FSX dual controls fun

[GOZR]

Well that was fun with King tonight doing some flying on dual controls two in one cockpit ..

Gunny ?

[TX-Gunslinger]

Don't hold your breath - I'd like to - FSX is very interesting - but consider this, I currently have:

Il2 - just reinstalled with Ultrapack - flown about 20 mins since Xmas
ROF
ROF beta
Black Shark - not installed
Flaming Cliff's - not installed
Wings of Pussy - not used in a week - probably won't be either (barring large development)
COD2 - Maybe two hours of play over the holidays - don't see much more
Theatre of War 2 - Great game - Have not played it much in the last month - but I'm sure when I need a break

It was back to work this week, and in my spare time - I was barely able to get through beta-test missions plus make a little progress on my retail ROF testing program.

I really admire how you and King can keep proficiency on so many titles, while I struggle for basic competency in one.  It will take me, 2 weeks minimum - just to get my setup where I'm comfortable with it - controls particularly.  I'm still iterating my controller profiles for distribution to the community (a lot of people did d/l my Cougar profile for ROF - once I learned how to track D/l on my wespace).

Anyway, you guys forget sometimes that I'm a lot older than you too.  Hand/eye and other things are degrading.

FSX and Condor greatly interest me - but I can't justify another title that's going to set on my desktop.

I'm really swamped with just ROF things and lucky to be making progress with them.

S~

Gunny

[GOZR]

Il2 = New Jets = equal fun but they are all wrong... yet .. waiting for guys to fly Korea with me ( Mig15/F86 etc. )
ROF= Fun with friends only
ROF beta= work with friend ( work on making it better waiting for end January )
Condor= Great little Sim witch use little controls usability basics great tool to learn lift and such, Outdated graphics.. will be replaced
Black Shark= Fun for racing and complex avionics and attacks if you like Helicos, A10 module coming soon.
Flaming Cliff = Great for SU25T soon to be dead with the upcoming Flaming CLiff 2.0 this month
Wings of Pussy = Great for cracking/hacking exercises and get the 3D's and textures from it but ain't good for flying.
COD2 = Overclassed by ARMA2 so no go with that need to be sold on Craigslist
Theatre of War 2 = Paper weight need to be sold on Craigslist

Flaming Cliff 2.0 = "Must have" with compatibility with BS ( long waited sim finally with tools )
FSX= Must have great tool for a lot of things and looks great!! New planes are much much better, flying in the environment on Dual controls etc.. very fun no other sim give you this effect..

What is interesting is all of them are easy setup really and using the same basics key/controls that your feel like your are flying only one big sim.. simple...


What is your ideas ?  someone else comments? We should take some video
Gived my TV away 2 years ago and freed up lots of evening time or going to facebook to see pictures of friend or other friends wasting time on getting fan of some stuff  Hehehe!!

[TX-Gunslinger]

I don't watch TV really, maybe 15-30 mins a week max, if that.  Do you ever stop to think that maybe it's the 50-60-70 hours of work each week which limits my time?

I don't agree with you about TOW2.  For me, it's a good game - particularly when "on the road" without high end computing, controllers and wide bandwidth internet.

Sometimes Gozr, when I take the time to honestly attempt to explain my situation to you - I recieve a little "life critique.

All I'm trying to do is give you an understanding of "why I'm not there", because you are my friend.

NO TV/NO FACEBOOK - GUNNY DOESN'T DO THESE THINGS 

If I had no TV in my house - what do you think my wife would be doing while I'm wasting time on my computer every night?  If I got rid of the TV - I'd have to get rid of my Flight Simming - do you not understand this?


Ahhh, I've got to quit responding to these threads.  TB and TOAD are probably having a good laugh right now.....

S~

Gunny

[GOZR]

LOL Yes you are right.. I understand Gunny.. and Gunny "having a good laugh" is the point .. mostly when things looks so grey...

[TX-Gunslinger]

Well - upon review, I did actually spend three painful hours this week watching TV on Thursday night - but I had to because our company football team was having a little game in California

But, in my defense - I'm 100% sure than one other of our teamates was watching the same little game.

S~

Gunny

[GOZR]

Did your team win ?

[TX-Kingsnake]

The flight simulator collection is what sets TX Squadron members apart from the rest. Think of any given squadron and they are known for 1 or maybe 2 simulators. Within a given squadron the members are specialized to a few aircraft or likely a single aircraft and to stretch the point further, the late war plane in a narrow series of variants. Their argument is pro skill and per time allotted whereas TX Squadron members have a fascination with aviation.

TV, we don't watch much of it in the evening and that is what Americans do for 4-5 hours.  5 hours * 7 = 35 hours... almost an entire work week, wowy.  In a way we have a tv with a typewriter and a flight stick plugged into it. Everyone has a different schedule and time constraints and if thats not how you get your jollies its no biggie.

It is challenging to keep up with TX Squadron as the members have a need for the newest flight simulators and this creates diversity. The team speak channels attest to this. I'm trying to be here on Wednesdays to make the most of passing schedules.

[TX-Gunslinger]

Gozr: - No -  this city and most of the state was in mourning on Friday   I don't think I can remember when it was ever as quiet at work as it was on Friday.

They played well and proud - but suffered an unrecoverable injury in the first quarter.

King:  I have not made much of an effort to coordinate any MP stuff this week as all of our assignments in the "other thing" have been SP.  As Gozr was alluding to - and I'm sure your aware - this will all change soon.

I want to keep the Tues/Wed thing going.

S~

Gunny

[TX-Kingsnake]

[TX-Kingsnake]

Which add on aircraft are available for shared cockpit in FSX? 3 that aren't stock and here is a post from VATSIM explaining which ones they are and why aside from these 3, only the stock planes work.

Hey everyone,

An update of the research I was forced to do, if anyone is interested:

I have received official statement from PMDG: "The Shared cockpit function in FSX is not currently compatible with the PMDG product line. We attempted to implement this process during development of the PMDG product line but could never get it to perform successfully so it was abandoned. We will be looking at it again on the 737NGX"
Flightsimlabs.com whose Concorde-X is on the assembly line at the moment also mention technical difficulties:
http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.p ... t__p__2766
Airsimmer's A320 is on its way to release and seems it will support shared cockpit.

FSX is 4 years old now and quite surprisingly, I can count the aircraft which support shared cockpit on the fingers of ONE of my hands. After digging deeper into the community websites, 3rd party producers' forums, etc., it seems that Microsoft had produced rather buggy and unstable platform in which the shared cockpit is severely crippled and it exists almost only on paper, when it comes to custom gauges/instruments. The thing is that every self-respected aircraft producer does not use the default FSX gauges and instruments. You can see where this is going to.
So the most companies just dumped the shared cockpit feature on grounds that it's too difficult to implement. I have checked almost 95% of the market - CS, CLS, LevelD, PMDG, DA, you name it. Up till now I have found exactly THREE sharable aircraft:

Available now:
- DA Fokker 70/100 @ http://www.digital-aviation.de/site/?page_id=7
- L39 Albatros @ http://www.lotussim.com/features-intro.html
- MadDog MD-80 series @ http://www.flythemaddog.com/features.php

Upcoming that would support shared cockpit (given they find a way to implement it)
- Flightsimlabs Concorde-X (in final beta testing)
- Airsimmer A320 (not clear release date)
- PMDG 737NGX (somewhere in 2010)

Of those listed I can say the DA is awesome company, love their Piper Cheyenne, regretfully I don't feel like flying on the 2D cockpit of the Fokker. The L39 is an awesome bird, but since it's a military training subsonic jet, I imagine we would be frowned upon if we want to fly it online with people in 737s for example, although it has proper GPS navigation and we are willing to fly strictly with SIDs and STARs and everything else that involves ATC.
And lastly (praise Charan and all the aviation gods) the mad dog. This is the only airplane when it comes to flying commercial jet with a friend. Fully functional 2D and 3D cockpit, fully sharable over a custom TCP/IP channel (outside FSX), control panel, custom settings, load and fuel manager, etc. Fully working FMC (less features than the CS 757 FMC for example, but who cares). It does not have its own navdata, but it's built on the PMDG one and thus you use the PMDG one. Simulated failures across every system of the aircraft if you want some thrills. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone who wanna fly with a friend, despite its hefty price of 50 euro.

Despite it's dark times for the flightsim community, there's a light in the tunnel after all - AeroSoft is making a new flight sim, scheduled to release in Q2 2012. Last night I browsed the forum and I am completely stunned by the scale of the project. It can be found @ http://www.forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?showforum=278. I can recommend reading it, it's quite interesting. The way I see it, the whole flightsim community needs new sim right now, so everyone is invited to help them. FSX is aging and with ACES being booted last January does not help at all. I almost can feel the addon market producers headaches when they try to implement some serious features and being constrained by the buggy platform.

Enormous thanks to Charan Kumar
Cheers
Ignat

[GOZR]

Albatros here