NZFF

I'm as much to blame as anyone, but not too much happening in the forums these days I notice.

I've really stepped away from flight sim this last 6-8 months; might have loaded P3D maybe a half dozen times for a total of a just a few hours usage (less than 10 certainly).
I finally got my new home built, my office and my sim setup after not having it for the better half of a year, but seem to have lost interest.
I think it it because I mostly used my sim to 'practice' the small amount of RL flying I could do (microlight license, CH-601 out of NZMA).
Now that I no longer fly (nice house, but big mortgage!) the sim no longer holds much appeal ... doesn't help it take 10-12 mins from cold & dark to lined up and ready (P3Dv4 loading times and all the add-on bits).

Of course, my PC also threw a wobbly last week and is in at PBTech since last Saturday. I've asked them replace my spinning D: with a 1TB SSD but at this stage looks like might be a mainboard fault ... on such an old computer this could be expensive, so not quite sure how that will work out.

Anyway ... Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it ...
... and have a good break anyway, for those that do not

yeh
but I'm here just about every morning to see whats going on even though I don't post much,
still trying to get to the stage of getting back into it but life keeps interfering.
All the best for the festive season anyway and hopefully the jolly fella brings a new PC for you.


That's if I don't send him around and give him a direct vector to the international boundary

I think most of them are playing with their new R22 s

Me?....I pop in every day to see what is going on, post a bit of interesting stuff, and tell you all about my English Weather! My active Flight Simming has slowed down now after some 38 years of doing it on my various Computers since 1980. Spectrum 48k, Commodore C64, Amstrad 464, Amiga 500+1200, home built Windows PC's etc! A lot of my time is now spent riding my various Motorcycles around the countryside, videoing the journeys, and posting them on Youtube for my "far-away" Chums, (mostly Harley-riders in America), to enjoy, and view all theirs!.... ....! I also do a lot of shopping and cooking every day!.... ....! It's like everything else, our (boyish) interests change over time, and many of my Flight Sim Chums have moved on (disappeared!) over the years since I started doing all this Flight Sim Stuff. Its a grand hobby, but far to easy to get addicted to!... ...!
Been there, done it, got the Tee-Shirts, including the real Trial Flights!.... ....!
There you go, Chums! I pop in every day into my various Registered Flight Sim Forums, and post stuff to keep them going with whatever I can come up with, sensible or comical!.... ...!
Take care all, and have a Happy Crimbo!

Paul The Fozz.... ....!

Here's another example of what's keeping former forum members busy these days...
New Zealand Business Awards
(Page 7)

My word Robin, you have a finger on the pulse, alright.
Way to go, Andrew, mix your passion with a little income.
The years have rolled by at NZFF since inception, the likes of little Trolly have grown up, while others have grown old...

emfrat wrote:I think most of them are playing with their new R22 s

Too right, and now one can go back and have a proper look at all that lovely AFS2 scenery.
Not to mention some tantalising NZ bits that Robin casually dropped on Thames and surrounds:



And the AFS2 community is doing what we know and love about flightsimming: freeware tweaks!
Here are some updated lights in Utah:



- and there's a whole lot of Other Stuff, probably too much to get into.
The Christmas break this year is all of two weeks!
Gotta choose: make stuff or play with stuff.
Too much stuff to play with, so no contest!

"Not to mention some tantalising NZ bits that Robin casually dropped on Thames and surrounds:" ?
Where can i get this from ?

Robin I'm sorry I just deleted your post in quoting it for the post below...DOH
- Charl

Cheers Robomatic ...

Edit: Oops, forgot to add ... the coastline which is just a MSFS blend, which doesn't work the same way in FS2, so you see funny banding. Plus the colours need some tweaking, but it is usable in the meantime to get an idea of NZ.

A little colour shift, some water masking, cultivation, and why not a couple of airfields lifted a bit to become recognizable?
OK, three.
Job done, Coromandel has always lent itself to a nice package.

Actually I am delighted with what I see "in the rough", gives renewed hope for the sim in NZ.
I mean, just look at the screen above... the way that mesh sits so tightly on the photoreal

Charl, I notice that your screenshot doesn't show any cultivation, which means you probably started the flight close to Thames, rather than up north a bit... I think that cultivation should really be 'attached' to airports, but here I've just done one chunk, so although it covers the whole peninsula, it won't appear until you are close to the locus. Once I do a couple of airports, I'll fix that.

towerguy wrote:yeh
but I'm here just about every morning to see whats going on even though I don't post much

Yeah, I'm the same, in here often but post little. I really don't have that much to say ... very uninteresting life that I lead!
Still no news on my PC from PB Tech ... apparently the technician was off sick when I called.
I have a bad feeling this is going to be expensive ...

toprob wrote:Here's another example of what's keeping former forum members busy these days...
New Zealand Business Awards
(Page 7)

He's also keeping the seats warm at work with me

Ha, haaaaa! Got my computer back at last, just in time. Now sports a replacement MB, CPU and memory and a 1TB SSD for P3D.
To keep cost down, went with the Asus Z370-P II, Intel i5-9600K 3.7GHz and 16 GB DDR4 3200MHz Kingston memory.
Should be as fast as what I had before, I hope, and the SSD should improve loading times.
Literally just got it back, so haven't yet fired anything up ... been busy fixing drive letters, desktop icons, removing old apps and drivers and whatnot.

So, since in the last few days I've been bouncing ChCh - Wgt - Hamilton, and Hamilton direct ChCh in the ATR-72 (irl) ... anyone know of a decent ATR-72 for P3Dv4 - payware is fine and doesn't necessarily have to be 'commercial trainer' quality...

Cheers and have a Happy Christmas y'all...

jpreou wrote:Ha, haaaaa! Got my computer back at last, just in time. Now sports a replacement MB, CPU and memory and a 1TB SSD for P3D.
So, since in the last few days I've been bouncing ChCh - Wgt - Hamilton, and Hamilton direct ChCh in the ATR-72 (irl) ... anyone know of a decent ATR-72 for P3Dv4 - payware is fine and doesn't necessarily have to be 'commercial trainer' quality...

I'm waiting to see what the Milviz one's like but I think there's a Virtucol one out there.

jpreou wrote:anyone know of a decent ATR-72 for P3Dv4 - payware is fine and doesn't necessarily have to be 'commercial trainer' quality...

Hey Jeff. Sadly there isn't a "decent" ATR, and hasn't been since the FS9 days when there was an OK for the time one from Flight1. The only option currently as Lindstrim says is the VirtualCol model to fill in time while we wait for what should be a decent model from Milviz but who know's when that will be.

See: https://secure.simmarket.com/virtualcol ... -p3d.phtml

BTW, I have the VirtualCol model, is fine for some fun flying esp if on sale, but it's fairly low def texture/modelling/system wise. Similar detail wise to their Dash8 if you have that.

Oh and the Flight1 model works in FSX which is the better machine if you still have an FSX install lying about..

See: https://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=atr1

PS - merry xmas

Well, I have a rule that I rarely break (I did for the RV-7) that I only install P3D specific add-ons (version specific, if I can; i.e. v4 at the moment). So I guess I'll wait, but thanks for the info.
Perhaps I'll look into what else AirNZ has in their regional / national fleet that might be available (or not, probably).
Been sucked into Ark Survival Evolved recently, which is consuming more time than is probably healthy!

Took a long hiatus from flight sim as I didnt have a decent home PC and children got in the way of fun times But just recently managed to get a PC together for only a few hundred bucks thanks to our office throwing out some machines that were only 3 years old but no longer confroemd to security specs. So with just a GTX1050ti and a SSD I managed to get a HP Deskpro to run XP11 at 30-50fps depending on the aircraft!

So i'm back, I've binned FSX:SE and thrown myself into XP11 and Ortho4XP. It looks and feels amazing, the Zibo 737 mod is to me just as good as the PMDG NG was, and i'm really enjoying flying again with any crashes, good frames and lovely scenery\weather. I haent spent a penny on any Payware yet apart from the IXEG 735 and FlyJSim 732, both of which are fantastic. If someone comes out with a good ATR or Dash8 i'm complete. Maybe the TBM as well once it settles down bugwise.

So i'll going to try posting more here and always happy to help anyone make the transition to XP11, its worth it!

Good stuff