SimAddicts Anonymous

[Zerohedge]

Thanks Ian, Deeknow!

I'm glad to hear there are some fellow DCS pilots here - I'll be sure to look them up as soon as I feel my basic combat maneuvers are back up to scratch. At present I am not much of a danger to the enemy, mostly to myself and the seabirds I seem to keep mincing (4 engines destroyed by birds on takeoffs / landings within a week...I think I may need to adjust the bird strike likelihood settings a little).

Visiting Finns, that's cool! I do know there's a healthy flight sim community back home but it's cool to hear they visit NZ via the online skies.

As to the X-55 - I am happy with it so far, for sure! If you do end up buying one be sure to shop around - I got mine for about $330 instead of the standard retail $380. Still a lot of money but hey, every little bit counts. I hope the quality is good...have heard some mixed reviews but so far so good.

[Ian Warren]

Tapio , Im very sure once you have some air time with the birds, I think you would find your X-55 the bees knees, It would be the stick I would buy simply due to the HU-YA comments from others , also the displays at airshow like Avalon were think all seven linked in to a wide screen multiplay and they had their own screens little simpits all had X-55 , watch that display was impressive.

[Zerohedge]

Sounds like I made the right choice - that's good! =)

[Ian Warren]

Sounds like I made the right choice - that's good! =)

HU YA

[omitchell]

Thanks Ian, Deeknow!
(4 engines destroyed by birds on takeoffs / landings within a week...I think I may need to adjust the bird strike likelihood settings a little).

The trick to this is to make sure you have a cabin crew on the wing holding slices of bread behind the engines as you take off and that's your in-flight meals sorted...

[Ian Warren]

Thanks Ian, Deeknow!
(4 engines destroyed by birds on takeoffs / landings within a week...I think I may need to adjust the bird strike likelihood settings a little).

The trick to this is to make sure you have a cabin crew on the wing holding slices of bread behind the engines as you take off and that's your in-flight meals sorted...

Good old Kiwi Engine-urity < (new word invented) de-plucked <another new word) and cooked .. smack on the slice of bread ... YUMMY

[Zerohedge]

I hope those birds were runaway chickens off some nearby Georgian farm rather than the seagulls I fear they were...minced seagull sandwich sounds rather fishy!

Three of the four bird strikes happened at landing flare, which was okay but the fourth one happened on takeoff while I was just past V2 and about to rotate with fully laden bird, about to head off for a combat sortie. A lot of expensive weaponry was jettisoned in the next 2 seconds, haha...nearing max take-off weight, the Frogfoot doesn't like leaving the ground that much even at the best of times, let alone one engine down. It was interesting.

I did manage to bring her back to the tarmac but blew two tyres on landing. "Any landing you walk away from" and so forth, though...

[omitchell]

Just be glad it was birds and you weren't in Alaska...

[Agent X20]

I seem to be visiting here quite a bit lately so thought I'd better introduce myself properly.

I've been 'flying' sims since Mig Alley Ace and then the the early Microprose titles such as F15SE, F19 Stealth Fighter, Gunship and early versions of Flight Sim. Racing sims, subs and armour have also featured along the way but I always - always - come back to Flight Sims. Barring a few of the esoteric UK sims I've just about flown them all over the years.

Most recently Rise of Flight has been my favourite, combining an engrossing flight model with a diverse array of aircraft in a setting I truly love (who else saw all them DR1s at Omaka recently?!). I've not got into Battle of Stalingrad owing to its weak campaign setting but am watching it with interest. Another favourite of mine has been Falcon 4 - in large part due to it having a superb campaign engine. Some of my multiplayer sessions have been the most intense gaming every - rivalling those Grand Prix Legends online races that just about gave me heart attacks given the stresses of fending off my mates. I've not played Falcon 4 it in a while but still have a hankering for some more Viper action. In contrast DCS has never hooked me owing to its hard coded mission structure, weak tutorials and until recently very poor performance on my hardware.

Over the last few years it's fair to say I've had less time for sims owing to two wee lads (now nearly 5 and 3 respectively) so have tended to spend more time in shoot em ups and so forth I can pick up and drop them easily. But I've also been watching a few youtube channels - and one in particular by Frooglesim has really drawn me in and gotten me hooked on Flight Simulator X like never before. Sure I've dabbled before but without a 'mission', guns or bombs I've never truly really gotten the *point* of Flight Simulator - take off, fly about, and land... Now, watching Froogle doing his thing my eyes have been opened - and my general interest in aircraft and sims has been translated into a newfound fascination (or should I say obsession) of "GA" and all things Flight Sim.

In the last month I've:
- bought FSX SE (seems to offer better frame rates than my old box edition)
- upgraded my CPU to a kick ass 4790K (goes nicely with the 970 video card)
- bought FTX NI, SI, Milford Sound, Queenstown, Scotland and England, and HDTrees.
- bought Active Sky Next and EZdok
- bought A2A's 182, 172, Cherokee, Piper J3, and the RealAir Turbine Duke V2
- also picked up the REX Direct textures

So far, I've spent most of my time in the 182, and have gotten quite good at starting it(!) and following the checklists. I've done VFR flights around much of the North Island and have journeyed from Auckland to Wellington - enjoying some of the weather, scenery and generally getting to know my aircraft. I LOVE the fact that the A2A planes feel like living aircraft. Last night during the mag checks my left mag was misbehaving badly (it wasn't great in my previous flight) so I shut everything down and replaced it. Much better, and I enjoyed a very engaging flight into Wellington that was worryingly real in how the weather was depicted.

My real challenge is that I can do VFR flights with simple A to B flight plans, can interpret and deal with the weather from ASN, and can land and takeoff OK (though a yoke and pedals would be better than just my MS FF2 stick) while following ATC with very basic COM frequency handling, but I don't know _any_more_than_that_. I've got no idea about beacons, more complex routing, IFR or autopilot etc and am on the lookout for some great training guides.

I picked up the book "Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training" (http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle ... 88222.html) and am now working through the lessons. I'm hopeful it'll give me the skills needed to make use of the more advanced aspects of flying Flight Sim. I'm not far into it yet - and have been doing the basic takeoff and flight skills (wind - course, heading and track, and cross wind and cross wind take offs and landings) in my A2A J3. It's very hands on and sure is giving me good rudder and stick time.

So all in all I'm LOVING Flight Simulator at the moment (despite the slightly off 3D/FOV giving me headaches after long sessions - which I'm tinkering around to try to prevent but I think it's an engine problem as CFS3 used to do the same thing) - and here I am.

Some of you might also know me from Kiwisim.net.nz which I've 'run' for years and years after the sim crowd broke away from GamePlanet - the flight sim fans went to KiwiSim, the racers to KiwiSimRacing and a few to SimCentral.co.nz. It's quiet over there these days as we've all gotten a bit older and busier with kids, and there being fewer sims, but there's a very active (and awesome) IL2 multiplayer bunch over there who run 'The Flying Kiwis' and some outstanding multiplayer/co-op sessions.

So hi everyone - I guess everything above makes me a simaddict! And hey, if you've got any pointers to good (gentle) introductions and training to the stuff I outlined above that'd be appreciated. And yes, I do know about the FS lessons hidden away in there and will be working through them alongside the book lessons as it links to them too.

[Ian Warren]

Hi David and welcome to NZFF with all that simulation under your belt ... your going to love the VFR flying, you can get ready to use maps at flightsim.com , get them printed out and slipped into a clear folder for you desktop use, I put in the many off the ILS/NDB/VOR , idea for training up and have not let me down yet. you can sit back and not get lost, great thing now with forum there is a little chat box at the bottom off the page and course a Team Speak channel , sure you will find it fun here.

[1061147]

Hi all!

My name is Ryan Easte,
I Kind of lived all over the North Island, but spent most of my years either in Mt Maunganui, Wellington, or dirty 'ol Waitara in Taranaki.
I moved to Perth, WA around 4 years ago for work and have recently been bitten by the FSX bug again.

In the last month I have purchased the Dash8 Pro with FS2Crew, Upgraded to NGX Reboot, brought the A2A Comanche and just fell in love with the Cherokee where I think i'll spend most of my time brushing up !

I've been a lil home sick i'll admit of late so took advantage of the xmas sales and brought NZNI from Orbx and I plan on learning the dash there as well as enjoying some GA time.

If you see me on vatsim, say hi!

Here is a shot from the 19th floor at 0445. YPPH Hiding beind the 3 buildings there in the distance. I decided to pull a nightshift so I can pay for my next addon ! #addicted?

FlySafe!

[Splitpin]

Welcome aboard Ryan ... great intro.
Looking forward to hearing more from you .... you'll find a real rainbow of characters here , and a mine of information .
As for your addiction .... welcome to the group

[Killratio]

G'day All,

I'm an Aussie (there! said it, no way around it ) who has been flight simming since it meant sticking some tissue to a couple of pop-sticks and throwing it down hill. Actually been going down hill ever since! I live in the Southwest with wife and two dogs.

I mainly fly the A2A Spitfire these days, through my sim cockpit. Most of my time away from Professional Practice is spent building/maintaining sims or consulting on the actual sims cockpits or the software surrounding them.

I also try to find the time to fly a little Falcon BMS as well.

Glad to be here, looking forward to flying and discovering more of NZ in particular.

Darryl

[Ian Warren]

Darryl, NZFF, Welcome to New Zealand, Very Pleased you stopped in with your Spitty cockpit display of photo's and drawings, simply that really is going to whined a lotta people up with the detail , Just superb! , as for scenery to fly around, Nothing and nothing like it in Photo Real ! , be really looking forward to future screens from the cockpit.

[deeknow]

Welcome Dazza (go on, admit it, all your aussie mates call you that :-)
Your Spitty cockpit looks amazing, really lookin fwd to seeing that evolve, nice work indeed !!!

[Killratio]

Welcome Dazza (go on, admit it, all your aussie mates call you that :-)

Only the dead ones



Cheers, and looking forward to joining in AND having some more progress to show on the Spitfire... Now..back to my workshop for an afternoon of Frame 8.

[Killratio]

Cheers Ian.


Will do!

[Ian Warren]

Cheers Ian.


Will do!

Wodger

[AceNZ]

Hello, my name is Ryan I was born in Oamaru and have lived here ever since. I first got fsx on my computer when I was 8 and played it pretty much every spare moment I had. Took the controls of a real plane an old North Otago Aero club Cessna 172 at 11 and have been hooked on Aviation since. I intend to get my helicopter license when I leave school probably through the air force. I am now 15 and enjoy flying GA and heli's. I now have a huge range of payware and freeeware addons my favourites being RealAir Turbine Duke and the Milviz MD-530.

[Ian Warren]

Hi ya Ryan, Again Welcome to NZFF, as I mention there is a Oamaru scenery incoming , one thing missing is photo's of the airport surrounds and buildings, you should photo your neck of the wood and specific your airfield , nothing like photo real scenery and a photo real airport added to it