Plane for MacRobertson

[teson1]

Hi,
I'm at a complete loss what plane to take, and just no time to check out several. So maybe you can give me some recommendations?

My reference is the Realair SF-260 for its excellent VC and gauges, controllability/feel of the flight model and free cockpit view. But I would like to fly the classic challenge for the historic interest, and the interesting navigation challenges.

Here's what I'm looking for, in decreasing order of importance (FS2004):
1. Excellent VC - sharp, accurate to RW cockpit, sharp smooth gauges, all (or most) switches active.
2. Should fly "well", difficult to explain, just think of the SF260...
3. I would appreciate it the views outside would be clear from the VC, but that's not so important.
4. Any type and speed is ok so far.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Gunter

[Willy]

Golden Age or Modern GA? I went with my choices as they both give me good fps on this old and tired comp and I like to fly them. That's one thing about a flight like this. If you don't enjoy flying the aircraft of your choice, you'll soon tire of the flight.

Milton Shupe makes aircraft that are usually very good on fps and fun to fly. I'd look at what he's got available. I can very near flying his AeroCommander 680 in the Modern event and I'm still thinking about switching to his Beech 18 for the Golden Age.

[salt_air]

Golden Age or Modern GA? I went with my choices as they both give me good fps on this old and tired comp and I like to fly them. That's one thing about a flight like this. If you don't enjoy flying the aircraft of your choice, you'll soon tire of the flight.

Milton Shupe makes aircraft that are usually very good on fps and fun to fly. I'd look at what he's got available. I can very near flying his AeroCommander 680 in the Modern event and I'm still thinking about switching to his Beech 18 for the Golden Age.

A second opinion would be exactly what Willy has just said, couldn't have put it better.

Don't forget the Spartan I told you about as well.

You need to do like "Archie Bell and the Drells",,,,you got to Tighten Up!

[teson1]

Tried out the Spartan (spartan.zip) - same thing as with all freeware planes I tried - the VC just seems too blurry, gauges not sharp, in particular if zooming in.

Now I'm wondering whether I have something set up in a wrong way with my settings. If I compare the gauges in the VC with the artwork of the gauges in the spartan.cab, the artwork has much higher resolution. See the comparison attached...
It looks as if the artwork of the gauges was downsampled for the VC gauges???

Can I change this somehow? Get the gauges to display with the same resolution in the VC as the artwork?
(Btw - I have maxed all settings in the settings, including the VC ones.)

Any help appreciated! This would really make a lot more planes attractive to me; Almost all VC except the SC260 just look bland so far...

Thanks,

Gunter

[Willy]

Teson, I'm not sure what the problem is. What's your resolution set to in FS?

[Milton Shupe]

Interesting ... on my old system, they were crystal clear at 1280X1024 and a OMB GPU only.

New system now and 22" hi-res monitor and I get the same as you. I haven't flown the Spartan on this system so I am surprised as you. All my settings are maxed as well.

I'll ask Scott to take a look at this.

Thanks

[buzzbee]

delete

[teson1]

Milton, thanks for dropping in here!
It would be great if there was a fix for this, and the fact that you had it sharp is very encouraging!!!

In case this may help - attached are my settings. Very much everything maxed.
Screen 1440x900x32
FPS limited to 25fps and never drops below.
Intel C2Duo 7450 (2.13 Ghz)
4 GB RAM
GeForce 9600M
Vista

One note - as mentioned in
http://www.flightsimonline.com/spartan/faq.htm
I downloaded the aircraft.cfg patch (#1)
Added the sounds (#2)
changed the mdl (#5)
but I now tried without 1 and 5, and I still get the blurry gauges in the vc.

Thanks,

Gunter

[PRB]

Interesting ... on my old system, they were crystal clear at 1280X1024 and a OMB GPU only.

New system now and 22" hi-res monitor and I get the same as you. I haven't flown the Spartan on this system so I am surprised as you. All my settings are maxed as well.

I'll ask Scott to take a look at this.

Thanks

Very interesting indeed. I've always had the blurry VC gauges. Always thought that was as good as it got. I tried the usual trick of doubling the pixel_size values in the panel.cfg, but it doesn't work in the Spartan. I'm very surprised to hear that you once had clear gauges, but now have fuzzy ones like us! I'm thinking that means we can "fix" it! Can't wait to hear what Scott digs up...

[Milton Shupe]

Interesting ... I may have to redo that panel for higher resolution to accommodate to large gauge bmps. I suppose we can also try reducing the size of the gauge bmps too. There are typically 300X300 pixels. The panel.cfg reduces them to around 80X80 (to 26% of available size). Then when displayed at normal view range, they get blown back up to around 60% of original size but 2.3 times the reduced size. I think that is the issue.