Long Distance Flight
Another finding from today, regarding longer distant flights.
FSX
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Going for a joyride, flying from the North of England to Jersey in a Cessna; take off, head south then take a look at the map and zoom all the way out to see your entire route. Maps show at a glance all airports, NDBs and VORs on the route.
Can plan route all the way down via numerous VORs and NDBs.
Can accelerate time on auto-pilot to 16x to get there quicker.
X-PLANE 10
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Going for a joyride, flying from the North of England to Jersey in a Cessna;
take off, head south then take a look at the map.... can see only airports, NDBs and VORs for local area (tile on the map).
No ability to zoom out to see destination to ensure enroute correctly.
Therefore very had to file a flight plan, not knowing ICAO codes of the VORs and NDBs enroute.
Although not tried this a yet, I suspect this closer to real-world flying with reliance on paper maps and using the Garmin GPS.
Acceleration of time is limited to something like 1.3x based on speed of PC.
(I'm using Window 7 32-bit with Intel Quad Core Q8300 CPU, 4GB RAM, GeForce GTS250 with 2.3MB or graphics memory)
As aircraft progressed over next area (tile), it loaded it into memory.
By time 3rd/4th tile came into view; X-Plane informed me that I run out of memory (PC has 4GB) and as a result it would no longer render anymore textures enroute.
I abandoned the long distance flight in favour of short hops, like Jersey to Guernsey.
5 Answers
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MAPS - FSX
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Planning your long distance flight in FSX, can look at map and zoom right out to world level; seeing every airport, NDB, VOR etc...
Working out roughly which direction to head to an neighbouring airport is left to estimation or using GPS.
MAPS - X-PLANE 10
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Can only zoom out to currently loaded tile to see airpots, NDBs, VOR etc...
Navigation roses with 360 circles are shown on any airport, NDB or VOR clicked. Also a rose can be shown on your aircraft to give better estimate of bearing to take.
Extra features for map are things like showing the SLOPE for approach to an airport. Putting airport ICAO into the left side will show runways available.
Today performed exactly the same short hop from one airport to another in a Cessna Skyhawk on both FSX and X-Plane 10.
VISUAL: I preferred FSX for DAYTIME flying.
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Ground elevation, autogen trees and houses seemed more pleasing on the eye.
Although the roads were hard to make out on FSX, with no moving vehicles.
On X-Plane 10 the roads do show better with cars that move.
On ground/field textures, both were pretty much the same.
VISUAL: I preferred X-Plane 10 for NIGHT TIME flying
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In X-Plane 10, lights of towns houses, moving vehicles, landing lights on airfield and detailed taxi ways lights; make for a much more exciting/realistic experience.
GPS/NAV: FSX
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Frequencies are little easier to enter on COMM/NAV stack,
with less reliance on real-world control knobs.
GPS has 'push cursor' option to select to scroll through nearest items.
GPS is very easy to read and comprehensive with NAV and WPT screens.
GPS/NAV: X-Plane 10
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Frequencies can be set from GPS unit or using tuning knobs.
GPS doesn't appear to have a 'push cursor' option on right knob, to select and scroll through nearest items.
GPS is a little blurred and hard to read at times e.g. not able to read runway number's easily on Direct-To airport.
I find your posts very interesting.
I'm sorry that no one who has X-Plane has commented on them.
Enjoy!
Cheers RadarMan!
Agree, would love to see other people's findings on here too.
Those are excellent and informative observations, and thank you for them.
Now ... if I can get XP demo to recognize my joystick ... and if I can actually fly an XP plane, well, I'll try to join your discussion.
You guys are terrific!
Pete
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