36: Add New Views

The earlier post Remove Unwanted Views talks about getting rid of some views (cameras) that one doesn’t need.  This one talks about adding new views (cameras).

My system has a few Pro Flight Instrument Panels (FIPs); therefore, I want a full scenery monitor display without showing the 2D or 3D cockpit.

Although this can simply be achieved by pressing W to turn off associated panels in 2D cockpit view, the cockpit will appear again when eyepoints are panning to the right or to the left.

To address the issue, a number of options can be considered.

35: fsx.CFG – AverageFrameRate

fsx.CFG provides 3 sets of information about normal and slew flight.  The information will be displayed and cycled when SHIFT-Z is pressed.

To simplify and maximize the display, adjustments as shown below can be used to group the 3 sets of information into a single one for each type.

34: Smoke Gets in Your Plane

In FSX, only the Extra300, FA-18 and P51 aircrafts are pre-installed with an exhaust smoke system which can be activated by pressing the “I” key on the keyboard.

Customized Red and White Smoke System

To add the smoke effect to other aircrafts, insert the following lines at the end of the aircraft.cfg of your choice under SimObjects folder:

33: Fly to the Twilight Zone

Skyclock is a little app (offering both paid and free) for iphone which uses the phone’s GPS or network location service to calculate twilight periods for the present day virtually anywhere in the world.   It surely add some fun to the flightsim experience by matching the Civil, Nautical or Astronomical Twilight hours it displays.

Check it out from Skyclock or the App Store.

32: HK International Airport Bug Fix

The HK International Airport VHHH from Imagine Simulation is not a bad supplement to FlyTampa’s HK Kai Tak Airport VHHX.

However, the product is a bit overdone because it mistakenly replaces FSX’s default buildings from the adjacent area, which in fact is more true to the reality.

31:My HD5870 Overclocking Profiles

Followings are the overclocking profiles of my ASUSTeK MATRIX HD5870 P/2DIS/2G

I generally flighsim under 970MHz setting but sometimes further OC to 1000MHz as follows:

30: Flight Instrument Panel Tweak – Part 3

I got three Saitek’s Pro Flight Instrument Panels.   They are good but expensive, too.  Moreover, the more of this FIP are attached to a system, the more impact of it affects FSX’s performance.

Using earlier Tweak 1 and Tweak 2,  my three Panels are setup as picture shown below, and each panel controls two related gauges:

AIRSPEED <—> RPM

ATTITUDE <—> DIRECTION

ALTITUDE <—> VERTICAL SPEED

Under this arrangement, I can simply press the up and down buttons to easily access the six basic gauges on small planes I usually fly.

29: Flight Instrument Panel Tweak – Part 2

On each Pro Flight Instrument Panel (FIP), there are six physical buttons (S1 to S6) located on the left hand side of the LCD screen, which are predefined as:

The functions of these buttons are defined in the SaiFlightSimX.xml file under C:\Program Files (x86)\Saitek\DirectOutput directory as described in Tweak 1 (see below).

28: Flight Instrument Panel Tweak – Part 1

Saitek Pro Flight Instrument Panel

Saitek’s Pro Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) comes with an XML file that defines the order of gauges to be shown when starting up.  The default order is:

Altimeter<-> Airspeed<-> Attitude
<->  Compass <-> Turn Indicator <->  Vertical Speed

This order is also true to the sequence of gauge starting when more than one FIP are included in the system.  By editing the XML file, the order of the six gauges to be shown can be arranged as desired.

Here are the steps: