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New Job
Aug 16, 2016 20:30:52 GMT
via mobile
Post by brantleycmd on Aug 16, 2016 20:30:52 GMT
I just wanted to share my excitement with this group. I credit it with foster8ng my desire to make simulation into my life. I recently got a new job with a company called Avenger Flight Group. We handle simulation training for Spirit, Delta, an a couple other airlines. We javelin a 737-300 sim and next week will be getting an A320. I am having a blast. I am a Flight Simulator Technician and will be working on repairs both hardware and software for the Sims. Thank you so much for helping me to find my path. I actually brought your AutoPilot + panel to the interview and was pleased to find out I was the only new hire they accepted. Everyone else is being brought in from other facilities for this new location in Dallas Texas. See photos, more to come! www.dropbox.com/sh/wmxctoofhr579jk/AAD5bYqxPUeyv67l6jdqar78a?dl=0
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New Job
Aug 16, 2016 20:33:34 GMT
via mobile
Post by brantleycmd on Aug 16, 2016 20:33:34 GMT
Correction. 737-800W
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Post by MarkH on Aug 16, 2016 21:38:48 GMT
Wow, awesome! That is a cool job to have
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New Job
Aug 16, 2016 22:11:49 GMT
via mobile
Post by brantleycmd on Aug 16, 2016 22:11:49 GMT
Wow, awesome! That is a pcool job to have Haha I was just on Google on day l9okinh aro7 d and saw the job posting. Sent my resume and literally forgot about it for a month. Wasn't actively looking for work but thought "wow wouldn't that be cool" and what would you know I got it! Very pleased! I'm going to learn so much and will be happy to share!
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Post by ScottB on Aug 17, 2016 13:46:22 GMT
Congratulations! That's a cool story to tell! I browsed their website and noticed this: "State of the art simulators with the highest fidelity and visual standards", among other things. I've often wondered how the visuals of a full blown simulator compare first hand with ten year old FSX/P3D/Orbx and such (clarity, detail, density, framerate,etc.). I assume the big full motion sims are mostly about cockpit management and in that sense probably extremely immersive. But I wonder how the visuals are managed? It will be interesting to hear your take on that. Again, congrats and thanks for posting.
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Post by brantleycmd on Sept 19, 2016 17:58:40 GMT
Congratulations! That's a cool story to tell! I browsed their website and noticed this: "State of the art simulators with the highest fidelity and visual standards", among other things. I've often wondered how the visuals of a full blown simulator compare first hand with ten year old FSX/P3D/Orbx and such (clarity, detail, density, framerate,etc.). I assume the big full motion sims are mostly about cockpit management and in that sense probably extremely immersive. But I wonder how the visuals are managed? It will be interesting to hear your take on that. Again, congrats and thanks for posting. So, to put it as plainly as I can, there are three PCs called IGs (image generators). each of these PCs runs a projector. These three projectors are blended together and project the visuals onto what is called a BP Screen, Bleed Projection, I believe. The image does what the name suggests and bleeds through the BP Screen. This image is then reflected onto a 20 foot wide, curved mirror. Because the mirror is curved it gives a very immersive sense of depth. You mentioned Prepar3D, and we actually have an Airbus A320 Sim built by Lockheed which uses a supped up version of Prepar3D. Let me see if I am successful posting pictures, I have some of the mirror and what not. There are a couple videos in this link that have examples of the visuals. I'll take some more for you. I'm learning so much and have learned all these cool methods of going about things, so if you guys have any questions, I'd love to share! More Pics: www.dropbox.com/sh/wmxctoofhr579jk/AAD5bYqxPUeyv67l6jdqar78a?dl=0www.dropbox.com/s/6vfi6v41ac61eez/VID_19760918_145946.mp4?dl=0
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Post by MarkH on Sept 19, 2016 20:18:45 GMT
Wow, some of those pics look like the inside of the Millennium Falcon!
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Post by ScottB on Sept 20, 2016 14:17:30 GMT
Thanks for the explanation and posting the pics!!
Image generators, blending images, Bleed Projection, curved mirrors, souped-up P3D..... lets build one! Should be a snap with Marks help!! Mark? You can build one, no?
I have to admit, companies like Orbx, Fly Tampa, and a slew of others have turned aiports into breathing things with the moving grass, people, animals, etc. even compared to the big sims it seems, but the immersion factor must be off the charts!
The picture of the mirror reminded me of what these guys did some years ago using mylar and a shop vac!
Good stuff.
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Post by MarkH on Sept 20, 2016 20:29:50 GMT
Mark? You can build one, no?
You got it. (No.) Well not yet, I'm still trying to get rid of my blurry scenery...
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Post by ScottB on Sept 21, 2016 13:44:51 GMT
Mark? You can build one, no?
You got it. (No.) Well not yet, I'm still trying to get rid of my blurry scenery... I've never noticed the blurry scenery issue. Maybe it's because I can't distinguish that from my aging eyeware prescription. FSX is an old program and a pain but, it's also kinda fun for tinkering. I've been experimenting with the *.FLT file in the Doc folder recently. Also created a few batch files to turn on and off default aircraft in the menu, enable/disable AI traffic files, reset the dll.xml file and my FSUIPC joystick configs, etc. Point is, there's always something new to discover with the old so, I hope you get "the blurries" sorted out.
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Post by MarkH on Sept 21, 2016 19:02:18 GMT
I've never noticed the blurry scenery issue. Maybe it's because I can't distinguish that from my aging eyeware prescription. No, if you had it you would know. Your scenery refresh can't keep up and gradually the underlying landscape turns to melted ice-cream as the mesh and texture detail progressively falls back to lower and lower resolution. It's less noticeable at night because all the lights remain sharp. In the daytime it's even worse because the autogen stays sharp, so it looks like the houses and trees are floating on the melted ice-cream I am hoping these will help:
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Post by ScottB on Sept 28, 2016 13:59:31 GMT
I've never noticed the blurry scenery issue. Maybe it's because I can't distinguish that from my aging eyeware prescription. I am hoping these will help: I thought you had a SSD. Are the blurries somehow associated with load time? I recently moved to W10/SSD on my older desktop. Moving FSX over was a pain and may have resulted in a few glitches which could be attributed to W10 I guess. My simulator has always had a SSD and I love it! Are you going to use ghosting software? Reinstall?
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Post by MarkH on Sept 28, 2016 17:23:29 GMT
I thought you had a SSD. Are the blurries somehow associated with load time? I recently moved to W10/SSD on my older desktop. Moving FSX over was a pain and may have resulted in a few glitches which could be attributed to W10 I guess. My simulator has always had a SSD and I love it! Are you going to use ghosting software? Reinstall? Well I did the upgrade, with about the usual amount of pain for such a thing. I did a disk copy of the C drive using Acronis TrueImage 2014 to a 500GB USB drive, but when I restored it to the new drive I couldn't work out how to make it bootable. Solved (I remembered from my old 'backup' video) by installing Windows 7 on the new drive and then restoring the backup over the top. Amazingly, this came up with no problems at all. Then I just copied the entire D drive (FSX and all its stuff) to the other new drive, although I used a free program called 'FastCopy' because it does verification as it copies files. Then everything just worked. I didn't even have to re-activate or reinstall anything, with one possible exception - in rain I get an intermittent but persistent flashing effect, which I suspect is PrecipitFX telling me I need to reactivate it. All that said, it hasn't made a squat of difference to the blurries, so I need to put a bit of investigation into that. The texture loading must be a factor, but it's obviously not the thing that's bottle-necking in my setup. This wasn't the main purpose of the upgrade, my FSX drive was almost full and it made sense to go with SSDs across the board. (BTW, I sent the PCIe drive back and got a 500GB SATA one, as I didn't have as many PCIe slots as I thought! That was a lot cheaper too )
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Post by ScottB on Sept 29, 2016 14:56:12 GMT
Well I did the upgrade, with about the usual amount of pain for such a thing. I did a disk copy of the C drive using Acronis TrueImage 2014 to a 500GB USB drive, but when I restored it to the new drive I couldn't work out how to make it bootable. Solved (I remembered from my old 'backup' video) by installing Windows 7 on the new drive and then restoring the backup over the top. Amazingly, this came up with no problems at all. Then I just copied the entire D drive (FSX and all its stuff) to the other new drive, although I used a free program called 'FastCopy' because it does verification as it copies files. Then everything just worked. I didn't even have to re-activate or reinstall anything, with one possible exception - in rain I get an intermittent but persistent flashing effect, which I suspect is PrecipitFX telling me I need to reactivate it. All that said, it hasn't made a squat of difference to the blurries, so I need to put a bit of investigation into that. The texture loading must be a factor, but it's obviously not the thing that's bottle-necking in my setup. This wasn't the main purpose of the upgrade, my FSX drive was almost full and it made sense to go with SSDs across the board. (BTW, I sent the PCIe drive back and got a 500GB SATA one, as I didn't have as many PCIe slots as I thought! That was a lot cheaper too ) I use Norton Ghost myself for imaging, although I've also tried Acronis some years ago. I've never heard of "Fastcopy", maybe worth looking into. Once a solid working copy of W10 was installed on my older desktop, I reinstalled FSX from my CD's to set the registry items. Then I overwrote all of the new FSX folders/files from a backed up copy of W7 FSX (including the hidden folders). I did have to manually create a few shortcuts. Most everything works perfectly except FSX crashes if I minimize the menu screen (The UIAutomationCore.dll fix doesn't help this). Anyway, I suspect it is a W10 thing which makes me even more hesitant about moving to W10 on my W7 simulator rig. This FSX menu crash is minimal and of no concern to me.
I'm curious about your endeavors because at some point, I may want to upgrade my W7 simulator to a larger SSD and I was wondering how you would handle it. It's my understanding that moving from a smaller to larger drive via some type of ghost image (that is bootable) regardless of the OS will result in a the image not being able to make maximum use of the larger drive. I haven't done any techy research on the issue yet, I'm sure there are solutions.
I enjoyed your last video, btw. I couldn't see the blurries that you noted upon landing. I hope you get that sorted out. I know there are tons of references to the blurries online. I thought it was a memory issue, myself.
Oh yeah.... nice car. Didn't watch the entire vid though. :-)
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Post by MarkH on Sept 29, 2016 17:05:42 GMT
Oh yeah.... nice car. Didn't watch the entire vid though. :-) Yeah, I'm sure that video exceeded the NQ ("nerd quotient") of many of my subscribers As for upgrading your disk, I just followed the guide from the Acronis Help document, which recommended to use a 'disk backup' type of backup rather than a 'clone'. I moved from a 300Gb HD to a 500Gb SSD. The system disk has a single C:\ partition and a hidden 'system reserved' partition created by Windows. When you restore the backup to the new SSD, Acronis lets you specify the details of these partitions independently and it can create the new partition to be bigger than the old one. The bit that didn't seem to work was that you then restore the 'MBR/Track 0' partition (or track, or record, or whatever it is). The new disk wouldn't boot at all until I did the tap-dance I described earlier. Maybe this was a problem in the creation of the backup rather than the restore.
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