The A2A Simulations Community

Hello A2A community!

First let me say what a FANTASTIC product you guys have made! The P-47 with Accu-Sim is just incredible. Nothing else can satisfy my realism hunger. You pretty much made all other planes obsolete..

I am very new to FSX, but not to flight simulators. I logged ALOT of combat hours in IL-2, including modding. (I made a series of Smoke mods, and various effects mods for the game)

So im used to the easier way of IL-2's waypoint navigation.

Purpose for this thread is to see what else i can get, (freeware preferably, but if its really good payware ill consider) to improve the experience.

I do not care for modern flying. I would like to simulate, as best as possible, what it is like to travel in the WWII-Era

I may have a few friends who would fly with me to simulate fighter sweeps and such. So i can do formation flying, or a small bomber escort.

Any scenery, airfields, terrain, mods, etc.... Anything i could do to simulate massive bomber formations? Can the AI do that?

Until the ultimate realistic combat sim comes out, this is the best i can get. And i enjoy the long flights at high altitude, and seeing a mass of B-17s traveling to a target would be fantastic.

Thank you for any suggestions!

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To my knowledge, there isn't an easy way to accomplish what you are asking for. First, the AI isn't really designed to create formations, especially large ones; even if it was, you'd have to add a B-17 and then designate it as part of the AI traffic. I was able to accomplish that in FS2004 with an editor I downloaded that could add or remove aircraft from the list of AI. The problems I ran into, however, included having no control of how the traffic was generated--Japanese Zeros and German Bf109s flew unopposed over Seattle, for example--and having to assign default (but grossly incorrect) profiles to addon aircraft just to make them operate. I don't know if a similar editor even exists for FSX.

As you already know, in IL-2 you can easily create multiple ship flights in the Full Mission Builder and then plot waypoints, altitude and airspeed for that flight. The only way I've seen that FSX single players create a similar flying experience (ie, for screenshots) is to use a flight recorder and then manually fly an entire flight in the aircraft they want to see have in a formation. The player then loads the track and flies the same flight alongside the saved aircraft but this time in a new aircraft. The track is saved again, now with a playback of two planes flying together. The player repeats the whole flight in a third aircraft to accompany the previous two and saves again, etc. Using this method, if you wanted to create an eight hour mission involving 10 bombers, it would take you 80 hours of actual flying time.

Adding WWII airbases is possible, although they will unfortunately be surrounded by modern scenery and landmarks. I had a couple of really good English bases made by Ian P., downloaded from his website (Ian's Dark Corner), which unfortunately I haven't been able to find again after I lost these sceneries to a harddrive crash. Check Simviation and AVSIM libraries for WWII bases and object libraries.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

I found Ian P.'s site:
http://www.ianpsdarkcorner.co.uk/node/28

You should be able to download his WWII airfields plus the scenery object libraries that you'll need via that link.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

I found that site shortly after i posted. thanks for the advice though, Skycat. I was hoping for a AI flight maker, but i guess not. I think i remember you from the AAA forums i believe. Remember, I was making the new Jug and Ponies for IL-2 but then i had to pass that torch to Wolf.

Any good payware products that i could get to make my trip from Britain to Germany/France better?

How about some Papa New Guinea/Burma scenery and others to make those tropic jug trips better. The scenery and weather in FSX stock is okay, but i really want something to awe at. I checked out the REX and ASA and they seem good. ASA with the X Graphics especially.

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Yes, I signed up at AAA in its early days (under a different nickname) solely to instigate the P-47 cockpit mods.

I'm not sure what kind of scenery enhancements you are looking for. One popular product is the VFR Real Scenery series that covers Great Britain; unfortunately, each part of the series only covers a small portion so this can become expensive. There are similar photoscenery packages for other regions of Europe, each targeting a small but specific region.

A more general approach is to enhance all of Europe at once. Here's my 'quick start' approach:
1. Ultimate Terrain X Europe for more accurate coastlines, roads, railways, lighting, plus some landclass and autogen adjustments. This is a powerful addon but it is not photoscenery. More information at the developer's website.
2. Ground Environment X: Europe to replace the stock terrain textures. I have GEX for USA/Canada and I am very pleased with it. There are other texture replacement products like FScene that are also highly regarded.
3. Replacement mesh: freeware might be a good place to start. If you want to upgrade to a commercial product, FSGenesis has a variety of products. FS Global is another terrain mesh option.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

For me a good landclass makes the biggest difference in Europe. Since fs9 lcs still work well in FSX there is freeware available for most greater countries. Generally if you search freeware for specific countries have a look here:

http://walhalla.mine.nu/fsx.php

A very nice list that includes most freeware FSX sceneries.

If you want to fly above Germany German Landmarks is an excellent product. Comes with a very good landclass and thousands of 3D objects. Harbor areas, ships, trains, castles, famous churches etc. There is always something new to discover around every corner.

I wanted to recommend a landclass, but my experience with North America landclasses is that they can make some regions more unrealistic than the default. Finding a landclass that accurately represents the area you are flying over can be tricky. I've never been to Europe so I can't say what landclasses are best for it. For my North America flying, I use SceneryTech. It tends to make urban areas look a bit thinned out but suburban and rural areas look right to me, at least for the areas I primarily fly and know in real life. If SceneryTech landclass also thins out European cities as well, it might be an appropriate choice for going back 60+ years in time.

The German Landmarks package looks pretty cool.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

I can also highly recommend Adam Mills freeware replacement ground textures for Europe and the US (available at Avsim and flightsim.com). They fix the desert look of default Europe to something more realistically colored.

I forgot that Ultimate Terrain X Europe v1.1 and higher was upgraded to have a landclass that covers all of Europe instead of only some urban areas.

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

[b][b[size=150]]How do I get the P-47 fly like a regular aircraft without all this annoying smoke. It starts just as soon a start the aircraft, Enough already.[/b][/b][size=150][/size][/size]

Helldiver,

Your query probably should have been a separate thread, but no big deal.

Too much smoke? I'm guessing that either your realism settings are wrong or that you have already damaged the aircraft within the sim. Let's start with the realism settings in FSX:
1. Set all the difficulty sliders to "Hard."
2. Make sure the automixture box is not checked.

Once that's done, the plane should operate as it was programmed to. But you may need to reset the engine's maintenance to 'fix' any damage you've already done to it in the sim. Bring up Shift+7 and then click the "Overhaul" button. (This may not be available without Accusim, I'm not sure. If it isn't, ignore this part of my suggestion.)

Now, just for the sake of a controlled test, autostart the aircraft by hitting CNTRL+E. This will start the plane with correct mixtures, etc., so you shouldn't see heavy smoke while the aircraft is idling. You'll see a steady stream of puffs from the exhaust port though, which would be normal in the real aircraft: video

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

Hello Helldiver,In your FSX realism settings,make sure the auto-mixture box is unchecked and disabled.Good to see you here sir! Cheers!

**Edit** Skycat beat me to the punch!!

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Patrick

Well I'm 81 years old and don't know how to put in the autofix mode. I just want to fly the airplane wihout much bother.
Now as far as puffs of smoke are concerned, the Helldiver had an engine not too far from that in the P-47. Any engine that was puffing away would be an oil burner or the mixture was too rich. One, you'd land the thing, the latter the pilot wasn't tending to business.
The same hold true about exhaust flames. Any plane that is buning clean will not exhibit any flames coming out of the stack.

1. In the FSX main menu, choose the Settings tab.
2. Next, select the Realism tab. This will open a new window, which is shown in my screenshot.
3. I've circled where the automixture tab is located. Make sure the box is unchecked.
4. Hit the OK button.

I'm not sure if you meant to type "auto fix mode" but go to the maintenance hangar screen to clear the engine damage. It is a simple pop-up that is brought up with Shift+7. It looks like this:



Click on the white "Overhaul" strip, and that will reset your engine health to Excellent and your airframe hours to 0.0. (This may only be an AccuSim pack feature.)

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I like Thunderbolts! (Link to MySpace tribute page)


120th Fighter Wing, Montana Air National Guard

The Airframe Hours won't be reset, the Engine Hours since last overhaul will be.

regards
ROB

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A2A Simulations Inc.