FSBreak - The Flight Simulator Podcast

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Brendan, Mark. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. Our FSX PC First: Custom Built HP Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 - 2.83GHz Processor / 12MB Cache Option: -$100 for a Q9400 - 2.66GHz Processor / 6MB Cache Option: -$200 for a Q8300 - 2.5GHz Processor / 4MB Cache 6GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (2x 2GB, 2x 1GB) Option: +$80 for 8GB DDR2 800MHz RAM 500GB SATA Hard Drive nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB VRAM Option: -$100 for a 9600GS 768MB VRAM Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Price: Fully Configured $1,239.99. HP Customized M9500T. Direct link to machine: Link Low cost Built to Order machine from Newegg... Intel Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz / 4MB Cache 8GB DDR2 800MHz 640GB SATA Hard Drive nVidia GT120 1GB DDR2 VRAM Note: DDR2 not the typical DDR3/GDDR3 in GPU's Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Price: $779.99. Gateway LX6810-01. Direct Link: Link Mid Range Built to Order from NeweEgg: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 - 2.5GHz / 6MB Cache 8GB DDR2 RAM 2x 640GB SATA Hard Drive nVidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB VRAM Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Price: $899.99. Acer Aspire AM5621-EQ9300A. Direct Link: Link Results... We looked at various PC's from Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, Gateway, and specialty vendors such as Falcon Northwest, Alienware, etc, and we eventually settled on HP's line because they offer the most compatible hardware for FSX. Tests from Tom's Hardware universally show that nVidia GPU's run FSX better than ATI CPU's, nVidia GPU's are universally on the top 10 preforming cards before ATI shows up. [Link] and [Link] Tests from Tom's Hardware also show that the best card is an nVidia 9800 series card paired with a high speed Quad core CPU. Mark also recommends Glary Utilities to speed up your computer [Link], you can also check out CCleaner [Link]. (Be sure to back up your registry changes!) What DOES CPU Cache actually do? Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. Video of SSD RAID: Jeppesen Discontinues Support for SimCharts 4.0 Dear Customers, This email is to let you know that the sale of our SIMCharts 4.0 service which works in conjunction with Microsoft Flight Simulator version 10 (FSX), will end on April 1, 2009. There is no new version being planned at this time. Support for the SIMCharts 4.0 service will continue for 1 year thereafter or until March 31, 2010. Access to the service after March 31, 2010 will no longer be available. We appreciate you as a customer and encourage you to visit our website, jeppesen.com, to view the full breadth of services and offerings Jeppesen has available to you. Link to E-Mail. [Link] Are you a customer of SimCharts? WIll this affect how you fly? Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. New JaggyRoad Film #38; Videographer New video by the name of "She's My Queen", features the talented Xavier, the new videographer at Jaggyroad! Be sure to check it out in 720P here! [Link] Fszone Spring 2009 Landing Competition James from Fszone.org will be accepting video submissions through the end of April for the Spring 2009 Landing competition. The airport will be the classic... TNCM - Princess Juliana Airport. For a full list of contest guidelines and aircraft guidelines, visit the link. [Link] Mark Talks X-Plane Some great addons to spice up your X-Plane Experience: -Mitsubishi MU-2 from X-Aviation [Link] Screenshots: [nggallery id=19] Price: $30.00 -Peter's Aircraft - Airbus A330 and A340 [Link] Screenshots: [nggallery id=20] Price: ~13-15 EUR -Cessna 172 Garmin 1000 [Link] According to their site, it turns out it is only a dummy Garmin 1000, but still w...

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Jordan, Brendan, Andrew, Josh, Nolan, Marty, Joe, Cam, and Adam. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. We are trying out a round table format for this episode, let us know about what you think! Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. A few notable items from this episode: VA Discussion Vatsim (vatsim.net and vatusa.net) Real World Flying Virtual Military #38; Formation Teams Aircraft Painting (DXT Bitmap) Jordan's Nipple Headphones (We love Jordan) Co Host Information Voicemail #38; Other Contact Info Just leave a comment (Bottom of Page)

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Nolan, Brendan, Marty, and Andrew. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. FSX Tweak: Fix up your FSX Water for Free! There are many programs out there to make your FSX's default water textures look good, such as payware programs like Real Environment Extreme or Flight Environment Extreme... But for simmers on a budget, you can make your water look a lot better with a freeware application called FS Water Configurator. Easy to use freeware program that lets you tweak how you want your water to look just by dragging sliders, no configuration files need to be tweaked! Comes with several presets, and you can tweak each setting such as water reflection, surface shine, and more. You can even make real time changes without having to restart FSX! You can download FS Water Configurator [Link], and be sure to check out SimTips! [Link] [nggallery id=15] Carenado Debuts PA 28 RT 201 Arrow IV On March 25th, 2009 Carenado has released one of the most successful and popular "T" tail aircraft: the PA28RT 201 ARROW IV for FSX. This aircraft is full FSX and DX10 compatible with high resolution textures and a very friendly FPS performance. It takes advantage of all the FSX features like cast shadows on VC, external dynamic cast shadows, normal mapping, specular mapping and bloom lights. The new features of the aircraft include: External Dynamic Shadows and Internal Dynamic Shadows on the VC. Interactive Virtual Cockpit Full moving parts and animated sections such as the doors, co-pilot seat, etc. Other details such as antennas, chocks, even the baggage area. Full aircraft lights, and many additional features. To add even more to the realism, the model also includes a full checklist, reference material about the flight dynamics, and a PDF manual of the Virtual cockpit. The PA28RT 201 Arrow IV from Carenado is only available for FSX, and retails for $27.95 USD. Check it out from Carenado here [Link], or view the release here. [Link] Swiss VFR Airports Part 3 Explore five more highly detailed airfields in "Swiss VFR Airports Part 3". The product series ldquo;Swiss VFR Airportsrdquo; is the brainchild of the developer of the famous Switzerland Professional X scenery. An important aspect was to make the airfields and their immediate surroundings as realistic as possible and for this reason, photorealistic textures were used. Distinctive objects around the airfield were placed as an orientation guide. Each airport also fits seamlessly into the photo realistic scenery "Switzerland Professional X" thanks to the exact ground layout. The "Swiss VFR Airports Part 3" add-on is compatible with both FS 2004 and FSX. Here are the airports included in that package: LSZL Locarno LSZS Samedan LSZE Bad Ragaz LSMF Mollis LSPA Amlikon These 5 airports will run you 29.99 Euro Plus Shipping cost, and you can find them at SimMarket. [Link] Vehicle Flight Simulator Released Vehicle Simulator is a unique simulator, combining land, underwater, sea surface, air and low orbit environments into one, the program makes it possible to drive, fly, sail, dive, and go into space in one convincing simulation environment. After more than two years of intensive development a new simulator called Vehicle Simulator finally released. The program excels especially as a flight simulator and as a naval simulator combining the powers of two previous simulators Micro Flight and Virtual Sailor into one, however the game engine was completely re written and has far greater capability and capacity than any of the previous ones it was made of. Vehicle Simulator has some unique and innovative features that stand out compared to other programs of its kind, here are some of them: Ability to see air flow visualization, allowing you to learn how to soar cleverly using the rising currents of a...

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Nolan, Brendan, and Adam. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. FSX: More than 4 Cores? Comment from Juan on FSBreak 8 about FSX and multicore. [Link] Phil Taylor is quoted saying that "FSX will scale up to 256 cores". Does FSX use 8 cores? CAN FSX use 8 cores? Quoting an article from Phil Taylor in 2007 about FSX's multi-core capabilities: Today Intel announced their new 2.93G QX6800 Quad Core processor. As part of this press release, Aces Studio participated with a quote about our improved multi-core support in SP1. The quote stated ldquo;The latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator* X, Service Pack One (SP1), due out later this month, is a great match for the extreme multi-core processing delivered by the new Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core processorrdquo; ldquo;Flight Sim X SP1 greatly increases multicore utilization and will scale as more threads are available leading to reduced load times as well as frame rate improvements and greater visual complexity during flight. The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft is pleased to work with Intel to provide our end users with a great gaming experience." Our multi-core support will take advantage of both 2 and 4 cores today, and more cores in the future when they become available via a config setting. This is for both Intel and AMD processors. At render time, we run the terrain texture synthesis on threads across the cores. During flight on multi-core machines, as terrain and terrain textures are loaded you will notice significant multi-core usage. As all tiles are loaded, the multi-core usage will fall off, this is expected. As the terrain is re-lit, approximately every minute, you will see multi-core usage increase. As you bank and load terrain tiles, or as you fly forward and force a load of more terrain tiles, you will see the multi-core usage increase. Note - hyperthreaded is not multi-core. Our current plan is to treat HT machines as single-core since we noticed extensive collisions between threads which caused stutters. You can find the article here [Link]. This article was written in April 2007, and since then FSX SP2 has been released. Here is an important bit of information: The new Core i7 It is a physical 4 core CPU, with 4 logical cores - Otherwise known as hyperthreading, which makes it look like 8 cores to the OS. Since the release of SP2, the "Not Using Hyperthreading" statement could be false. Tweak FSX for 8 Threads As it turns out, some members are able to 'unlock' all 8 'cores' (or all 8 threads) by making some changes to the FSX.cfg file. Change the "AffinityMask" entry to "AffinityMask=255" if you are a core i7 user, there are reports that this may help with the problem. You can also set it to 254 to leave 1 core free for programs other than FSX that require CPU, such as TrackIR, etc. Members report that using AffinityMask=255 helps with loading speed, but not in game stuttering! Here is a link to the AVSim Forum post [Link], and more information about AffinityMask from Phil. [Link] Members on AVsim report the the method that BEST helps stuttering #38; FPS is AffinityMask=15, With hyperthreading off. Final Intel Core i7 overview here at AVSim. [Link] Share your FSX tweaks, and your system profile to us! Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. Flight Sim Bloggers Network The Flight Sim Bloggers Network (FSBN) is a Network of bloggers dedicated to flight simulation. They currently have over 15 blogs in the Network, covering all aspects of flight simulation. The Network gathers all the news items posted by every member, so they can build up a huge resource of available articles, searchable on any blog in the Network. The number of blogs and websites involved produces dozens of (mostly) FS related news articles every day, this ca...

Hosted by Eric McClintock, #38; Joe. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. The World's Most Expensive Home Built Flight Simulator Matthew Sheil, owner of a trucking parts company, has the most expensive home built flight simulator, an almost exact replica of a 60 Million dollar 747-400 simulator, cost him just $300,000 to build. The simulator is housed in his Sydney Australia warehouse. The cockpit features: Over 45 different software programs running on 14 different computers. He rents out the simulator to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and then donates the money earned from the rentals. His Simulator offers full motion. Matthew also is a real life pilot and owns a beechcraft baron B58, and says he prefers flying the real plane but enjoys the limitless posibilities of the simulator: He says: In the [real] plane I fly, you take off and you point it in the direction of Melbourne and you press a button and away it goes until you come into land, whereas a simulator you can do whatever you want - if you want to fly upside down, fly upside down, If we hit a mountain or the ground the simulator just freezes in its current state and everything goes red - and then we just hit reset. You can find the news article here [Link], or find moe information on Matt's website. [Link] More Pictures: [nggallery id=9] Show us your home cockpits! Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. Problems For Computer Pilot Magazine? (Correction, in the podcast I stated that they have gone for 3 years on a monthly release date, the actual time is 7 years.) Robert, the owner of the popular Computer Pilot Magazine, sent out a note to subscribers explaining that they are selling less, and hence the cost have gone up, forcing him to reduce the frequency back to once every TWO months instead of once per month. Computer Pilot started as a bi-monthly and then went monthly in 2003. While we enjoyed 7 years of month-after-month issues, a recent slowdown in readership and advertiser support due to the toughened economy has forced us back into the bi-monthly schedule. They also state: Donrsquo;t worry, wersquo;re not planning on going away any time soon. In fact wersquo;re taking this opportunity to regroup and recreate a better magazine with a complete new look and improved content based on reader feedback. So while it will be 2 months between issues, they will be ldquo;betterrdquo; issues from this point forward. If you are currently a subscriber, donrsquo;t worry, you havenrsquo;t lost anything. You will still receive the number of issues that you are signed up for. If you have 8 issues remaining in your subscription, you will still receive 8 issues. Nothing else will change. Computer Pilot will be a better magazine with a new and improved look and improved content, published and delivered every other month. View the article on SimFlight here [Link], or see the release directly from Computer Pilot Magazine here. [Link] X-Plane releases "Sully's Flight" for as an iPhone Application Based on X-Plane, 'Sully's Flight' starts you on runway 4 at LaGuardia in an Airbus A-320, at similar time, weather, and weight conditions to that fateful flight. YOU will fly the plane yourself, following hoops plotted in the sky showing Captain Sullenberger's approximate ACTUAL flight-path... This will let YOU fly the same profile Sully did, from take-off right through to landing... all with realistic physics and accurate land and river placement. As well as the actual location, airplane, time, weather, and flight-path, the ACTUAL radio transmissions are played at the right time, giving a full immersion into the actual 5-minute flight... and with flight physics that are accurate enough to make it very similar to the real plane. Touch down below 120 knots, at less t...

Unedited Post Show Discussion! Hosted by Eric McClintock, Joe, Jon, #38; Nolan. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. Post Show Discussion Believe it or not we kept going after Episode 7! This is some conversation in the post show chatter after episode 7 where we discuss hardware a little more. Episode 8 will be here in the comming days!

FSX Thunderbirds, X-Plane Beta, AVSIM Fancon, #38; More! Hosted by Eric McClintock, Joe, Jon, #38; Nolan. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. Update: X Plane Racing Released Last week we mentioned the upcoming X-Plane racing iPhone/iPod Touch Application The application is now for sale for the expected $9.99 For more information, visit the direct link to the iTunes App Store. [Link] X Plane For iPod/iPhone updated to 9.08 Version 9.08 is the 8th free upgrade to the X-Plane line-up! Updates include: An autopilot on Glass Panel planes New scenery, frame rate enhancements, and sound enhancements. Updates also include local multiplayer support The 9.08 update is available as a free update for current owners. For more information, visit the X-Plane.com website. [Link] X Plane 9.30 Beta 4#38;5 Released The new flow-field visualization for X-Plane 9.30 Beta-4. Pitch-rate, downwash, and wake effects are all clearly visible. For the full feature list, visit the Beta information page. [Link] Care to school us in what these updates really mean? Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. AVSIM Announces 2009 FANCON Key Note Speaker Captain Robert S. Randazzo is the founder of PMDG and an Airline Transport rated pilot with more than four thousand hours of pilot in command experience. He has flown nearly two dozen aircraft types from Cessnas to restored warbirds and holds type ratings on five aircraft types from the BAe JS4100 to the Boeing 747-400. Robert has been working on, under, or near airplanes since the age of fifteen, and spent almost all of the past twenty years in the airline business. He began his career with United Airlines as a part time cabin/lavatory cleaner working an overnight shift, but, convinced that such endeavors would eventually lead to the flight deck, Robert capitalized on many job opportunities presented by United. He served on the employee team that opened Denver International Airport, served as a Negotiator/Account Executive in Washington, DC., was a member of the Critical Incident Response Team, and was a member of UAL's operational management team at Washington Dulles International Airport. In November of 1999, Robert accepted a First Officer position flying Jetstream 3200s for United Express carrier Atlantic Coast Airlines out of Washington, Dulles Airport. In January, 2001, he upgraded to Captain flying the Jetstream 4100 on routes throughout the eastern United States. A year later Captain Randazzo was promoted to the Chief Pilots team where he assumed responsibility for drafting an airlinewide operational plan that was largely credited with giving industry leading on time performance to Atlantic Coast Airlines and follow on carrier Independence Air. Robert has been involved in flight simulation since 1981 with the release of SubLogic Flight Simulator for the Apple II. Founded PMDG in 1997 to bring his real world experience to the simming community. Find this story on Avsim [Link], and learn more about the 2009 FANCON event here. [Link] Microsoft Flight Simulator MVP asks a question Nick Whittome was at the game studios during the MVP summit, He asks a question for the community: If the former flight simulator team at Microsoft made available, in a rough form, an unsupported set of tools that they may (or may not) have that would improve the current design tools available to FSX right now, would that at least soften the blow of ACES closing as we knew it and would it be helpful in keeping you all developing for the platform ongoing? Nick asks for the community's feedback on his blog article. [Link] What could these unsupported tools really mean? Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426. A new Mike Ray Article on FSVisions This month FSVisions is happy to

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Brendan, and Joe Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. X-Plane Racing Coming Soon For iPod Touch/iPhone X-Plane racing lets you have timed races against a computer, or in multiplayer. Multiplayer will be soon updated to ALL versions of X-Plane to iPhone for CURRENT customers, however Racing will only be sold with this new version. Other versions will be upgraded once testing complete. Multiplayer is ONLY for LAN! No Online Multiplayer. More about X-Plane racing: X-Plane racing comes with 4 regions, and 4 planes: F4U Corsair P-51 Mustang F-4 Phantom F-15 Eagle A race course for each plane in each region, 4x4=16 total races. Familiar "Green Hoops" in other flight racing games (Like FSX Airbull race, etc) "Coming Shortly", our best guess is $9.99 for X-Plane racing. Link to Article here. [Link] UPDATE! X-Plane Racing has now been released for $9.99 as we predicted. [Link to iTunes Store] Mike Stonersquo;s Aircraft Available Again Garry J. Smith from Australia reports ldquo;hellip;.. As many of you know Mike Stone has retired from the simming community and model development and has no desires to return to the hobby of model creation, modification or revisions. However, Mike has graciously granted permission for me to host for download all of his aircraft via the GJSmith.net sitehellip;hellip;rdquo;. ldquo;hellip;.. This is an excellent opportunity to gather together all 107 of Mikersquo;s models and make them all independently available to the simming community from the one spot. To facilitate this I have created a web within a web which is exclusively dedicated to presenting all of his aircraft over several pages. The web pages now contain download access to all of the Mike Stone Aircraft. The new pages are herehellip;.rdquo;. View the article on SimFlight.com [Link], orgo straight to the website here. [Link] Out thoughts: We respect Mike's decision to keep control of his property, but the site can use some work (A search function and more robust server for starters) and the copyright can be loosened up a bit as it currently does not even allow the FS2004 aircraft to be converted to FSX by the community... RDJ Simulation's Bigfoot Adventures for FSX Have some unusual fun as a bush pilot in several exotic locations around the world while landing by ground, float plane and even freefall parachute. You then go on foot to track and tranquilize these elusive beast to cover it all up for the government. You get paid well and find all kinds of great hunting and fishing spots along the way for when you take your R#38;R. 5 Total Missions included: Australian Outback Louisiana Amazon River Washington DC Tibet Price: $18.00 [Link] Share with us! What is your weirdest FS addon you have ever owned? Screenshots: [nggallery id=7] SimFlight.com wants you to know about ForkLift Simulator Yes, the simulator recommended by Adam on Episode 5... Not Sure You Want To Know This But simMarket now carries a Forklift Simulator (in German language only). It is published by Astragon, the same company that also brought you the amazingly popular Farm Simulator and another few lsquo;gamesrsquo; away from the ordinary. Actually, it is quite fun so why not give it a go? Available here on simMarket. [Link] Again, this addon is available only in German, and will run you back EUR 19.99, or about $26 USD. Link to article. [Link] VA Discussion Joe is a member of Delta Virual [Link], and Brendan is a training manager at Fusion Airways [Link]. If you are a member or an owner of a VA, tell us what your VA offers! Call our voicemail at 513-201-5426. Quick Links OpenSceneryX 1.10.0 Released The OpenSceneryX project is a free to use library of scenery objects for X-Plane v8.50 and above. It is a collaborative effort by members of the X-Plane.org c...

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Adam, Cam, #38; James. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. Free MegaScenery Earth Download Pick and choose areas that you want photo scenery for. Prices for the scenery range from 1/4 cent to 1/2 cent per square mile. Most areas are between 1,200-2,000 Square miles, and are priced at $7.49. Approx. 1GB of scenery per area, available for instant download. Complete states are priced at around $120, and a 65GB download. (They do have a price to include a hard drive shipped with the scenery) City packs are also offered for $15-$30 per city. They currently have almost 300,000 Square Miles in 182 areas in the United States. They are adding new areas all of the time. The scenery is FSX Only, and displays at 1.19 meters per pixel. Each area includes day scenery and night scenery, and enhanced autogen scenery. Free Scenery: They are offering one area free, "WA-004" which includes a 1,300 Square Mile area around Mt Rainier in the state of Washington. Free scenery is a 1.14GB download. As a special promotion they are offering the first area purchase for $2.99, instead of $7.49. Link to Free Scenery. [Link] Air Hauler Previewed Air Hauler is an automated program that allows you to manage all aspects of your own air cargo company, and fly the flights in FS2004 or FSX. Features: Airline startup options, you get a plane and a small amount of cash to grow on. Manage multiple companies as their own entity. Complete airline route, airport, and financial information. Each airline has a base, Air Hauler will import your custom airports from FS2004 or FSX. Each airport has a startup cost and a monthly lease. It is able to automatically suggest possible airport candidates to add to your inventory. Remembers where you left off your game progress. Even if in the middle of a flight and Flight Simulator is shut down, next time you start the game it will pick up where you left off. Fuel prices vary from region to region, airport to airport, and between different fuel types that your aircraft require. It also pulls the oil price from the internet to reflect the real world price of fuel. The program assigns jobs that need to be flown, and you are able to filter them and fly the ones you want tom and expire after 72 hours. You are able to adjust FS settings such as time and simulation rate without penalty. Aircraft limits are enforced. If your cargo is over weight you are not allowed to leave the airport. For a fee you may have the airport remove some fuel to make your aircraft lighter, and you are able to make stops for refueling, but careful flight planning is required! Any aircraft can be used, freeware an payware. However, aircraft must either be purchased or leased. The price depends on the condition of the plane. Loans can be taken out to lease or purchase assets, and there are different loans available with different terms and interest rates. Air Hauler even includes a stock market feature. You can use your company's cash to purchase shares of real world companies at current market prices that are downloaded from the internet. All costs are automatically determined from your flights and company. Including airport use fees, fuel, aircraft repairs, insurance, and loan fees. At a certain point in the game, you are able to hire on virtual staff. Pilot's skill levels differ, as do their salaries and efficiency. Complex flight planning can be used for the flights flown by you. The game is currently in late beta and will be released for FS2004 and FSX priced at $36.99 from JustFlight. [Link] You can also read John Allard's full preview. [Link] Screenshots: [nggallery id=3] Tecnam P92 for X-Plane The P92 is an advanced microlight, two-seater (side by side), single strut braced, high

Hosted by Eric McClintock, Jordan G, #38; Adam J. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. Support Flightsim This petition is to serve as an open letter of support for both the ACES studio members and the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise as a whole. Over its 25+ year history the franchise has built an unmatched fan-base stretching across generations. With the closure of the ACES studio, we, the loyal supporters of the franchise are concerned with the continuity and quality of the brand. Though the franchise remains the property of Microsoft Corporation, the real value remains in the dedication and creativity of the ACES studio members that have now been lost. Check it out and sign the petition at SupportFlightSim.com. [Link] End of an Era, Part III New blog post from Phil Taylor where he wraps up the various press coverage Microsoft has gotten. Is the FS Franchise dead? Here is some information from Phil: Two groups being formed, Group one involves using using character animation, that was supposed to be in Train Sim 2, in a social networking environment lead by Microsoft Research. Group two is the most interesting, it will be centered around a flying game - NOT FS11 - But still a flying game. Group two has 30 employees, and plan to take on 15 more over the next year. The job postings last week which mentioned a "flight orientated game" were for the second group. Also remember that some employees from the ACES studios were asked to find another position in the company, presumably to 'group two'. So what does this mean? Phil speculates: This is a serious change in direction for the hobby, but the jury is out in terms of the exact details until Microsoft Game Studios releases more information. Phil mentions the possibility of a pay to play type system, similar to other games like world of warcraft, where you pay a monthly fee in order to play the game. He also has said that it could be a possibility that it might not feature the entire world, and not as a deep simulation experience. Question? If this were to happen, what would happen? Would you pay to play a FS? Online Surveys#160;#38;#160;Market Research Tell us what you think! Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected], or call 513-201-5426 Phil ends the speculation by saying that it is clear Microsoft has SOMETHING in the works, but we will just have to wait and see. Until then FSX is a great platform to build on. View the full article here. [Link] New Film from JaggyRoad Films Imagine you are watching an amateur edited video with a bit of music in the background to spice things up a bit. Nothing crazy, just a relaxing but fun experience you might find at a friend's TV on a late night while tipping back a few beers. Video: Watch this video and JaggyRoad's other videos here. [Link] GoFlight Integrated Communications Console Features a Full-size COMM and NAV stack Includes a prewired USB hub, just plug it in and use the configuration software. Will run you about $900. View more about the console here. [Link] Picture of Jordan's friend's setup: [nggallery id=2] Share your home cockpit! Use the form on our contact page, email [email protected] and include an attachment or a link to your home cockpit! Quick Links Sandspit "X" Airport This is one of the most popular and yet often forgotten airports in North America. From the very detailed and unique terminal building to animated "birds in flight" and Orca whales "splashing about" just off the coastline, we have done our best to capture the area's overall peaceful and serene feel. Both FS2004 and FSX versions included. Price: $15.00 USD. More info at this article. [Link] Sky Diver 2009 A skydive 'simulator' for both FS2004 and FSX. Features 5 different types of animation. Also features a watch with Altimeter and different canopy colors.