Question for Jomni, PanzersEast or other Flight Simmers

[PanzersEast]

Great story Toonces. I can relate to that in a lesser sense; I have flown the Fokker 50 where we only had V/S, atltitude hold and an APP mode. No autothrottle.
The autopilot didnt work a lot of the time either.
It was mainly hand flown.

When I went to fly the 737 I felt exactly the same as you just described! :) Often just getting rid of the Autopilot and do it myself because I knew what I wanted to do, just not how to quickly control the A/P to do so.

One thing I am very glad for is the fact I did fly in a much more hands-on environment before. It's there that you learn to fly.
No to piss on others, but you often see a completely different mindset of pilots who know only glass cockpit style flying.
Gives even more food for thought about that MPL license that goes around, where students are trained for a specific type from day one of flight academy. The course is almost all simulator based...
They do not fly their hours in GA to get a license. They do not get their wings in the military. Just computer based training and afterwards they fly across the ocean with 400 people on board...

Yea that is scary... I started out in Cessna 150.... and my flight instructor was an ex Marine fighter pilot.  You can fly flight sims from your desk all day... but your eyes will totally open up once 3 dimensions are introduced.  Even flying something as simple as an C150 takes situational awareness up several notches.



PE

[Jarhead0331]

I just bought Air Hauler.  You bastards...

I have no idea how to run an air freight company, but it didn't stop me from starting "ALH Sky Freight & Logistics, Inc."

Now what?

[Toonces]

I'm in a hurry to get to airliner freight hauling, so I started on easy.  If you start on medium or hard it will take a lot longer to build up your cash to expand, but you'll fly more.

Pick a decent hub.  It's tempting to take that remote strip on a deserted island, but it be challenging when it comes time to actually make some money.

I started on easy with a hub in Atlantic City.  Within the two weeks or so that I've been playing I've hired 3 pilots, bought a Mooney Bravo, and have two leased planes: a Dash-8 and Jetstream 4100 (the PMDG one).  So I have my pilots flying a bunch of AI routes while I'm sleeping and stuff.  My company's value is up to about 3 million so I'm slowly getting closer to that 737!

[jomni]

Just to make you guys drool.  My Air Hauler fleet way back.   I stopped flying it by the way as the debt piled up and I had to sell some planes.  The perils of massive expansion.

C-130


B737


DC-10


A330


B747

[Toonces]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice!

I can't wait to get my first airliner. 

[JudgeDredd]

I just bought Air Hauler.  You bastards...

I have no idea how to run an air freight company, but it didn't stop me from starting "ALH Sky Freight & Logistics, Inc."

Now what?

Choose an airport to fly from (I don't know what option you choose - but I choose Career so that I don't get an easy start (£100,000 I think and a Cessna) and I can't progress to bigger aircraft until my rep goes up. Some people like that challenge, if not go for easy and jump into whatever you like...then...

...just go with the flow.

Look at jobs (you can filter them so you can see inbound to/from your base etc), pick one at a time (pick more if you want, but if you don't do them, you get a huge drop in reputation) and fly.

Performing a job on time sees an increase of 0.5 to your rep. Not meeting the deadline sees a drop of 2.0. Make money (I tend to fly at least enough to pay my monthly bills. Keep an eye on finances and rep and work your way up.

It's a great wee add on and just gives some flesh to an otherwise empty (albeit pretty good) sim.

Damage to aircraft will occur for heavy take offs etc.

[JudgeDredd]

Jomni

I think I asked you before - is it easy to create your own liveries?

[jomni]

Jomni

I think I asked you before - is it easy to create your own liveries?

You need Photoshop (or Gimp) skills. 
Knowledge of layers.  Not really hard to learn.

The most important thing is to find the actual paintkit for your aircraft.  Most major 3rd party developers will provide it.
A paintkit is a photoshop file that has several layers (base paint, windows, rivet details, etc.).  Basically you insert your livery over base paint layer or change the color of the base layer itself. Then "flatten" the other layers into the image.  You save your file into a bmp file.  Convert it into DDS texture using DTXBmp. etc.

Try learning from this site.
http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/forum33-tutorials/

[JudgeDredd]

lol - thx...but you lost me at "Hello"  :D

I'll see if I can be bothered - I had hoped it was slightly easier

[Tuna]

lol - thx...but you lost me at "Hello"  :D

I'll see if I can be bothered - I had hoped it was slightly easier

lol.. it does look cool though, I was gonna ask if Air Hauler, lets you pick/create your own skins!

Now does AirHauler give you planes to buy? Or can you basically buy what is in your inventory?

[JudgeDredd]

I think anything in FSX that's flyable is available - I think

[jomni]

Anything that you have installed in your FSX to be exact.  There's a menu to add to Air Hauler's plane database to link a plane model and a skin.
Air Hauler will compute the stuff, performance, cargo capacity, price.

Then it's up to you if you can afford to buy or lease it for your company.

[JudgeDredd]

Hey Tuna

I'm following the Tristar tutorial you told me and I'm stuck. I've followed it to the letter and I get to the INS - put the co-ords in, but it won't align (yep - I'm doing each of the steps as laid out in the manual) - the number is not dropping from 9.

Any ideas?

[JudgeDredd]

Nevermind - it's going down now

[Tuna]

Yeah.. I was having a hard time with that one too...

Turn that knob all the way off.. then turn it to Nav...

Go to your INS put it on POS

Enter your coordinates

Put it back on the other selection (don't have the book or game in front of me watching the Pats)..

Now go back and put that knob on Align.. and watch it.. I never saw it go to 9... I saw it go like 85, 75, 65, 55 Then the Nav light tuns Green.. then you can move the knob to Nav...

It takes a couple minutes