Workaround for PMDG 747-400X Issue

Whew! I managed to find a workaround for the PMDG 747-400X "kamikazee autopilot" issue. I have mentioned it before -- the autopilot can get into a bad state when the plane encounters substantial turbulence, making the plane almost uncontrollable.

For the time being, I simply went into the FSX settings and disabled the setting to make turbulence affect the aircraft. Sure, it makes things a tad less realistic, but at least I can complete long flights on the 747X without the autopilot steering me sideways toward Antarctica now.

I completed Day 3 of the travelogue in the 747X, and the article will be up soon. Lots of sights to see in this one, which makes for a longer than usual article. Sorry for the delay!

Checking DirectX 10 Compatibility

Just out of curiosity, I spent some time checking various add-ons for DirectX 10 compatibility recently. Here is what I have found:

Publisher    Product            DX10 Compatible?
CLS          747 Classic        no
CLS          DC-10              no
Flight1      ATR 72-500         no
Flight1      Fokker F70/F100    no
Flight1      Level-D 767        yes
Flight1      Pilatus PC-12      yes
Flight1      Super 80           yes
Flight1      Super 80 Pro       yes
PMDG         747                yes
PMDG         Beech 1900D        no
Wilco        Citation X PIC     yes
Wilco        737 PIC            no
Wilco        777                no
Wilco        Airbus Vol. 1 PIC  no
Wilco        Airbus Vol. 2 PIC  no
Wilco        A380 v2            yes
Wilco        A400M              no
Wilco        CRJ                no
Wilco        ERJ PIC            no
Wilco        E-Jets PIC         no
Wilco        Legacy PIC         no

Hope this helps.

Wilco E-Jets Airline Pack Issue

When I installed the Wilco E-Jets Airline Pack containing the extra liveries from McPhat Studios, I encountered a minor issue when starting up Flight Simulator. I got a message about "more than one object exists" for the Northwest Airlines E-170 livery. It turns out that this is a minor issue in McPhat's additions to the aircraft.cfg file, which is easily fixed. If you get this message, simply pull up Airplanes/feelThere PIC E170/aircraft.cfg (FS9) or SimObjects/Aircraft/feelThere PIC E170/aircraft.cfg (FSX) in notepad, and scroll down to the section starting with [fltsim.43]. Change the line that says:

title=Embraer 170 Northwest

To:

title=Embraer 170 Northwest mcp

Then save and exit. Restart Flight Simulator, and it should be happy now.

Hopefully Wilco and McPhat will fix this issue soon.

Wilco A380 v2 NavData Update Troubles (Solved)

I tested out updating the FMC database for the A380 using the latest available AIRAC cycle (0806) from Navigraph. Good news -- it works, although there seems to be a bit of a trick to it.

Most of Wilco's add-ons seem to be developed by a separate outfit known as feelThere. Nearly all feelThere/Wilco products look in FSX\feelThere\Nd for navigation database information. (FSX here refers the toplevel Flight Simulator X directory, typically Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator X.) However, for some reason, the A380 v2 add-on looks in FSX\Wilco\Nd instead. The Navigraph installation utility for feelThere/Wilco planes updates the data in the feelThere directory, but it is apparently unaware of the existence of similar data in the Wilco directory. This results in the A380 v2 not getting updated navigation database information for its FMC.

As an experiment, I tried copying the updated files in FSX\feelThere\Nd to FSX\Wilco\Nd. This proved to be successful -- the A380 v2 FMC became aware of the latest waypoints and terminal procedures after the update. Hopefully this discrepancy is merely an oversight by Wilco, and they can fix the add-on to look for FMC data in the feelThere directory instead. Copying this data over manually after each AIRAC cycle update is a pain.

Running the PMDG Beech 1900 Series in FSX

While surfing around, I happened to run across an interesting tidbit over at the PMDG wiki. Did you know that it is possible to run the PMDG Beechcraft 1900 series aircraft from within FSX? PMDG has instructions here. I tried it out, and it worked fine for me. This makes for another fun little turboprop to go cruising around in. I guess they don't want to be bothered with officially supporting this, but it might be nice to mention that the add-on is FSX-compatible from their main page.

The Beech 1900D is among the smallest planes used for scheduled airline service. Great Lakes Airlines flies a bunch of them between small towns in the western U.S. and Denver.