FSBreak 15: One Hundred Dollar Hamburger, X-Plane: The First Week, ADE Updated, and SimFlight 3D?s C172

Summary: Hosted by Eric McClintock, Nolan, and Mark. Listen Here: Subscribe to automatically get the latest podcast: iTunes, Zune, RSS XML, E-Mail, All Other. 1958 C172 from SimFlight 3D Now Released It is a four-seat, single-engine, high-wing airplane, capable of cruising at 131 knots. Original models shipped with 145 horsepower, 6-cylinder engines. Its considered the most popular flight training airplane in the world and is still being produced today. More than 35,000 aircraft have been built. Features: First professionally produced classic 172 (straight tail) Optimized for FSX Working, highly detailed virtual cockpit, GPS and localizer with glideslope Doors, windows and engine compartment open (for oil check) Full 2D and 3D IFR Ready panels Includes checklist and performance information 4 paint schemes Price: $22.95 More information here [Link], via Fszone.org [Link]. Screenshots: [nggallery id=26] Airport Design Editor Updates to V1.40 Airport Design Editor is a graphical design tool to create and enhance airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. It takes it's inspiration from the excellent AFCAD2 developed for FS9 by Lee Swordy. ADE does for FSX what AFCAD does for FS9 and adds support for new FSX features such as fences, jetways and terrain. ADE is being developed with the help of a small group of dedicated airport designers with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Version 1.40 Features: The major new function is the Visual Approach Designer. In the past creating approaches has meant writing xml code and repeatedly checking it in FS. With Version 1.40 we have introduced a graphical interface for approach design that mimics the FSX GPS Display. ADE is available as a free download from the author's website, and a full feature list for 1.40 can be found there. More more information on ADE, look here [Link], Via FlightSimX.co.uk [Link]. X-Plane: First Impressions Eye Candy I liked: Moving traffic on roads, like in FSX, I think it adds a lot of realism. Power lines, Again, I think this adds some realism to the mix... AI Trains Runways slope with terrain (Something MSFS has been struggling with for some time) Night airports look incredible. Features I liked: Simulator ran very smooth, and tended not to stutter even in high autogen (Is this what it is called in X-Plane?) areas. Water #38; Wave Configuration More key combos, overwhelming at first, but after they're all set up they come in handy Ability to assign a macro-like function to a key. X-Plane has more helipads, all of the local hospitals and even the Police helicopter station down the road from my house were in X-Plane. The Ugly: Joystick controls sometimes buggy, needed to reverse certain functions when it seems like they shouldn't need to be reversed, etc. Still having intermittent issues with plane veering to the left. Default aircraft models.. Suck (Honestly), addons are better, but not the quality of MSFS freeware models (Ex. Project Opensky), or Payware models (PMDG, etc). Helicopter controls are very touchy, could not actually get a heli airborne without flipping it. Flight Physics seem to go crazy at times, for example I've been able to drop 500-1000 feet in a cessna, go back up 1000 feet, drop 1,000 feet, and then pull out and recover all in about 3 seconds. I've never flown a real plane, but doesn't seem likely. Normal flight physics seem OK. When adjusting the weather, I set "Precipitation" to "None", yet it still rains. I'm probably missing a setting though. Compared to FSX: Amount of addons? Smaller airports just aren't up to par with MSFS. For example, KCVG looks like a parking space with three runways, larger airports like LAX look good, though. While it may seem like a small feature, FSX is loaded with real world road data from Navteq, which also supplies data to GPS makers, and is used to recrea...