Had a fun sim-moment this morning. I was (finally) getting around to spending some quality time with the X-Trident Tornado…did a full cold & dark start up and proceeded to taxi out to the runway. Checked the controls, flaps, wing-sweep, etc…then rocketed off down the runway. I get cleaned up, make the turn to the downwind…and all of the sudden the engines start spooling down. Oh hey…I only had a couple thousand pounds of gas when I loaded the sim!
I had seen the switch for the Emergency Power System (EPS) (you remove a little pin from it prior to start. I flipped that thing up and it restored my hydraulics (without which the control surfaces won’t function). I had just enough altitude and speed to bring it around the rest of the pattern and land. I actually touched down in the blast-pad area just short of the runway, but I was pretty happy I made it…!
I’m not sure how the new beta (14) is overall…but I will say that XP11 beta is probably the prettiest sim out there at the moment. From a lighting, haze, and just overall texture and clarity standpoint, there really isn’t anything better out there. Yeah, I know ORBX + Active Sky + quality add-ons for FSX/P3D are good…but X-Plane has a really nice looking authenticity to it. The reflections are just jaw dropping in some lighting conditions…and coupled with that fluid XP flight modeling…man, it really is hard to fire up anything else…
Got a question for any of the site’s computer gurus, specifically programming; in looking at Beach’s screenshot where it shows the HUD of the Tornado, I notice the HUD symbology always looks blocky, off color. It is always the same with FSX or Prepare3D as well. In DCS the HUD symbology is always beautiful, thin like it should be etc. Question is why are HUDs like that in X-Plane, FSX etc. and why is it so different in DCS? What do they (DCS) do that makes the HUDs look so much more real in game?
At least in X-Plane, it seems to be a deal with the virtual cockpit rendering - because HUDs in the fixed forward view (not really a 2D view…but sorta) seem to have a more accurate HUD font without the shadowing or blocky appearance.
For instance - here is the FlyRealHUDs (I do NOT recommend buying these though…as they have zero product support) display in the fixed HUD forward view that shows a much cleaner and accurate HUD. And the HUD display updates at a ridiculous smooth rate (moreso than FSX ones I think).
But for some reason, when you project the HUD in the 3D VC in X-Plane, it has that more blocky and shadowed appearance…this is the Tornado HUD in that view - which again, has a fantastic update rate, but isn’t as realistic looking as the non-VC view…
This is a short video I took using the FlyRealHUDs flying an IMC approach into PHX a couple years ago (X-Plane 10)…you can see how nice the HUD symbology looks…but it only works in that fixed forward HUD view (SHIFT-W or something) and not if you are in the virtual cockpit.
I’m guessing they do that as a compromise. The HUDs in DCS, while very realistically depicted, can be hard to read at times. If you frame everything in the HUD with a few black pixels, you get a lot more contrast.
Perhaps it’s texture aliasing on the HUD? That made the ol’ FS2004 do weird things when you had a 3D HUD, this reminds me of that a lot. DCS has a proper rendering for the HUD.
Anyway, gorgeous Tornado but these days it only makes me thing… DCS
(Rotate MD80)
