I have a plan...

[Broadsword]

Listening to you guys talk about your FSX flights has got me hankering for the old days. I played FS in one form or another for a dozen years, then got a bit burnt out on it, but maybe now it's time to pick it up again.

I used to have an Air Hauler company running out of Ketchikan, Alaska, using Orbx's Pacific Northwest and Pacific Fjords sceneries, along with the Tongass Fjords X scenery. I mainly flew the OZx Goose (which I heartily recommend) and the Just Flight DC-3 (because there wasn't a better one, unfortunately - horrible to paint, and the cockpit looks far too neat). I knew FS inside and out, so my fleet and sceneries were heavily modded and skinned to make them what I wanted. I think I'd struggle now to make the kinds of modifications that made that DC-3 fun. My company DC-3 was bought from the Indian air force as surplus, and flown home from Chabua AFB over the Hump, through China, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia and the Aleutians. I flew out of Japan just before the 2011 tsunami, and until I got to Anchorage for a refit she was running on old fashioned instruments. On arrival in Ketchikan I repainted her in company colours and set her to work.

So I started thinking. If I was to get back into the FSX water, I'd want to make a similar journey, and hopefully with a better DC-3. I think I've found the Gooney Bird that I want to use, a freeware plane by Manfred Jahn with a nice soundpack, a good paintkit, and engine wear if you fly her outside of the greens. The VC at the moment is from Jahn's Basler BT67 - not entirely accurate but not bad and very lived in. However, at some point in the next few months there should be a brand new vintage DC3 VC made for this very airframe by Jan Visser.

I googled up a website that picks random coordinates on the earth, thinking that I'd take half a dozen goes and pick the starting point that seemed best. As it is, on my first go I got a point in the savannah (I guess you'd call it) about 50 miles north of Victoria Falls in Zambia. The perfect place to find an old beat up DC-3 that's been used for hauling cargo to out of the way places and gradually become forgotten. Just the sort of Gooney that I'm going to want to buy, fly out of Africa, get refurbed and then put to work doing what she was born to do

So I figure, alongside my old sceneries of Alaska I'm going to need some new toys, and since the plane is free I can splash out on making the journey look nice. Obviously there aren't any big Africa scenery mods out there (or are there?), and whilst I can try to pave the route in front of me by finding any individual sceneries that might be applicable, what I really need to do is get a whole Earth upgrade, as it were.

So, what I'm asking is this. What do you guys think of the following list, and can you recommend any changes or extras? If my test flights round Alaska in this new DC3 meet my expectations and pull me back in, I was going to then buy...

FTX Global Base (textures)
FTX Global Vector (roads, rivers, coastlines and such)
PILOT'S - FS Global 2010 FTX Compatible (mesh data)
FTX Global OpenLC Europe (landclass data for the 'passing through Europe' part of the trip, will also come in handy later for other flights)
FTX Global Open LC NA Alaska/Canada (for the final legs of the journey, and will come in very handy for future flights)
Active Sky Next - about time I had a proper weather engine, and this is the one that apparently goes best with...
FSCaptain - for failure simulation, icing simulation, First Officer feedback, etc, and will be very useful once I get to the actual cargo hauling bit when I get home.

So, there you have it. That's my plan, but I've been away from FSX for a while so I might have misjudged things. Do any of you guys know of better choices, or just things to avoid? Have you used any of these programs (I know you have) and have any endorsements or warnings to make? What have I got right? What have I got wrong? I'd love to get your feedback before I set off for Victoria Falls with my spanner and duct tape...

[Scrogg]

Not really anything to add other than Steam has FSX on for 80% off till Fri or with Cargo Crew and Dangerous approaches for 50% off till Oct 21st.

[Dave]

I suppose the only real thing to worry about with a list like that is OOMs. Have you got some way of autosaving the flight in case it does go tits-up? I once nearly lost an entire trans-atlantic crossing because of a crash...

FSCaptain and AirHauler definitely look like things I should invest in at somepoint though. I wasn't even aware the former existed until you listed it here in fact.

[Broadsword]

I'm told that you can save FSCaptain flights just fine, they automatically save when you save the FSX flight, and if memory serves you can set periodic autosaves in FSX anyway. Or did I used to have a 3rd party doodad that handled that for me? I can't remember TBH. Don't suppose anyone has a good protocol for this?

[Archangel]

You might want to include the FSX addon AirHauler or even FSEconomy for an online equivalent for your Cargo operations into this list.

AirHauler: http://www.justflight.com/product/air-h ... sx-and-p3d

FSEconomy: http://www.fseconomy.net/

[Dave]

I'm told that you can save FSCaptain flights just fine, they automatically save when you save the FSX flight, and if memory serves you can set periodic autosaves in FSX anyway. Or did I used to have a 3rd party doodad that handled that for me? I can't remember TBH. Don't suppose anyone has a good protocol for this?

Honestly you'll probably be fine so long as the actual legs of the journey aren't incredibly long, and the plane you're flying doesn't have leaky memory issues. I've got one or two addons that are almost unusable just because they eat up memory like mad for some reason. FSUIPC has an autosave function though if you're interested, and you can also set it up to monitor VAS so you can kind of benchmark how much memory is being used.

But looks good to me otherwise. The Orbx stuff is pretty good, although make sure it's all installed in the right order, otherwise you'll end up like me yesterday with tropical rainforests in east Anglia...

[Pariah]

I would make sure you pick up the Steam Edition of FSX. They made a number of improvements under the hood and it uses slightly less memory so you should experience less or none OOM errors. Since I've had my install on my new machine I've flown for several hours and not had a single OOM error.

AirHauler is one I've been tempted to get although version 2 is in the making and so I'm waiting for that.

Like Buzz says, make sure the addons are in the correct order in the Scenery list. I install mine in the right order but for some reason FSX didn't put it in currently. I had to move some things manually.

[Dave]

[tr][/tr]Well it depends on the flights you're doing. If you're flying around the UK in a Cessna then you're very unlikely to ever OOM, but if you fly across the Atlantic or to Dubai and back in a Boeing 777 with Orbx scenery installed, then you're highly likely to OOM with regular FSX or the steam edition. I believe that's why the PMDG aircraft support loading and saving mid-flight.

[Pariah]

Very true Buzz. That's part of the reason why I stick to just pootling around in my Cessna.

[Broadsword]

Makes sense. Most of my flights will be in Gooneys, Geese or something similar, so I should be ok.

@ Pariah - I'm already on FSX, thought that bit was a no brainer. It's the £200 of addons that I felt nervous about

@ Archangel - never been a fan of FS Economy, though I'm basing that on out of date info so I'll look into it. AirHauler I used for many years. As I said in my opening post that's how I ran Redline Airfreight out of Ketchikan. It's very good, and I recommend it to anyone, but after running two companies (Caicos Freight Dogs in FS9 and Redline Airfreight in FSX) I started to get a little annoyed by some of it's limitations. I'm sure the 2nd version will be great, Slopey seems to put his heart and soul into it, but since its not out yet I thought I'd try FSCaptain and see how it goes.

This afternoon I'm doing more flight testing on the Dak, with maybe a little panel modding and I might even start on the paintjob...