Icarus2

OOTB FSX is butt ugly. With hours of tweaking and lots of frustration (and some good payware) I got it to look like this.

Krebs20 is right. You must have forgotten. COD MW2 boxed DVD version requires Steam. I bought mine at Walmart and it requires a Steam account to install. Open disk one and see the Steam icons. They are the only executables on the disks.

Master Arm ON.....

+1

What is up with the download speeds??? 1-7 kb/sec??? HTTP is slow and navigating to download page takes 60-90 seconds to load. So far this 24 hours a day. WTF?

DC

Interesting. Not sure why a real pilot would want a canopy line, but ok. It is on the real one and I never noticed that before. The real one is even longer and goes almost over the pilots head.

Here is my rear view. I seem to have aquired a third stablizer.

Price and IIRC you cannot use the OEM if you get another computer, but you can if you get the retail version and I believe other than that they are both complete versions. I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 OEM as I figure that by the time I get a new computer it will be time for Windows 8+ anyway.

So true. Aerosoft is excellent, but ORBX NW with REX is even better. Top pic is Seattle on my rig. The level of detail right down to the street level is amazing. The houses are styled for the area. No sugar cube houses, chalets and huts in Seattle.

Here is my setup with u70's. They do fit, but just barely. Also the bezels are quite thick and keeps the screen a bit too far back from the MFD for my taste, but I'm too scared to pull off the bezels as the on/off switch is in the bezel. If I could get the bezels off without wrecking them, they would be really good.

If ver. 4 is working well do not bother. I had ver. 4 and it worked just fine. I now have ver. 5 because I broke the old one. Yes ver. 5 is smoother and has less room light issues, but I would never have upgraded if it wasn't broken.

That's what I have and liked them so much I bought a second set for my rec room and play BR's through my computer and projector. The woofer is larger than I thought band works great. Really shakes the wallls if you set it up that way. Good speakers for the money. Especially if they are on sale.

I have that TB headset. Love them. The Surround really seems to work, even though connoiseurs say it shouldn't. I hear footsteps move around in COD5 and raindrops in all differnt directions in Crysis etc. Very immersive. Woofers take a little getting used to, but they are not bad. No headset can do what a real woofer can, but it is a lot better than vanilla stereo headphones. Besides, I think a headset is the best for flight sims. I never use my surround speakers for my flight sims. It just doesn't feel right. Probably because in real life you'd be wearing a headset anyway. Mic works wel too. If someone has a headset that does surround better than these, I'd buy them pronto.

Just an observation: For years I had 2 Gb of RAM and never maxed it out. Thus, I thought I didn't need anymore. Then I moved to 4Gb and realized I was now using over 3Gb for the very same OS and game. It also seems very much game dependant. It made no difference in F4AF whether I had 2, 4 or 8, but the CPU sure did. With Crysis I tested it and I always used less RAM than what I had. Then I moved to 8Gb. Crysis now uses over 4.5 Gb of RAM on my machine! I did not think that going fron 4 to 8 Gb would have any benefits, but I was wrong in that case. It does seem to follow the law of diminishing returns, however. For instance, I'm not sure if a move from 6 to 8 makes much sense for any game. Made no difference in F4AF whether I had 2, 4 or 8, but the CPU sure did. Does this sound right?

Dude, you need a RAM upgrade. :D

Thanks for the update, they changed it then, because this is what it used t say: GeForce Driver Release 197 Version: 197.41 WHQL Release Date: 2010.04.09 Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit Language: English (U.S.) File Size: 117 MB Supported Products GeForce 400 series: GTX 480, GTX 470 I'm going to skip as it only does this: New in Version 197.45 Recommended for the best performance with the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5. Adds support for the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here. Fixes a video playback issue in Media Player Classic.

If you have one or more of these: GTX 480, GTX 470 = Yes. If not, don't. Its a 400 series driver only.

I just installed windows 7 and I can't get it to stop resizing my desktop after I exit from games/sims. I run the desktop at 2650 x 1800 and when i exit game that uses a different res, it resizes me to 1024 x 768. Sometimes it even sends it to 16 bit colour. Never had this with Vista 32 or 64 bit. I have dual GTX 260's SLI and 197.21 latest whql drivers. Did it with the previous drivers too. Any ideas?

Or just use in-line splitters and run both off the soundcard, which is what I do.

I have both 5.1 surround speakers and 5.1 surround headset. I never use the speakers except when I have a friend over to show them my rig. My advice, get a surround headset. Many say they don't/can't work, but they do. At least mine does. Turtle Beach Earforce HPA2. Nothing is better than a speaker subwoofer, but the 5.1 headset is not that bad. Besides, there is a realism/immersion factor to a headset for sims. My 2 cents.

Thanks, thats good to hear. The manual makes it look over-the-top.

And a 24 page installation and Activation Guide. Lots of hoops to activate this one. Its getting ridiculous.

Ya, that's what I said at first, but the more I played the worse it got. The DRM sometimes works ok, but not always. And for a single player option, to not be able to play it because of a DRM log on, is a disgrace. I have other games with server DRM's and you can get in always. DRM server needs fixing pronto. Also, now campaigns are crashing semi-regularly and weird things happening like a battleship anchored that all my torpedoes go right through it like it was a ghost or something. Also saw a carrier group coming toward me so I turned toward it and the entire group disappeared as I got within range. Oh ya, the lack of a serious manual for a sim like this is also a pretty unforgivable. This thing has potential, but it needs serious work. I like it, but it has some real problems. Patches should be frequent or people will lose interest fast.

I only play Single Player and I have been bounced out in the middle of campaign games several times losing my kills, and sometimes I can't even connect. Server problems for SP play is a disgrace.