PC Sims

[Egon Toast]

Good Day All,


Quick Question about PC Simulators from the semi-Computer Liretate side of the house;

What's the best one available for European Airports? Not really interested in Wx or stunning visual effects, just need a sim with some up-to-date Procedures, preferably without having to supply my own Jepps.

Any opinions/info gratefully rx'd.

Thanks in advance,

Toast;)

[keithl]

Egon,
You'd have to tell us more about what you need it for before anyone can recommend a "Best". For example, I use RANT 2000 for basic IF Procedure instruction (but it's not really a "Simulator") and Jepp FlitePro for a more advanced and realistic (though light a/c based) simulation. Do you want emergencies, realistic handling, etc, etc? So it depends on a/c type, stage of training, intended use, etc.

[Dick Fisher]

A good procedural sim is Airline Simulator 2 by nomissoft of Austria. I think you can still buy this from justflight.com (http://www.justflight.com) . If not visit the publisher's website atnomissoft.com (http://www.nomissoft.com) .

The main flight models are an MD-83 and a 747-400. Scenery is awful, but the flight models are very accurate and while the procedures are simplified for single person operation, the sim is still a challenge.

[7550]

Be very careful if you intend to use Airline Simulator 2 on Win XP. It is an excellent flight simulator program however I have never been able to run it again since upgrading to Win XP, despite endless attempts with various solutions etc. My computer screen just goes blank when I try to run it?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

7550,

Have you loaded the latest 3-D Drivers for your Video Card?

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. If that does not work, try setting your refresh rate of the monitor to 60Hz. (Some older monitors will only work in 3-D with 60Hz.)

[7550]

Thank you for the reply Richard. I have tried downloading the latest drivers for my NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX20 card and changing the refresh rate however I still get messages saying that an illegal operation has been detected etc with all sorts of codes (NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction). I am really desperate to get this program working again however it does not look like its going to happen. The people from Nommissoft were helpful and told me to download someting called VDMS etc but that did not work either?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

7550,

Not knowing the specs on your hardware, it is hard to give suggestions.

I would try one more time. Download and install the latest drivers for your motherboard and then the nVidia ForceWare Drivers for WinXP (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_53.03).

Take Care,

Richard

[goates]

7550 - You may be out of luck trying to get it to run under XP. Try the latest drivers as Richard suggested, and also look for a patch for the program from the publisher. Some games and flight sims were written with the expectation that they would be on Win95 or 98, which are very different under the hood and don't react well to XP. Unfortunately for many of these programs, there is little hope as the publishers or developers won't update them. If the program lists WindowsNT or 200 nder the requirements, then the problem is something else, but if it doesn't this probably what you are running into.

I have one computer at home that has both Win98 and WinXP Home on it, and some games will not run under XP, even with the latest drivers for the video card (an ATI 7500). The screen just turns black while the sound still works fine. Under 98 with the same driver version number (I used the latest Catalyst drivers for both 98 and XP) the games run great.

Good luck!

goates

[7550]

Thanks all for the help, still no luck getting AS2 to work. Maybe I should try loading Windows 98 on my system as well as a dual boot system? Can anyone please tell me how to do this as I am extremely hesitant to mess around too much due to past experiences!
Thanks a lot

[goates]

7550 - There are 2 ways to set up a dual boot system. You can backup and reformat your entire hard drive and then install the two operating systems (Win98 first, then WinXP), or you can buy a program like PowerQuest Partition Magic or Acronis Partition Expert. The two programs mentioned allow you to change partition sizes and help with installing a second operating system. I believe the PowerQuest program also includes a boot loader that helps with selecting which system you want to use when you start up. Windows 98 will install it's own boot loader that will not allow you to see the WindowsXP system (the reason why you install it first). PowerQuest also include a tutorial on how to install a second operating system that I found easy to follow.

If you do want to go with the dual booting route, backup everything before you start. The process isn't very hard, however the potential is there to loose all of your data and it can be time consuming. I've done this a few times and haven't had any trouble, but I've always made sure I had a backup just in case.

goates