Category: Flying

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X-Plane 10 and the bugs I hate

Right after Microsoft said they would quit development on Flight Simulator, I started looking for a new sim to fly. One that came up was Austin Meyer’s X-Plane. Some key factors were that it ran natively on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Since I switched to using a MacOS Desktop, this was awesome as I didn’t have to keep booting in to Windows to use MS Flight Sim. So I purchased version 9 of it a couple of years or more ago. While it lacked several features that MS Flight Simulator had and I had become used to (I.e. a pretty nice ATC, lots of AI traffic, nice graphics, etc) it did have it’s own pluses, like running a little smoother and a little easier customizable.

One of the “big” things about X-Plane9 was that a full install was nearly 80GB in size. One of the big things I hated was that there was nearly to no airport buildings at the airports, unless you got a third party download where some one had recreated it. Granted this was cool as it allowed people to create some awesome replications (I did one for Morgantown, WV and Waynesburg, PA). But alas, for over 80GB of install you would have thought there would be the basic airport buildings or at least the terminals in it.. So while I still played with X-Plane, I found myself going back to MS Flight Sim just for the buildings and the ATC (sounds hokey, but it seemed “more real”).

So they finally released a new version of X-Plane, version 10 this year. The screenshots on the internet looked almost photo realistic. So I downloaded the demo, and it had one airport (KSEA) and it had buildings and all. So I was happy to see they had done that. There was also promise of a better ATC, which from some quick playing with the demo was better… So I spent the $80 and bought the full game. and about 6 hours later, I had another 80GB of X-Plane 10 installed (so now I have over 160GB just for version 9 and 10). This is where my “fun” left.

So it seams that the only airport that has the terminal and buildings (that I have been to so far in the game) is the KSEA. Every other airport is just the tarmac, runways, apron, and taxiways, no buildings what so ever. Another “peeve” is the AI traffic. It makes no difference where you are (little municipal airport to a international one) it seems like there will always be a 747, a little single or dual engine prop and what ever plane you are flying, and a 747 in the sky. I don’t know how many times I have changed to a new airport and the AI planes spawn directly on top or under me. It is hilarious to see a Boeing 747 try to taxi around KMGW and try to take off on a 5,000 ft runway.

Another stupid bug with the AI traffic is that I can go and file my flight plan (with the some times working ATC) and then start taxing to the runway. Every single time I have done this, there is already 2 planes holding at the runway, however one AI plane is ALWAYS half on the runway and half on the taxi way. This causes problems as it never freaking moves. So when another AI plane tries to land, it is told to go around because of the AI half on the runway. I sat at KJFK one day for over 20 minutes waiting for it to take off and it never did. I finally “drove” through it and took off. This of course pisses the ATC off and it constantly keeps telling you to taxi back to the runway. So much that the only way to stop it is to change the COM channel.

Since I am on a rant about the ATC as well, might as well mention that some ATC’s in some airports are on channels that you can not turn too. That makes it awesome to try to do anything. In addition the ATC never seems to tell you the frequency you are handed off to, which makes it impossible to do a full hand of to any other ATC.

I have also found that if you go to file a flight plan once you have taken off and screw up entering something in the route box, it will completely crash the application and you have to restart the entire program. Which I am not sure what changed between version 9 and 10, but version 10 takes forever to load. My machine is not a slow one either, with dual quad Xeon 2.8GHz processors, 10Gb of ram and a 3GB/s SATA drive with the application on it.

So until there is some more patches to fix some of these I will be going back to X-Plane version 9 and MS Flight SimX.

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Blackhat and Defcon 18

Pano View of the Strip from Augustus Tower at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas

Another year has past and another trip to Blackhat 2010 and Defcon 18 has been completed. Overall both conferences were great. However Defcon 18 (aka Barely Legal) did have its problems. One was the amount of new people who showed up. During the closing Ceremony DarkTangent asked who all was here for the first time, most of the people in the room I was in rose their hands. When asked if they would return next year, almost all of them stayed up.  The problem that this caused was that one, they ran out of Human badges (They only made 7,000 of them). Luckly I got one of them, and once again Kingpin did a awesome job making the badge this year. So there were thousands of people who received the “paper” badges. From what I have been reading there are estimates that there were between 10 and 12,000 people at the Con this year.

Because of the massive amount of people there, there were talks that I was unable to get in to that I really wanted to see. Hopefully they will be up on iTunes soon and I will be able to see them. The one big announcement that DarkTangent made was that this would be the last year for Defcon at the Riviera Hotel. Next year it is going to be at the Rio.. Which is Freaking awesome. In addition to being at the Rio, they will be doing 5 TV channels in the hotel that will be run to the rooms so that if one of the talks gets full, you can go to your room and actually watch it live on TV. I see this becoming a huge benefit and success for Defcon 19.

The one bad part about the trip, USAirways… We had originally set up our return flight to only have about a 1 hour layover in Phoenix. Unfortunately, USAir decided that was too short, and changed the flight so that it had a 4 hour layover. Which turned in a trip that if they still flew direct from being 4 hours to being almost 9 hours. My total travel time for my return  home, 16 hours… WTF.

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Travel update 2009

Decided to update the map again, so far my total is 64341 miles. I have done 9,755 miles so far this year. I see a lot more coming up next year. This year also took me to 3 new states and 4 new airports.

gcmap

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Thoughts on Southwest and Northwest Airlines.

Recently I had to fly to the Northwest of the US. Unfortunately the only flights out and back were on 2 carriers that I had never been on before. The first was Southwest, over all not to much to complain on but the main point I hated was their seating policy. Yeah it may be ok for the average size person, but if you are anything over 5’5″ it sucks. Being 6’5″ makes it extremely hard to sit in one of their seats for 3+ hours with some one elses seat in your knees. It also means that if you aren’t up ad the crack of dawn to “check in” online you get a bad seat. What makes this worse is that if you have multiple connections, you are SOL. I had to go through 2 airports to get to the final destination. Southwest has a policy that you can only have 2 Boarding cards at once. What they don’t tell you, is that you can only get the first one on line. The web site will refuse to let you print the other ones, until after you have flown the first flight. Which means the 2nd and 3rd flights you are stuck with the really bad seats. In fact, after I had flown the first flight they still would not print out the boarding card for the last flight. I ended up having to wait in line to get a card while the rest of the flight boarded. Only thing that lucked out on the final flight was that I got an exit row sit, even though it was a middle seat, it at least had more leg room.

Some observations of the flights, they like to taxi a little faster than most other carriers do. They seem to hit the runway a little faster and harder than most others do as well. After talking to some people it seems this is how they get their good on time rating. Other than that, they seemed to be ok. They even checked my bags through for me on the weird ass path I had to go through which was nice.

Next up is Northwest (or Delta?). My trip back was supposed to leave at 105PST. But about 30 minutes before our board time they changed it to 230PST. You should have seen the gate area. Every one was running up to the desk to try to get their tickets changed. The suck part was that for me, the only way I could get home if the flight didn’t go was to wait another day. So they then come on the loud speaker and said that the Pilot talked to the ATC and we were going to start boarding, Yeah!. But that was short lasted, we ended up setting on the taxiway for about 30 to 50 minutes waiting on a clearance to leave. Needless to say there were a bunch of pissed people. (I saw the guy across from me go through like 4 beers in a 30 minute period). So we get close to the airport and we are told to slow down and start circling because of weather and runway problems. (Don’t go through MSP if you can help it till they get their construction stuff done.) Needless to say we landed and I had 3 minutes to go from Gate C1 to C21, which is a hefty walk. By the time I get there the board still says the flight is on time and will be leaving at 720CST. So I ran to the desk and found out that the crew hadn’t even showed up yet. Great, at least I should make it home. But the crew showed up like 30 minutes late, and we were late leaving, which meant we were really late arriving. And then a 1.5 hour drive home.

I think that the airline industry has cut back to much on their staff, such that they can’t even get their own crews to the gates on time. The other thing is that if they know there is so many problems in MSP, why do they scheduled flights so close. Course it is probably not their fault but more of the travel agency’s.

But the “best” thing I saw yesterday, and I wish I had my camera in video mode shooting it, was when a baggage tosser was kneeling on top of a bag coming out of under a 737 from Delta that had just landed. He rode it half way down the belt and then stood up and acted like he was surfing. No wonder people’s bags are destroyed so much.