Add Artificial Traffic To Your Flight SimulatorPosted by on September 4th, 2010

One of the best ways to learn how to fly an aircraft is with a simulator. In the beginning it’s essential learn the fundamentals of flight. Then you should learn the different controls of your selected aircraft. This might take some time until you have progressed to a stage where you feel at ease flying the plane. When you’re fairly confident in flying, the next step is to make the experience more realistic. Of course flying in a place with detailed scenery will make your flying feel a lot more real, especially if the area is familiar to you. After you are done admiring the landscapes and terrain, you might realize that it is very quiet in the skies. This is where an add-on called AI is a great addition to your flying experience.

In flight simulator terms, AI means artificially intelligent traffic. It helps to liven up the airports with traffic and can make your flying more realistic. It will make the airport come alive with a range of aircraft which are simulated to function as they might in a real airport situation. AI traffic started back with Microsoft 2002 with a few airliners and private aircraft. Since then, many 3rd party developers have developed additional models that are even more realistic. You need to watch out for AI traffic, as it is possible to crash and end your simulator session. You can also interact with the traffic and air traffic control, or just listen as the flights come and go.

In addition there are freeware developers of AI traffic, such as project AI. As well as a variety of aircraft models, it is possible to download aircraft textures to repaint aircraft, paint kits themselves and flight plans. Not satisfied with artificially controlled planes, some developers have also added ships. It is possible to add single or fleets of ships to your simulated world.

To get the most out of your flight simulator experience, find out about the best flight simulator yoke at www.flightsimulatoryoke.org

Increase Your Flight Simulator Graphics PerformancePosted by on August 14th, 2010

People love playing flight simulators as it simulates an actual flying experience. Of course the more realistic the experience the better. As we are viewing the simulated world through the graphics displayed, the graphics is a vital component. The graphics performance depends on a number of variables, include how detailed the scenery is and how smoothly the graphics are displayed. The computer has a great impact on the second component, how smoothly the scenery is displayed. In technical terms, this is called the frame rate.

The frame rate of a flight simulator refers to how often the screen is updated. Frame rate is measured in fps, standing for frames per second. A frame rate of 5 frames per second won’t look smooth at all and will look jerky. It will not look realistic at all. To get an idea of what the frame rates mean, a television picture in the U.S is updated 30 times a second and in Europe and Australia, 24 times per second. Similarly, to get a realistically looking flight simulation experience, your computer needs to produce the graphics at a frame rate of at least 15 frames per second, preferably higher.

Up to a point, higher frame rates will produce a better picture. To increase the frame rate that your computer can produce, there are two options. The first option is to upgrade the computer. A computer with high end specifications will have better performance and produce higher frame rates. The most important components to look at upgrading are the processor speed, the computer memory and the video card. A dedicated 3D video card is required to run some flight simulator software such as Microsoft flight simulator. To get the best performance, you would want to have at least a 3.0GHz process, more than 2GB of memory and 512MB of video memory.

The other option to increase your frame rates is to change the setup of your computer. It is not always possible to upgrade your computer, but there are a number of things you can look at that will improve performance. One simple improvement is to update the drivers on your video card. Often the video drivers can become out of date and installing the latest will increase the performance. Updating the drivers is a simple fix and may be a quick win to improving your frame rate. Also, look at what is running on the computer. Make sure no other programs that are not needed are  running. Every program uses system resources, and we want to minimize the number of programs running, so the flight simulator can have the computer’s resources to itself. Another area to look at is the graphics settings inside the flight simulator software, it may take some time, but you could find the combination of settings that will dramatically improve your frame rate.

For more information on flight simulator controls, including the flight simulator yoke go to www.flightsimulatoryoke.org

Add Artificial Traffic To Your Flight SimulatorPosted by on August 14th, 2010

One of the best ways to learn how to fly an aircraft is with a simulator. In the beginning it’s essential learn the fundamentals of flight. Then you should learn the different controls of your selected aircraft. This might take some time until you have progressed to a stage where you feel at ease flying the plane. When you’re fairly confident in flying, the next step is to make the experience more realistic. Of course flying in a place with detailed scenery will make your flying feel a lot more real, especially if the area is familiar to you. After you are done admiring the landscapes and terrain, you might realize that it is very quiet in the skies. This is where an add-on called AI is a great addition to your flying experience.

In flight simulator terms, AI means artificially intelligent traffic. It helps to liven up the airports with traffic and can make your flying more realistic. It will make the airport come alive with a range of aircraft which are simulated to function as they might in a real airport situation. AI traffic started back with Microsoft 2002 with a few airliners and private aircraft. Since then, many 3rd party developers have developed additional models that are even more realistic. You need to watch out for AI traffic, as it is possible to crash and end your simulator session. You can also interact with the traffic and air traffic control, or just listen as the flights come and go.

In addition there are freeware developers of AI traffic, such as project AI. As well as a variety of aircraft models, it is possible to download aircraft textures to repaint aircraft, paint kits themselves and flight plans. Not satisfied with artificially controlled planes, some developers have also added ships. It is possible to add single or fleets of ships to your simulated world.

To get the most out of your flight simulator experience, find out about the best flight simulator yoke at www.flightsimulatoryoke.org