FS ramp gates

[EHM-1821 Javier]

Why is it that in most airports,even some big airports, do not have the ramp that connects to the plane's door when parked at the gate?does anyone know in which airport do they have it?:[

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

You'll find that most of the default airports don't but if you search Avsim or Flightsim.com there are lots of addon sceneries for airports and many of these are very detailed with ramps and many other real world details. Just choose any fairly large airport you want to fly to and I'm sure you'll find detailed freeware scenery for it !!

If you have trouble or are looking for more unusual airports, try this link for a great list of freeware scenery all round the world:

http://walhalla.mine.nu/fs2004.php

Happy hunting!

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Oops, someone please correct me. I thought ramp is the clean, flat area near the terminal, where you park the plane, and the bus and staircase will come to help the passengers I thought a typical "gate" is where the automatic docks operate. Or, am I wrong ?

It is true, that many airport don not have docks, only some terminal "imitation". This is because scenery size. Only at the major airports are docks and detailed scenery by default.

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

I think he meant gate / finger indeed.
FSX will bring some life to the big airports (finally !)

[EHM-0641 Rico]

Does anyone know the specs. for FSX?? I'm buying a new pc and want to make sure that it can get the max outta FSX

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

If you want to get the max out of a game that is still in alpha phase, then you have to buy the best of the high end
It should take advantage of 64 bits architecture, so for now the only thing I would recommend is to get  64 bits CPU.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Rico, I have been researching this myslef a little lately.

The only other "rumours" I have heard is that Vista and FSX will be Dual Core compatible so an Athlon X2 or a Pentium 800 series processor would be your best bet.

With it using DirectX 10 this may be where your main problem lies. An Inquirer article ( http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25902 ) states that Microsoft will cut compatibility with previous DirectX versions meaning more software will be required to run older games and apps that will be included with Vista but will innevitably slow performance. I would really suggect that you buy a PC with a low end Graphics card and save some money now, then fork out for an Nvidia G80 (The codename for the next Nvidia chip) or ATI equivelant when they become available (they will probably begin at around the 300USD mark as well so make sure you budget this in) I would be tempted to put it of for 6 months if you can, things will be a lot clearer then and will probably save you money in the long run.

[EHM-1651 Christian]

In PC-Pilot there is an article about this issue:
Recomending this setup roughly

AMD Athlon x2 64bit 4400+/3800+
Motherboard: SOething supporting PCIexpress 16x
RAM DDR2 2GB
HD 250GB SATA 16MB CACHE
Monitor 19LCD with 8/12ms response
GeForce7800GTX 256mb or the card phil talks about i would have bought

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

Not sure it would actually fully use the 2GO of RAM.
I have 1GO DDR for quite much time (my computer is a 3D rendering station) and excepting when rendering 3D work, I never filled the 1GO.
Games so far have taken 512 at most (Windows 2000 Pro) even the latest and demanding ones (HL2, Battlefield 2, FS2004 with loads of addons and tools, and many more)...

I don't know how much RAM Vista will need though, so if it's really the highest end you want, go for the 2 GO.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Well, after I start my FS2004 with add-on sceneries, add-on softwares, and lots of Project-AI airlines, the normal memory useage is 730MB only for FS So I am thinking on updating to 2GB instead of 1, because the HDD still works too much in the background.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Minimum required RAM for Vista is "Expected" to be 512mb apposed to 256mb for XP.

[EHM-1507 Manuel]

can I use my normal WinXP (not the 64Bit - version) together with an AMD 64Bit CPU?

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Well... Yes, the AMD 32-bit emulation is far better than the one Intel came up with, but why would you want to?

Or is it one of those "expense of buying WinXP64 license, Vista is just around the corner" things? (Don't bother waiting for Vista, all the IT news recently has been about how it needs 1GB RAM and 3GB HD just to run at all!)

[EHM-1507 Manuel]

Hey Murray, thanks for the help.

No, it´s just three months ago, I´ve bought XP Professional for 140€ and I don´t wanna buy another operating system so soon, but my new PC (with an 64Bit CPU) ist already ordered.

1GB RAM for an operating system??
Microsoft lost any relation to reality, I think.

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Do you remember Bill Gates words from early 90's ? : "512 kB of RAM must be enough for anybody to work !"

the good'ol days

[EHM-1703 Philip]

In relative terms, that's not too bad really! When I bought my first 286 PC back in nineteen hundred and frozen to death, I paid £200 for 4mb of RAM! These days you can pick up a good quality matched pair of 512 meg sticks for that... Although I will agree that it would seem that both the OS an programmers don't make economical use of RAM these days, but when you compare what my Intel 840, Windows XP and 2gb of ram can do compared to my old 286 (running at 16mhz )with Windows 3.0 and 4mb of RAM, it's not really surprising we will need so much for the next generation OS. Windows XP will run with 256mb but is best with 512mb. Vista will run 512mb but will be best with 1gb, I suppose we just have to call it progress!

[EHM-0641 Rico]

Thnx for all the tips guys...

I think I'm gonna put it of for while like Phil said.. Allot can happen in six months in the pc world... I buy one now, and in 6 months theres already something better again ..

I think i'm gonna let FSX come out first, and then see what to buy.. get some info on trouble shooting and how it runs with various configurations..

About the RAM issue, I run Windows Vista on this PC, and have 1GB of RAM... no problems so far

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Originally posted by philnutt
...Vista will run 512mb but will be best with 1gb...

Truely hate to argue with you Phil, but Vista ticks over at 800MB! Was either The Register or The Inquirer that had a screeny of Task Manager on the current internal Vista beta (2) and it's using 800MB with absolutely nothing else running.

Found it - was The Inquirer - click for the morning glory

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

Message original :  Murray Crane

Originally posted by philnutt
...Vista will run 512mb but will be best with 1gb...

Truely hate to argue with you Phil, but Vista ticks over at 800MB!

Well, have to agree, XP *can* run on 256, but let's be realist, it needs actually 512 to work *properly* especially when it's actually used as a multi user OS (that's why many computers dedicated to single user use for memory consuming tasks -3D rendering, calculations, etc...- are still running on 2k).
No surprise if Vista needs between 512 and 1GO of RAM to run.
Add the RAM necessary for the latest games (some MMORPG, Battlefield 2, probably those Quake 4 and so on...) and you'll already be at 1.5GO.

Yeah, 2GO will be standard very soon.

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Maabaa - edited my reply to Phil.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

Hi Murray,

I saw that article too, It was on the Inquirer today. It contains a screen shot of the task manager showing PF usage without any other details on the screen and is no real indication of what will be "Needed" to run Vista. Anyone can do that, here's the Task Manager from my Laptop running XP Pro at the moment!

Notice a PF of 788mb, what I didn't tell you was that FS2004 was running!

All we can be sure of from the inquirer is there are 46 processes running and no proof that there are no Apps running just the Inquirers very ambiguos term "idling" (and we all know, they love to MS bash, just like the rest of the Free Press!) In fact there is not even any proof that screen shot is of Vista at all!

Here's the article those on the fence to make up their own mind:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30128

It doesn't say as far as I can see that there are no applications running. It leads you to believe it by saying "even while idling, Vista eats as much as 800Mb of system memory" but it doesn't actually say there are no apps running or what the background processes were that were taking the 46 slots! This is typical of the sensentionalism that the surrounds any MS Beta!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not being argumentative for the sake of it, I don't know how much RAM Vista will need! My name is not Bill Gates, and to be honest, I bet he doesn't know yet! The Beta 1 of Vista (or Longhorn as it was then) I saw running was on a machine with 512mb of RAM that's all I know!

Lets wait and see eh!

**EDIT BTW, I am not an employee of MS, nor do I love the stuff they produce (With the exception of FS of course) I just don't think the Inquirer is the best source of facts regarding Vista, I would be tempted to take more notice of the hundred of blogs posted by some of the developers! (of both Vista and FSX) Sorry if I sound a bit defensive just after reading this post back, it looks like I am Mr. Bill Gates himself!

[EHM-1539 Pierre]

You don't have to apologize for being critical, rational, and objective, it doesn't look like you are bill gates, a rational person will put objectivity above personal convictions.
I totally agree with you on that critic

Murray, when I said I have to agree, I meant with you.

[EHM-1703 Philip]

For those of you who don't frequent the FSX developers Blogs, here is an interesting one, may answer some questions about FSX and DX10!

http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/2006/01/23/516653.aspx

[EHM-1798 Conrad]

hey, i noticed a few of you worried about the 800mb PF usage. Im one of the Beta testers for Vista, and i can tell you that the pagefile usage varies from PC  to PC at the moment. Mine uses around 500 PF. Hence its still a beta.