Tips

357: Get Rid of the GeForce Experience

| Tom Tsui

Updating driver regularly is a good practice, especially when it comes to video cards.  However, doing so may risk us to install unwanted features that come with the driver as well.  One of these is the Nvidia GeForce Experience.

GeForce Experience is Nvidia’s proprietary software in which separate applications, including Game Optimization, GameStream, ShadowPlay, Battery Boost and LED Visualizer are included.  They are designed to automatically adjust the configuration of the GeForce graphics card based on the games we play.

It sounds good, doesn’t it?

Continue reading →

348: My Fix for Windows 10 Upgrade

| Tom Tsui

In the past ten months, I had failed to upgrade my older computer to Windows 10 numerous times.   Various google-searched solutions were tried but futile in the end.  The upgrade process always stopped at 20- or 70-somethings and reverted Windows10back to the original OS.  It was quite frustrating.

Last weekend, I was finally successful to upgrade the computer to Windows 10.  The optical drive was the key!   Continue reading →

347: Shade for P3D ?

| Tom Tsui

From time to time I receive questions from simmers asking if my ShadeShifter utility is compatible with P3D, while they are requesting for the download link.

The answer is “No” because “Shade for FSX” by Mogwaisoft is written specifically for FSX as its name indicates.   And since my ShadeShifter utility was built upon it, it therefore doesn’t apply to the P3D platform indeed.

However, as my Post 107 mentioned, “Shade for FSX” is basically a utility that modifies the sky texture in FSX to achieve a different look and feel.    And since P3D is in general an upgraded version of FSX, we could therefore copy and paste the “sky textures” modified by “Shade for FSX” into P3D.    That will achieve the same result, although this approach lacks the user-friendly interface the utility originally provides.

Shade_for_P3D

Perhaps some of you have been doing it already.   For others who have both FSX and P3D and the “Shade for FSX” utility and don’t know how to do it, here’s the instruction: Continue reading →

345: Saitek Panels Can be Networked, Too

| Tom Tsui

Stefano Cancelli in Canada recently reported to me that the Saitek Pro Flight Radio Panel, Multi Panel and Switch Panel actually can be run on a networked computer, exactly like what the Flight Instrument Panel (FIP) does.

Post345

“I discovered it quite by accident.”

Stef said he was not aware that the panels were still connected to his network computer after reverting SPAD.neXt to Saitek drivers due to some issues.  When he started a flight, he then realized that the networked panels were all working perfectly controlling radios, auto pilot, switches, and everything on the main fsx computer.

“This was a big surprise to me since I do not believe it is ever mentioned in Saitek’s documentation,” he said.

Stef came to me and ask me if I could help confirm his finding. Continue reading →

344: Don’t Go Changing, to Try Reverse Me

| Tom Tsui

TechLevel02W
As mentioned in my last post, although Jack’s suggestion of reversing the order of the gauges in the SaiFlightSimX.xml list renders a more intuitive and logical user-button reaction, the “solution” still isn’t perfect.   Because the opposite associations of the “Up Button – Down on the List” and “Down Button – Up on the List” or vice versa basically have not changed.

Thanks to Alexey, who is the author of FIP Toolkit & FIP Customizer, I am now able to swap the functions of the Up/Down button “physically”.   Meaning that when I press the “Up Button” on the FIP, it really means “Going Up” the gauge in the SaiFlightSimX.xml list, and when I press the “Down Button“, it really means “Going Down” the list.

Alexey said that the two buttons cannot be reprogrammed because they are not handled by the device’s SDK.   However, we could swap the button masks of these two buttons to achieve the same result.

Followings are the steps.   NOTE that you are highly advised to make a system backup before you proceed. Continue reading →

343: Reversing Orders of the Gauges

| Tom Tsui

Over the years, I’ve been putting the order of my gauges in the SaiFlightSimX.xml file according to the start up order of the FIPs as shown below.
Cockpit_Order
I know by “pressing the UP button” on the FIP means switching to the “NEXT” gauge (Down one on the SaiFlightSimX.xml list order), and “pressing the DOWN button” means switching to the “PREVIOUS” gauge (Up one on the list order).

With these “UP button – Down One / DOWN button – Up One” arrangement, I can’t help falling into the confusion of Continue reading →

331: 30,000-Something Invalid Paths

| Tom Tsui

It is commonly known that every piece of software after removed from the computer could have left some invalid registries behind.  But I was shocked to find out that the total number of invalid path registries left by Prepar3D v3.0 could have crazily accumulated to 34,423 entries.

Unbelievable but it is real.  It took me nearly three hours to clean them up from my computer earlier this evening.

If you have updated to P3D v3.1 recently (no matter it was by patches or by re-installation), you’d better run a thorough system check.   Maintaining a clean and error-free system as always is critical to keep the flight simulation, both FSX and P3D, to perform in best condition.

 

329: AffinityMask=256

| Tom Tsui

AffinityMask is the highest searched subject in my blog.   There are many recommended values over the Internet and I’ve tried and explored many of the suggestions (see my various Posts here) for both my FSX and P3D systems.

Since early last year, I’ve been using  AffinityMask=256  in my P3D setup.

I know the Binary of 255 equals to 11111111, which represents the using of all 8 cores on a Quad-core 8-Thread CPU when it is assigned for the AffinityMask.

And the Binary value of 256 equals to Continue reading →

324: Make Your Aircraft Invisible

| Tom Tsui

It’s still true that I mainly flightsim in one of the following cockpit views reported in my Post 181.

1. Landing/Takeoff — showing the hood from the pilot seat on the left
2. Cruising — showing outside scenery only
3. Normal Cockpit — used only when FIPs are turned off

To implement the Cruising View, in particular, I used to disable the 2D-Cockpit in the camera.cfg first, and then create a specific CameraDefinition for it.    Recently, I found Prepar3D has a hidden feature which makes this customization process totally unnecessary as shown in the video below:

Two steps only are required: Continue reading →