This is NOT a knocking thread - let's get that clear from the start OK?

Just had a most enjoyable hour or so flying the ski Maule out of Courchevel with the weather set for winter and snow.

Just one little thing - why the heck is there a tree right in the middle of the runway approach threshold - anyone knows that Courchevel is a favourite airfield, so why didn't the beta testers find it? Again - sloppy.

Having said that, the rest was stunning. The aircraft looked and handled great and the scenery was exceptional. Not just the mesh, which was very good, even though I don't have that high a setting, but the scenery textures as well. Snow in FS2004 ......well, it doesn't look like snow does it. Can't pretend it does. But snow in FSX looks excellent. From a technical point of view, repeat tiling is almost unnoticeable which makes so, so much difference, and it's nice and white. The mountain peaks look great.

So what was weird? I said the Maule handled well, but the flight came to an end in a very strange way. The aircraft totally lost its trim. I'd descended to the valley floor and I can't remember whether it pitched up first or down. But it pitched up and elevator wouldn't get the nose down, so I had to wind on down trim, then it pitched too far down, couldn't get the nose up with elevator so had to wind in up trim. But the oscillations (large porpoising) got worse and worse until it became uncontrollable and it crashed.

Really disappointed. Anyone else found this? Not icing surely.......

Courchevel is LFLJ - it's the very famous altiport with the sloping runway high up in the French Alps. There was a very good addon for FS2004 and as the default FSX scenery is better than FS2004 but still not that hot, I'm sure there will be one pretty soon for FSX.

There were trees in the way in default FS2004 but as everyone knew that I'm surprised the problem has fed through into FSX.

Roger,

did you land the ski Maule on any snow....and did it leave tracks in the snow?

best,

.......john

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Being a big kid, course I did 

Didn't notice any tracks but it sure blows up some clouds of the stuff. No complaints about the effects there 

About the weird pitching ?

That has happened to me twice. I know WHY it happened.. I just don't know HOW..

Anyway.. for whatever reason.. the little "check" in the views  pop-up/pulldown.. making  the mouse into a yoke was there..

Go figure..

Or maybe some ice damaged your plane controls ?  ???
Ok, I know I'm being quite optimistic there  But if you think about it, we now have engine failures on default aircrafts, so why not icing ?

By the way Roger, you said that default Courchevel in FSX is a bit better than default Courchevel in FS2004, but is there finally a real sloppy runway ? In FS2004, the runway was a normal horizontal one. What about FSX ? Any improvement ? 

Roger, i didnt had any trees physicly on the runway, but on the end there were a bunch of trees, i dont know if that is what you mean?

No the runway isn't sloping unfortunately so that constraint still applies. And the trees are really annoying. Just flew it again in the Cub and they are dead on your approach path and glide slope.

Now this next bit IS a gripe and I think it's an important one. Read this next bit carefully Mr ACES because it won't just be me saying it I'm sure.

If you are clever enough to give us fancy water, bumpy rivets and lord knows what other special visual effects, you must be clever enough to do the autogen properly by this stage of development of the sim.

In my book it IS NOT good enough to have autogen hanging out in space on sloping surfaces. We've complained about it long enough and I'm now seeing it all over the place in this sim too. You go to all the trouble of giving us new, more accurate mesh and land textures in the interest of realism and then you go and ruin it all by keeping a pathetic autogen model which you should really have sorted out first, before you did any of the other stuff.

At Alcatraz you've got autogen in the form of large domestic houses all around the prison buildings, which shouldn't be there and weren't in 04 and half of which are hanging out in thin air. And you've got the same thing at Courchevel too.

More realistic autogen is more important than ruddy elephants!

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Hmmmm.... interesting Brett and I'm sure you're right. If it's happening automatically and not because of pressing a key by accident or something like that, I see that as a serious glitch.

We're finding all these things within a couple of days of having the new version and I ask the question again - what did the beta testers actually DO?   ???