Help needed !

I have just installed G3(with success). I am use to the G2 sim and miss
a few of G2 menu functions. I have played around with the G3 for about
5hrs to day and I still can not set the airplane to a new position on the
run way/ or change direction of airplane heading (I mean changing the
default setting of the airplanes position when you press the space bar).
This change was so easy on G2. I also printed the 253 page G3 manual
hoping I would find the reference with ease, after an hour I am still looking.

Need help. Any feedback/guidance will be very welcome.

Thanks

Brgds
JGZ

Most of the airports in G3 come with multiple airplane spawn locations. To change which airplane spawn is used, you must change the camera position. Look for "Camera Position" in the "View" menu. Clicking that brings up a submenu of all the pilot spawns in that airport. Once you choose a pilot spawn, the plane is placed at the closest plane spawn. Press 'X' to cycle through the list of pilot spawns.

If you want to add your own airplane spawns or change existing ones, you may do so in the airport editor. Click "Edit _______ (airport's name)" in the Simulation menu. Once in the editor, look in the "Airport Editor" window for the various plane/pilot spawns. They are usually in a folder called "Control Objects." You can move/delete/rename them just as with any other airport object.

jaafit,
Thanks for the help, I will try it out tonight.

Brgds
JGZ

The old G2 used to allow you to change pilot position with the mouse. I take it, that is no longer available?

I too have been frustrated by the inability to easily change the view position. My normal flying is done from pilot left to pilot right takeoff, using a left turn pattern. I like to start my takeoff from the end of the runway at the pilot left position and use left to right. The default appears to be place the airplane in the middle of the runway and takeoff is right to left. I played with spawn and still had a problem.

BTW, a little off the topic. No one has answered the question why G3 is extremely touchy, especially during ground maneuvers.

Well...sometimes the planes do get into a ridiculous gyration when going over rough surfaces. Reminds me of the cartoonish break-away physics, where you may have pieces flail-about for quite some time after the crash. Even the whole fuselage/engine does it. I've also noticed that the crash/barrier mapping is off considerably, where you may just get somewhat near lots of objects, and crash without actually touching them. Sounds like the crash mapping-matrix is a bit loose. Lots of planes snap when giving up elevator, as their CG is aft, making for super-performing aerobatics, but touchy when flying/landing, even on low rates. I've moved CGs more forward on these planes, and played with elevator throws to help tame them to my liking. I think many (my Edge 540 too) are setup with defaults for extreme aerobatics and 3D flying, which makes them a handful if sloppy with controls, especially on 3D high rates.

I've also noticed the infamous "pass-through" problem hasn't been addressed fully either, as the crashed fuselage will pass-through canopies or picnic tables and such when coming to rest on them. You have to wait a bit, but they will pass depending on attitude and such.

All new software/hardware releases have to be used/abused to find problems with them...G3 is no exception. A work buddy who said it best one day, when I asked him if his latest software project was as buggy as I had been told, said, "My software isn't buggy...it just develops random features".

I give G3 graphics an 8 out of 10, looks awesome on a fast machine and graphics card. Flight and crash physics a 5 out of 10, and hardware (controller) a 2 out of 10, as it was defective when I got it (jack on rear out of its mount/alignment, left gimbal was skewed as saddle wasn't snapped into place, causing centering pin to dislodge.

I wished RealFlight had made less of an "active" environment to fly in, and concentrate more on flight/crash physics to bring it closer to "true-to-life".

Actually, the controller issue was the biggest problem, as you cannot use another USB interface with your transmitter on G3, since the controller is serial numbered and registered. You cannot fly G3 if you send-off your interlink controller for repair. A software/hardware monopoly that only inconveniences loyal customers. I opted to fix my controller instead because of this issue.

Anyway, I hope RealFlight/Great Planes are reading these forums and their websites. That's the only way software/hardware problems will be eliminated...and there ARE problems.

Charles

I assume you are referring to the feature where the camera would move so it was looking down at the airport and you could then click on the spot where you wanted the pilot to stand. That feature was taken out in favor of the new walking pilot. You can now make the pilot walk or fly using the mouse and keys 'W', 'A', 'S' and 'D'. So, if you're not happy with where you're standing, just press 'W' to start walking somewhere else.

I'm trying to get online and fly multiplayer, problem is: failed to send player information packet. If anybody knows how to fix that..please post a reply thanks...Rob

I get the same error. Turning my firewall off does not help.

Eric

I'm thinking my problem may be that we have roadrunner dsl, but I still use aol to get on internet. We have a split line running two computers, maybe I need to switch my internet connection to roadrunner, and forget about aol...I really don't have a clue what to do.Rob

oh yeah...one more thing...how to open these (ports) its nice somebody told what to do, now just tell me how to do it...for those of us that are p.c illiterate. Rob

Jaafit,

Is there any short cut to changing the airplane direction other than using the airplane spawn.
The way I am doing it I am going to edit function and zooming in on the airplane
spawn and then pressing the shift key and changing direction of airplane. This
method is very long winded compare to the G2 version.

In real world the pilot is usually in a fixed position and you move the airplane..G3 seems to have it the wrong way around (move the pilot and keep the airplane in a fixed position). Presently my feelings are that the G3 is not worth $180 upgrade...G2 is far user freindly to the Pilot. G3 seems to be designed more for the guy who like to create own airports/airplanes than the guy who has bought a simulator to improve his flying skills.

brgds
JGZ

This is a known issue related to firewalls. We are working on a fix.


There is indeed a way to set up the airport so that you can change the airplane's direction with a press of a button. Make two airplane spawns and two pilot spawns. The two plane spawns can be right next to each other, but facing opposite directions. The airplane will start at the spawn point closest to the pilot spawn so make sure that pilot spawn A is closer to plane spawn A, and pilot spawn B is closer to plane spawn B. Then, to change the airplane's direction, just hit 'X'.

How in the heck do you fly gliders other than high wind slope gliding? What happened to being able to take a glider to altitude from a standard airfield? Why not hi-start or start at x-altitude setting? Not all gliders or glider pilots are slopers... what about thermal flying?

It is possible to launch a glider from any altitude. Here's how:

1. Press 'Q' to enter walk mode, then use the mouse wheel to change the pilot's altitude.
2. Press space bar to launch the plane.
3. Press 'Q' again and use the mouse wheel to return to the ground.
4. Press 'C' to look at your plane, which should now be flying wherever you launched it from.

Is it just me or does G3 seam to have complicated a bunch of what use to be simple operations in G2?

E.G.

1) It is now much more difficult to set the pilot position and, until someone tells me how, not possible to set the default pilot position. We used to be able to do this with the mouse in G2. Now every time I reset the airplane I have to WALK to my pilot position. Now I know this is considerably quicker than taking the airplane home, repair it, and then take it back to the field -- for God's sake this is just a simulator.

2) Who ever heard of launching the pilot into the air, release the glider, and then put pilot back on the ground -- laughable!!!

Now I recognize the fancy graphics and other fancy intro to G3 but I just like to practice flying RC and maybe hope to experience new airplanes once in a while -- with realism. Unfortunately, I have already invested in G3 and a $300 video card to run it on so will continue to struggle with it. It will, for sure, be my last Real Flight version. I only hope that when I put it out on eBay it will still have a following so I don't have to take too much of a bath. I still won't get my video card investment back.

I have to admit, I own and LOVE RealFlight G2... I'm still not "seriously" into 3D, so I'm not sure how the physics are in that respect, but for general flying and aerobatics, they are pretty good. I also taught myself to fly heli's with it and haven't had a single incident at the field with the real one since. When a friend of mine wanted to buy a sim, but didn't want to spend a fortune I figured I'd just upgrade my own and sell him the old one. My first thought of course was G3 since I was so happy with G2. Well, everywhere I started reading reviews and stuff while sometimes they had good points, there was a LOT of bad points. I started getting more and more nervous about the prospect of getting G3. Then when I can across aerofly pro, I figured I'd do a little poll. I found several people using both versions of software. Everyone using G3 generally listed more bad points than good, while generally there were both. Everyone using aerofly pro generally had a LOT of good to say, and occasionally one or two bad things... (and very minor things at that). In the end I made the decision to abandon the RealFlight platform and move to aerofly pro deluxe. It's supposed to be shipping next week, so we'll see, but no matter what I think I'm gonna be happier than if I had went down the G3 route. Knife Edge had a great product, and I'm sure in time with testing and fixes G3 will be a great product too, but it just feels like it was "rushed" to the market (maybe to try to beat aerofly pro deluxe?) before it was ready, not to mention not offering an upgrade path. That in my opinion was pretty lame. A big part of the cost is supposedly the controller... I've already got a controller... You want me to buy a brand new version for what? A little silly button that saves me from reaching 4 extra inchs to hit the spacebar? No thanks, sorry guys, but I gave up on you. Maybe you can win me back with G4?

You can use the airport editor to change which pilot spawn is the default. Find the pilot spawn you want, right-click on it and pick "Set As Default." If you want to change it's location, just click and drag.

Resetting the plane does not change the pilot's position. Are you using 'X' instead of space bar?

Sorry if those instructions weren't helpful. Did you try it? It's actually really nice to be able to launch from wherever you want. There is another option, which is to edit the aircraft to add a propeller, launch the aircraft from the ground, climb to your desired height, and then start looking for your thermals. The choice is yours.

I have been fighting this software for 10 hours now and have to say it should be illegal to take money from people for this kind of crap...

I have a Radeon X800 graphics card (over $400 card) and it still doesn't play smoothly.

The software locks up constantly, and won't allow me to resave over airports that I've copied and edited previously.

Many planes will violently jump around on the ground with no engine running... to the point that they flip over on there back for no reason.

I'm constantly "running into" invisible items in the air that aren't really there... or are they? Destroys the plane

Resetting the pilot to high in the air (for gliders) is extremely difficult, you have to memorize a bunch of keystrokes and hit them all while your hands are on the sticks (takes three hands) then when/if you finally get your pilot back on the ground you can't find your plane in the air. If you find it, you'll find it sinking like a rock. Land it and you have to do all this all over again. You can't save that "high-in-the-air" starting position... you have to redo all the keystrokes for every launch.

I've tried adding motors, engines, etc. to get the gliders up in the air and that doesn't work for crap either. Went through dozens of motors and nothing would get them up over 20 feet altitude. Finally dropped the weight settings for the airplane to nearly zero and I could get it up there... even then it sinks as soon as you cut the motor.

If you add a motor to a glider, you have to give it zero throttle to shut the motor down... which also turns the flaps on! If you use the kill switch to shut down the motor, you can't restart it when you start sinking (and you will sink... fast) so the motor is of no use. Motor on = flaps off = not really "gliding" / Motor off = flaps on = stall and sink (still not gliding)

No thermals can be found even with the settings for thermals at max

The 3D planes fly nothing like they did in G2 and nothing like any real RC plane I've ever flown. They'll snap and/or stall if you look at them wrong. They are way too sensitive to throttle and are too twitchy. I hover fine in G3 and great with real planes but can't hold a hover for 2 seconds in G3

Funfly planes are fly horribly too.

Sloping is great but gets boring after a while. Can't slope with the Bird of Time... it just won't do it which makes the plane useless as there is no other way to fly it. No engine/motor I can find will get that BOT up in the air without making it so unstable that you can't fly it. Take it to the slope and it just blows backwards over the hill. Add ballast and it sinks like a rock... no win scenario.

Speaking of sloping... did you guys know you can take the giant scale Yak to the cliff and slope with it? Oh yeah... those are "realistic physics".... NOT!!!!! [:'(]

Most of the airstrips in G3 have way too much "crap" in the area of flight. It's neat to look at it, but hey... who puts a gas station on one side of their airstrip and telephone poles on the other? Every airstrip is a virtual obstacle course and your view is usually obstructed. Yes I can edit the airstrips, but why should I have to? Many people aren't that computer savvy.

It took me an hour to figure out what I had to do to get my add-ons to install. Then I find that the two gliders I bought the add-ons for were already installed with G3. So, I bought two add-on packages for nothing.

These are just a few of the "bugs" (understatement) that I've found in my first day with this software. I find another one about every 30-45 minutes. This is total crap and I strongly urge everyone to resist the temptation to buy this software for it's apparent high-end graphics. They aren't that great and are useless if you can't fly in 'em.

I feel like I've been taken advantage of, and this was supposed to be a gift from my siblings and I for my father. No way am I going to give a 78-year old man a pile of *** and problems like this for Christmas. I guess I'll give my siblings their money back and I'm out $250... until I get VISA to revoke the credit card payment! [:@]

Tom