What really happened to Microsoft Flight Simulator

It's grown up and now only the big boys get to play :)
http://www.prepar3d.com/

been a while

I got frustrated by FSX being unable to keep my settings on instrument panel size , flight controls and window arrangement.

So I have been taking a break from the cockpit, playing IL2 1946 instead :)

another monitor!

Since I couldn't fix zonescreen, even installing their own virtual display driver, I bought a damaged LCD off Ebay. It has some blemishes/black areas but other than that they say it works fine. Since it's going to be the left side window, such damage is acceptable.

Once this gets here, it's time to do some serious flying.

zonescreen does not play well with FSX

I was able to use zonescreen to simulate a 4th monitor.

I have an ATI 9550 with only one monitor connected to it.

What I did is I went into the ati catalyst software and forced it to detect a TV connected to the second port of the ATI 9550. I only have one real monitor connected to that card.

then I was able to enable that monitor in display/control panel. And then I used zonescreen, with the laptop as a client.

But trying to use it with zonescreen resulting in zonescreen, then FSX crashing.

So I geuss it's either the maxivista software or an used monitor from ebay. The difference in price is negligible if you are willing to go with a cheap LCD or CRT.

this sucks monkey gonads!

After I got all the keys configured with a macro I wrote myself, and added them to the standard.xml file, everything worked fine except that I was missing the fuel pump toggle. After I tried to add that, FSX always resets the keys to defaults. Even after removing it, it still does it.
I'll have to go through the keyboard section of the controls line by line :P

In other news, I am trying to hook up an old laptop as a fourth monitor, for outside views, using the ZoneScreen software.

coming together

The keyboard panel has been labeled, now only the keys need to be assigned. And believe it or not, that's the easy part, because I wrote an Excel macro that generates XM strings for the controls.xml FSX configuration file. booya!
It will be posted on the site soon. No FSUIPC for me, no siree...cause it's not free....

big update coming soon.

geting FSX

I finally bought FSX, from Ebay. Unfortunately I realized that I bought the standard edition ,which does not have the SDK. I really wanted to do some developing. Oh well, I can buy the Deluxe later.
I just hope my computer can handle FSX. Maybe some upgrades are in order :)