Friday, October 27, 2006

Grand fun


I have literally a whole new world to explore with FSX, so I've been hitting the obvious spots-- the Pyramids at Giza (nicely done!), and last night, the Grand Canyon. It looks really good. To tell you the truth, its been a long time since I was in the G.C. in FS9, so I can't say for sure how much it has been improved. But I was delighted by the sights. Interestly, my nemesis Sudden Onset Blurries did not trouble me during this session. I'm guessing that this was because the textures are fairly limited in this area. It seems textures are what bogs my system down the most-- it handles the complex terrain mesh fairly well.

I started out in the Cub. It was pretty neat to come over the rim of the canyon, cut the throttle, and descend into the maze. The Cub is as good as ever. My only quibble is that the window reflections show the yellow paint scheme, so when you're flying a different paint it looks odd.

Low and slow is great, but eventually I wanted to see more of the canyon more quickly, so I switched the the Extra. A rather abrupt change from slow and stable to fast and twitchy, but I sorted it out eventually. I don't remember if this was the case in FS9, but the FSX extra has a glass bottom! Good for canyon viewing.

Couldn't resist a little inverted flight on my way back to the airfield. I never really enjoyed the Extra in FS9, but this version holds a lot of promise. I actually brought the Extra back in one piece.

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