Real flying, in FSX

Last night was the official weekly Flying Night, and I had a very good time flying the Cub over some islands off the coast of Maine. I discovered a trick for great framerates-- fly around small islands where there's nothing but water and trees. I love the dense forests-- my system can handle tress well when that's all there is. I had re-loaded my low settings config file, and started again to bump up selected sliders. The performance I was getting here was really nice, and I felt unrestrained the joy of flight again! I did not worry about the sim's performance, nor was I concious of being scenically deprived. However, I must say that when I flew to the mainland things got a little less smooth.


Just look at all those trees!

I set up my own weather with moderate turbulence and wind gusts, and that Cub kept shaking the whole time (even on the ground!). It was quite immersive, especially seeing the wing struts move in relation to the window frame (due to the pilot's point of view shifting). I really felt like I was inside the airplane, not looking at a two-dimensional representation. I found an ideosyncracy with the display however-- I got microstutters with all of the shaking, which I suspect may be related to the head latency feature. I switched the framerates from unlimited to 24, and that got rid of the stutters (normally, unlimited works much better for me).

I also figured out how to handle the Cub on the ground-- keep the stick back as long as possible to increase the effectiveness of the tail wheel. No ground loops last night!

I tried cranking the GA traffic up to 100%, since I wasn't flying into any large airports. I was quite delighted to see all this (last shot) at KIWI, which is a pretty modest airport as far as I know. A minute later someone came in for a landing.
I don't know this for sure, but I think they've increased the GA traffic in FSX, and I've seen parking spaces at airports that didn't have any in FS9.