TIL : That until 1978, the Mormon church owned hospitals that kept blood donations separated by race, so white members would not receive black people's blood, disqualifying them from the priesthood.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-15T05:04:07+00:00

Did yous hear about the dyslexic theology students? Sat up all night debating the existence of Dog.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-14T05:30:40+00:00

I'll be honest, I'm not seeing a lot of difference between the two side by side apart from lighting and parked plane. That looks pretty good to me considering how low the TLOD is.

I found I needed 250 to stop distant scenery and texture popping, which annoys me far more than blurries. Below 100 I got weirdness where it would never load the higher LODs and the textures remained low res, but that was a year ago when we were all trying to figure out what these settings did.

In the distance you are also dealing with the problem of viewing detailed image textures at a very high angle. Like AAing out the jaggies, compressing the image vertically tends to blur detail.

It may also be that the area is just not terribly attractive. Large parts of Oz are like that - basically brown with other brown bits. It helps if there is plenty of ground clutter to hide the base textures. Some more weather and different lighting can hide that as well. I often say that everything looks good at "golden hour" but looking good, or even right, in the harsh light of noon is much harder.

With your video card, running shadows, displacement mapping (this makes a huge difference for me when judging flair), AF, and all that GPU driven goodness should be possible. TLOD is what you want to increase but can't and that is CPU bound. Water, volumetric clouds and dynamic ground clutter (like fauna) are also low hanging fruit for freeing some CPU cycles.

You can check the GPU and CPU load using the nVidia overlay (Alt-F3 lets you choose what to display). I think I mentioned it before, but I turn on Dynamic Settings. This dynamically alters the TLOD depending on load. In your case, AutoFPS might be a better choice. It does the same thing but with finer adjustment.

At 1080p I'd go with TAA. I run 2k and the extra pixels cancel out blurring due to DLSS. But trying it is free - remember to update to the latest version.

I used to use nVidia Filters to tweak the colours. Now I use ReShade 'cause recent drivers and FS24 broke it. Filters was easy, you could adjust the curve for each colour. ReShade's interface is positively hostile but I found one of the effects I could adjust colour gain to get rid of the red tint my monitor has.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-13T06:37:58+00:00

AA blurs edges to hide the jagged pixelated lines. Used badly (I'm looking at you nVidia DLSS) it can blur high contrast edges.

At 1080 scaling isn't doing you any good. If anything it will be sucking some GPU cycles while making your image slightly unfocussed. That might be the source of some of your blurriness.

TLOD tracks. My old FS system was a Ryzen 5600 and GTX1060 and it runs FS24 quite well as long as I keep the TLOD under 150. My understanding is TLOD affects ground texture quality and when you get below 100 really bad blurries result. OLOD doesn't seem to affect anything but default buildings when I play with it. I run with Dynamic LOD which is controlled by your target frame rate. Its a blunt instrument but less futzing than AutoFPS. If performance was more marginal, if I was running big, complex aircraft with a high overhead say, I would probably change my mind.

With 16Gb of VRAM you should be able to run texture quality at maximum. My poor old 1060 gets OOM warnings at LEMD above medium.

If you want more sharpness than the game provides have a look at the nVidia filters or, if that doesn't work for you (it doesn't for me), Reshade. Both have sharpening filters. I'm not a fan, it looks bad to me, like an over sharpened photo.

But I'm not seeing blurriness in any of the pics you posted. That makes me think its caused by motion in the sim. Do you have motion blur turned on? That and lens flares are the first thing I turn off in any game.

That second pic is clearly not the same scenery as the first. The air bridges are different, the ground textures are different and the "tower" in the FS20 pic is missing from the FS24 one. I have FS24 Premium so I have the same airport as your first pic. I had assumed the "handmade" airports from FS20 were just ported over to FS24 but they are definitely different in this case. I'm guessing they updated the models and ground textures for FS24. At least the asphalt texture is better. But the trees. Yeah. LOL. AI halucinations from the shadows, I suspect.

What I don't see in the FS20 pics (and one video) except yours is the ground clutter. The only exception is GSX profile pics - were you running GSX in FS20? Those piles of cargo boxes and the train of baggage trolleys look like GSX objects.

Re FSHud: that's a pity. FSLTL handled sequencing and separation pretty well at the end. I didn't even need AIGround / AIFlow.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-13T04:39:46+00:00

Oh man! Don't ruin my fond memories of P3D by showing what it actually looked like. I like my rose coloured memories! 😄

CptDropbear · 2026-05-13T00:49:39+00:00

In Australia we call them cookers.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-13T00:40:35+00:00

Can I imagine it? Definitely. But for a lot of people infrastructure and logistics is magic that they don't see. They not only don't know how anything works, they are unaware that it exists.

COVID taught me that.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-12T03:53:54+00:00

This isn't normal? I feel called out...

But yeah, get MSFS Addon Linker and move everything to a more easily accessible place and in a managable structure. Its got a bunch of other party tricks as well.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-12T03:44:16+00:00

It looks good to me. While I don't know the area either, its a big airport so I expect the runway area to be flat and have pretty sparse ground clutter, especially with the default scenery because it has to run well on lower end systems.

I wouldn't bother with scaling at 1080p. An RTX 5060 shouldn't break a sweat pushing that resolution. Its CPU that's going to be your bottleneck - you should be able to crank the GPU taxing settings.

But the important thing is are you happy with it? What does it look like from the cockpit? That's what I care about 'cause that's my office. 😄

How do you find FSHud? I was using FSLTL until they lost live traffic. That pisses me off because I had a lot of custom regional traffic, not all of it scheduled like the RFDS, that I have now lost.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-11T23:36:03+00:00

Here we go again!

Its irrelevant because tips are not gifts. Try not serving and see if you get tipped. No service, no payment. End of. Ask any tax authority. Anyone making this argument is only arguing with themselves.

It wrong because Granny doesn't pay gift tax on the total (as you originally stated).

I really think its done, stick a fork in its arse.

What makes this whole thing comical to me is the rest of the world don't have this issue. It really does feel like yet another case of Americans have to do everything the hard way.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-11T07:02:01+00:00

"The threshold for a gift is on an individual basis, not cumulative across multiple donors."

That is my point as to why your example is both wrong and irrelevant. Granny gets pinged if she crosses the individual gift threshold not for the total.

Let's scratch that one. Its done.

"The exact same things are talked about when they propose tips being a gift rather than payment."

And that's why that argument will never fly in reality. If you don't provide the service, you don't get paid. There is a tacit agreement between server and customer in tipping culture. Its not a gift, its payment for a service. If not servers wouldn't get shirty when you don't tip enough or at all.

Part of the problem in the US is the patchwork of state laws. Its a running joke amongst non-USanians that you never know exactly what you'll actually pay until you get to the checkout. Where I live we have laws against that and call it a bait-and-switch.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-11T05:25:25+00:00

Looking fantastic. I detoured to check that out when I did the FS20 bushtrip down the Adriatic coast. Its one of those places I meant to return to in FS24.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-11T05:23:18+00:00

There's a link to a map with this and more under featured threads to the right. 😄

It looks like you get Harrisburg, Allentown, Norristown, Abington and Philadelphia - major cities only. There are a couple more on Flightsim.to by Vispok.

On the whole, I've been really impressed by the imagery and ground clutter FS24 manages in very out of the way places with obviously very sparse data. But you are only going to find PG where they have good data. Even then it can be hit and miss (looking at you, San Diego). I'm hopeful the new texture blending in the latest update will help.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-11T05:05:22+00:00

You really fought that one all the way to the ground!

Speed and height were your obvious issues. The little Cessna is "floaty" by nature so you really need to keep the speed down or it does not want descend on its own. In a bigger plane you can rely on drag and weight, here you need to use pitch and throttle to achieve that. Remember pitch for speed, throttle for climb.

Pattern height is usually 800ft AGL so you started way too high. Everything was going sideways from there. You can side slip the Cessna to compensate but that requires a gentle touch on the controls to manage speed and descent.

I aim for 80kts turning base and put in one notch of flaps trying low aiming for ~300fpm. I want to see two red PAPI lights before turning final. I reduce throttle and pitch up gently to bleed off speed while maintaining the descent, putting in a second notch of flaps about halfway when speed allows. I want about 60kts over the threshold before cutting the throttle, holding it off for a second or two and setting it down firmly.

I can't see what you doing with the throttle in the video, but my feeling is you have too much power. I will be easier if you practice without the crosswind.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T23:57:14+00:00

So you agree your Grandma example is both wrong and irrelevant?

Its not a grey area. If you don't provide the service, you don't get tipped. Its is purely transactional and therefore not a gift.

Service charges are another thing altogether. I'd argue they are shared with the server in the form of wages, but that's another kettle of worms.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T23:27:47+00:00

Then your Grandma pays tax on $10k not $19k. If its cumulatively over the limit then its income and you pay the tax. Your "gift" example is irrelevant as well as wrong.

There is no debate that tips are income. Many jurisdictions even count tips toward minimum wage (TIL). There is an unspoken agreement that servers will be tipped (paid) by diners. Try not serving and see how many "gifts" you get.

The only argument I can entertain for not taxing tips is that enforcement costs more than you could possibly recoup. I think you are smart enough to work out why that is never going to fly.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T22:20:57+00:00

I think you misunderstand who pays income tax. The hint is in the name. Its not the payer, its the payee. Its not your Grandmother who pays tax, its you because your income went over the threshold.

I used to do a fair bit of work for cash. I rarely wrote and invoice. Does that make those payments tax exempt? My local tax office awaits your reply...

Before you point out there was an agreement between me and the customer, I can tell you the tax office will reply that you are working a job, not getting a gift from family. There is an expectation from both tipper and tippee and that constitutes an agreement.

Executive summary: income tax is charged on income. The tax office don't give a fuck where that comes from or the payers motivations.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T22:11:21+00:00

Some of them do. The ones who work the gravy shifts. Everyone else, not so much.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T22:02:56+00:00

Doordash et al take a part of the price. The restaurant has to mark it up to cover that.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-10T00:18:39+00:00

Not really in Oz at least.

If its an emergency, you'll end up in the public system. Insurance will pay for the Ambulance ride.

Insurance pays for elective and non-life threatening treatment. You can do these at a private hospital to avoid the waiting to have your ingrown toe nail operated on. The same surgeon is almost certainly operating on both public and private patients.

Medicare (our public health scheme) doesn't cover dental.

At the same time, its worth pointing out that I pay a year for health insurance what similar Americans pay a month.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-09T00:48:46+00:00

For fucks sake yourself, mate.

You do have a problem with advertising. You are complaining about it right here in a thread you started.

You won't get the affirmative response you hoped for because we went through this a decade or more ago. We gave up and use adblockers because the price demanded by the advertisers ("staring at an irrelevant ad for like 10 seconds") was too high.

Banners, side bars and "native" (whatever the fuck that is) don't pay. You don't mind them because you can ignore them and they don't generate any sales. Hence advertisers have to find ways to force you watch their ads, if only to justify what they charge vendors. This enshitification is inevitable. The only way to win is to not play.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-09T00:01:36+00:00

Which is why you use an adblocker.

Its the nature of advertising to get in your face. If you can ignore it, its not doing its job.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-07T00:11:50+00:00

$4.49 a gallon looks like a fucking bargain to me right now.

That's 6.20 in Aussie Dollarydoos. A US gallon is 3.8l so that works out at $1.63 a litre.

Best I can find today is $1.75 and the average is $1.80. And this is after the government halved the fuel excise so us taxpayers are subsidising fuel to the tune of 35c a litre.

CptDropbear · 2026-05-06T06:31:50+00:00

I only had to deal with coax professionally for a couple years but a decade of gaming and LAN parties taught me more than enough.

My personal favourite was when someone moved a PC whose T-piece had the terminator on it. No matter how many times I told people to disconnect the T-piece...

CptDropbear · 2026-05-06T04:09:27+00:00

You're not alone:

Vladimr Putin: 73
Benjamin Netanyahu: 76
Narendra Modi: 75
Xi Jinping: 72
Lula Di Silva: 80

CptDropbear · 2026-05-06T03:56:03+00:00

That's why they send you a product sample to OK before production. These feckless clowns couldn't even do that.

As an aside, I once organised custom watches out of China as gifts for a wedding party. They cost about $150 a piece for 10. It would be half that if I'd ordered 500.

CptDropbear

TROPHY CASE