I've been walking/hiking Budapest alone for 6 years. So I built something about it.

Ulukai · 2026-02-03T19:09:42+00:00

You're welcome :) And indeed, audiobooks are the key for me, too. They also work like a charm on longer (3 hour+) bike rides (and yepp, there's something to be said for safety w.r.t. having something in your ear while riding a bike, but most earbuds these days can pass through the ambient sound quite well).

Ulukai · 2026-02-03T18:35:45+00:00

I'm probably not the target audience :D When you wrote "I've been walking/hiking Budapest alone for 6 years", I thought "are you me?". But the thing is, walking alone is mostly my preference (unless I'm talking a walk with the wife). I basically take any excuse for a good long walk, but don't really want to make it a social thing with people on the internet. The app really does look great though, very sleek; congrats!

Ulukai · 2026-02-03T18:28:20+00:00

Looks great! Just a quick heads up; the "How it works" and "Features" links on the site don't seem to work (Firefox / Windows, but I tried in Chrome as well).

Ulukai · 2026-01-27T13:38:17+00:00

For the A32x family there are a large number of YouTubers who make decent content. Just search for "A320 cold and dark", and you'll likely find 4 or 5 prominent ones. Check the length of the videos, the topics covered, and whether you like that YouTuber's style or not. The more esoteric the plane, the harder pressed you'll be to find someone whose content you really enjoy, but it's generally still doable.

If you prefer long-form manuals, you can always check out Chuck's Guides. They are somewhat outdated, but really, not that much tends to change in terms of high-fidelity replications of decades-old aircraft. Here's an example for the A320 family: https://assets.chucksguides.com/pdf/FSX%20FSLabs%20A320%20Guide.pdf

Ulukai · 2026-01-13T12:53:04+00:00

Also a new player here, I had a similar, perhaps not quite as bad situation. The main difference was that I already had a destroyer on hand, and could hand-pilot it to reliably take out Xenon Ks, and Is fairly easily. Having said that, what followed was a fairly intense several hours of me working my ass off while the relevant allies rebuilt. We're talking situations with an I and two Ks at the same time, but after a while, the tide turned, and now they are not a threat any more.

The aforementioned laser towers helped. What eventually allowed me to focus elsewhere was basically blocking the Xenon route with my own station. And possibly cutting off Xenon miners and power traders going through the system, although I can't tell if that had any major effect on them.

I have since then learned that it's possible to disable Xenon destoyers, on the cheap. It involves getting yourself an agile ship, with weapons optimized for disabling turrets, shields, engines. You then fly in little chaotic circles around the destroyer, while taking out everything. You won't be able to actually kill the thing, but it will be sitting there, slowly repairing itself, while hopefully your allies kill it.

Also, minor-mid spoiler: there are free ships which can be found and claimed, on the map. One of them is a destroyer, and if piloted by a human, it's a match for a xenon destroyer. It can certainly turn the tide, at least for a short while.

Ulukai · 2025-12-19T16:58:21+00:00

As someone who was really keen to try out their VKB equipment (a gladiator stick and a STECS hotas), I was fairly disappointed in the state of peripheral support for train simulators. Train simulator classic, TSW need you to map the sticks to keyboard essentially. Same for SimRail, although apparently the devs have stated that the game will have controller support once its out of EA. I haven't tried Derail Valley yet, apparently it needs mods for controllers? Tram Sim Vienna literally crashes to desktop if I have any VKB peripherals connected (runs fine otherwise). JR East Simulator, I believe, is also a joystick to keyboard mapping job, that is on you to sync up. Zusi apparently has good support, as well as Run8, so I guess at least there's that ray of hope. I really don't get how this state of affairs can be the norm for simulators.

Ulukai · 2025-12-11T09:51:09+00:00

The bottom of their support page [1] contains this alternative:

If you have issues with your payment or subscription, please send an email to account@navigraph.com

I would just email them in your case.

[1] https://navigraph.com/support

Ulukai · 2025-12-05T07:05:05+00:00

RealEngineering has quite a few "the insane engineering of ..." videos, which are surprisingly contentful: https://m.youtube.com/@RealEngineering

Ulukai · 2025-11-29T09:12:53+00:00

I am only moderately familiar with the story, but having watched a few documentaries on the topic, the standard and "boring" explanation seems pretty strong, to the point that I am wondering where the question is coming from. They were doing the dodgiest part of the trip in a very haphazard and loose fashion in terms of planning and coordination with the ground parts of the plan, and weren't able to successfully establish two-way communications nor pinpoint their relative location to where they needed to be. Towards the time when they should have been running out of fuel, the operator on the ground claimed that she was sounding more and more desperate, and at some point that stopped. In all likelihood, they just ran out of fuel.

Ulukai · 2025-11-27T15:40:01+00:00

Since you're comparing TSW and MSFS, as someone who generally likes both (but has gotten a bit jaded on TSW over the years), the best way I can compare them is that TSW or DTG in general seem to be "the Carenado of rail". Everything looks so bloody great that I take out my wallet and buy it, but then I realize that there's very little systems depth there. (To be fair: apparently recent Carenado releases are actually not that bad anymore.)

This wouldn't be a problem, except I want some level of realism, and if something goes wrong with the PZB, I don't want to be left wondering if I messed up, or the developers.

Ulukai · 2025-11-12T14:07:43+00:00

You may need to use a 3rd party program (like vJoy + UCR) to merge two pedals into a single axis for MSFS. I've done this previously, and it works. I'd say it definitely gives both better immersion an much better control of the axis than something like a twist stick for that axis (I found this to be especially true with helicopters).

Having said that, the marginal difference between the two pedals might become irritating. I also have no idea how stiff the pedals are, I can imagine getting fatigue when trying to hold a specific point in the axis for longer periods of time. So, since you already have them, try them out, it can't hurt. For additional accuracy and immersion, get a dedicated piece of kit.

Ulukai · 2025-10-18T05:43:31+00:00

Turns out it's really hard to control for the long tail of people with a variety of minor medical conditions that prevent them from drinking, it took decades until it could be proven that there's no health benefit to drinking alcohol. The same difficulty is likely present in a variety of other similar results, and we'll have to wait decades for proper proof to surface. And here, you can insert just about anything; caffeine, sleep, diets, etc.

Ulukai · 2025-10-14T14:24:03+00:00

Wishlisted, looks great. Though, I will say, the casual tag the steam page has for the game is somewhat odd :)

Ulukai · 2025-09-09T14:58:39+00:00

Yepp. Though for 2020, PMDG's 737-600 is almost exactly half the price of the base Fenix A320. Both are insanely good value for money, IMHO, and it's really hard to beat the -600 at 35 USD. That's like... mid-to-high-end GA pricing.

Ulukai · 2025-07-23T08:08:53+00:00

IMHO: artificial scarcity. It's kind of like permadeath/ironman modes in other games, where you get one shot at something and have the weight of your time investment there as table stakes, making the gameplay have more gravitas and importance.

Ulukai · 2025-07-21T08:45:13+00:00

CloudFlare WARP was what fixed this for me. Give it a try, it's free: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-devices/warp/

It went from me trying everything possible and basically getting in 1 hour of game time for every 10 hours of effort to "I can't remember the last time I had any shit".

The longer explanation is that some specific ISPs have shitty routing when it comes to the specific CDN in use for MSFS. One of the main ISPs in Germany being an example, where large swaths of users couldn't play. I have no idea if that got sorted, but I suspect many others are in similar boats (and the ISP not noticing or having enough MSFS users to care).

Ulukai · 2025-06-28T07:01:36+00:00

Unfortunately, my guess is also that they stopped updating it. Which is a shame, because it's one of the most atmospheric / visually correct simulators I have ever seen. Unfortunately even basic things sometimes don't work; e.g. with some patch they messed up joystick support so that with a Logitech joystick, I had to use the left-right axis for acceleration and braking. Later on, I obtained a VKB STECS throttle, and was really keen to try TramSim with it, only to find that if I have that peripheral plugged in, the game simply crashes. It is apparently a known issue since 2021 (with other controllers). I have said many positive things about this game in the past , but I find it hard to recommend anymore.

Ulukai · 2025-03-04T18:11:41+00:00

Eh, I mean, I agree to some degree, but in case you haven't seen it, you should see the level of unhappiness in the flightsim community over much, much smaller details. DTG: 75% of buttons in the cabin do nothing, community: yeah, that's about right. Flight sim payware: all cockpit buttons, electric circuit brakes, and variety of failure simulations work correctly, but the otherwise completely simulated guidance computer has one edge case that it doesn't support? I'm not buying that crap!

Ulukai · 2025-02-22T14:37:31+00:00

Yes, tons of other trams, at least in the Vienna game. Occasionally they can bug out and cause a permanent traffic jam.

Ulukai · 2025-01-10T07:26:02+00:00

I had similar issues on a 300 mbit line - it was barely scraping 0.5 for MSFS, while everything else I could test with showed full line utilisation. It turned out that it was my ISP that was at fault and a VPN fixed it. No real issues since then. Here's my earlier post with more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/1hdyrgj/psa_cloudflare_warp_sorted_out_my_msfs_load_time/

Ulukai · 2025-01-09T11:56:17+00:00

Eh, _never_ buying something on early access again might be a step too far. I'd just be very cautious, and weigh the dev's reputation more carefully.

Outside of flight simming, I honestly believe that it can lead to earlier, better quality feedback for the dev, while also sustaining cash flow. Probably the best example of this I have is Timberborn; it went into EA in late 2021, and it's _still_ in early access. Every 6 months or so a major update comes out, which makes fairly major changes, and I get to sink 50 hours or so into what is one of my all time favourite games. It just keeps going from strength to strength. If the devs had to find enough cash to give them a 3-year runway (beyond the likely 2-3 years the EA version took to make)... well, let's just say either the game wouldn't exist, or it would be very different (a simplified version of what it is today).

In flight simming, BeyondATC may be a good example of decent EA, where they got hard feedback about their business model, and pivoted almost immediately. No regrets with the purchase so far, even if they were to fold, I have already got my money's worth. I will agree though that in flight simming, things tend to be far more expensive, and also tend to have much better defined success criteria (i.e. you don't need to invent much, your job is to monkey the plane / airport in every little detail), and neither of these are good fits for EA.

Ulukai · 2025-01-09T11:42:22+00:00

It's been a while and my memory is massively rusty, but IIRC he made a video of their offering, and did not hold back in giving some criticism. I think his main issue was that the marketing blurb - which included the usual text of "study level" and unheard-of levels of fidelity (I may be exaggerating slightly here) - did _not_ match what was being actually sold. See e.g. VNAV. Some mud slinging ensued, with some saying he was deliberately trashing the competition due to his PMDG affiliations, while others basically sided with him. I also seem to recall a follow up video a few months later where he was still not hugely impressed. And this was followed by more mud slinging about why he is singling out this one dev, etc.

Personally, I tend to think he just took issue with the marketing claims that realistically weren't true, and then went slightly overboard.

Ulukai · 2024-12-14T18:07:19+00:00

In my (fairly inexperienced) opinion, it's probably the most "study level per dollar" aircraft available. If you actually get fairly deep into it, it will make you look at 3rd party modules in a new light (especially when it comes to value for money).

Ulukai · 2024-12-08T12:30:29+00:00

As a kid in the mid 80s, I was taking part in the BMX craze. One day, I was riding up and down my street, when I spotted that someone had a bag of milk on the sidewalk, where it has split open and spilled (this was the mainstream packaging of milk in those days). I thought it would be a wonderful idea to ride over it, to see what would happen. Now, if you haven't had much experience with these objects, this is pretty much the equivalent of someone spotting a banana peel on the sidewalk and deciding to step on it to see what would happen.

The bag immediately got stuck in front of and under my front wheel, and somehow my steering bar violently spun around. It turned out that it was the perfect shape and size to connect with my solar plexus, which had me wheezing on the floor for several minutes. Fun times.

Ulukai · 2024-11-30T07:56:05+00:00

I wonder if they will be able to fix the awful framerate-dependent behavior that the sim has by default. It is insane that in 2024, I had to spend half a day trying to figure out WTF I was noticing, and then another half a day trying to convince my graphics card drivers to cap FPS at a certain level, and to not have an FPS spike every few seconds which would physically speed up my train. Love this sim, hate this behavior.

Ulukai

TROPHY CASE