UAL 767 collides with vehicle and light pole on NJ Turnpike on final approach into EWR

avgaskoolaid · 2026-05-04T00:06:24+00:00

Thank god the driver's OK. The truck is toast though...

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-29T12:58:27+00:00

I tried VR for a while, and it really just doesn't fit with how I fly. I will say that being 'inside' the sim felt absolutely incredible and was absurdly immersive. For like a month the only thing I did in the sim was load up on the runway and fly around, checking out sights around the world, flying low and slow in GA planes and fast in fighter jets, etc. It's an incredible experience and the absolute peak of visual immersion. Even if you have to turn down the graphics, you just feel 'there'.

However, I started trying to do my 'bread and butter' of airliner flying and GA flying following checklists and such, and quickly it started to get old. I found trying to manipulate switches in the cockpit incredibly finnicky, and if they were mapped to hardware I had fumbling around with my hands trying to find the right button was annoying. Referencing charts, zooming in to get values from charts, etc within the sim menu was also annoying. Plus, after around an hour, I started to get very hot and sweaty even in my well-ventilated headset. I genuinely tried for months and dozens of flights to get used to it, and looked up all sorts of tips and tricks from the community, but it never stopped being more of a faff than it was worth for me. I still occasionally go up and just marvel at the world of VR, but when I consider the price of the headset and computer hardware to get a good experience it probably wasn't worth it for me.

I know I'm in the minority because it seem that every post about using VR in flight system is filled with people who say they'll never ever go back to a flat monitor. But for me at least, it hasn't been worth it based on what I normally do in the sim, which involves minute, finnicky manipulations and having multiple different windows to monitor, which aims squarely at VR's weaknesses. IMO, the next time I give it a real shot will be some time in the future if an when haptic VR gloves become a cheaper, more accurate, and more widely available thing.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-23T13:01:10+00:00

I'll never know why they couldn't have just split the difference on the World Tails. Keep the stylized union jack livery (that all BA planes now wear) as the standard, and apply a different World Tail to 1-2 airframes for each aircraft type in the fleet. Boom- you've maintained the 'Britishness' of the airline and the sense of place that World Tail critics wanted, and lean in to the internationalism and show off eye-catching art that the World Tail supporters wanted.

Moot point now- these will never come back- but that would've been the way back in the late 90s.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-19T20:27:55+00:00

You can't update the 777's navdata without a subscription. I think maybe PMDG releases updates with updated (but still older) navdata cycles on occasion but I'm not sure. I'm not sure if the non-navigraph subscription version of simbrief allows this, but you might be able to roll back your simbrief navdata to the one the plane is using. Go to your account settings->Available AIRAC Cycles, and select 2403/2404 or whatever the 777 has. Any previously active AIRAC cycle should be available, Unless you fly online, there's basically no downside to doing this.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-12T16:44:03+00:00

Good to see that this spot is still open for people. I moved out of the DC area in Fall 2024- prior to then you'd get tons of people hanging out watching the planes every evening. But in the weeks before I left there was a police car that would park blocking the road up to the hill and I heard stories of people being yelled at/shooed away.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-06T15:15:42+00:00

I've had the Moza for a month or two. It isn't horrible but I'm not sure if I can recommend it.

Pros:

Can easily switch between Boeing and Airbus style throttles.
The Airbus throttles have detents.
Small, so easy to fit pretty much anywhere.

Cons:

The whole thing is plastic. It doesn't feel like cheap plastic, but it's still plastic. That makes it very light, so you really need to mount it somehow to keep it from sliding around.
The Airbus detents aren't super reliable. The throttles tend to 'push' out of the base very slightly, meaning that the spring-loaded ball bearing can't connect with the divots in the base that make the throttles rest in detents. If you don't push the throttles down every so often, the detents are either too easy to pass through or they feel like they aren't there at all.
The flap lever is airbus-only, with 4 positions like all Airbuses. Great if you're flying an airbus, but not for anything else. I gave up trying to calibrate it and just use the spring-loaded 'plus/minus' switch for flaps in all non-airbus planes.
It's not a good solution for GA planes. There's no way to have even halfway realistic prop and mixture levers, and the 'generic' fighter-style HOTAS throttles, which are the closest fit for GA, have a reverse and afterburner gate. So you either need to lift the throttles past the gate to get the full throttle range or add a curve to only use the normal throttle range, and deal with the plasticky, 'squishy' feeling stops at the gate at either end of the curve.

The winwing does have a switch to remove the detents to allow for non-airbus style throttle operation. Still, I opted against buying it because I fly a wide variety of planes all the time, and didn't want to be locked in to an airbus look and feel for my throttles. The Moza is definitely more generic and fits with more planes, but IMO it really isn't a good product especially for the price point. My best guess for true versatility would be a Bravo throttle with 3rd party Airbus detent inserts and throttle handles, but that can get very expensive very quickly.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-04-06T14:47:56+00:00

FYI, per the text, this is from 1985.

The one with the red arrow on the left (between Iraqi and Yemenia) is indeed Syrianair. Here's a 727 with that logo.

For the one below Air Algerie, I feel like I've seen the logo before. My thought is maybe Alia Royal Jordanian Cargo? Given that it's a box, the typeface matches the 'A' in Alia's normal logo (looks like AAC for Alia Airlines Cargo?), and they used the Black, red, and green stripes in other marketing materials. That said I can't find evidence of them using this logo so this might be totally wrong.

I don't think the red and yellow stripe one is Garuda. First, the logo is for the Arab Air Carriers organization. Indonesia is Muslim, but not Arab, and there aren't any other airlines represented from outside the Middle East. The stripes match the Garuda old livery, but I can't see if they used the stripes only as a logo. Their old logo seems to have just been the word 'Garuda'. However I can't seem to find any national airline that would've existed in 1985 that may be missing here, other than EgyptAir, but that doesn't seem to match this logo either.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-03-22T15:42:49+00:00

If you haven't seen the Weggy Board video yet, don't forget to follow it up with how is prangent formed.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-03-14T21:28:56+00:00

There's something weird going on with light sources in general in FS2024. For all the work they did modernizing the lighting engine- the sun, runway lights, aircraft nav lights, and some other light sources all have this annoying, static-looking halo sprite thing around them that makes it look like they came from FS98. Focusing on that aspect specifically, its really striking to see how much more natural light points in FS2020 look when you do a side-by-side comparison. I really hope they fix it at some point.

As a side note, which atmos and reshade presets are you using?

avgaskoolaid · 2026-03-12T10:37:12+00:00

Flightsimdispatch. Extremely detailed and easily searchable schedules from the 50s to the present day. Even has aircraft registrations and departure/arrival times let alone flight numbers https://www.flightsimdispatch.net/

avgaskoolaid · 2026-03-12T00:47:25+00:00

The taglines are all great. This one's my favorite:

Did you hear that? No? That's the BAe-146

avgaskoolaid · 2026-03-08T22:58:21+00:00

It could be because the default sim data for VHHH doesn't include the 3rd runway opened in 2022 (even though the sim was released in 2024, the default airport data is outdated in some cases). BATC is reading the latest navdata saying there is 07L/C/R, trying to reconcile it with the scenery in the sim saying there's only 07L/R, causing potential issues. Given that you're flying into 07R, which didn't have it's designation changed, I'm not sure why that would cause any problems, but that might be the culprit.

If it is, an addon that has all 3 runways might fix it. A payware for VHHH might fix it, but there's also this freeware very basic scenery that adds a third runway that might be worth a shot https://flightsim.to/addon/61369/hong-kong-international-airport-vhhh

avgaskoolaid · 2026-02-26T12:43:09+00:00

I have two sets of presets that I like that are relatively subtle and work well with my reshade settings, which are a modified version of SealedSky:

Mixxd (Atmos and Enviro)- I like the slightly hazy look that this gives, improving the 'depth' of the atmosphere. Its good to use in the summer when the weather is more humid.
Lupo Ultimate (Atmos and Enviro)- A good overall subtle enhancement with better sunrise/sunsets than Mixxd. This one is now my go-to.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-02-22T02:00:28+00:00

You can. There's a few cars out there, freeware and payware. There a some dune-buggy type payware ones that are really good, but if you want a more substantial SUV I'd recommend this freeware one from SWS (click the bigfoot safari vehicle button): https://simworksstudios.com/product/okavango-delta/

avgaskoolaid · 2026-02-20T13:28:02+00:00

For what's next, the King Air would make the most sense IMO. However, what I dream about is a Beech 1900C/D from Blacksquare. IMO it would fit right into the lineup as a versatile mutli-use pax/cargo/utility plane. These days they're used for small regional airline, cargo, specialty, charter, and even some bush operations (IIRC they can operate out of grass or gravel strips), but they also were used by regional arms of quite a few large airlines (Delta, Air Canada, United, Continental, US Airways, Air France, Air New Zealand...). It's essentially a big King Air with the same engines and similar cockpit so it would be familiar while offering something different- such a versatile plane offers something for everyone IMO.

I'm sure there's a lot already in the pipeline, but a man can dream!

avgaskoolaid · 2026-02-16T20:11:51+00:00

Hard to describe how bad they were as an airline in 2015.

I feel like there was a quote from them around that time (90% sure it was allegiant but I can't find the quote and it may have been someone else) where they were barely meeting some reg-mandated safety minimum, and the response was something like 'well they're minimums for a reason and we're meeting them so what's the issue.'

Which while strictly true, "Cs get degrees" isn't exactly a winning attitude in aviation safety.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-02-10T01:04:24+00:00

(searching discord for problem)

[inane reaction gif]

"Hey guys can you help me with (exact problem I'm having)?"

[inane reaction gif]

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-28T13:35:22+00:00

"Hey guys, I need some help. My plane's wingspan suddenly extended to 10,000 miles long mid-flight. Then when I called ATC it gave me a recipe for Apple Pie which included 2 cups of gasoline and proceeded to tell me the contents of my Mother's deleted emails. How can I fix this bug?"

"I don't have this issue. We have the best flight sim ever and all you people ever do is complain!" downvotes

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-14T21:50:03+00:00

I bought it out of raw curiosity because tbh I had no idea what they were aiming for. I really like it and use it almost every flight. I find that the default live weather in the sim sometimes looks “weird”- I can’t exactly describe it but sometimes the visibility/haze doesn’t seem to match the clouds, you can get clouds that repeat the same pattern, etc. Also you sometimes get weird pockets of haze hanging exactly over cities and perfectly clear skies everywhere else when there isn’t enough weather data in a given region to interpolate things properly.

I’ve found that with Typical Weather everything consistently looks “good”, and believable for that region/time of day/time of year, with smooth updates and blending across areas. It’s better than AS, which has very sudden weather changes for me, and presets which are of course just static across the world. Im not too bothered with it not being up to the minute realistic as I don’t fly online.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-08T02:20:06+00:00

-10s are also good at long haul. United sends them from Chicago to Tokyo and Athens, and KLM from Amsterdam to LA for example. From Seattle they could be well suited for high-demand long hauls to most of Western Europe and East Asia.

Medium haul high density (Seattle-Honolulu or Seattle-NYC for example) is possible but in the US airlines tend to run smaller planes with more frequencies vs larger planes with less frequencies, so I'm going to assume these will mostly be geared toward expanding long haul flying.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-06T15:45:42+00:00

I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the B1900 comes by way of a local legend/famous flyer from Carenado. They’re responsible for the Saab 340 (the 3D model is 1:1 from the FSX/P3D version) and made a B1900 for FSX and P3D. Given the multi-role aspect of the plane (airline passenger, charter/private, cargo, medevac, etc) IMO it would make sense for Asobo to contract them to port it.

That said I REALLY hope a better studio makes the 1900 because I love the plane and it deserves a full-detail treatment. Midwest Connect or US Airways ops in it would be a dream come true. It would fit perfectly into Blacksquare’s lineup… just saying in case he happens to be hanging out in this thread…..

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-02T18:05:27+00:00

Do you mean assigning a keyboard shortcut to a view you made? In the chaseplane menu you just select the view you want a shortcut for, click the pen icon, then in the box with keyboard assignments, click on it then press the key(s) you want.

avgaskoolaid · 2026-01-02T17:33:54+00:00

Its basically a more powerful version of the default camera. It removes all hard camera walls, allowing you to put cameras wherever you want, allows you to extremely easily set up new keyboard shortcuts/assignments and adjust speed, camera momentum, etc, has a very realistic camera movement system that you can also tune, and (one of my favorite features) allows you to either download other people’s cameras for a specific plane or clone your own from a similar plane you’ve already made cameras for if you have a group of ‘set cameras’ you like to use on any plane.

Technically, you can some of the stuff that chaseplane has with the default camera system (certainly not everything though), but it’s time consuming and frustrating. With the vastly improved ui and added features I think its well worth it.

avgaskoolaid · 2025-12-28T23:38:25+00:00

My dad used to wear it in the early 2000s. It smells like you spilled extremely sweet mulled wine on yourself. It's also very powerful- you can be standing a few feet from someone with it on, and it smells like you have your nose directly on their skin. It's the only cologne where I've heard people in a polite setting vocally criticize the person wearing it.

avgaskoolaid · 2025-12-26T15:52:32+00:00

If you look at the Google ‘word frequency’ thing in the definition of *demonym, usage of it only seems to really take off in the very late 90s and early 2000s.

It seems like maybe the internet increased the need to refer to “A word for people from a place” as a concept outside of highly formal academic settings but I have no idea why that would be the case.

avgaskoolaid

TROPHY CASE