Blade Edge

I made a day-one purchase of Drzewiecki  Design’s New York City X product, which I had been salivating over for months, and ended up with a scenery add-on that brought my computer to its knees with the dreaded Out Of Memory error, which is what happens when too much is loaded into FSX at once and it runs out of the ability to address enough virtual memory to keep up. Turns out the product, as shipped, required the use of DX10 Preview mode, which is an aspect of FSX that Microsoft never fully developed before dropping the software. Therefore there are a number of issues with using DX10 but over the years these issues have largely been solved, enough so that a good portion of FSX users now fly with DX10 enabled all the time. I was not one of those people. Note the past tense.

Rather than fight for a refund I decided hell with it, lets see if I can get DX10 mode up and running. It took me a while but I finally figured out everything I needed to do to make it work on my system. I have updated my Install Log with details on the steps and techniques I put into action to get things working. It’s not something I will want to use for anything but helicopter flying around Manhattan, but at least I can now do that with this new product. I suppose I will also need to run DX10 if I decide to fly and aircraft up/down the Hudson as well past NYC – I plan to make a few more tweaks and test that on my next flight, which is a 5 hour trip from KPHL to KBUF.

Anyways, I’m going to refrain from day-one product purchases from now on. Despite getting DX10 working I’m still rather annoyed the developer didn’t bother to mention at all that the scenery was pretty much incapable of being run under DX9. It wasn’t intended to be a DX10-only product but then it should have been delayed in release if the developer didn’t want to have it only run on DX10 systems.

Alright enough ranting – let’s talk about the flight. I spent a little over an hour in the air, taking the Coney Island and South Shore routes from Floyd Bennett Field (NY22) then patrolling the harbor, up the East River, across Central Park and down the Hudson to the West 30th St Heliport (KJRA). I tried to aim for a pad on approach but I still can’t time my hover to happen over the pad – instead I ended up a few feet over the water just off the pad and tried to creep forward but couldn’t stay steady and after a minute or two of futzing around I just put her down wherever I could. I at least managed to pull off a good 1.1 ft/sec landing when the wheels touched down. A short break (didn’t even bother throttling back the engines) and it was back up and down the rest of the way to the tip of Manhattan, a short hop to the Downtown Heliport (KJRB). Again, my approach ended up short of the pad – but close still so I’m getting there. A bit less futzing, but I rushed the landing and ended up taking a good bump at 2.1 ft/sec. Down safe though, so I shut down on the pad – I should have taxied to a parking spot really.

Nothing too exciting, just an excuse to spend some time flying around the scenery to see if there were any issues. I got no OOM error box popping up and forcing me to shut down the sim but after landing at KJRB whenever I looked north I would get an occasional system chime warning me that I was dangerously close to generating an OOM error box.