geolpilot

Apologies for not posting in old thread/s about this but I feel this need to be brought to the attention of Avsim users and Moderators Ok so for the first time in 20 years of online purchasing of sim products, this has now happened to me. On 6th May 2021 I purchased two airports (Walvis Bay and Windhoek) plus Aerosoft Lukla P3D from Simmarket. No purchases for 3months prior to that, and after that earlier March purchase(PMDG) no strange transactions. Starting May 9th (3 days after the Simmarket purchase) many transactions that I did not initiate went through that card (I only picked up on these reviewing my statement at month-end June; wish I had done it end May but its been a busy time for me the last two months). -several small amounts in one day (on several days) to Youtube. Look like Superchat payments. Never made those ever. -two monthly amounts to Netflix (amount is the same as their "premium" monthly plan). I have never used Netflix. They did not register an account in my email, so maybe they have made a mistake here using their Netflix account but paying with fraudulent online card details. -a few payments to Beanstalk-AWS. Never knew what that was until I looked it up. Whoever it is, is a computer nerd/hacker/programmer) - largest payments to Walmart (again I have never been to a physical Walmart store or ever ordered anything online from them) - possibly to relieve the stress of his/her criminal behavior the perpetrator favors herbal remedies. Several purchases from Herbalife, (again I have never used them). Now previous threads about this before degenerated into some victim-blaming so let me make it clear that; - my computer is well-secured and protected (firewall, antivirus, antimalware) - when I make purchase using that card it always asks me to enter a One Time Password (OTP), which I get via email or phone. This person was somehow able to circumvent that. I have received no spurious SMS messages or Emails, or warnings about strange logons to my email account. The fraudster may be a computer hacker who can somehow divert these requests as soon as made? Or is someone at the card-clearing-house (Stripe) involved? Going over the previous list of people posting on this problem; Many are fairly to extremely confident this happened shortly after a purchase at Simmarket. I am 100% sure. Come from countries around the world (Australia, Canada, America and myself a South African bank) These have been going on since June 2017, without remedy, and strangely all occur around June (whoever it is has a spending spree then - holiday?) I was lucky as I have a monthly limit set (in ZAR so the person making these must have been very disappointed with his/her choice of card) My card was almost maxed out end-April. The fraudster hit the max on 28th June The bank was clearly suspicious as I never use my card in this way. Though listed on my statements the amounts are noted as "uncleared payments" so can be reversed after validation of my claims. Now this matter DOES warrant investigation. After several years this is ongoing and in all cases is reported after Simmarket transactions! The argument that all Simmarket users should be affected does not wash with me. The person/s is clever enough to pick his victims, and it looks like timing as well, and does not want to go all-out on everyone as he/she would definitely get caught. I have nothing against Simmarket, used them for years, so if anything only disappointed that I cannot and will not safely use them again. Please AVSIM users be very wary of making credit card purchases at Simmarket until this is resolved. I cannot say do not, but if you do, watch your statements carefully in the following days so that you can prevent any further fraud if detected. Regards to all and keep safe Rob

No, only if I am going to fly a totally different plane with a radically different control setup. The control profile imported for a session, say on an Airbus, is saved automatically to the standard control file. So next time, if flying an Airbus again, I can simply carry on. But if changing to a Boeing (PMDG or QUALITYWINGS) and I want to use my Saitek Yoke not Joystick, I import a new profile, that will "stick" as long as I say with the Boeings. This also avoids clashing/duplicating assignments if you are using a Joystick on some planes and a Yoke on others. Plus the added advantage of having backups for various control settings. Used with FSUIPC my method also gives one a lot of "control" over fine tuning control settings for various planes. Is really takes only a few clicks to change control profile, and only when using a very different plane. Rob

Followed this thread with interest as I never have had such problems with the AS 330. Just completed a flight from Kigali to Nairobi, no problems (pitch never exceed 15 (on take off), went as low as 5 on accelerating to climb speed, and in 290 knot climb was around 7.5). As for high altitude being a problem I regularly fly the AS 330 from HAAB (Addis Abba) to FAOR (Johannesburg), also without these pitch problems Also use ORBX Africa LC so its not a scenery thing. Looks like "something" sorted itself out though.. Thinking about this you did mention not injecting any weather in those first problem attempts. I assume you are on V4.x not V5, as without injected weather you have the wind bug in V5 that can cause major upsets If it was a simple clear weather scenario in V4.x I am wondering what the outside temperatures were at the time of these upsets. I have had occasion where the network connection to my Active Sky has failed, and it reverts to a clear weather default scenario and chaos breaks loose especially if in climb. And then one sees that the SAT is ridiculously high for the given altitude and there is no way one can climb - engines cannot generate enough thrust even at full throttle to keep going up. So just speculating that maybe a combination of high outside temps (unrealistic) plus asking the plane to attain 250 plus knots and stay on a VNAV climb profile may have resulted in a no-can-do situation, triggering A-FLOOR, and you had enough power to level off and regain control, but as soon as going back to AT/AP and commanding a climb, it was rinse and repeat.

This works like a charm. I have saved control options for all my planes, especially those using yoke controls versus joystick controls (Airbus vs Boeing, and many GA different planes).. Also can knock out/delete default axis / button controls for specific planes where I use FSUIPC for finer control, like dampen brakes, or lower sensitivity on elevator axis, using curves. Trick is not to forget to import the appropriate control profile when changing planes. I have been caught out pulling back on the yoke on takeoff after last flying a Boeing, in an Airbus and wondering why I am careering down the runway with no lift (doing those FLTCTRL checks on the checklists always helps!) Rob

Thanks.at the time I just wanted to be blessed to fly. Will check the fix out

Are you using Fs Aerodata. It caused problems with my airports after 4.5 HF2. Planes parked way back from gates, GSX a total mess, airport elevations awry. Try disabling if you are using it and see if that fixes your problems.

Technical update #1 was the first HotFix to address mainly grey panel issues when using PTA or Tomato shaders with Environment force. Shorty after that was released a further technical update was announced as "coming" and that is supposed to fix, among other things, the HDR issues. Still not released this HotFix.

I had this happen in one of my tests to see if ASP4 was controlling cloud morphing / lighting. At Kolkuta, India as Cyclone Fani was passing. FPS when down from 30 to 15 sometimes as low as 10 (P3D Vsynced, unlimited, to my 30Hz 4K screen). I saw a post on the REX forums last night that this is due to setting the "Enable Dense Cirrus Overcast Layer" to ON. Apparently this results in a huge number of cloud model vertices having to be processed, with a dramatic effect on frame rate.

Yes indeed. As an addon that was advertised to operate outside of the sim and leave it unaffected by changes made within EF, this should have been a priority. REX support is good so no doubt they will fix it, but they really could have saved themselves a lot of forum activity / replies to problems had such a reset or EF ON/OFF button been present from first release.

Hope that does the trick then Pete.

@Pete Dowson As I understand it you have; - Disabled the Rex Entry in the ProgramData dll.xml - Replaced the original shaders from a back into P3D Root / ShadersHLSL folder (Updating to 4.5 Client should have done that anyhow). - Cleared the Shader Cache - do not at the moment have any other shader utilities (PTA / ENVshade active) When you run P3D now (after a reboot), and you get these dark ground textures / greyish skies, have you checked Options/Graphics/Lighting to see if; HDR is ON the Brightness/Bloom/Saturation sliders are as you had them before using EF (perhaps you have a saved, custom graphics profile you can reload?). Maybe these have been left set to EF values, giving you the strange lighting effects. That moving these sliders is having an effect on your P3D display. I usually test by turning Saturation way down and see if I get a monochrome view, or way up to see if I get vivid colors. If the sliders no longer work, I am at a loss to assist further then, as it seems that in that case REX is using some other P3D control file (not only the aforementioned dll.xml) to "lock" these HDR lighting settings. Rob

I am afraid I am with @Nemo and others on this one. I have supported REX for many years, and enjoy Sky Force, and this post is not at all intended to denigrate REX's valiant efforts, or their very ambitious EF product, but this is my experience so far.... Initial Install went OK, but like many I did not enjoy the brightness and overdone bloom. OK could control that through the mini UI. Installed the Tech Update and was able to use Tomato shade and not get greyed-out cockpits (I want to use TS for aircraft reflections on non-PBR enabled models). Then last night I decide to try run P3D (on 4.4 client as I await LM 4.5 FPS fix), just fly and NOT test or run EF. But EF's brightness/bloom settings remained "locked in" and the P3D internal HDR sliders do nothing (/graphics/lighting, HDR on and tried set saturation to 0, which should give a monochrome view, but it stays fixed as set by EF). So restart computer and same. Try another run with EF, and last straw, mini UI is gone. So I uninstalled EF, rebooted, reset the Shaders HLSL from backup, cleared shader cache, ran P3D and happy days, could again control HDR brightness, bloom and saturation from P3D graphics/lighting UI. Closed, reinstalled Tomato Preset RD1.7 and am back to SF3D + ASP4 + TS. Along the way my GSX stopped working and in investigating that I found that an entry in ProgramData/ Lockheed Martin/ Prepar3d V4/ dll.xml referring to a REX EF module DLL had been left behind, despite the uninstall. Is it this entry that locks out the normal P3D lighting controls even when not running EF!!!!???. If EF is uninstalled the REX dll referred to in this dll.xml is gone so it cannot load, and one is back to a straight P3D setup. But why, oh why not clean up the dll.xml on uninstall, and even more importantly, set the dll entry to not initialize the REX module if EF is NOT run, so users have the option to run a EF-less setup if they wish. I also cannot confirm if the automated cloud morphing and lighting dynamics work if using ASP4 for the weather engine. Have not seen anything change. Admittedly one needs a very dynamic weather situation to test under. But what concerns me is that the METAR information reported in the auto EF interface when running ASP4, and with EF weather data read OFF as advised if using AS, is non-sensical except for the temp/dewpoint and QNH readings at the end of the string. If this is what is reported to screen then I am seriously left wondering what values of cloud types, levels and densities are being used to model cloud morphing and lighting! Switch to read real time weather from NOAA and this METAR report makes sense. Maybe Active Sky is compatible with EF, but that does not necessarily mean it will work just as well to control auto-mode as when using REX's SF weather engine / NOAA data. Maybe if one uses the SF weather engine this all works perfectly, but I have never been a fan of that weather engine because; Historical weather cannot be used I have had a serious problem with REX's wind interpolation model, since REX Essential days. HiFi have this aspect (math) spot on. So for the foreseeable future EF stays off my computer. Maybe when WeatherForce is released and I see that it is at least up to HiFi standards I will give it another try. Will cross-post this later today on REX forum. Is Sat night in Phoenix and the guys may take Sunday off from hectic Hotfixing !!. Now I see the very knowledgeable Pete Dowson is on-board the EF merry go-round, maybe he will track down some of the issues (see he has problems already). Good luck Pete!

Thanks Erich for confirming that this is not due to the use of SF. Yes I have seen those linear cloud alleyways before, but obviously saw those in the sim, but did not have the radar on to see how that would look. When I have see these false cloud streets in sim, its mainly altocumulus, and I may not have thought to turn on the radar as they did not look like precipitation clouds (would not show radar returns anyhow) or dangerous in any way.

Well we know that using a 3rd party engine we can sync SF cloud models (by Rex's own statements to that effect) The three points you make above are still "all up in the air". The fact you can still turn on these three Weather Controlled Sync Settings under cloud sync settings, despite the SF weather engine being turned OFF, would seem to suggest that these can be used and synced through another weather engine. People have asked the simple question of REX a number of times - OK so we can use another weather engine with SF, "but will we still get rain shafts, rain walls and roll clouds?". So far no simple Yes or NO answer from REX. Meantime many, including me, using AS+SF are out there hunting for these features, possibly all in vain. Or is it maybe that REX, knowing the SF weather engine is an immature shoe-in to SF until Weather Force comes along, do not want to state outright that one has to use the SF weather engine in order to see these amazing effects, as such an acknowledgment will, I am sure, result in a deluge of criticism for an "unfinished" release, and calls / nagging for them to move on quickly with Weather Force. I am sorry to say it, but all the REX weather engines so far that I have tried have just not been up to par for me. They are no match when compared to AS16 / P4 in terms of reliable Metar reporting, setting up a weather system that resembles what is seen on say PFPX's weather browse maps, and wind vector patterns (simply a totally wrong, and poor interpolation model being used - I can say this with certainty because a whole chapter of my PhD thesis, and much of the computer programming and modelling I did for that thesis, involved interpolation models for, and mapping of, 3D vector fields from point measurements of vectors, and I have lectured extensively on the topic). Simply for those reasons, never mind the jarring refresh problem that is confirmed, I am not prepared to use the SF weather engine. REX still have REX Essentials Weather Engine P3D V4 compatibility "On Hold" , so, unless they plan to get Weather Force out first, maybe even as a replacement to Essentials (i.e it will be their new P3Dv4 compatible engine), then I expect a long wait for Weather Force.

Well I have been offline since the maintenance shut down last night and life events today (What's that?! Did I just hear a chorus of cheers?!). Anyhow glad you have now found and fixed up your problem Jeroen! That it was a simple setting in the SF interface that did this to you for days, even after you read in the manual that logging would have no impact - well I personally would have been more than a little miffed. Hope REX fix this pronto, should be a number one priority for them I would think, or else many people may be misjudging the visual impact of their SF install not even knowing there is an issue.