Ray Proudfoot

He lost his installation file. He’s now been provided with one quite legally.

I’ve received a PM requesting the PFPX installation file. The requester says he has his product key but lost the installation file when his computer crashed. Is it permissible to send him mine?

Just checked both PFPX and TopCat and both keys are 15 character. 3 blocks of five characters separated by a hyphen. I successfully reactivated my PFPX license late March / early April. TopCat was happy with a new SSD.

@Igor Cunha , a few months ago I changed the SSD on a computer to a larger one. PFPX detected the change and prompted me to enter my product key. Fortunately I had kept it. I’m surprised the same process doesn’t apply to TopCat. Did you keep your product key?

This is a warning to anyone still running PFPX. Yesterday I cloned my SSD for a larger one on which PFPX is installed. The laptop booted up fine and all seemed well. Until I launched PFPX. I was presented with a registration screen to enter my product key. ☹️ WHAT??? I'd only swapped out the SSD for a larger one. No change to any other hardware. This seems total overkill. So I searched all my mail from FlightSimSoft and it included one with all the registrations. TopCat and annual subscriptions for their services, But crucially not the one for PFPX. This I guess is because I bought it from PC Aviator, not direct from FSS. Fortunately their website is still running and on finding my order I was able to retrieve my product key. But had PC Aviator not still been running I would have been stuffed! So if you change your SSD make sure you have your product key available.

@Captain Kevin, that’s far more work than me adding waypoints manually. Concorde wasn’t obliged to stick to jet routes outside SIDs and STARs as it flew in airspace no other aircraft would occupy. Thanks for the tips though.

We’ll agree to disagree then Mathijs. It’s not that important anyway.

It must cost money to run the servers and maintain the software. If no separate charge is made that suggests it’s subsidised.

It isn’t a case of avoiding particular airspace. Concorde could only go supersonic once clear of populated areas. So essentially, over the ocean. See if you can generate a flight plan from KBOS to KMCO that stays over the ocean as long as possible and gets no closer to land than 20nm abeam.

@srcooke, thanks for that Steve. So it’s subsidised by Navigraph. I saw it in use yesterday on a friend’s computer running MSFS20. It looks very slick and suitable for real world routes. But my flight from Tokyo to Heathrow last week via Alaska was hand created in PFPX as the GCR took me over Russian airspace now out of bounds. How would SimBrief planned it? And as for my fictitious Concorde routes such as Boston to Orlando I believe only PFPX will allow the user to create those manually. Once the plan is created I stop using PFPX as the fuel planning etc. is performed by the FSL coding in the sim.

@Mathijs Kok, who owns SimBrief? A single person or company? Given it’s free that raises questions about how the servers are financed.

Has anyone successfully reinstalled PFPX and TopCat using their saved installers? I’m thinking of the day my Dell laptop SSD might fail. Having said that I do make a backup of the actual disc so restoring that should be fine for me.

Out of curiosity I entered my email address and received an email with my product keys. I had them already but it shows the system still works. Well done Liam. 👍

I bought Ben Gurion last month. I guessed Aerosoft wouldn’t lower the price even though sales for P3D must be close to flatlining. Performance is good but given I have an i9-13900K, 32Gb RAM and a 4090 I’d expect nothing less. I’m more than satisfied with P3Dv5. When I look at the state of MSFS I have no desire to buy a sim with so many unresolved issues.

@Kalnon, no worries. Yes, love the aircraft but with the weather so glorious here in England I haven’t been in front of my PC for over a week. 😃