A simple but important reminder. There is evil in the world and there are people trying to destroy this country and our freedoms. But there is hope. We will never forget the tragedy and the innocent victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Have you seen it? Watch Audacity movie today
Watch what hope looks like – FullyFreeFilms.com
Main image source
God has supernaturally taken you back in time. The date is September 10, 2001, the day before the attack on New York’s famed Twin Towers. You and two other speakers have been invited by the United Nations to address one thousand employees at the top of Tower One of the World Trade Center. The subject you have been given is “The Benefits of My Religion.” The other speakers are a well-known Hindu and a New Age teacher from Santa Barbara, California.
Would you consider yourself to be a good person? How will you know?
Do Christians hate gays? watch this
Image [source]
Jesus made some very relevant statements concerning the hatred of His followers (also called Christians) a long time ago. In the book of John from the Bible Jesus stated these words to His disciples, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (see John 15:19) In verse 18, we read that Jesus made it clear that He would be the object of this hatred before it would come to Christians. “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.”
God makes it clear that any hostility Christians face is actually aimed at God Himself. If you don’t believe that, all one needs to do is take a look at the Ten Commandments. Looking at just a few of the commandments, ask yourself if you have ever lied, used God’s name as a cuss word, lusted (Jesus said that is committing adultery in the heart – see Matthew 5:27,28). had hateful thoughts toward a brother, or failed to put God first? If so, then we are seen from God’s perspective as breaking His perfect, holy law. Take a moment to think about what this means. Perhaps you find or have found yourself getting enraged at God. Any anger or lack of humility we have toward God is the hostility we have by nature toward Him. But our mind and flesh filled desires are to naturally desire to do evil and break God’s law.
“…the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” see Romans 8:7,8
We all by nature deserve the judgment of God because we have broken God’s law. We have all committed crimes against God who cannot have sin in His presence. (Sin is the breaking of God’s perfect law and we are guilty of that as seen in the good person test. ) The question we all need to ask is what can be done, if anything, to remedy our relationship with God? If God judges us who are deserving of Hell because we have sinned against Him, is that the end of us or is there a way of escape?
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27
For anyone sensitive to finding out the answer to this they will find it. You may be surprised or not but the answer has nothing to do with good deeds we do or don’t do. It has nothing to do with what sacrifice we can or cannot make for God either. We cannot earn back a right relationship with God. In fact, the answer really has nothing to do with us at all but Him. And the answer will not be because one joined the right church, or became a better person or found Religion. There is no religion that has the answer for how to escape God’s judgment and restore a right relationship with Him because the answer is found only in God in the Bible. God Himself is the only one who can provide a way of escape from His judgment. Because His love is so great for us, He did that Himself 2000 years ago in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the perfect, holy sacrifice who paid the penalty for us breaking His own law.
“now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Hebrews 9:26
“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
Jesus Christ is the answer for all humankind to be saved from coming judgment against sin. Satan (God’s arch-enemy) knows it and hates it. Therefore he hates true Christians because he hated God first. But there is hope because Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice and payment, satisfying the great wrath that God has against sin.
“Therefore He [Jesus] is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25
“God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” see Romans 8:9-10
Would you consider yourself to be a good person? How will you know?
Do Christians hate gays? watch this
Image [source]
Bad things happen and the world seems to be running out of control. Todd Friel shares incite from God’s Word on God’s Sovereignty and Providence.
Find true hope and peace. Watch free films at FullyFreeFilms.com
UPDATED 9/24/20
September 16th came and went and we have another game patch (1.8.3.0). The game has been playing better, no crashes while flying and I’m closing in on 50 hours. However, I did have one crash using the fps counter from the in-game developer mode while in the main menu. Odd. For full patch details visit here. Another one is right around the corner.
UPDATED 9/18/20
After more than 30 hours of actual flying time in the game, I can officially report that this sim is both beautiful and exasperating. The game is beautiful because it does contain eye candy and stunningly realistic visuals. And this game has its exasperating moments when it decides to close/crash to desktop in mid-flight while looking at the eye candy. And why does it crash to desktop? In my experience the crashes are occurring randomly so their root cause hasn’t been easy to pin down. I will update this further if/when I find a permanent fix. (Note: The game was running flawless for about one week of off and on flying without any game crashes that is after I uninstalled MSI Afterburner. And so I thought I had figured out the root cause. But as of 9/16/20 the crashes have returned without MSI Afterburner anywhere in sight.)
ORIGINAL POST AND SOME UPDATED CONTENT CONTINUES BELOW
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the successor to FSX the other popular Microsoft Flight Simulator released in 2006. I have been able to spend a few hours in the latest rendition of the simulator and will offer some thoughts and insights on my experience so far with the sim and whether or not it’s even worth your time.
First, I will start off by saying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is not without it’s faults, graphical glitches and bugs but overall one word describes it for me. Wow. (and I don’t mean “wow”, that sure took a long time to download because it certainly does. Additionally that long download will contribute to inaccurate gameplay hours on the Steam version. I currently show over 110 hours but have only been in game for around 50hrs)
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 or MFS2020 has three tiers of pricing available depending on the package you get. I won’t go into many details of each (as you can find them here) but there are Standard ($60), Deluxe ($90) and Premium ($120) versions. Depending on the version you choose, there are five additional aircraft included along with five highly detailed major airports.
Downloading MFS2020 can be a daunting task as the sim is between 90gb- 150gb (depending on the version). I purchased the premium edition from Steam and left it to download overnight. It took at least 5 hours for me but many people have said it can take 9 hours depending on internet speed. (Note for Steam users: After small initial file download of are 1gb, the actual game content downloads within the simulator itself, not Steam)
Performance wise this game will depend on the power of your system. I have a GTX 1070ti (8gb), i7-8700k (overclocked to 4.7), 16gb ram and on 1920×1080 the game runs quite well on higher settings. I would ignore the system requirements as listed for the simulator because I believe they are too low. Of course, each of our ideals for how a simulator should run will be as different as we are but in my opinion running a smooth a game on low and not being able to see quality scenery is not an option. On my system, the visuals are quite stunning while running near 60 fps in most places and 35-50 fps in larger cities. Certainly there is always room for improvement on performance so a better GPU, CPU and at least 32GB ram is probably recommended. I do not think I could run the sim satisfactory on higher settings using a 4k monitor for example.
Besides the general graphical options, there is one setting slider that is really important to have the ability to crank up. That setting is the Terrain slider. Everything else should be set to mostly high (if not all) with Terrain at 200%. There is a settings option for buildings but I don’t think this means how many of the buildings or their quality are rendered in the Sim. More on that in a minute.
I would suggest you use at least a joystick and/or flight yoke to fly in MFS (more expensive). Straight out of the box, I wasn’t able to successfully use a keyboard or mouse for flying an aircraft. However, the keyboard is great for flight systems (gear, lights, trim, flaps, views) and the mouse also works okay for panning the view. A usb Xbox controller works best when using the external drone camera.
MFS2020 uses the internet, a lot. In fact, in order to get the graphical map details and live weather data for the location you are flying around, it uses Bing maps as part Microsoft’s cloud server (Azure) and it is used with this sim. This sounds like it should make all the visuals and systems amazing and realistic but sometimes the things in simulator don’t look (or work) right. Sometimes textures flicker under the modeled objects where there shouldn’t be any texture at all. And sometimes rivers and waterways are hundreds of feet off the ground and traffic runs through it. And sometimes the airports and buildings are either nonexistent or misplaced. For example, I was visiting a small town in South Dakota and took off from the grass landing strip as it is rendered in the simulator. The town should have been on the left. I couldn’t find it anywhere near the landing strip. I checked the airport map and found the simulator had placed the runway at least 35 miles south east of where it should have been. This brings to me to buildings and how they are displayed in the game.
It would seem that there are at least two different ways the simulator renders buildings. There are generic autogen buildings which can be found in many rural towns like my own (see KACV and KEKA areas). And in more accurately detailed areas, such as in the larger airports (such as KSFO, KLAX or even Redding near KRDD) the simulator looks like a work of art as long as your above 3,000ft. The buildings appear to be extruded models of the underlining satellite image. Modeling in this way doesn’t make for the best visuals at low altitudes but up in the air couple thousand feet everything can look fantastic and recognizable!
ATC in MFS has been a little bit disappointing for me. Compared to FSX, I actually think this simulator has gone back a step or two. FSX had multiple voices to choose from and more than one voice could be heard from other pilots communicating with the towers. UPDATE: A patch has added three more voices to the mix! This is a good sign the sim is headed in the right direction. Although for whatever reason, the person speaking cannot pronounce the number three or five correctly. As far as I know, my call sign doesn’t have a tree in it.
Apparently MFS2020 is part of long process in continued development. So there are bugs, audio, graphical and data glitches to be expected. And sometimes you can’t tell if your experiencing a game bug or user error. But the question remains. Should you get this sim? If you were a fan of FSX or even X-plane you probably will love this simulator straight out of the box. There are patches being release every few weeks and the development team appear dedicated to improving the sim based on user feedback. Overall, despite some frustrating moments, I certainly have been enjoying it. Additionally if you are a fan of flying, I would not suggest purchasing any version less the Premium Edition because let’s face it, you will most likely want the extra airports that are included. These airports are more detailed than their standard counterpart and you will be glad you have the additional planes that can only be found in the Premium Edition.
If you are on the fence or new to PC flight simulators then I highly recommend watching some videos of people using the simulator to get a taste of it visually speaking. But keep in mind that most of the videos on YouTube feature the simulator running on a high-end computer system. (Higher than what I currently own)
So if you have the money, a little patience, like flight simulation, and have at least a mid to high-end computer, you will probably have a ball exploring and tweaking Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Microsoft Flight Simulator Official
Other recommended MFS2020 Forums – AVSIM
Get the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator Patch release
What what hope looks like (FullyFreeFilms.com)
Do Christians hate gays? Watch this movie to find out
Images source: All images are screenshots from my own MFS2020
A simple reminder. There is evil in the world and there are people trying to destroy this country and our freedoms. But there is hope. We will never forget the tragedy and the innocent victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Have you seen it? Watch Audacity movie today
Watch what hope looks like – FullyFreeFilms.com
Main image source
UPDATED 9/18/20
After more than 30 hours of actual flying time in the game, I can officially report that this sim is both beautiful and exasperating. The game is beautiful because it does contain eye candy and stunningly realistic visuals. And this game has its exasperating moments when it decides to close/crash to desktop in mid-flight while looking at the eye candy. And why does it crash to desktop? In my experience the crashes are occurring randomly so their root cause hasn’t been easy to pin down. I will update this further if/when I find a permanent fix. (Note: The game was running flawless for about one week of off and on flying without any game crashes that is after I uninstalled MSI Afterburner. And so I thought I had figured out the root cause. But as of 9/16/20 the crashes have returned without MSI Afterburner anywhere in sight.)
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the successor to FSX the other popular Microsoft Flight Simulator released in 2006. I have been able to spend a few hours in the latest rendition of the simulator and will offer some thoughts and insights on my experience so far with the sim and whether or not it’s even worth your time.
First, I will start off by saying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is not without it’s faults, graphical glitches and bugs but overall one word describes it for me. Wow. (and I don’t mean “wow”, that sure took a long time to download because it certainly does. Additionally that long download will contribute to inaccurate gameplay hours on the Steam version. I currently show over 110 hours but have only been in game for around 40hrs)
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 or MFS2020 has three tiers of pricing available depending on the package you get. I won’t go into many details of each (as you can find them here) but there are Standard ($60), Deluxe ($90) and Premium ($120) versions. Depending on the version you choose, there are five additional aircraft included along with five highly detailed major airports.
Downloading MFS2020 can be a daunting task as the sim is between 90gb- 150gb (depending on the version). I purchased the premium edition from Steam and left it to download overnight. It took at least 5 hours for me but many people have said it can take 9 hours depending on internet speed. (Note for Steam users: After small initial file download of are 1gb, the actual game content downloads within the simulator itself, not Steam)
Performance wise this game will depend on the power of your system. I have a GTX 1070ti (8gb), i7-8700k (overclocked to 4.7), 16gb ram and on 1920×1080 the game runs quite well on higher settings. I would ignore the system requirements as listed for the simulator because I believe they are too low. Of course, each of our ideals for how a simulator should run will be as different as we are but in my opinion running a smooth a game on low and not being able to see quality scenery is not an option. On my system, the visuals are quite stunning while running near 60 fps in most places and 35-50 fps in larger cities. Certainly there is always room for improvement on performance so a better GPU, CPU and at least 32GB ram is probably recommended. I do not think I could run the sim satisfactory on higher settings using a 4k monitor for example.
Besides the general graphical options, there is one setting slider that is really important to have the ability to crank up. That setting is the Terrain slider. Everything else should be set to mostly high (if not all) with Terrain at 200%. There is a settings option for buildings but I don’t think this means how many of the buildings or their quality are rendered in the Sim. More on that in a minute.
I would suggest you use at least a joystick and/or flight yoke (more expensive) to fly in MFS. Straight out of the box, I wasn’t able to successful use a keyboard or mouse for flying an aircraft. However, the keyboard is great for flight systems (gear, lights, trim, flaps, views) and the mouse also works okay for changing views. A usb Xbox controller works best when using the external drone camera.
MFS2020 uses the internet, a lot. In fact, in order to get the graphical map details and live weather data for the location you are flying around, it uses Bing maps as part Microsoft’s cloud server (Azure) and it is used with this sim. This sounds like it should make all the visuals and systems amazing and realistic but sometimes the things in simulator don’t look (or work) right. Sometimes textures flicker under the modeled objects where there shouldn’t be any texture at all. And sometimes rivers and waterways are hundreds of feet off the ground and traffic runs through it. And sometimes the airports and buildings are either nonexistent or misplaced. For example, I was visiting a small town in South Dakota and took off from the grass landing strip as it is rendered in the simulator. The town should have been on the left. I couldn’t find it anywhere near the landing strip. I checked the airport map and found the simulator had placed the runway at least 35 miles south east of where it should have been. This brings to me to buildings and how they are displayed in the game.
It would seem that there are at least two different ways the simulator renders buildings. There are generic autogen buildings which can be found in many rural towns like my own (see KACV and KEKA areas). And in more accurately detailed areas, such as in the larger airports (such as KSFO, KLAX or even Redding near KRDD) the simulator looks like a work of art as long as your above 3,000ft. The buildings appear to be extruded models of the underlining satellite image. Modeling in this way doesn’t make for the best visuals at low altitudes but up in the air couple thousand feet everything can look fantastic and recognizable!
ATC in MFS has been a little bit disappointing for me. Compared to FSX, I actually think this simulator has gone back a step or two. FSX had multiple voices to choose from and more than one voice could be heard from other pilots communicating with the towers. However, I have only heard one voice used so far no matter the airport or location. And for whatever reason, the person speaking cannot pronounce the number three or five correctly. As far as I know, my call sign doesn’t have a tree in it.
Apparently MFS2020 is part of long process in continued development. So there are bugs, audio, graphical and data glitches to be expected. Should you get this sim? If you were a fan of FSX or even X-plane you probably will love this simulator. Overall, I certainly have been enjoying it. And if you are a fan of flying I would not suggest a version less the the Premium edition because let’s face it, you will most likely want the extra airports that are more detailed than their standard counterpart and you will be glad you have the additional planes that can only be found in the premium edition. If you are on the fence or new to PC flight simulators then you will want to watch some videos of people using the simulator. And keep in mind most of the videos on YouTube feature the simulator running on a higher-end computer system than my own.
So if you have the money, a little patience, like flight simulation, and have at least a mid to high-end computer, you will probably have a ball exploring and tweaking Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.
Microsoft Flight Simulator Official
Get the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator Patch release
What what hope looks like (FullyFreeFilms.com)
Do Christians hate gays? Watch this movie to find out
Images source: All images are screenshots from my own MFS2020
A simple reminder. There is evil in the world. But there is hope. We will never forget the tragedy and the innocent victims who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.
Have you seen it? Watch Audacity movie today
Watch what hope looks like – FullyFreeFilms.com
Main image source
Elite Dangerous is a massively multiplayer online space game by Frontier Developments. Although the game requires a persistent internet connection it also features a solo or single-player mode. Elite Dangerous is the successor to Elite which was first released in 1984 and now 30 plus years later, the game has seen quite a change.
My history with Elite Dangerous is virtually non-existent aside from hearsay about a learning curve and how fantastic the game is to play in Virtual Reality. Now it’s true I have interest in open world simulation games such as X-plane, Microsoft Flight Simulator and both Euro and American Truck simulators but interest in a space game not so much. It seems most space games are about aliens, monsters and mostly shooting other spaceships in an arcadey fashion. Something about the wide open vast nothingness of space travel also hasn’t had much appeal….but then again I have never encountered game quite like Elite Dangerous.
Something about Elite Dangerous seemed different. Oh and there’s that learning curve I kept hearing about. A learning curve to play a game? There is always some learning when you are starting a new game especially in flight simulators but this game simulation was suppose have a notable learning curve and was not meant to be taken lightly.
And so armed with a wee bit of knowledge of what I might be getting myself into only through those online game reviews and gameplay, I took the plunge into beginning my journey into the world of Elite Dangerous. And what a journey it has been.
Now I don’t consider myself a very fast learner and besides that I prefer to take my time to make sure I’m understanding what I learn. And so after 14 hours later, I was able to fly my first ship! Did I mention I like to take my time? You see, perhaps Elite Dangerous is a game at heart but it’s also a simulation that takes place in space. It must be experienced and that’s not even with VR! Now I generally do not enjoy multiplayer games and so my time in ED has been spent in singleplayer (Solo) mode, along with training tutorials and the options menu for keybindings and that is probably one of best places to start in Elite Dangerous.
If you aren’t familiar with the game, within the universe of Elite Dangerous there are 400 billion star systems as part of the in game reproduction of the Milkyway galaxy. All these systems can be seamlessly traveled to in a spaceship which you can upgrade as you gain credits. You begin the journey in a spaceship called the Sidewinder. If you die or crash in Elite Dangerous you will get your Sidewinder back but will have to start over. Later, when you buy a different ship, you will need to pay a rebuy amount (5%) of your total ship value should you die or crash it.
For me the learning curve in Elite Dangerous has been first and foremost related to keybindings and understanding both the game, menus and ship systems terminology. At the start you will want to take a look or two or three at that Elite Dangerous manual which gives a nice overview of system terms. Of course you will need to learn how to operate your ship and it’s not a point and click operation (at first). Each ship features a six-way on-board thruster system (vertical(up and down), lateral(side-to-side), forward and backward and don’t forget about pitch, roll and yaw) somewhat like trying to fly a Harrier jet in space. But unless you would like to go spinning uncontrollable toward the side of the spaceport you might want to leave Flight Assist on.
If you have familiarity with flight/combat simulators then learning to fly in Elite Dangerous will a piece of cake, maybe. Your ship features thrusters are not unfamiliar but figuring out your keybindings just might be! I am using a Flight Stick with throttle control – Thrustmaster Hotas X (Hands On Throttle and Stick). Also a keyboard, a mouse and a Xbox controller. I have heard you can fly with a keyboard and mouse only but I haven’t tried it.
Moving from one star system to another within the galaxy is also a new experience which must be learned. We just don’t do that kind of thing on Earth!
Likewise docking (landing) in a spacestation-like port is also not like driving to grandmas around the block in your car unless you use AutoDock which is a newer feature of the game. (Note: All ships come equipped with AutoDock, Auto Launch and Auto Cruise. Auto Cruise can be useful when hyper-traveling around the galaxy.)
So you can move around in Elite Dangerous and you’re learning the keybindings and termology? Good. Now what? As a noob to ED at just over 80 hours (at the time of this post) I have learned about a few things you can do in this vast openworld galaxy. There is a war going on within the game but it appears to me, at least visually speaking, to be a nearly silent war (maybe it’s different in Open mode with human players?). But nevertheless, space is really big and so unless you go looking for a fight you might not find any. Each port features a news and mission board which displays information about the faction war and their particular allegiance (if any). You can choose to do missions for the leaders of the factions to earn credits (in game currency) or go exploring on your own.
I have found that doing Courier jobs at first helps as you are learning how to jump from star system to system and it doesn’t require any cargo space. The data is store on your internal computer and if you get scanned by another ship or pirate they will not try to steal your stuff. NPC’s or none playable characters are all that is found in the solo mode but in Open play mode you will encounter human players.
Recently I have begun to explore systems and map individual planets using the Detailed Surface Scanner (which must be bought at a Starport). The data you get after mapping a planet and from discovered systems can be sold 20ly (light years) away in a different star system for sometimes hundreds of thousands of credits!) If you prefer combat, you can learn how to shoot other ships down and gain credits for doing it. Besides doing missions, you might try mining an asteroid, landing on a planet and disabling turrets on the base for a particular faction leader. This is part of the war except you won’t encounter actual people or aliens walking around with guns. Maybe you like to free-roam and wish to visit a random planet (not for a mission). You can with the included SRV (Surface Recon Vehicle) that is part of the Horizons expansion pack in Elite Dangerous. Horizons is great especially if you want to be able to land on some of the planets and moons. (Note: As of this post there is no life on the planets and you cannot land on any Earth-like planets)
I haven’t really scratched the surface (aside from a few planets) of what this game probably has to offer since I am still quite new. However, I have been able to get a glimpse of what this game is and how vast it is. Elite Dangerous is masterpiece in it’s size and beauty but something more jaw dropping is what this game is based off of. When you go outside on a clear night, look up at the night sky and see hundreds of dots of light and realize those are suns similar to our own—one cannot but ask at least one big question. Who made all this?
I know the Maker of the Universe and perhaps you do as well. But if you do not know the Creator Almighty God, there is a reason why it matters more than anything else on this earth. Elite Dangerous was made by mere men but someday all men will face God. Some will meet God willingly in worship and some will be kicking and screaming but today you have an opportunity to find out who the true God really is and why it matters. Many people believe in Heaven but if hell is real place you need to find out what that means to you. I don’t want anyone to go there. If you haven’t already why not check out the good person test linked at my website or read my post called 5 things you should know before you die. And if you have a Bible start reading in John 1. The good person test and starting with John 1 from the Bible will give you a good start to understanding who God is and why it matters since none of us are promised tomorrow. And in case you wondered, this is a matter of life or death and not about joining a religion or church.
You learn quite a bit in Elite Dangerous, you need to even to survive but is it a game I would recommend? And how about that learning curve? I would enthusiastically recommend Elite Dangerous but especially to anyone with special interest in Flight/combat simulators and/or truck simulation games with a twist. If you don’t mind learning and setbacks and frustrations and grind to get a reward (menial at first) then you might like this game. Each person is different but do your research and then if you still like what you see, get it on sale with Horizons. Naturally, you will need to take your time to learn ED but I think it can be a rewarding experience when you learn something new. I know it has been for me (and that’s saying a lot).
My Rating (out of 10) 8.5 out of 10
5 things you should know before you die
Elite Dangerous Deluxe Edition on Steam
Watch what hope looks like -FullyFreeFilms.com
images are my own in-game screenshots
tinkerXperience 