WIP 00 - Videos

[Cameron]

John,

On behalf of Javier, Anton, and myself thanks for the kind compliments! It's always encouraging to see people interested in our projects and excited for their release.

We'll be in touch!

[JohnInMontreal]

Hi guys

I watched the dark cockpit video.  Stunning.  Two trivial comments from what I can see so far:

1. When you turn on the battery master, you don't get the pilot's PFD/MFD, only the two EICAS displays and chimes as a stack of cautions/warnings are posted.  The DC essential bus which powers the left PFD/MFD can only be powered by the battery while airborne, or on the ground if the ADG handle is pulled (you pull the handle even after the ADG auto deploys to make sure the left displays won't blank out when you land).   The airplane is still totally quiet (no avionics cooling).  After the APU is running and you turn the generator on, everything comes alive at once with a big whoosh and a low roar as the cooling fans and start up and all the displays start.   It's a really cool moment.

2. This is really anal, but if you're going for 99.9% realism... when you operate the bleed switch lights for 10th and 14th, the isolation, LCV etc., the lights and status messages don't come on immediately, because the light is actual commanded position of the valve itself.  So there should be a lag from the time the switch is pushed to when the light comes on when the valve has finished moving, about a second.




I really hope this sim fixes two major flight model deficiencies with the RJ in FSX/Wilco:

1. The roll due to yaw characteristics in FSX is hopeless.  In FSX a swept wing a/c behaves like a straight wing with a very mild roll if yawing.  The RJ rolls quite nicely with very small amount of yaw and if you do nothing when an engine quits it will be on its back in seconds.  The first time doing engine cuts in the sim were a real eye opener, coming from a small piston twin before it.  This also makes it difficult to do crosswind landings realistically, which you do using small aircraft sideslip technique in the RJ and it takes a fair amount of aileron to get the sideslip going.  If you capture the roll/yaw couple behavior accurately it would be fantastic.

2. The Wilco RJ has way too much pitch change with trust changes.  There is barely perceptable pitch down with added thrust in approach config and a slightly stronger pitch up when you go to idle, but nothing like it is in Wilco.   Also the pitch attitude on final is a couple degrees too high at Vref with Wilco.

That's it for now.

Cheers

John

[Choix]

Hi guys

I watched the dark cockpit video.  Stunning.  Two trivial comments from what I can see so far:

1. When you turn on the battery master, you don't get the pilot's PFD/MFD, (...)

2. This is really anal, but if you're going for 99.9% realism... (...)

Thank you for information John.

1. We will fix it soon. Really good information for programming systems.
2. We already have a delay for 1 second with all buttons, but because of simulator timing sometimes it happens faster.

[Japo32]

New little video to make you more confortable the wait. It is taking longer that I expected (almost it is a year and 1 month from the beginning) but it is how it has to be. Programming is not an easy task, and now every new feature programmed has to be tested, fly and corrected, to be tested again. And not only on windows, but also on mac (linux version will come later). So please be patience.

Anyway.. here is the video. It is a feature I haven't seen on other planes on x-plane, but I wanted to see on the CRJ. If nothing is changed on x-plane 9 or 10 version, it will be the same because I use a trick on x-plane to do it.

best!

[Maxime]

This awsome Javier!!!!
Will this apply to the Sea Max and the Javelin?

[NGC007]

Thanks for that.  Just what the troops needed, a great video.  Keeps us hanging on and what a cool feature which just adds to the sense of realism.

[hobofat]

The wiper effect is pretty sweet!  And fun to see inside the cockpit.  Keep up the good work Javier and Anton!

[FlyingJackal]

impressive.

that's all i got to say.

[Nova]

Not very realistic 

Rain is dropping constantly, and not every few seconds, onto the shear wall.
And when the wiper goes back, it would need more time to be covered with water again.

However, it's a nice gimmick.

[dan]

Not very realistic 

Is it much more realistic to have rain and no water accumulating on the windshield (like every other aircraft in X-Plane) or to have a pretty decent representation of rain that somehwat interacts with the wipers? Tell me...?

What Javier has achieved here is groundbreaking, and not a silly gimmick IMO. I'd imagine rain is pretty difficult to pull off and I'm very impressed with the result he has achieved with the limited tools X-Plane offers. With all the attention to detail that Javier and Anton have put into this aircraft I'm confident that this will be the single most advanced addon to hit the market i 2010!

[crs]

Are you sure about 2010? ;-)
Just joking.

One question Javier: You already participate delay of releasing Linux version. I guess this is related to plugin. What exactly causes that? If you need any Linux related help - I can volunteer. Also, how big delay do you expect it to be?

Ok, it wasn't one question.

Kind regards,
Kamil

[Choix]

One question Javier: You already participate delay of releasing Linux version. I guess this is related to plugin. What exactly causes that? If you need any Linux related help - I can volunteer. Also, how big delay do you expect it to be?

I will try to answer your question. At the moment we are testing everything on Mac and Win. When we have beta, i will recompile everything for Linux and we will test it there.

P.S. I'm pretty sure that on linux CRJ-200 will show better performance, than on any other OS. So don't worry, we will have linux version.

[garrettm30]

Not very realistic 

Rain is dropping constantly, and not every few seconds, onto the shear wall.
And when the wiper goes back, it would need more time to be covered with water again.

However, it's a nice gimmick.

I'll agree that as it is now, I thought it not very realistic when I first saw it. I too noticed those things you mentioned. However, I was happy to see it because it is progress, and I always want to support progress. They are looking for ways to push X-Plane to perform better than it was designed, and that is commendable. Rain that interacts with the wipers in some rudimentary way is a good step in the right direction over wipers that have no effect. Why bother modeling wipers otherwise, except just for looks?

It may be that this is the best that can be done with X-Plane as it is now, or it could be that they will figure out something even better. Either way, I applaud their efforts.

[Capnsully-Simon W]

Agree everyone, I too noticed the 'automatic rain', but give 'em a chance! Jeeze, n
moving wipers alone are very rare on xp, let alone rain. Any pushing of the envelope is greatly appreciated, or else that is all we'd get- paper planes.

Ha, I'm sure next vid will show droplets proportional to weather settings and airspeed, with droplet direction influenced by wind direction. Furthermore little rivers of water left by the trickles, pooling of water below the wipers, and finally dust particles mapped to the window as the rain subsides! Nah, we're not picky!

[Cameron]

Not very realistic  

It's real simple, guys...

We added in a feature that was extra eye candy. The wipers are part of the plane, so we animated them...we didn't HAVE to add in the rain, but we did for some form of visual effect. We can only do so much within the limitations of XP, it's weather system, and the datarefs/hooks the simulator provides to us.

Sooooo....

Don't like it? Don't use it! Just pretend like the feature isn't there (like on every other aircraft around), and you won't have to deal with it. Plain and simple. You can just use the regular X-Plane weather instead.

My opinion is it's better than what we have now as default X-Plane stands, so I'm happy to use it and have it. It's things like this that ultimately tell Laminar where to improve. "Pushing the envelope" as they say...

Rain is dropping constantly, and not every few seconds, onto the shear wall.
And when the wiper goes back, it would need more time to be covered with water again.

Also bear in mind it's design to work when the rain is "heavy" in X-Plane.