Many gauge questions/comments

[mattag08]

Found a few bugs/discrepancies:

1. I have what I believe is a bug with the tachometer. After running the engines through various phases of flight and doing some of the FAA Commercial Multi-engine maneuvers. I recovered from a power-off stall to find that my left engine's tach needle was stuck at about 1400 RPM and would not move no matter what control inputs were applied. However, the engine continued to run perfectly, so I assume it was just the needle.

2. The engine temps seem to get extremely hot for no reason. Ambient temp is set to 75*F in my sim and I'm getting red line CHT and Oil Temp readings just idling on the ground or in cruise flight at about 130 knots and a 20"/2300 power setting. I know for a fact that only a malfunctioning engine (or gauge) would generate readings like that in real life. The gauges act like the engine temps are directly related to the cowl flap position and are not actually being based on any sort of engine temp modeling.

3. Fuel gauges show readings even when the battery is off. They should show empty until the battery is on, then about 1/2 full until the engines are started, and then accurate thereafter.

4. Can we get red and blue lines labeled on the ASI please? That's kind of a big deal. I only know of VERY old twins that don't have Vmc and Vyse labeled on the ASI. Certainly the Duchess I fly in real life has them and it has never had its ASI replaced.

5. The loadmeters have smooth needle movements sometimes and instantaneous movements at other times. For example, do an alternator check and one needle will POP to zero while the other needle smoothly increases to around 50% (the latter being an accurate animation).

6. The HSI appears to be drifting even though it is a slaved gyro. Along the same lines, will we ever see a true slave/free gyro control with the ability to adjust the gyro for errors?

7. The audio panel buttons to don't have animations so there is no way to know if they are on or off. Somehow I got one of the nav audio buttons depressed and nothing I did would turn it off.

8. The stormscope is inop. I read a review where the pictures showed it working, so I'm not sure what's up there.

9. The instrument flood lights and post lights are operating backward. The post lights knob turns up the flood lights and the flood lights knob lights the posts.

10. Turn coordinator should turn past the standard rate markings with increasing turn rate, but it does not.

11. Do the brakes get hot and lock up or slip? It seems that if I apply full brake pressure for more than about 5 seconds the brakes cease working for an undetermined amount of time.

Other than those picky things, great product. I'm using it to help augment some training in the Duchess.

[Goran_M]

I have what I believe is a bug with the tachometer. After running the engines through various phases of flight and doing some of the FAA Commercial Multi-engine maneuvers. I recovered from a power-off stall to find that my left engine's tach needle was stuck at about 1400 RPM and would not move no matter what control inputs were applied. However, the engine continued to run perfectly, so I assume it was just the needle.

Also, can we get red and blue lines labeled on the ASI please? That's kind of a big deal. I only know of VERY old twins that don't have Vmc and Vyse labeled on the ASI. Certainly the Duchess I fly in real life has them and it has never had its ASI replaced.

Could you confirm you had all levers on the throttle console fully forward when you recovered from the stall and that carb heat was ON.

I just tried 3 power off stalls and could not replicate the problem.  However, I did try it with carb heat off and had engine trouble.  Turning the carb heat on recovered the engine to normal operating speed.

I doubt it is a Duchess bug and I will explain why.

When animating the gauges, Blender doesn't recognize the 180° angle.  It only recognizes up to 179.999 and then it goes straight to -179.999 and back up to 0.  That is Blenders circle and it is a pain to work with.  Especially with circular gauges.

The way I animated the Tach gauge was positioning both needles at 0 BEFORE adding an armature to it.  The armature moves the needle through its animation and also has the dataref attached to it.  So both needles were animated in the exact same way using the exact same values, EXCEPT for the part number of the dataref used.  They both use the same dataref (same line of code written by the x plane programmer) but part numbers are given (where available) to distinguish between part number (engine number) 1 and part number 2.  So eliminating everything and assuming you had all levers fully forward and carb heat on, I would say the problem lies elsewhere. 

Redline and Blueline indicators on the ASI will be added in the next update.

[Dozer]

Found a few bugs/discrepancies:

[snip]

7. The audio panel buttons to don't have animations so there is no way to know if they are on or off. Somehow I got one of the nav audio buttons depressed and nothing I did would turn it off.

[snip]

Other than those picky things, great product. I'm using it to help augment some training in the Duchess.

I know the answer to this one! There's two rows of buttons on the audio panel. Regarding navaids, the top row is 'on' and the bottom row is 'off'. For some reason (almost certainly a limitation of X-Plane) if you're halfway through listening to the ident and press the off button, the sound continues until the ident's finished playing.

[Goran_M]

Found a few bugs/discrepancies:

1. ANSWERED

2. The engine temps seem to get extremely hot for no reason. Ambient temp is set to 75*F in my sim and I'm getting red line CHT and Oil Temp readings just idling on the ground or in cruise flight at about 130 knots and a 20"/2300 power setting. I know for a fact that only a malfunctioning engine (or gauge) would generate readings like that in real life. The gauges act like the engine temps are directly related to the cowl flap position and are not actually being based on any sort of engine temp modeling.

3. Fuel gauges show readings even when the battery is off. They should show empty until the battery is on, then about 1/2 full until the engines are started, and then accurate thereafter.

4> ANSWERED

5. The loadmeters have smooth needle movements sometimes and instantaneous movements at other times. For example, do an alternator check and one needle will POP to zero while the other needle smoothly increases to around 50% (the latter being an accurate animation).

6. The HSI appears to be drifting even though it is a slaved gyro. Along the same lines, will we ever see a true slave/free gyro control with the ability to adjust the gyro for errors?

7. The audio panel buttons to don't have animations so there is no way to know if they are on or off. Somehow I got one of the nav audio buttons depressed and nothing I did would turn it off.

8. The stormscope is inop. I read a review where the pictures showed it working, so I'm not sure what's up there.

9. The instrument flood lights and post lights are operating backward. The post lights knob turns up the flood lights and the flood lights knob lights the posts.

10. ANSWERED

11. Do the brakes get hot and lock up or slip? It seems that if I apply full brake pressure for more than about 5 seconds the brakes cease working for an undetermined amount of time.

Other than those picky things, great product. I'm using it to help augment some training in the Duchess.

In future, could you please supply screenshots with your problems.  It's hard to know what is going on when I don't have enough info.  

Now, to address the problems you are having.

I have tried the idling on the ground for at least 5 minutes and the temp gauges did move very slightly, so there is engine heat modelling.  They stayed within normal operating temperatures as per the flight manual.  I also took it up to FL130 at approx 130kts and temps were also fine.  See screenshots.  Note the times in my system tray.

On the ground...

In the air...

Fuel Gauges use default Fuel datarefs and they have been coded by the X Plane programmers to show current fuel levels regardless of power.  To make them go to zero with the power off would require plug in work.  

The electrical modelling in x plane is more basic than any developer would like.  This includes the way the loadmeter snaps in some cases.  ADF has the same issue.  These are X Plane issues and can only be changed with plug in work.  I will stress, they display accurate readings.

I'm not sure why the HSI Gyro is drifting for you.  I modelled it to specifically not drift.  I tested this also and had no problems with it.

I'll have Theo look at the audio panel buttons as that was all his department.

The Stormscope is not a weather radar.  It will not show cloud the way a weather radar does.  Set your weather to extremely heavy thunder, cloud, rain, etc and it will work.  

Post and Flood lights will be swapped in the next update.

I tried a few braking scenarios and the brakes work fine.  Are you using regular braking or maximum braking?

I will also mention as a small footnote, please do not mess around with the flight model.  The temperatures were doing some odd things when I was programming the gauges using x planes datarefs and flight model limits.  I got them working accurately but trying to change any figures in the planemaker flight model temperatures will totally screw up the temp gauges in the actual sim.

That's why I always tell people, DO NOT ALTER THE FLIGHT MODEL (ACF FILE) ON YOUR OWN IN ANY WAY UNLESS YOU ARE FOLLOWING SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS MADE BY ME.  The smallest change you make could have an exponential effect on all other related systems and will make a huge impact in the sim.

[mattag08]

I have what I believe is a bug with the tachometer. After running the engines through various phases of flight and doing some of the FAA Commercial Multi-engine maneuvers. I recovered from a power-off stall to find that my left engine's tach needle was stuck at about 1400 RPM and would not move no matter what control inputs were applied. However, the engine continued to run perfectly, so I assume it was just the needle.

Also, can we get red and blue lines labeled on the ASI please? That's kind of a big deal. I only know of VERY old twins that don't have Vmc and Vyse labeled on the ASI. Certainly the Duchess I fly in real life has them and it has never had its ASI replaced.

Could you confirm you had all levers on the throttle console fully forward when you recovered from the stall and that carb heat was ON.

I just tried 3 power off stalls and could not replicate the problem.  However, I did try it with carb heat off and had engine trouble.  Turning the carb heat on recovered the engine to normal operating speed.

I doubt it is a Duchess bug and I will explain why.

When animating the gauges, Blender doesn't recognize the 180° angle.  It only recognizes up to 179.999 and then it goes straight to -179.999 and back up to 0.  That is Blenders circle and it is a pain to work with.  Especially with circular gauges.

The way I animated the Tach gauge was positioning both needles at 0 BEFORE adding an armature to it.  The armature moves the needle through its animation and also has the dataref attached to it.  So both needles were animated in the exact same way using the exact same values, EXCEPT for the part number of the dataref used.  They both use the same dataref (same line of code written by the x plane programmer) but part numbers are given (where available) to distinguish between part number (engine number) 1 and part number 2.  So eliminating everything and assuming you had all levers fully forward and carb heat on, I would say the problem lies elsewhere.  

Redline and Blueline indicators on the ASI will be added in the next update.

Good to hear about the ASI. I have the carb ice warnings turned on, so I would've been aware if that was the problem with the tachometer. As I said, I tried just about everything (including a shutdown and restart) to get the needle to move and no dice. It's only happened once or twice, so it's not a huge deal, but I just thought I would report it.

Found a few bugs/discrepancies:

[snip]

7. The audio panel buttons to don't have animations so there is no way to know if they are on or off. Somehow I got one of the nav audio buttons depressed and nothing I did would turn it off.

[snip]

Other than those picky things, great product. I'm using it to help augment some training in the Duchess.

I know the answer to this one! There's two rows of buttons on the audio panel. Regarding navaids, the top row is 'on' and the bottom row is 'off'. For some reason (almost certainly a limitation of X-Plane) if you're halfway through listening to the ident and press the off button, the sound continues until the ident's finished playing.

Unfortunately, the statement I emboldened is not how that B-K audio panel works in real life. The latter statement I understand and is acceptable to me.

The Stormscope is not a weather radar.  It will not show cloud the way a weather radar does.  Set your weather to extremely heavy thunder, cloud, rain, etc and it will work.  

Post and Flood lights will be swapped in the next update.

I tried a few braking scenarios and the brakes work fine.  Are you using regular braking or maximum braking?

I will also mention as a small footnote, please do not mess around with the flight model.

I'm familiar with stormscopes. I was mostly referring the fact that the buttons don't work.

Good to hear about the lights.

As far as the brakes, I have toe brakes on a pair of Saitek pedals. When I had this happen I was applying full brake pressure. I haven't had it happen since I started only applying about half pressure unless stopped.

As an aside, I haven't adjusted any parameters on the aircraft at all.

[Goran_M]

Good to hear about the ASI. I have the carb ice warnings turned on, so I would've been aware if that was the problem with the tachometer. As I said, I tried just about everything (including a shutdown and restart) to get the needle to move and no dice. It's only happened once or twice, so it's not a huge deal, but I just thought I would report it.

If it happens again, could you list what happened prior, what you did to try to correct it, fuel level in each tank and the position of all engine levers, fuel crossfeed and carb heat.  If it's only happened once or twice, I'd say it has something to do with the sim (which can happen but not often)

BTW, I posted a small set of instructions to make the flight model a little more accurate.  This may eliminate the tach problem. 

http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=1611.0

I'm familiar with stormscopes. I was mostly referring the fact that the buttons don't work.

Only the screen works for the stormscope.  It was just something we added as it was available as a generic screen in X Plane.  It's only functionality is to display storms.