known Number of bugs and some feedback

[NZWW]

Hi

I purchased XP11 & ixeg several days ago and really happy with it (after being devoted fan of PMDG B737NG on FSX). It is a very fluid, immersive and realistic simulation of B737CL, on par with PMDG, if not beyond.

However, there is a number of bugs which I discovered having completed about 10 flights so far:

 

1. While on ground, unable to enter CRZ speed in FMC (e.g. "0.7", "0.72", etc.), "not allowed (or so)" message prompts, this is however possible when airborne;

2. Unable to enter DES speed and speed restriction in FMC, although EXEC prompts, fields remain blank;

3. ANP value not given (0.0);

4. Climb de-rate (apparently) not removed gradually to full CLB while climbing to cruise flight level;

5. By switching seatbelts off at night time cockpit becomes lit with light (dome light apparently);

6. On takeoff, after rotation, "glideslope" aural message plays (I always set NAV1 prior departure to ILS for emerg return, as per SOP);

7. Autobrake either does not perform at all or performs insufficiently for the selected position (I DO arm spoilers on approach with the appropriate light illuminated, and there is no "disarmed" light upon rollout);

 

Please, consider allowing entry of raw coordinates and/or radial-distance waypoint in FMC. This is a pretty crucial thing, I couldn't believe at first it was still not implemented, as it is such a basic thing to have.

In general, FMC needs significant further development and refinement. VNAV issues, HOLD page, inhibition of DME-VOR-GPS, custom waypoints, fuel predictions, supplementary pages & functions, etc. It would be also nice if you could specify what exact FMC software version you replicated (U5.0, etc.).

Own failure model would be nice too (I'm aware about that small LUA script).

 

Other systems, designs, dynamics, performance (especially fuel burn) are spot on!

 

Thank you!

Edited April 10, 2018 by Morten

[Litjan]

Hi NZWW,

thanks for the kind words.

Most of the things you mention we are well aware off and agree - they are on our list of improvements to do!

Some things are harder to whack - i.e. the GLIDESLOPE warning is realistic - its just that in real life there is no reception of the glideslope as you use the opposite runway to depart on, hence no warning. I do get that nuisance warning in XP as well. That being said, I am not sure which SOP´s require setting navaids for immediate return - all the SOPs I am aware of require to set navaids for the SID, instead.

The autobrake works fine for me (and most people) - make sure that your thrust is really idle upon touchdown. The deceleration rate is default X-Plane, but I did some measurements and found the values to be pretty much in the ballpark for the real 737´s autobrake.

The "cockpit lit with seatbelts off" is a X-Plane limitation - it is actually the cabin light "bleeding" through the rear cockpit wall. To avoid that, just keep the belts ON. You can see the dome or emergency exit lights in the cockpit illuminate (fixture is bright) when they are lit, so you can confirm it is neither of them.

I have to check the climb N1 again, but I was pretty sure it gradually washes out to full N1 during the climb...

Cheers, Jan

 

[NZWW]

Litjan, thank you for a quick reply and your great product.

In regards to autobrake, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work for me at all. I do arm spoilers on approach and I do set engines to idle thrust upon touchdown, as per fcom-fctm. I tried both with application of reverse thrust and without. Is there any way to troubleshoot this or to check some specific settings? 

I'm on XP11 latest beta as of this date and xEnviro 1.07 (all landings performed in dry conditions so far).

 

Thank you

Edited April 11, 2018 by NZWW

[Morten]

Maybe your brake hardware is sending/spiking signals, which will deactivate the auto brake..

[novato X11]

Hi Litjan, Firstly I want to congratulate you for the excellent addon that is the IXEG B733, I came from FSX was in doubt which simulator to migrate, the 'X-plane 11 is fantastic its dynamics in flight without comments, I am passionate about PMDG B 737NGX, after I got the IXEG B733 I can say do not lose to PMDG, x plane forever, in the issue of autobreak disarming apparently but without indication in the panel I think this is an addiction to fly a lot the PMDG in FSX because with it applied reverse soon to touch the train main without the nose touching the ground, it was the same with me what NZWW says, so I started to wait for the IXEG B733 to touch the ground completely after applying reverse and I noticed that I had no problem with the autobreak failing, noting also that the track in the x-plane is undulating depending on the landing the wheels lose contact with the ground at certain times and I think that reverse reverse triggering causes this fault, which does not occur with FSx and P3D flying under rails.

If possible I could revise the intensity of the taxi lights I'm finding it very weak my x-plane is original + xprealisticpro + x-camera.

[Litjan]

Regarding the autobrake: Try to fly without X-Enviro to test this - there have been occasional reports about the ground friction getting affected in some weird way - just to test, disable it in the plugin menu. Also, un-assign your hardware thrust lever and use the default keys (F1/F2) instead for this test - sometimes thrust axises aren´t calibrated properly and "0" throttle angle is not achieved, even with hardware at stop. You can also output the relevant data to screen to test this (go to the DATA OUT tab).

There will be no "disarm" light if the autobrake fails to work because thrust is not at idle - since it is not "disarmed". There will be a "disarm" light if you disarm the autobrake with manual brake input, though.

Also note that there is an X-Plane bug that will prevent the autobrake from working again if you reject a takeoff and then do a second one and try to reject that as well (iirc).

Cheers, Jan

 

[novato X11]

6 hours ago, Litjan said:

Regarding the autobrake: Try to fly without X-Enviro to test this - there have been occasional reports about the ground friction getting affected in some weird way - just to test, disable it in the plugin menu. Also, un-assign your hardware thrust lever and use the default keys (F1/F2) instead for this test - sometimes thrust axises aren´t calibrated properly and "0" throttle angle is not achieved, even with hardware at stop. You can also output the relevant data to screen to test this (go to the DATA OUT tab).

There will be no "disarm" light if the autobrake fails to work because thrust is not at idle - since it is not "disarmed". There will be a "disarm" light if you disarm the autobrake with manual brake input, though.

Also note that there is an X-Plane bug that will prevent the autobrake from working again if you reject a takeoff and then do a second one and try to reject that as well (iirc).

Cheers, Jan

 

X-Enviro ??? I do not have this installed only XRealistcPro and the X camera. Thanks for the clarification I will make your suggestion and report the result, it may be also the potentiometer of the joystick that is spent, many years of use. Nothing that can be solved and I am very satisfied with the IXEG B733 congratulations to the product and to continue to improve and develop new quality products for the X-plane.
 

[novato X11]

3 hours ago, novato X11 said:

X-Enviro ??? I do not have this installed only XPRealistcPro and the X camera. Thanks for the clarification I will make your suggestion and report the result, it may be also the potentiometer of the joystick that is spent, many years of use. Nothing that can be solved and I am very satisfied with the IXEG B733 congratulations to the product and to continue to improve and develop new quality products for the X-plane.
 

Problem solved with regard to autobreak and sinking aircraft in the 50ft approach of the rwy causing violent Touchdown Effects caused by XPrealisticPro by disabling in the IXEG B733 the aircraft returned to function perfectly.

[NZWW]

I did some tests with auto brake and this is what I found.

eXnviro (latest 1.08) and use of reverse thrust does not affect auto brake operation. About half of full rudder deflection and more (either direction) causes auto brake to disarm. It perhaps more than possible to control aircraft on centerline in good conditions, but under cross-wind, gusts, contaminated runway, etc. more aggressive deflection may well be required, and this will cause auto brake to disarm. Is this intended or a bug? Is there any way to override this logic? 

 

PS. I did play with various joystick sensitivity settings.

[Litjan]

16 hours ago, NZWW said:

I did some tests with auto brake and this is what I found.

eXnviro (latest 1.08) and use of reverse thrust does not affect auto brake operation. About half of full rudder deflection and more (either direction) causes auto brake to disarm. It perhaps more than possible to control aircraft on centerline in good conditions, but under cross-wind, gusts, contaminated runway, etc. more aggressive deflection may well be required, and this will cause auto brake to disarm. Is this intended or a bug? Is there any way to override this logic? 

 

PS. I did play with various joystick sensitivity settings.

Steering with the rudder pedals should not disarm the autobrake - I will try on my end to verify that it doesn´t. I find it extremely difficult (on my CH Pedals Pro) to steer a lot without accidentially triggering the brake pedals, though. And there is not "null zone" that you could set for those.

We are using the default autobrake logic for X-Plane for now. The real plane requires a certain amount of brake deflection over a certain time to disarm the autobrake, I think in X-Plane ANY short tapping of the brakes will disarm them.

Custom joystick axis polling is a can of worms and VERY difficult to achieve (due to the need to detect the correct axis on a multitude of devices and setups) and therefore we try to stay away from it as much as possible...

That being said, you also need to watch carefully in the real plane for accidental disarming of the brake, it happens easier than you think and the pilot monitoring must carefully watch the light and call it out "Autobrake Disarm!" when it illuminates.

Cheers, Jan

Edit: I just tried in 1.21 and XP11.20b5 and in both RTO mode and regular autobrake mode (tried setting 3) I can fully deflect the rudder/nosewheel without disarming the autobrake.

Edited April 17, 2018 by Litjan

[NZWW]

I tried to be more gentle with rudder upon rollout, so far it works, yet haven't tested under heavy cross-wind/slippery runway.

Having seen your last edit, unfortunately mine autobrake disarms with full rudder deflection. I use regular joystick with Z axis, nothing complicated, no pedals for now.

Another few things.

1. With the latest versions of xEnviro (1.08, 1.09) wipers don't clean off the glass. I understand it is more to do with xEnviro / XP, but still. Almost blind with heavy precipitation.

2. No morse code identification or barely audible. Since there is no auto-translation of morse into letters on ND as on 737NG, it is potentially unsafe.

3. Those scratch marks on cockpit windows are nice, but under certain lighting conditions you can distinctly see underlying boxed areas with each scratch mark that are not fully transparent as the glass itself.  

 

Thank you.

[Litjan]

1 hour ago, NZWW said:

I tried to be more gentle with rudder upon rollout, so far it works, yet haven't tested under heavy cross-wind/slippery runway.

Having seen your last edit, unfortunately mine autobrake disarms with full rudder deflection. I use regular joystick with Z axis, nothing complicated, no pedals for now.

Another few things.

1. With the latest versions of xEnviro (1.08, 1.09) wipers don't clean off the glass. I understand it is more to do with xEnviro / XP, but still. Almost blind with heavy precipitation.

2. No morse code identification or barely audible. Since there is no auto-translation of morse into letters on ND as on 737NG, it is potentially unsafe.

3. Those scratch marks on cockpit windows are nice, but under certain lighting conditions you can distinctly see underlying boxed areas with each scratch mark that are not fully transparent as the glass itself.  

 

Thank you.

Thanks for the feedback! No idea why your autobrake disarms .

All other points are known, noted and agreed upon, we hope that we can remedy those in the near future!

Cheers, Jan

 

[NZWW]

Litjan,

 

I've applied your suggestion from the other topic for nosewheel steering coupled with braking, it does work, autobrake does not disarm anymore with slight rudder/steering deflection. Thank you!

 

Very much looking forward for the next update. Please, consider adding at least one way of adding custom waypoint (raw coordinates or radial-distance waypoint), as you are currently stuck if there is something wrong with the database or need a custom route.

 

All other things I mentioned in my posts above are still relevant, however I also noted that the weather radar is next to unusable as it displays red/yellow areas when it should not. I was unable to use it for any weather avoidance. I did use both xEnviro (different versions) and SMP+RWC+NOAA.

Edited August 29, 2018 by NZWW

[NZWW]

Dear Litjan,

 

Here is another issue. I used to use TOPER performance calculator for B737-300, but essentially it is useless, I think it's calculations are flawed, it is for 22K engines, and it does not take into account obstacles -- smth that TOPCAT does (TOPCAT is not avail for B733).

So I decided to calculate assumed temp and TO N1 manually. Here are given conditions: pressure altitude 486 FT, OAT 19 C.

Maximum Assumed Temperature Table 1 gives me 61C (no interpolation), Table 2 gives me N1 of 88.9, Table 3 gives me correction of 5.5, so the final N1 is about 83.4.

Now, if I enter that 61C into FMC, it will give me N1 of about 88, which is a significant difference, consequently V-speeds are also way off from FCOM numbers.

I use B737-300/400/500 FCOM, Document Number D6-27370-3/400-TRX, Revision Number: 12. Performance for 20K engines specifically.

Those tables are on pages PI.10.13 and 14.

I did enter my N1 values manually using knobs, but I would like to know if FMC's data is correct. If the problem is confirmed, is it only with assumed temperature to N1, or all N1 values, i.e. CLB, Go around thrust (I didn't have a chance to check yet)?

 

Thank you.

Edited September 10, 2018 by NZWW

[Scatena]

 

On 9/9/2018 at 3:28 PM, NZWW said:

Dear Litjan,

 

Here is another issue. I used to use TOPER performance calculator for B737-300, but essentially it is useless, I think it's calculations are flawed, it is for 22K engines, and it does not take into account obstacles -- smth that TOPCAT does (TOPCAT is not avail for B733).

So I decided to calculate assumed temp and TO N1 manually. Here are given conditions: pressure altitude 486 FT, OAT 19 C.

Maximum Assumed Temperature Table 1 gives me 61C (no interpolation), Table 2 gives me N1 of 88.9, Table 3 gives me correction of 5.5, so the final N1 is about 83.4.

Now, if I enter that 61C into FMC, it will give me N1 of about 88, which is a significant difference, consequently V-speeds are also way off from FCOM numbers.

I use B737-300/400/500 FCOM, Document Number D6-27370-3/400-TRX, Revision Number: 12. Performance for 20K engines specifically.

Those tables are on pages PI.10.13 and 14.

I did enter my N1 values manually using knobs, but I would like to know if FMC's data is correct. If the problem is confirmed, is it only with assumed temperature to N1, or all N1 values, i.e. CLB, Go around thrust (I didn't have a chance to check yet)?

 

Thank you.

Do you mind to share this document? I can't find it anywhere.

[NZWW]

Here we go.

 

Please note that for regular full thrust takeoff (20K) there is another N1 table.

 

Here I'm referring to N1 for assumed tempeature takeoff.

Edited September 15, 2018 by NZWW