Is this still alive?

[Xiropillo]

Hello again. 
 

Just wanted to know if development and updates of this add on are still possible in near future.

Thanks very much

Xiropillo

[aljaz41]

Check out this thread:

 

The project is still in development as it seems. They are in the phase of redesigning FMC which will use the new XP1100 dataset. This will allow for better/easier progress performance predictions, holding calculations and so on. Basically the things many of us have been eagerly awaiting will now have the foundation to be built on. It does seem that the team has a lot of real life obligations though, so we must be patient and understanding of the fact.

[Xiropillo]

Thanks very much.

Knowing that this is alive is enough for me.

Great news.
 

Regards,

Xiropillo

[Kopelent]

Some developing process informations would be nice. Thx

[severniae]

Is it really alive though? the last post was in October, yet there are quite a few issues and no update in sight..?

[Cameron]

Is it really alive though? the last post was in October, yet there are quite a few issues and no update in sight..?

I guess you'll just have to wait and see to solve this mystery!

[Iain]

There really is no news at all? 

Last patch is coming up on 2 years, I can't taxi and turn at the same time as the brakes come on, editing aircraft files completely messes up the lights.  For such a product with known bugs, I would expect some small fixes for things like this to at least keep the aircraft usable. It's not asking for much, FMC re-write is a large task, and most of us understand the complexity behind it, and the challenge regarding the limited time the guy doing that has, completely understandable, but those small bugs that could be dealt with are quite frustrating...unless I am completely underestimating the resources needed to fix them.  Hopefully, some small updates soon, the product is too good, Zibo is free, but people like me, want the IXEG improved, which shows that they see the current quality in it and want to support it's development.  

While I'm here, enjoy your Xmas break, enjoy the time off if you are lucky to get some! Be safe with the fireworks!

[Cameron]

There really is no news at all?

No. News usually means there's something to be told or shared other than what we've already said. Asking for it doesn't produce it any faster.

[Iain]

Ok, thanks for the clarification.  

[XPJavelin]

On 12/20/2019 at 11:35 PM, Iain said:

Ok, thanks for the clarification.  

Thanks Ian for posting the question in such a polite, caring and respectful manner to the devs. Developers seems to not be put under any forum pressure it seems. And that's legitimate, even if you are more polite.

Edited December 22, 2019 by XPJavelin

[XPJavelin]

On 12/20/2019 at 11:30 PM, Iain said:

Hopefully, some small updates soon, the product is too good, Zibo is free, but people like me, want the IXEG improved, which shows that they see the current quality in it and want to support it's development.  

I am the first to say there is unmatched quality in this aircraft simulation. I publicly state it around when able to do so, it cannot compare with free alternatives.

On 12/20/2019 at 11:30 PM, Iain said:

FMC re-write is a large task, and most of us understand the complexity behind i

Yes, there's complexity behind. In the mean time it's good if more and more xplane add-ons get standardised on the powerful default XP navigation databank.

 

[avantime]

On 12/23/2019 at 2:01 AM, XPJavelin said:

Thanks Ian for posting the question in such a polite, caring and respectful manner to the devs. Developers seems to not be put under any forum pressure it seems. And that's legitimate, even if you are more polite.

We're paying customers, not cheering fanboys. And IXEG and X-Aviation are for-profit businesses. We expect a finished product for what is a very expensive addon that we paid for. To put it politely and with full respect to the developers, after 3 and a half years of ownership this state of affairs is unacceptable.

Additionally at this pace of development I'm of the opinion that by the time the FMS rewrite is complete most people would've have moved on to XP12 or MSFS2020. Remember XP10.51 was the last version of XP10, and we're now approaching XP11.50. Vulkan/Metal and the experimental flight models would probably become compulsory by then, and will most likely break this addon in some way. 

Developing addons for X-Plane is like running on a treadmill. If you don't update constantly, you're at risk of falling off and not be able to climb back up again. Even with the FMS rewrite complete the rest of the addon might become so old that it is unusable without much more development work. And that work need a monetary incentive. This is why early-access games on Steam often fail, because the money stop coming in soon after release. Unfortunately coming from FSX/P3D I find this trend to be all too prevalent in the X-Plane community.

Quote

I am the first to say there is unmatched quality in this aircraft simulation. I publicly state it around when able to do so, it cannot compare with free alternatives.

What I see is great, but squandered potential. When it was released it was the by far the most detailed addon for XP10, despite it being released in an incomplete "early access" state. From a long-time FSX/P3D user I can see that it has the potential to become PMDG-quality if finished, and this was the addon that got me moving to X-Plane. What happened afterwards was that the devs stopped releasing patches for 2 years while the addon is still in a relatively buggy and unfinished state, and customers like me were frustrated at first, and then progressively lost interest. I haven't flown the IXEG for so long that I forgot that I actually still have it, until today when I did some cleaning up of my XP11 installation. 

When you charge $75 for an addon, there's no excuse to leave customers with a buggy and unfinished product without an update for 2 years. At least release some quality-of-life patches and ninja fixes that makes their experiences better while you continue to rewrite the FMS. Because if you take too long on the rewrite (or it stalls due to other commitments), you might find that Laminar has already moved way ahead of you, and the rest of the addon no longer works. At least with more ninja fixes the customer would've gotten a bit more enjoyment out of the addon, while you rewrite the FMS.

Quote

Yes, there's complexity behind. In the mean time it's good if more and more xplane add-ons get standardised on the powerful default XP navigation databank.

As I said earlier, time is against them. XP12 will come very soon as Austin needs more money, and a head-to-head competitor to the big MSFS2020 launch next year. Like the move from XP10 to XP11, the vast majority of the X-Plane userbase will move forward with each new release from Laminar. The treadmill is only getting faster and faster......

[Cameron]

5 minutes ago, avantime said:

Additionally at this pace of development I'm of the opinion that by the time the FMS rewrite is complete most people would've have moved on to XP12 or MSFS2020. Remember XP10.51 was the last version of XP10, and we're now approaching XP11.50. Vulkan/Metal and the experimental flight models would probably become compulsory by then, and will most likely break this addon in some way. 

As we've done in the past, things that will truly break what didn't work will always continue to be patched.

We have been testing add-ons in Vulkan. At this time no problems exist that we've seen.

[tkyler]

Thanks for the inputs gentlemen, I fully understand everyones point of view and dont' disagree with folks feelings.   The issues to bring the 733 up to speed are indeed challenging for sure, and there are several factors contributing to the complexity of the situation; however,  the likelihood of us falling behind technologicially is not as great as it may seem....that's not the issue. 

The issue has always been stability for myself as I'm the one who needs to fix the glaring issues.  Not an excuse, but an explanation....(followed by a course of action) As a self-employeed engineer, I'm always having to gauge project opportunities that can provide for me and my family and the 733 and customers have taken the hit over the last few years while I've committed to other work that has to be completed towards  'deliverables'. ...in particular, what I like to call, "the NASA gig"...which fortuantely is over....and took 4 years of my life at heavy cost....and why I got out.

As that gig ended earlier this year, I begin looking for other work, while simultaneously working on the FMS again...and folks have seen those posts around that time frame I'm sure.   For those who might say, "why not just work on the 733 full time".....the simple answer is that even with the X-Plane market at its best, it doesn't compare to what I make as an engineer...and it'd only be a matter of time before I went broke on 733 revenue alone (i.e. kids college tuitions, mortgage, etc). 

I have since secured new work (in the flight simulation industry no less.) and began in November.

After much discussion with Cameron / X-Aviation.......the obvious course of action is for me to simply prioritize and focus all my available X-Plane time on bringing the 733 back up to speed.   Whereas the NASA gig ate up nearly 50-60 hours week....this new job is more stabilized...and basically puts me back in the same situation I was in when originally working on the 733 years ago.  That's the story and the plan moving forward.  I need to get on it.

-tkyler

[Whiskey Rebel]

Tkyler,

Many thanks for the update and good to hear there may be some progress.  After some time away from the bird, I have gone back to flying the 733 recently, which indeed is such a joy. To think it might be further patched/updated really gets my hopes up for 2020.

Thanks again and Happy New Year to you and the team!!

[tkyler]

So some pretty significant news.  One of the contributing factors to our lack of updating was our mostly deprecated 3D toolchain using a very old version of Blender.  Because our project is of a significant amount of 3D complexity.....manually transposing all the work (6 years worth) to the newest toolchain used by Laminar was so daunting as to preclude us from even attempting it.  Laminar, recognizing the volume of work performed by many aircraft developers in this old version of Blender was significant enough to warrant their development of an "automatic conversion" tool.  As such, Ted Green of Laminar took on the task and provided it as of a few months ago.....but we (IXEG) have only gotten around to trying it recently....after waiting for Blender 2.8+ to also evolved and stabilize .  But I am happy to report that we have successfully converted about 85% of our 3D work and its now in the new Blender 3D / Laminar pipeline and exporting as expected.  The remaining 15%, we will have to do by hand and will take a bit of time....but once done, SHOULD allow us to make more frequent updates as we did early in our release.    It is our hope that once we get the new toolchain back up and running (and it was our efficient toolchain that allowed quick updates during release)....we should be able to handle updates well again.  It was unfortunate that XP and the toolchain (and Blender) all changed radically at about the same time...leaving us somewhat in a difficult spot, but I do see a lot of light on the horizon.

-TomKyler

[danhenri]

Many thanks for all these precisions. 

Happy new year IXEG (and Tom in particular). And more and more happy years to come on board of the 737/300 !

Edited January 3, 2020 by danhenri

[ktomais]

To divert a bit from the deep technical aspects of 733, I was wondering if as part of the updates to Vulkan and new capabilities in the sim, there's also a plan (not necessarily immediate) to do visual and performance upgrades to the 733. 

Edited January 4, 2020 by ktomais

[Cameron]

On 1/4/2020 at 9:57 AM, ktomais said:

To divert a bit from the deep technical aspects of 733, I was wondering if as part of the updates to Vulkan and new capabilities in the sim, there's also a plan (not necessarily immediate) to do visual and performance upgrades to the 733. 

 

Vulkan won't really change much of anything for X-Plane's visuals, or necessarily allow us to do something we couldn't before. In fact, for a while it will prevent add-ons from doing what they can do already in some cases (like xEnviro and SkyMaxx Pro from even working).

 

[Tim013]

On ‎12‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 5:30 PM, Iain said:

There really is no news at all? 

Last patch is coming up on 2 years, I can't taxi and turn at the same time as the brakes come on, editing aircraft files completely messes up the lights.  For such a product with known bugs, I would expect some small fixes for things like this to at least keep the aircraft usable. It's not asking for much, FMC re-write is a large task, and most of us understand the complexity behind it, and the challenge regarding the limited time the guy doing that has, completely understandable, but those small bugs that could be dealt with are quite frustrating...unless I am completely underestimating the resources needed to fix them.  Hopefully, some small updates soon, the product is too good, Zibo is free, but people like me, want the IXEG improved, which shows that they see the current quality in it and want to support it's development.  

 

I understand what you are saying.  Of all the addon aircraft I own for X-Plane, the only three I don't fly anymore are the LES SAAB, the IXEG 733, and the MU-2; all X-Aviation products.  It's not that they are totally broken in XP11.41, but they are all in need of some work to make them compatible.  I guess the exception is the MU-2, an XP11 patch to fix the engines was being worked on, but I think tkyler pulled back on that, in favor of working on version 2.0 instead.  So I'd consider the MU-2 v1.0 no longer XP11 compatible.

I think what triggers some people are differences of support for the products out there.  The Hotstart TBM is updated frequently, and features are also added, making it arguably one of the better addons available for XP anywhere, then you have the 733, which is just as complex, and has languished.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Tim013

[Litjan]

12 minutes ago, Tim013 said:

I understand what you are saying.  Of all the addon aircraft I own for X-Plane, the only three I don't fly anymore are the LES SAAB, the IXEG 733, and the MU-2; all X-Aviation products.  It's not that they are totally broken in XP11.41, but they are all in need of some work to make them compatible.  I guess the exception is the MU-2, an XP11 patch to fix the engines was being worked on, but I think tkyler pulled back on that, in favor of working on version 2.0 instead.  So I'd consider the MU-2 v1.0 no longer XP11 compatible.

Well, going by your statements in various other forums we don´t really need to spend any effort to fix them anyway, right?

[Tim013]

Jan, I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.

In any event, I'll welcome any updates that come down the pipe for the 733. 

[ktomais]

Quote

Of all the addon aircraft I own for X-Plane, the only three I don't fly anymore are the LES SAAB, the IXEG 733, and the MU-2; all X-Aviation products.  It's not that they are totally broken in XP11.41, but they are all in need of some work to make them compatible.

Actually the only plane I fly nowadays is the IXEG 733 because I'm so spoiled for quality tbh. Updates are always welcome if they improve something, but I don't have issues with 11.41

[Litjan]

4 hours ago, Tim013 said:

Jan, I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.

In any event, I'll welcome any updates that come down the pipe for the 733. 

Well, this is what you said:

"The bottom line is the base sim, in the FIRST ALPHA TECH build, is shaping up to run roughshod over XP and P3D.  Don't be afraid to accept the idea that XP may be relegated to a distant second best flight sim again by FS2020.  It's OK.  Really."

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/198035-msfs-2020-update/&page=6&tab=comments#comment-1814359

Edited January 6, 2020 by Litjan

[Tim013]

Yes I did say that, and I stand by it, without hesitation.

I also said: "Will I delete X-Plane when FS2020 is released? No!  Am I open minded, and going to buy FS2020?  Yes!"

So, there is that too.

I've not jumped on the band wagon of people railing the IXEG team for literally years of no updates.  I don't think it's right for an addon that costs $74 and change, but that's my personal opinion, and up until now, I've kept it to myself.  I haven't complained about it, because frankly, there's nothing that can be done about it, from a consumer standpoint.  I'm just recognizing another users frustration as being valid.  

When the IXEG 733 was released, the X-Plane community gave it great support, both financially, and praise as the best addon ever released for the sim.  It's not surprising, looking at how things have played out, that some of that support has eroded. 

I'm sorry if I triggered you with my comment.  That was not intended.  I extend my most sincere apology.