Some problems with 2.1

[diamonddriller]

Some odd things. and a request or two:

Firstly - frame rates.  On a 27" iMac running 10.15.6 (and I refer you to the frame rate thread), but I have a 4GB graphics card, rather than the 2GB one that the other poster has.  I also have the top i7 and 32 GB ram.

I can leave my settings pretty much as the photo he attached, but I disable parked aircraft.  Load up in KSAC (ORBX TE N CA), and I'm looking at between 4 and 8fps!   Hmmm...  Start disabling plugins, and stuff like dataref editor, etc. make no difference.  Then I disable "Nimbus Airport SASL", and the fps immediately jumps to 38!   Great.  Then I "shift 8" and I drop back to 8 fps.  Then I go back into the cockpit, and I'm back to 38fps.  "Shift 8" again - and I'm still at 38 fps!  Good.  Disabling RWC and Skymaxx Pro makes no difference at all, so I leave them on.  I also use XP-NOAA weather, and that sometimes can affect fps if it kicks in a new weather report.

Flying along, later, I'm seeing 85 fps!  Pretty good!

Next, I take off and head to my first waypoint.  Manually flying, then kick in the AP.  Adjust heading bug, and then go to NAV - on GPSS.  Plane starts banking and  turning right, and heads way off course.  Odd.  Now, still in NAV mode, I turn the heading bug towards where I should be going and the plane turns as I adjust the bug - turning past the bug, and eventually regains the correct GPS course and turns on to it.

The first time I tried NAV mode, yesterday, I got so fed up, as it was always turning away from the GPS course, and I just hand flew it to the waypoint, changed to VLOC, adjusted the OBS, and it flew the VLOC course perfectly. Much later, on the second VOR I was flying to, halfway along the segment, I changed to GPSS again and it flew it perfectly.   So, it works - eventually, as I found it would then fly a "Direct" by GPS, etc. and also change headings correctly as per the flight plan.

Now, requests:

Why does the old panel radio not act as COM2?  What's the point of it mirroring the radios in the GPS?  Or, am I missing something obvious?  I want to monitor ATIS on COM2.

Can you increase the power of the instrument lighting?  A lot of the time (and this is X-Plane's lighting, to a large extent), even with reflections off, the instruments (steam gauges) are very hard to read - they look like they are muddy.  The contrast between the figures and the dials (which are gray-brown, not black) is very poor. Yes, I know it's an old plane - but this is a sim, and I shouldn't have to struggle too much by zooming in to see what's going on.  The ability to light them up a bit more than you currently can would probably do the trick.

Thanks for an interesting plane.  Way back, I flew the RG version (I think it was a Musketeer) RW.  I can't remember ever flying the BE23 as modelled here.   However, it seems pretty similar to a PA28 in handling in the sim, and I believe it was RW, too.

BTW, this is in XP 11.41.  I have got 11.50 RC1, but this iMac does not get any benefit from Metal.  The older Radeon cards in the 2015 iMacs are Metal capable, but don't seem to be levering the advantages.  OpenGL works better on them.  The SR22 from TS is hopeless in Metal on this older iMac.  New one arrives in  a few days  :-)

 

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by diamonddriller

[Goran_M]

Could you post a log.txt file so we can see what's going on?

 

[diamonddriller]

I didn't keep that log file.   When I get a chance, I'll try and duplicate the events!

Any thoughts on my wish-list? 

 

[ilias.tselios]

@diamonddriller regarding graphics and performance, C23 was optimized to absolute best possible with Vulkan in mind (which also should see benefits in OpenGL), without degrading the quality. Thumbs up to Laminar for the great tools they are providing, due to Vulkan/Metal transition. Now we can have actual metrics on many things that helps us greatly to improve things.

About NAV. The S-TEC 55 autopilot, a quirky piece of kit, has some idiosyncrasies, one of which is that uses the heading bug as tracking reference, rather the course indicator value from any source (VOR/ILS or GPS).  You must always set the heading bug to a value close to the desired track, otherwise the behavior might be erratic. There is nice video from Philip explaining the operation of the autopilot. I will also hope soon to be able to do a live stream, to answer any question regarding the C23.

About the COM situation, the aircraft meant has only one COM radio, and kept the buttons and knobs on the GNS430 for convenient, so , in your case use the stby frequency as ATIS and switch between the 2 as you like. The "hardcore" version of me, would like to go and rip off those button, and even lock the possibility to switch between stby and main frequency, so you have to dial the frequencies back and forth! Also, convenient, is the reason I put an autopilot. The base model has no one, but later many was retrofitted with some autopilot model, many with the S-TEC 55 (source beechcraft forums). 

With those older aircrafts, nowadays, you almost cannot find any typical layout. Most of them (to be able to fly today) have passed through a "modernization" phase with some newer avionics. So, with the V2 update, we also "modernize" her a bit!

I will see what I can do for the lighting.

[diamonddriller]

@airfighter  Sorry, I didn't seee your post till today.  I actually did see the autopilot video lately, because I had fallen foul of a similar a/p in another plane.  This prompted me to double check on what I was doing!  In the RW, so many of the old bangers I flew had inoperative autopilots, so a lot of my experience has been in sims.  Of course, most of the newer planes, in X-Plane, have more modern A/Ps, and the latest digital ones are even better.   RW, I fly (mostly) in G1000 equipped planes with, occasionally KAP140s, but mostly with GFC700 autopilots.

So, once I realised what I was not doing properly with the A/P in the Sundowner, I was fine :-)

Although I see what you are getting at with the radios, if anyone retrofits  a Garmin, they will definitely assign and wire the old existing radio to be COM2.  Why wouldn't any avionics installer not do that?  In fact, if you think about it, how could you "mate" an old radio to the Garmin, so that the frequency in one would mirror the other?  I have doubts that this is doable - and it would be pointless!

As for frame rates, my new iMac is still not with me, as the first one that was built was lost by the carrier......

[ilias.tselios]

3 hours ago, diamonddriller said:

Although I see what you are getting at with the radios, if anyone retrofits  a Garmin, they will definitely assign and wire the old existing radio to be COM2.  Why wouldn't any avionics installer not do that?  In fact, if you think about it, how could you "mate" an old radio to the Garmin, so that the frequency in one would mirror the other?  I have doubts that this is doable - and it would be pointless!

This is a very valid point and I can't understand how I missed that. I will have in mind to do that for the next update. Already added in our bug tracker. Hope you get your iMac soon and enjoy X-Plane with the Sundowner!