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MU-2 progress towards update


tkyler

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Interesting to know you don't work from home Tom! Do you do X-Plane stuff full-time then? I assume most flight simulator 3rd-party devs work part-time alongside a full-time job!

I work "full time" on x-plane yes.  Currently I'm full time on laminar work...so my x-scenery dev work is indeed "part time".  I'll work with laminar as long as they can stand me...and after V10 ships, hopefully I'll turn more attention to my x-scenery projects.  The experience over the last 2 years has been unbelievable with regards to workflow and efficiency and should translate well to my own projects.  

If you check my laminar V10 work on the F4 vs. the MU2 texturing (screenshot link below), you'll see what kind of detail will be coming in future stuff...and the laminar stuff isn't as high rez as what I'll be using on the Mu2 2.0 update.  There's definitely some MU2 realism coming down the pipe. 

http://www.x-plane.com/images/v10/aircraft/week4/f-4_comparison.jpg

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OK...so Dozer nudged me into something I've been avoiding....and that is finally getting around to implementing custom commmands.  Now just putting in commands is no big deal....but organizing the code so you can put in a few hundred of them quickly IS....and so I finally put in some code to allow quick additions of custom commands.  So NOW you can map your keyboard commands to custom datarefs like the throttle levers and condition levers and just about anything you want to.  I have yet to tackle rheostat hardware though...like the yoke or throttle levers BUT that is coming.  The movie below shows working the throttles with the mouse like the days of old, then by using the F1/F2 keys to move both levers...except this time, F1/F2 is controlling my datarefs, which in turn control x-plane.  So now you don't have to hit the pesky "period" key to go into reverse you just drag the levers back.  This will probably be a bummer for those with joystick paddles that don't have stops as in the real McCoy...BUT there are some detents programmed in to give you a little bit of a range.  Can't win em all I guess.

22 MB quicktime

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/955680/commands.mov

Also,  more and more systems realism is getting put in.  Now when you shut off the main fuel valves, the engines will run for just a micro bit longer till the fuel in the line is burned up.  The Run / Crank / Stop switches are  DEAD ON now.  This means that the "STOP" position is properly "spring loaded" as in the the real MU2....this is so you don't  accidentally turn off the engine and this Mu2 is that way now too.  Also, you have to hold the switches in the stop position for a few seconds (just like in the real thing) to get the engines to shut off.....AND fuel purge is now simulated.  That means when you DO hold the Run/Crank/Stop switches in the stop position, the engine will surge a bit to burn off residual fuel in the manifolds before it shuts down.

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Oh dear, have I accidentally delayed the v1.5 release ;) I haven't figured out how to create custom axis yet, unless we're to use the 'CustomSlider' axis, in which case I haven't figured out how to use .ini files yet to specify which one can be used to avoid colliding with someone else's plugin's CustomSlider assignment!

I love the sound of those details on how the fuel systems will work. That kind of detail really helps the immersion that you're dealing with the massively complex assembly of different components and systems that a real turbine engine is, rather than flipping IsLeftEngineOn from 1 to 0!

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The axis is handled by intercepting the joystick input.  There are x-plane datarefs for this to make it somewhat easy.  

EDIT:  I removed several posts regarding the MU2 paint kit to keep the thread relevant. They were not directly related to news of Mu2 updates.

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I finally reworked the paint kit to reduce the complexity and number of layers and make it many times more manageable.  It was so bad, I didn't even want to do extra liveries.  After a goodly amount of time cleaning up the paint kit files, I was able to eek out this 'bandit' paint in a few relaxing hours.  It's available for download at the following link....instructions included.

http://www.x-scenery.com/xscontent/downloads/mu2_bandit_paint.zip

post-4-131369599199_thumb.jpg

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What about the 3d rendering in photoshop extended cs5? Can that be leveraged? I've never used it myself but would be interesting...

It might be....never used it myself.  I'm a big "old fashioned" in that regards I guess....certainly worthwhile to look into.  Looking at some videos, I'd say it just might be something I'd like to try.

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Love the MU-2, fly it just about every day. I have one question/suggestion concerning the next update. Can you make the landing lights work with x-plane's built in landing light on/off commands. I have a GoFlight MCP Pro on which I have one of the buttons programmed to toggle the landing lights. The three way functionality of your landing light switch makes it inoperable from the MCP Pro, I have to 'reach up' and flick the switch with the mouse. Not a big deal, but it would be nice to be able to use the hardware buttons. Having X-plane's 'landing lights on/off toggle' working would be great.

Thanks

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Can you make the landing lights work with x-plane's built in landing light on/off commands

Done...HOWEVER, it's through a custom command and not the default landing light.  You'll just set your button to my landing light commands instead of x-plane's landing light commands and it'll extend/retract the lights and turn em on and off.

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Love the MU-2, fly it just about every day. I have one question/suggestion concerning the next update. Can you make the landing lights work with x-plane's built in landing light on/off commands. I have a GoFlight MCP Pro on which I have one of the buttons programmed to toggle the landing lights. The three way functionality of your landing light switch makes it inoperable from the MCP Pro, I have to 'reach up' and flick the switch with the mouse. Not a big deal, but it would be nice to be able to use the hardware buttons. Having X-plane's 'landing lights on/off toggle' working would be great.

Thanks

Marcmec, I've written a plugin that already does this with the v1.1.1 MU-2. The command /Dozer/MU2/Landing_Light_Inc and /Landing_Light_Dec will move the MU-2's landing light switch if the MU-2 is the active aircraft, or the default landing light switch if you've loaded a different aircraft for some reason ;-) Also, /Dozer/MU2/Landing_Light_Toggle will toggle the default landing lights or move the MU-2's switch between off/retracted and on/extended.

It's the first plugin I've published (out of a grand total of two) and I'm still quite new to it. You might need to alter the MU-2's description in Planemaker, and you'll need this file from Microsoft until I learn more advanced ways of compiling stuff. The plugin is on the org here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=12628

I'm assuming you're running Windows!

edit: I've bound Landing_Light_Inc and _Dec to one of the momentary switches on my Saitek X52 - I did that for testing and quite like it. Move the switch up twice to activate Landing_Light_Inc twice and turn lights on, move it down twice to extinguish then retract the lights. Simples.

Tom, a very minor plea - I quite like the three-position switch, it's a nice detail. When you say you're skipping the extended/off position, you are just talking about your own commands, right? Will it still have that position if you're using the mouse (or setting the dataref from your own plugin)?

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That is correct...you can do the "3-position" with the mouse OR use the commands.  My plugin is structured such that all the commands do is move the switches and the switches still control the logic.  So it doesn't matter if the switches are moved by command, by the mouse or anything else.  The separation between inputs and the logic is probably one of the wiser decisions I've made and allows me to really concentrate on systems simulation and interaction separately.

will move the MU-2's landing light switch if the MU-2 is the active aircraft

I haven't downloaded your plugin yet  (just looked at it).  You do not have to check for aircraft type IF the plugin is inside the MU-2 folder.  If it is, then your plugin will only load when the aircraft loads so the MU2 is guaranteed to be the active aircraft.  The plugin systems was designed this way somewhere during the 8 series to make it easy for "aircraft specific" plugins to be distributed.  You do multiple plugins for a single aircraft by creating  separate folders in the MU2 plugin folder...call it "Dozer_plugin" and INSIDE that folder, you'd put your win.xpl.  So you could have many different folders inside the plugin folder and each of those folders would contain the win/mac/lin xpls, thereby keeping them separate.

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Thanks Tom, but I deliberately chose to make the plugin global because it's NOT MU-2 specific! (It's useless if you don't have the MU-2, but that's not exactly the same thing...) It provides unified commands for the landing light and engine start switches. The commands provided by my plugin will operate either the default X-Plane commands or the MU-2's commands, depending on which aircraft is loaded. That way, I can for example bind Ctrl-1 to dozer/mu2/start_engine_1. If I've got the MU-2 loaded, when I press Ctrl-1, MU2 Command will activate your xscenery/mu2/engine_start_left command exactly as if I'd got Ctrl-1 bound to it. If I've got a different aircraft loaded, Ctrl-1 will activate the ordinary /sim/starters/engine_start_1 or whatsitcalled. This wouldn't work if MU2Command lived in the MU2 directory, because it wouldn't be loaded when I'm using a different aircraft!

Code snippet from the dozer/mu2/startengine1 command handler:

     if (inPhase == xplm_CommandBegin)
    {
        if (isMU2)     //isMU2 is global bool that is true if a/c identified as MU2
        {
            XPLMCommandBegin(MU2Start1);   //MU-2's custom engine start command
        } else {
            XPLMCommandBegin(XPStart1);    //normal X-Plane engine start command
        }
    }

MU2 Command as it is today crudely uses the .acf description string to identify whether or not the aircraft that's just loaded is your MU-2. A better method would be to check whether the MU-2's plugin is enabled but I didn't think of that at the time!

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