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Nice John! I've had a creative day too you'll see. That KC-10 really disturbed the neighbours!

Just a teaser...... Muwahahah!!!!!! , John Maxx-XP

Hi guys, These last few days we have been busy with the FMS again. You might know that all modern airliners have one of these - and while you can theoretically fly without them, they are very much a centerpiece to a safe and efficient operation. They are quite complicated and highly sophisticated - and while that is great when actually using them on board, it is also the reason why a realistic FMS has been the domain of very few and selected add-on making companies so far. Well, we are taking on that challenge. The quality and feel of our FMS is blowing me away every time our coders punch out a new page or feature. I have written about the thrust management before, today I will punch up a few more "preflight pictures" and point out what I think is special about them. Above pic shows the two CDU´s - note that they are still "floating" in mid-air right now. Every CDU can operate independently of the other one - show a different page, accept input, etc. Above pic shows the "PERF INIT" page, where you will input weights and other parameters of the flight. You can see that I am about to enter "FL240" as cruise altitude into the boxes on the top right. The FMS uses this data to compute various things - amongst them the takeoff speeds as you can see on the next picture: Above pic shows the TAKEOFF REF page on the left CDU and the N1 LIMIT page on the right CDU. You can see on the right that I have entered a TASS of 45 degrees - the FMS has calculated a reduced take-off N1 of 87.5%. It has also automatically selected a reduced climb thrust - otherwise the N1 would increase at the thrust reduction altitude. Also note the thrust mode annunciator shows "R-TO" to alert the pilot that a reduced takeoff thrust will be set. The left CDU shows the takeoff data - once you enter the takeoff flap setting (1 in this case) the FMS will calculate and suggest V-speeds, that you can accept with the click of a button or overwrite with your own speeds. This last pic shows the effect of those inputs on the EADI. V1 and Vr are automatically shown on the speed tape. V2 must be set manually with the MCP speed selector. Ready for a reduced power take-off. Jan

small hints here and there...lol , it is nice to have some impact on something as cool as XPX. Here is a video in motion, forgive my flying...lol

Quick update, here is a shot using default clouds at 10%: http://imgur.com/xUlaW Working out transparency issues as we speak......

Watching Canada whizz by.....

New blog is up on the subject of Lateral Navigation (LNAV). As you can see, we are not cutting any corners.. http://www.ixeg.net/blog/item/24-navigation-polar-cosines-and-newton-rhapson