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Flying above Adelaide Photoreal.....

Becoming a dad has kept me from the IXEG kitchen for a few months but I've had a little time again recently to work on engine textures. Figure I'd show the bottom of it because it's more interesting in terms of detailing. You won't fint many useful texture references of the bottom side of a CFM56-3 online, so as much as my crawling under one of these in a Lufthansa hangar amused the surrounding maintenance crews, it did pay off when it came to painting it. In case someone wonders about texture resolution and use of decals, the pic below is pretty illustrative of our 'target range' that we want stuff to look crisp at (click image for full size!). We discussed using as much as 4 times the texture space to achieve twice the resolutions, but we don't think it makes a good trade off between appearance and VRAM demand. We want this plane to at least load for you with 512Mb video cards. Regarding decals, we have hundreds of megapixel photos of decals and bolts and rivets covering virtually every square foot of the aircraft and we could certainly make every warning text on the entire fuselage readable using 'decal' techniques. By 'decals' I mean the use of 'skin' polygons sitting on top of the main aircraft geometry that are textured with a high-res picture of a warning label or maintenance panel. The thing with these however is that, if done to extremes, I believe they do the overall apperance disservice. At least to me, large differences in texture resolution on adjacent surfaces draws more attention to the lower rez texture and the visual effect of the decal, however crisp and sharp, is lost. A reasonably hi-res but consistent texture sells the model better than one with bits of extreme detail bolted on to it. So for the 737, we do use decals but make sure not to overdo them. The engine in the picture has a handful of them for the smallest warning signs - not to make them perfectly readable at any distance, only to enhance the sense of detail at a reasonable viewing distance.

You have included Parafield (I one day hope to get an airline cadetship and train at FTA) Those screenshots have made my week. I have never been able to download your scenery because my feeble computer can't run X-Plane 10. Being able to run that is now my inspiration for getting a new one. P.S. I noticed the Bunnings Warehouse

A double-shot of Mt. Shasta! Here's a second image taken just north of the yesterday's screenshot. Lake Siskiyou is on the right, with Black Butte on the left.

Thanks man. This is one hell of a game. heheheh It would be a lot easier to fly these planes if there wasn't wind or gravity. Take care, Jay

Massive Update available for X-Plane 9.70 and 10.xx on Robins Nav Data Site. http://data.x-plane.com/get_data.html Robin's been very busy with the new update: http://forums.x-plan...869#entry719051 List of changes: http://data.x-plane.com/log.html I'm off to download my copy of Robin's new data and have a good look! Note: This is an X-Plane Update, not an update for Complex Addon Aircraft FMS's like the CRJ-200 or B-777 Worldliner (They use seperate Navigraph or NavDataPro database's which contains SID/STAR/APPR's ect ect and you will still need that ). cessna729.

The short answer is yes....the MU2 1.5 will be xp10 64bit compatible. The longer answer...The MU2 1.5 uses the latest version of Gizmo for a lot of its customization. The latest version of gizmo is 64bit compatible. There are a few other features in gizmo I am still waiting to be complete before I can release the MU2 yet. Gizmo relies on several other software packages and the port to 64bit has been a huge endeavor for Ben. Reliability is very important to all of us and work steadily continues on making sure this all works....and when it does, we will have a solid foundation to build on for the future. Tom K

Above the Grand Canyon in my FedEx 727!

Yay!