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I did get some feedback from people who thought the effect was overdone, with that said here is a SS with the crepuscular rays dialed down a bit.....

Maybe you wait for the texture updates in 10.25 ... and horrible is extremely relative (be very careful in your wording), especially as we are talking about - kind of - artistic interpretation of real life phenomena (which always reflects the taste of the artist too). And I can assure you, that neither is it something done "overnight" ... (I know how much work went into them over the years) ... And maybe you have already read, that there is no such thing as "mesh resolution" in X-Plane when we are talking about an irregular mesh. Maybe this old screenshot from my HD Mesh 1 download page helps you to get a feeling of how / what changes (and HD Mesh Scenery v2 will even have a slightly denser mesh than v1):

I would just like to say a big thank you and well done to Leading Edge Simulations and X-Aviation for the release of the Saab 340A, a real 'game changer' in every way. Having taken time to read the excellent manuals/charts etc, the aircraft is a real masterpiece in so many ways. The flight model just 'feels right' and the systems are absolutely brilliantly simulated. Normally preferring GA aircraft I prefer to hand-fly as much as possible and this aircraft allows you to do just that if you wish. I have used the autopilot in all modes and they are all magnificently replicated. The sounds are the best I have heard on any model for X-Plane. As I touched on above, the included manuals and charts are wonderfully well done, and this coupled with the excellent support on this website will mean any problems/questions are always quickly solved. I am really looking forward to the new version with its performance enhancements, although I might add it runs well enough as it is. I think it's about time I had another flight!! Cheers Simon

That may well just have been the most bizarre question ever asked on here.

Hi, Just a month into Xplane 10 after many years away from Flight Sims. Purchased the JarDesign A320 Neo and downloaded the paintkit - and getting back into the swing of painting in Photoshop : British Caledonian ordered these before BA killed them off Hopefully finished Livery available soon. Allan

Working on a VOR route from KLFT - KIAH. I made a few mistakes and will need to mod the route for future flight. This video was pulled from my live stream. Enjoy

File Name: Swedish Airforce livery for L.E.S Saab 340A File Submitter: Leen de Jager File Submitted: 01 Oct 2013 File Category: Heavy Metal X-Plane Version(s): X-Plane 10 Livery For: Click Here For Aircraft Swedish Airforce livery for Take Command! (L.E.S.) Saab 340A by Leen "Flybike" de Jager. Low and high-res folders included. Installation: Simply unzip the contents of Swedish Airforce.zip into a temp folder. Place the high- or low-res version in the Liveries folder of the aircraft. Have fun, Leen de Jager http://www.flybike-paints.nl Click here to download this file

Sorry Carlos but that is disgusting clouds, make me want to vomit over it ... Like an old aquarel John rescue me !

Hi, Folks!, Let me just start out by saying the next update will give all of you some considerable FPS improvements. Read on! I wanted to give you an idea of where we're at for the forthcoming update. There's quite a bit going into this, and I'm not sure exactly when we'll get it out, but I would really like it to be within the next few days. Some of you have had concerns with performance, the combination of HDR, and comparing the Saab to other aircraft in these situations. I'm going to touch on that below, but first, here's a quick list of things you can expect to be included in the 1.1 update: • Fixed typo on GUI walkaround checklist • Added GPU sound • Fixed bug in Condition Lever joystick assignment • Desensitized joystick assignment • Changed animation of flap handle for joystick users • Fixed bug causing an error when CTOT was on and engines overheated. • Fixed bug in Anti-Skid system causing no CWP annunciation • Reverted to default sounds on Dot-Dash radio code • Fixed bug in window anti-ice system • Fixed bug in wing anti-ice system• Fixed bug in volume control GUI on "RESET ALL"• Fixed "pop" in prop sound• Adjusted generator cut-out parameter• Fixed avionics blackout when making abrupt moves with the throttle • Memory leak plugged - fixed There's a bit more included as well, but that's the main list of things to expect. We'll be sure to detail every little thing in your update e-mails when they go out and the update is available! Okay, so lets talk about performance. I know this has been a hot subject for some of you, and while majority of our customers are very happy, we really do want to work towards making everyone happy. The Saab 340A was a 3.5 year long endeavour and we set out to accomplish three things in the process: Create the most detailed and accurate 3D model for X-PlaneCreate a true study level simulation that mimics the real aircraft in essentially every aspect (really, the first aircraft to do this for X-Plane)Make the texture detail and sounds as accurate as possibleNow, I believe we successfully checked off all three of these tasks, however, with it came some consequences. The first had to do with HDR. The Saab simulates so many systems and has so much number crunching going on behind the scenes that the CPU is always working for you to run this. Adding in HDR places more burden on the CPU, and not just the GPU. Believe it or not, majority of your FPS hit is coming from the actual system simulation and NOT the geometry or textures in use. In fact, X-Plane can chew through quite a number of 3D geometry without a lot of consequence. Because of these two factors at play, HDR has been taking a pretty tough hit with the Saab. We also look forward to improvements in the future with Laminar working on HDR as the version 10 series continues to develop. There were also reports of a memory leak which we are happy to say we have fixed. This doesn't necessarily improve performance from the start, but it WILL solve the out of memory errors and the sudden slow downs later into a flight, so we're definitely happy to report that! With all the above said, and now that the Saab has been out, we have had a little breather, and gained our lost sleep back, we've been back at working on optimizing the Saab. By this I mean that we are going over every aspect of the Saab 340A code and looking at ways we can improve the time it takes the CPU to munch on our code and spit out results. With programming there can be 10 different ways to get the same result, but one of those ways can be much more efficient. Think of it like a highway vs. city streets. In most cases, the highway is always going to be the most efficient route to your destination, even if there's 10 different ways to get there through city streets! With the help of Ben Russell's new profiler we have been able to analyze every aspect of the code and have begun the work of cutting down heavy hitting code to run more efficiently on everyone's machines. So far the results have turned out to be quite promising. I don't know how far we'll get with this optimization before 1.1 is released, but rest assured 1.1 will contain some pretty nice optimizations none-the-less. You WILL see FPS increases in the forthcoming update, and over time I'm sure we'll continue to refine and optimize till we have squeezed every last ounce of optimizations out. For now, I'd like to show you test results of the current 1.0 build of the Saab that you all have, vs our 1.1 optimized code of the Saab as it stands now. I have ran various tests and setting changes in X-Plane across three different computers to give you an idea of what to expect. At this time I'm just posting one machine but will followup with the next two machines soon after. I will say that in EVERY instance, on EVERY system tested thus far (Mac and Windows) we are seeing considerable FPS increases. Keep in mind that everyone runs different settings. Higher resolutions require more VRAM, etc. I have tried to give you a relatively wide array of examples to get an idea: Computer Specs - Windows Desktop Machine CPU = i5 2500k @ stock speed RAM = 8GB GPU = GTX 680 4GB @ stock speed (2GB version will get similar performance. VRAM only helps on big monitors) X-Plane Settings Screen Resolution = Full-screen @ 2560 x 1440Texture Resolution = ExtremeTrees = PopulatedNumber of objects = TonsNumber of roads = Tons Number of cars = Kansas ResidentialWorld detail distance = MediumAirport detail = DefaultAnti Aliasing = 16xAnisotropic Filter = 8xPer Pixel Lighting = OnWhen HDR is shown, the following settings are applied Atmospheric Scattering = OnHDR Anti Aliasing = 4x SSAA+FXAAAnisotropic Filter = 8xThe following test was conducted sitting at the default runway location at KIAH. You will see that best case scenario with these settings we have gained 11 fps in the 1.1 update. In the next example rendering settings have been toned down as indicated below: X-Plane Settings Screen Resolution = Full-screen @ 2560 x 1440Texture Resolution = ExtremeTrees = SparseNumber of objects = DefaultNumber of roads = Default Number of cars = Siberian WinterWorld detail distance = MediumAirport detail = LowAnti Aliasing = 16xAnisotropic Filter = 8xPer Pixel Lighting = OnWhen HDR is shown, the following settings are applied Atmospheric Scattering = OnHDR Anti Aliasing = 4x SSAA+FXAAAnisotropic Filter = 8xThe following test was conducted sitting at the default runway location at KIAH. You will see that best case scenario with these settings we have gained 16 fps in the 1.1 update. All FPS listed are from f-act (actual FPS), and not the often higher number from f-sim. The other guys on the team are reporting roughly a 14 fps increase with version 1.1. The biggest point being here that there will be quite a bit of room for you guys to work, tweak, adjust and see improvements over 1.0. One other thing to note...these stats are taken at the airport. It is my experience that once off the ground and flying, X-Plane's FPS tend to increase, so these stats would be slightly higher in such scenarios. I'll be back soon with more stats from the Mac side!

LOL These textures are 1000 times better than the stock textures of FSX....... Oh and these are free...

And when properly set up, much quieter as well.

Does he want it? Yes. Will he get it? No.

Well done! Well Im not a default cloud fan, but you do well with them

For some reason I think this is going to change everything I thought I knew about how clouds were supposed to look in X-Plane. John, you have my credit card, plus a bottle of my favorite Cab if you ever stop by the Windy City any time soon

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, another hold on the project, darn.

No. Have a read through the manual. All switches that do not function are highlighted. The CRJ being a much older aircraft than the SAAB is less "simulated", as to be expected.

Very very nice - I'm really looking forward to this

My turn with the Saab

Wellll...I didn't exactly fly these airplanes today, but I'd caught a pretty bad cold and couldn't post them right away. I'm still racked up (I wouldn't dare go up in plane feeling like this--did it once, never again), but my fever's gone and my eyes aren't crossing anymore, so here we go. I was feeling like flying over to Phoenix SkyHarbor (KPHX), but instead of the usual Twinjob, I decided to fly the ol' Piper Malibu from X-Plane 9.x. I'd never flown it, but figured it would be a challenge to fly a relatively fast G.A. Single for a change. The Wx here in San diego was socked in at the time (1500' 10 sm), but once we cleared the Coastal Range it was clear, with only slight x-winds along the route. The trip was uneventful despite random failures having been checked, so this shot is of our Downwind at SkyHarbor. Established on extended Final Rwy in sight, glidepath established and solid Flaps full--hey is that Thomas the Tank Engine down there? Over the threshold Tied-down on the ramp. All in all it was pretty uneventful--until the trip back. About an hour or so out from KHPX, I lost oil pressure, and the engine fought a valiant fight, but died. I feathered the prop and I ended up making an emergency landing at Thermal (Jackie Cochran Regional, KTRM), and since it was later in the evening the onsite A&P Mech was in a bad mood because I hit him up after 1700, his quitting time (It was around 1800 or so, then). He said I'd have to wait 'til he returned the following morning before he could work on it, but when he'd lifted the cowling I could see that the problem was a oil feed-line that had chafed itself thin, up against a steel-braided return hose. Hell, it looked like something I could have easily fixed myself, but my A&P Certification had long ago lost currency, and I didn't want that mech ratting me to the FAA if he'd come back to the ramp in the morning and we were gone. He had our tail number. Cursing under my breath, I slapped two Jacksons into the A&P's hand, pulled my flightbag and Thermos of coffee from the pax seat of the Malibu, told the mech I'd see him tomorrow afternoon, and headed over to JacksonAir Flight Training to rent an airplane. I lucked out in a good way. All of JacksonAir's planes were out--ramp was empty. I was about to leave, exasperated, when the Manager leaned across the counter and asked if I was type-rated in Twins, and I said 'yes,' showing him my MEL endorsements. A slow grin spread across his sun-worn face, his hooded blue eyes twinkling. What I ended up in was...in my next post. APUtech

Aaron, I am going to be diplomatic concerning this situation but I do feel it is an obligation to air out a few things regarding how you have done business in the past and a few notes on my involvement with you. Recently you started pushing this sky product by providing very few and vague screen shots of your work. Only when I asked you to show more detail did you post more shots. Terrain Europe XP was marketed the same way. You asked for pre-orders and when anyone ever asked you for more screen shots you didn't provide much of anything. You also promised updates and landmarks as part of the product. Recently you did a 180 and decided not to support the product any longer which angered a lot of individuals in the community. In conversation with a friend of mine, from the community, you touted the sucess of your Terrain Europe XP, but here in a public forum you are telling people it wasnt a sucessful product. I think you may have lied to that individual in order to get something out of him..... Additionally you recently reached out to another friend of mine asking for his services to create a product better than UrbanMAXX, this is OK but you were making all kinds of promises as to a "new technique" to place textures and line them up with the roads.....This is all OK, but you were looking for this individual to figure it out, which isnt possible BTW.....Not without code anyway. If you did have this at your disposal why would you need to enlist someone from the community to do the work for you? That seemed very fishy..... And lastly you reached out to Sun-Dog, looking for them to develop another cloud add-on as work with me and Sun-Dog were already underway. And you found out pretty quickly that we were under an agreement. I don't mind that you did this, but again it shows you are trying to exploit the talent around you..... How could two versions of the same product compete? I think you were trying to cut me out, not good..... Another point is you do not even participate in the community, side converations, development threads, not an ounce. You show up out of the blue and try selling stuff with little information and thin content. Becoming a good developer in this community requires you to become a part of the community. Developers need to have a true relationship with the user base. You found out how strong mine is recently and I continue to work hard to maintain this.... Don't underestimate the intelligence of this community, they can see past shifty answers. Always be honest and open with them, especially in the area of how a product works...... Im not telling you what to do, or telling you to ignor the business side, but you should never let business take over, you need to keep a leash on it until you develop a reputation.... Plus a few of these points noted above are why you are having a hard time winning over the community. Frankly it is very painful to watch...... My Involvment With AWG Ok there is some hear say above so let me hash out my involvment with AWG. Aaron contacted me wanting to use UrbanMAXX with his Terrain Europe XP. So we started talking and I said that may work out. During our converations on skype I asked about reporting of sales and Aaron replied that he did not have a way of reporting sales statisitics RED FLAG.. I let that red flag slide and kept in the back of my head that we will just work that out later. During this time I offered him up some custom glacier textures which he put into his terrain europe product. One thing we discussed was a formal announcement of the product and our partnership. A blog post came out showing the glaciers and touting them as a feature in his product, with NO mention of Maxx-XP....RED FLAG I was a bit irrate at this point and after a conversation he added a little something down at the bottom of the blog post.... Around this time a member of a popular X-Plane review site contacted me with some concerns surrounding Aaron, Ill be honest I dont remember the details but it was surrounding his use of OSM and another irrate X-Plane developer. RED RED RED RED FLAG This review site was going to run a piece on AWG but decided to back out because of his reputation......And that was the straw that broke the camels back....I contacted Aaron and said he can have those glaciers and Im out....... Many other details were left out, but these are the facts I remember and this is why you have a hard time around here Aaron....... Dont get angry, really read this and try to take something away from it......But Im afraid you may have already have tarnished your reputaion to the point of no return.....

Hi, I'm very puzzled about choosing between C/C++ and Lua as main plugin language for my L-410. Looks like Lua language is much more efficient in development time, but in the other hand C/C++ is much faster. Since I'm planning to implement almost all the system functionality to L-410, a question came up: is it worth to use Lua? As IXEG team uses SASL for systems, I prefer to use that too. But don't know if it can handle lot of calculations effective, and also I prefer not to use script language as good programming sense says C/C++ is the right way of doing this I'm writing a complete engine model (initially in JavaScript for easy debugging) to cover performance graphs in manual. E.g. here is an example for ITT: http://x-plane.hu/temp/L410/model/ (change black (thr) and/or green (spd)). Source: http://x-plane.hu/temp/L410/model/engine.js There are some interpolation calculations in code and this is just ITT (fuel consumption, N1, N2, oil temp, hydraulics, etc will to come). Can Lua handle this kind of math? So convince me! Thanks for answers.

Commercial car model, came without any materials, all set up in LightWave. Post processed in After Effects. Quality heavily degraded by the downscaling in the forum software.

I think perhaps we have over 30,000 lines of Lua code on the IXEG 737 and while there is a performance hit, it is surprisingly low, especially on a modern machine. As Cameron says, with LuaJIT, the code is compiled code, not interpreted "on the fly" so it runs really quick....and TBH, we are talking functions that run in billionths of a second and compared to what XP is running, aircraft systems code (if decently written) is usually negligible. Ben Supnik concurred that unless you did something really irresponsible, it's unlikely you'd see a performance penalty. Here's my thoughts on each, clearly I'm biased towards Gizmo, but will try to be objective: C++: Doesn't require dependency on anybody else. Runs quick, full support of SDK. 3 platform support a PITA, having to reload aircraft to reload the plugin is a PITA. That's what put me off on C++. I can do it, but my goal isn't to have fun programming or challenge my programming skils, my goal is to produce a simulation. So while I've done two C++ plugins, I prefer the Lua scripting. Gizmo: Depends on Ben Russell. He dies or decides to pull it, your stuck. Ben's been around over a decade though so he has my vote. Gizmo has some licensing restrictions that favor X-Pilot and X-Aviation....don't expect to use Gizmo and upload work to the org to share or sell.. Almost full support of SDK functions though, including openGL and openAL functionality. Also has support for particles and physics and internet communication (correct me if wrong Ben). Gizmo mimics the x-plane SDK API very well so it's a bit easier for me to comprehend having worked in C with the xplane SDK. Performance perhaps a tiny bit behind C++, but for me that is not enough of a motivator to ditch the crazy development speed I get with Gizmo. No support for easy 2D popups, you have to make your own, but the tools are there. SASL: Depends on somebody...I'm not sure. I think Philipp was the last to "save" it. SASLs open source with no real restrictions. I do not think the original authors works on it anymore but I can't confirm this, anyone? SASL has a specialized API originally designed for 2D "gauge programming" and is therefore very suitable for 2D pop-ups and you'll see lots of SASL products utilize this feature, but has support for sounds also. I don't think it has the graphics horsepower of Gizmo's GL implementation though. We use Gizmo GL frame buffer objects on the 737 to render to offscreen textures and other things necessary for EFIS drawing operations. With the ability to read and write datarefs, then systems coding is pretty much the same for SASL as it is for Gizmo. As far as C++ being a "real language" compared to scripted languages, that argument does not work for me. I think such an argument contains a bit of "programmer pride", a sort of status symbol to say, "hey, I'm smarter than you...you can only program in a scripting language"....but that is ridiculous, these are all just tools and you should use the best tool for you to get your goals met. I've used both and my development requirements are speed and stability..speed of development, speed of code running and stability of the running code and the stability of gizmo development. In my opinion, you can produce faster results with Gizmo than C. Plain text files, 3 platforms supported...no loading and unloading of aircraft during development lets you focus on getting results, not fighting platforms and compilers. As to why I myself would pick gizmo over sasl....the first reason is I'm familiar with the API structure and the 2nd is the more robust openGL implementation. If neither of these matter to you, then I think either would fill your needs. Lua can definitely handle your math whether in SASL or GIZMO and with its primary data type being a table (same as object in javascript...also called hash table.....the whole key/value pair thing)...you would probably be very comfortable with Lua right away. Tom K

IXEG uses Gizmo, not SASL. Gizmo is very powerful and can do anything (so for that I have seen) that you can do in C, and very efficiently. In all honesty, the 737 is the most advanced aircraft for X-Plane in production to date, and given it's LUA driven that in itself is all you need as a testament. Because of the JIT (Just In Time) compiler used in Gizmo the performance "hit" is practically negligible in comparison to C...you honestly wouldn't notice it in my experience. Any calculation or desire you have can be done with Gizmo so long as it's within the realm of the X-Plane SDK and you know your syntax. And, as you've mentioned, it's very fast to develop in. SASL does well from what I have witnessed, but has limitations against it that Gizmo does not. The major reason for this is due to the way the plug-ins were architected. At this time SASL works well in some areas, but lacks in many others. It works for those who use it within its limitations, and may do the same for you. I don't want to make this a Gizmo vs SASL war, so I'll leave it at that. Yes, LUA can handle your math.