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Good question! We will not have the hold page up yet...where you can enter holds wherever you want. Neither will we have procedural hold entry paths drawn (in magenta). That, of course, requires a bit of work depending upon your entry angle. Also, we do not have "abeam points" implemented. We have all the infrastructure in place to implement it...just not enough time. Um....what else......we do not have an 'offset path'. That is more common on oceanic routes and so shouldn't be missed by most. I will say we have designed our code to handle most anything, so we are not in so deep that we can't address whatever a real FMS can do in the future, its just a matter of picking and choosing after 5 years. Our FMS development has gone through some ups and downs (it is our first one) and we are shooting for a high level as we have some catching up to do. That being said, we are really happy with what we have so far. If Jan can conduct a flight with it as normally as he does in the real word...we're in a good spot! We are hoping to get a last video in before release that showcases the FMS features in a real world scenario (you know that Jan ALWAYS has problems on his flights). ...if you're on a Lufthansa flight and the pilot says, "Hallo, I'm your captain Jan Vogel"...get off the plane! So....I've been at it for about 14 hours today and spent the whole day programming in "flight plan loading and saving". We will be implementing our own flight plan format initially, (*.ixg) and it should be available on onlineflightplanner.org at some point. Ideally, we'd like to be able to read in multiple formats, but alas....we have to draw the line for the initial release. At the least, you can save your routes (with some limitations) and can share these text files if you like. We will be providing a "coroutes" folder that holds "company routes" flight plans for the initial release. Ok, back to it, this was just a break to blog about today's work. -tkyler

The last couple of days have been bug chasing for route editing features, mostly as it applies to VNAV calculations. The ability to edit the route in almost any circumstance is very important to simulating real operations. For example, the kinds of things we test are like so....give these a try on other products 1.) Enter a SID only, fly it on LNAV.....then enter an approach while in flight, EXEC....change your mind and enter a new destination airport while flying...select a new approach.....EXEC...begin flying that approach, shortcut to some point further down the approach for grins, EXEC.....enter a SID from the airport you are on approach to..... while on that approach (wipes out the previous route), EXEC... (plane should go into 'climb' phase and begin climbing)...and fly that successfully. 2.) Enter too high a cruise altitude for a short flight (KLAX > KTOA)....the FMS give you a "UNABLE CRZ ALT" warning and then calculates the intersection of the climb/descent "peak" and will change from climb to descend mode automatically as you pass this virtual intersection. OR you can begin to lower the cruise altitude on the CDU and as you do, you can watch the T/C and T/D symbols get closer and closer until you can visually see that you can make the cruise altitude. 3.) Fly a route on LNAV past a DISCO......lnav cuts out...AP needs to revert to hdg and pitch modes....then fly past the point on the other side of the DISCO...it (and the disco boxes) should automatically sequence off the CDU and you should be able to re-engage LNAV and continue on. 4.) Bunch of other crazy tests... Jan is the toughest beta tester I have ever seen...the stuff he does to try and break the FMS is ridiculous. If he can't manipulate it almost exactly as he does in real-life...he cracks the whip! Folks want to learn what its like to operate the real thing.....that means it has to be like the real thing. You know how stable and flexible the real thing has to be? That being said, there are several FMS features yet that we will not ship with V1.0 simply due to lack of time. Most all of these features though are 'fringe features' and certainly do not detract from typical operation most users will utilize. Putting those features in post 1.0 will be as much a matter of team pride as anything as most of the features will rarely get used. Still, we can't help but keep at it. As for right this moment, we're just finishing up a 'flight plan loader"...that will eventually be able to load and save routes. If you want to get a head start on your favorite routes, the format is rather self-explanatory. (format subject to VERY slight changes) Gear up! -tkyler

It is a conversion of FlyTampa's Dubai Rebooted for FSX! When quoting a post delete all the images next time

I don't know. I am putting in 12 hours a day, do not have another job in sight...this is it until this thing is out! If its not December, it will be as fast as possible on the other side of the new year.....I'm not slowing down and I can not tell you at this time that it will NOT be December as we are on a very productive pace. We'll know more in a few weeks. If 5 more days past 2015 are required to add much needed stabililty, then we'll take the 5 days rather than ship a product with a known bug. We're close, moving fast and we'll let folks know in a few weeks where we are. -tkyler

Decided to make a worthy investment

After several flightless months, I've had some time to fly long haul over Thanksgiving. Quite a stress reliever to finally have time for X-Plane after such a while! Today's flight originated from New York JFK and destined to Amsterdam AMS, using the route operated by Delta Air Lines flight 48. Sunrise over the Atlantic calls for some screenies Dawn over the Ocean ​Significantly brighter outside now as we progress toward Amsterdam: Despite the challenging weather in Amsterdam this afternoon, heavy rain and crosswinds, still touched down on runway 22. (Quick note, I can't get outside the plane and set my wing views on the 757. On the 777, I moved out the doors in 3D view and set my views. Can anyone help me get outside the walls in the 757? ) Thanks for reading and Happy Flying

I agree about the offset - but in reality this is mostly handled with headings. This is not only easier for the pilots and ATC, it is also more efficient (to fly a detour it is less way to fly a "triangle" as opposed to joining an offset distance and then rejoining later). But this should be no excuse for not having an offset feature, just an explanation why we decided it is ok to ship the initial version without it. The RTA mode is supposed to "adjust" your speed so that you arrive at a specified fix at a specified time (RTA = required time of arrival). I have used it once on the 747-400 when we were supposed to not arrive "too early" over a fix to cross Afghanistan airspace. It didn´t work at all... Yes, wind prediction for navigational purposes will be available. It will influence time and fuel predictions, climb and descent path calculation. OPT CRZ altitude calculation is not dependent on wind per se, and the FMS doesn´t adjust OPT ALT, even if multiple wind levels are known and input. OPT ALT as suggested by the FMS is based on weight and cruise speed, only. In reality a different wind level can make a less "optimum" level more desirable, of course, but the FMS won´t help you making that call. Jan

Hi, This is definitely wrong. There is no compatibility problem between X-Plane and SASL. What has been happening is SASL has been crashing X-Plane on El Capitan for --months-- now. This is just the first time we reported this crash for what it is: a plugin crashing the sim. In 10.41 the exact same crash happens, except you get an Apple crash report. If you speak Apple crash dump, you'll see a plugin (that is in fact SASL) on the stack causing OpenAL to abort. The problem is that Yosemite broke X-Plane's automatic crash reporting (via break pad) and with that we lost the code that annotates whether a plugin or the sim was running at crash time. The annotation is now restored (unfortunately without auto-crash reporting for X-plane..that's a much harder thing to solve). For the last few months I have just received a huge number of "bug reports" from users, sending in Mac crash reports that were attributable to SASL. I put the annotator back into 10.42 to stop the torrent. The fix for SASL is already available for freeware aircraft - for payware, the vendor has to roll a patch. Here's the details. http://developer.x-plane.com/2015/11/sasl-crash-fixed-youll-need-a-new-sasl/

That shot's even better! Makes a lot more sense without the Neo wingtips! This just makes me more disappointed that Jar haven't gone ahead and added the other engine options!

Here is : nol

Left/Right = Heading Up/Down = Vertical Speed These are drag and hold manipulators that spring back to their location when done. In other words, grab the vertical speed one, pull up (lower V/S) or down (higher V/S) and hold in the position until you are satisfied with the number.