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These guys are breaking all the rules. Thank so much Pocket Rocket team!

I'm (virtually) mega and ultra rich so I have two TBMs (at least)...one at Santa Barbara and another somewhere tooling around Florida. I like to go to Santa Barbara and fly touch and goes (cuz, you know, I'm virtually mega rich) and then go back to Florida for some real trips...for the snakes and humidity, of course. It would be cool if I could have different frames in each place since touch and goes can be pretty hard on landing gear and it's such a pill to fly it all the way across the country to do touch and goes even if the airport is gorgeous. From what I see, you have to put the airplane there and then change the airframe. Wouldn't it be cool to have it do it automatically...keep one airframe at one airport and the other one at a different airport. Load up the sim and the right airplane is there. How cool would that be? Gregg

Hi, made a little HOLD script for the classic. https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/51057-ixeg-737-classic-hold/ Still a bit rough around the edges, but it works. Teardrops and all. All courses are corrected for wind and magnetic variation, but it has not been tested in very extreme situations. A flight with 80kn wind worked. Things that influence the size (and shape) of the pattern, bank angle, height (TAS!), speed, wind. (TAS influences the turning radius, not IAS) Things that may confuse my program, large changes in aircraft configuration during holding. Its only a little smart. PPOS PPOS is a hold pattern at present position, a simplified version of the PPOS of a Boeing FMS. Enter the desired inbound course, leg lenght, speed and altitude, and click HOLD. The aircraft will enter a holding pattern and will adjust speed and altitude. When the hold is active, you can adjust speed and altitude if needed, the program will anticipate the changes. There is no luxury option like in the real aircraft to enter quadrants and arm an exit. If you are cleared to leave the holding, to have to find the best position to leave the pattern and continue with LNAV / VNAV. The PPOS hold is terminated when you click the button, or when you deselect HDG SEL. The program anticipates wind, but with strong winds the pattern will start to look pear shaped, because turn radius will be influenced by wind. Other factors that will influence the hold pattern are speed and altitude. A speed of about 220kn is quite good for a holding. The bank angle the program uses is 30deg. If you change the bank angle during the hold, the program will adapt. Small bank angles will create a large pattern however. If you choose a inbound course that is very much different from the course the pattern will look a bit odd in the beginning. Best is to choose a course with as much upwind as possible. "HOLDING AT" This will allow you to search for navaid in your area, and use this as the FIX for the holding pattern. If you have the navigraph files (you dont need them for this option), an attempt is made to link a hold record with the navaid you chose. Beware to check the result of your search, especially the distance, this may give an idea if you found the right one. Some searches may find navaids very far from your location. HOLDING AT searches for waypoints,VOR and NDB navaids, near you. When you are satisfied with your choice, click hold, and the aircraft flies to the FIX and enters the pattern according the general rules. This may look a bit strange at first, but its just a teardrop or parallel entry. It can do nice teardrops "FIND HOLDING" This uses the Navigraph data to find a HOLDING, and tries to link this to a waypoint or navaid. This works well in general, especially if you use the Navigraph (moving) maps / charts with it. Otherwise it works as HOLDING AT, some data from HOLD records may be added for you to accept or override. Some holdings you can find by their name, and some by their FIX name. Beware, the searches may find results thousands of miles form your location. And yes, it will try to fly there From the test range:

That's pretty cool. For the record, I am finally back to working in the FMS, including adding the holds. I'm in the process of porting over to the ARINC 424 / XP1100 nav-data format, which should make things go much smoother for holds...accurate routes / entry....just about everything route related. But thanks for this script...it will be a bit before the holds features get distributed! -tkyler

Hi Dan. Thanks for your interest, I'm glad to see the frustrations with control setup are not just me. The plugin is in the Quality Assurance phase at the moment and I still have some research to do with regards to how portable the setup profiles will be. I'm hoping that profiles will be exchangeable between Windows, Mac and Linux clients so that we can setup a library of controller default setups. This will allow a new user to simply select "Saitek Pro Flight Yoke" from the drop down and get flying quickly and easily. This will be in addition to the ability for the user to save as many different profiles as they like for their own setup under whatever name they chose. The profile data is stored in a simple text file that is human editable and, importantly, will not be obliterated by a version upgrade. Hopefully I will have the plugin available for purchase in about a month. I'm thinking somewhere around the $10 mark. I have another unannounced plugin in the works that takes priority so this date might slip a little. Cheers! Ben.

I received a comment on YouTube asking if this gauge is going to be a plugin or whether it is for a "special aircraft".. This gauge will be available as a stand-alone gauge that will work with any aircraft on Mac Windows & Linux! It is possible to integrate it with a 3D Panel if aircraft authors choose to do so. It supports a full suite of "command strings" for all the buttons so that the Bezel buttons can be mapped using either Generic Buttons or Manipulators. In some cases, aircraft with heavily customized 3D cockpits that have not been designed to integrate with the ST3400 will need to use the gauge in "Pop up" mode for optimal usage. The popup toggle is also activated with a "command string" so that it may be activated using either a joystick button, keyboard hotkey or generic-panel-button. So in summary; - Will work without mods on most 2D panels, drawing over the top of any existing gauges. - Will work on some 3D panels with no mods. - Will require integration with high-level 3D panels that use 3D instrument bezels, eg: the Mu2. - Will always work in Pop-up mode independently of the panel instruments regardless of the aircraft.

Hey Nils, thanks for the comments. It's a fun toy to play with - I think it will be awesome once it gets some momentum. I haven't investigated the Hard-Object issue at all... I'm really not sure, I suspect they aren't available. I might tie the bullet physics lib into this one day... that opens up -lots- of fun options. For now though I just wanted to show off the core technology. Due to the nature of this product I'll be releasing a public beta as soon as possible for people to play around with. The content will take a while to grow but it's kinda fun to make 'in sim'. Lots of instant gratification. Good to see you over here.. hope you like what you see. Ben.

That's where bullet comes in, it can compute all the object collision stuff, then I just push the ground data into x-plane.. very handy. The tricky part is the different world scales, bullet doesn't like an environment the size of X-Planes so you have to come up with some fancy code to keep switching the active object contexts around without hitting performance too hard. Bullet suggests a 10 kilometer box in its sample code. It's a bit of a combination of both. Eventually, it will be capable of pulling down OBJ+Image files off the server as well as placement data. To begin with I plan on leveraging OpenScenery X - a lot of people have it installed and by referencing it's object paths we can begin to populate the world. I do not have permission to redistribute the OpenScenery X library so people will have to pre-install that to see it. I don't think that'll be too much bother though, it's already got enough momentum. It'll definitely get interesting as time progresses. One of the things I can see in my mind is an iterative build up of the world. Normally when working on a scenery package you need to finish all your objects and then work out the placements and then package it all up and push it out the door. With flux I can see a workflow where you can knock out a rough version of a given building, upload it to the flux server, place it in the world, then work on the building for another week or whatever, uploading better content as you go, replacing the mesh of the first version you placed but keeping the location data. This way the world will be more alive, each time a user flies through a given area they will see the buildings being improved on. I want to get the ST3400 out first, then probably X-Joystick 'cause it's closer to completion and then flux some time down the line.

Thanks for investigating the FF stuff guys... I only have the rumble packs in my XBox pads to test with. *laughs* ..one less thing to think about.

He's on his last chance. We all want this place to be open and friendly but I have to draw the line somewhere.

..I made him a special group, if anyone can think of a better group name let me know.

...and so it is.

Go back to your "Rafael Fernandez" account and make something, anything, with your own blood, sweat and tears. Hiding under another name is easy and not worthy of respect. Standing up and wearing the shit you've attracted with your behavior is far more admirable. Yes, you've got some work to do to restore your reputation but it's not beyond repair. If you want to play pull-aparts with other peoples stuff that's fine too, just make sure you label it clearly, like you have above. (Though, personally, I'd tag the image in BOLD with something like: "Learning to texture, FUSE IS XPFW WORK.", not a side note of "PS") Attribution is something you're going to learn a lot about in the next few years as you progress through high school and if you're lucky, college. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, we owe a lot to those that have walked before us, just remember to give credit where it's due. Respect is earned, not given. ...maybe this will help: http://www.darkscarab.com/tutorials/blender/car001.php It could be worse:

Give yourself a chance Raf.. I can only show you the path, it's up to you to walk it. "Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy" -Theodore Roosevelt (paraphrased)

...that's why I call it PAIN-maker... people that say blender is non-intuitive and hard to learn need a good dose of PM. ;D

Nice plane... dunno about those Yokes though... but then I don't like any yokes. :

..I like pizza. ;D

Cameron was banned at x-plane.org because he questioned how often Nicolas flies the simulator after Nicolas had posted a series of screenshots featuring an aircraft over water. It's disturbingly easy to get banned, black listed, suspended or censored over there, which was a large part of the motivation for providing a new playground so that we can all sit around and enjoy threads like these. Indeed, I would go so far to say that, had you, Dave, started this thread at the org, when R.S. was a contributing advertiser, you may have found yourself black listed, banned, warned, etc. and the thread would likely have been deleted. As an ex moderator there, resigned of my own accord, I can say that I have seen people reprimanded for absolutely absurd things. As for your review, I am puzzled by the cling wrap effect... it's definitely rather glaring. As I own modest hardware I haven't tried any of the scenery, so I can't make any comparison, but it is certainly of some concern. I was going to suggest that it may be Gamma settings... but then the FS scenery you compared to is definitely designed for PC's and doesn't suffer from the same effect. The other item that I noticed is that in your review you do a comparison of an airfield (Tillamook) pre and post some processing you applied yourself to enhance detail. ( http://tinyurl.com/n6b77f ) This seems an odd choice of images to do detail enhancement with as the majority of the enhanced detail that you're pointing out will be filled in by x-plane anyway when it renders it's own airfield representation... I think an urban area with a similar level of "line detail" would've made a better choice. ... popcorn, beer, anyone?

Free Language choices: - C/C++ - Delphi/Free (Obj) Pascal - Python, with a third party plugin. (Sandy Barbour's) This is a great choice for learning/prototyping but users sometimes have trouble installing it properly. - One or two others. I'm very close to completing my Lua scripting plugin which is designed to make a lot of common plugin tasks very easy. I also have a .NET bindings plugin that I aim to finish one day. See the SDK site for more information: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/Main_Page The SDK is powerful and pretty easy to work with once you grasp the concepts. There are always lateral thinking exercises to do to achieve what you really want though. Tools: Anything that can build a normal C-style .dll, .so, bundle or dylib. The gcc toolchain works nicely on all three platforms. Visual Basic 6 is out. As are all the .NET "Assembly style" .dlls, without a wrapper. OpenGL for drawing. There's no audio SDK calls so it's kinda roll-your-own, most people use OpenAL or Direct-Sound depending on how much compatability they want. Plugins for aircraft can range from the mundane to the very complex. Hope that helps somewhat.

Sweet!

Quick Q: ... is 256 custom sound slots going to be enough?

...well I've been stretching the scripting engines legs by creating a test gauge with it. The gauge uses up 13 sample slots for aural warnings alone. I think 256 slots might NOT be enough. *laughs* This is "possible sound samples loaded and ready for use", NOT "voices playing at the same time". Most sound cards have a limit of about 32 hardware voices, high end cards have 128, software has no real cap, but you start chewing up CPU time. As for positional audio, we're definitely going to need that for things like subtle engine sounds as well as being able to move away from being in the cockpit and listening to the sounds go "past" with the air frame. Dataref triggers: This isn't like OBJ animations where you bind a sound to a specific dataref 1:1. This is a free-form scripting language with full logic/loop capabilities. It offers much more than simple dataref bindings.

I've been working hard to bring a Sandel ST3400 TAWS unit to X-Plane. Here's an Alpha Preview video. This gauge will be feature complete. If you'd like to see more info on the real unit, check it out HERE.

Everything is on permanent, possibly terminal hold while I sort out living arrangements and a new abode. Very likely involving a new job, a new city and other exciting adventures. Whether X-Plane factors into it at all is yet to be determined. It's been fun.

I have banned 'mickthebike'. - User is a continual spoon-feeder. Shows no initiative. - User never says thank you. - User never contributes anything of value back to community. - User is arrogant yet aware of laziness and continual reluctance to read the manuals to learn how to use the tools at hand. It is my opinion that the user contributes nothing of value to the community while contributing much annoyance. Goodbye.

That works with some versions of windows but not all, indeed, I started out that way, but then when using Win7 and 64 bit flavours of Windows, things didn't work. The old tried and true rules of where DLL's can live have changed in subtle ways and I have worked hard to provide the easiest solution for everyone. Additionally, there are step by step instructions and single file links on my Wiki for those that don't like installers. I'm sorry that there's an initial bump to getting Gizmo installed but that's what happens with something that introduces so much more to the sim. We've only barely scratched the surface with what we can do with it, I hope to show you a lot more in the coming weeks.

I have modified the DRM license server so that it will recognize machines that have registered before. If you lose your license key or need to re-install a DRM locked product for some reason, you should be able to get your old key back without the need to contact X-Aviation. If your machine configuration has changed significantly the 'fingerprint' we generate will probably change and the machine won't be recognized. If this is the case, contact X-Aviation support and we will look at it on a case by case basis. We're working towards allowing you, the customer, to manage a pool of machines with a reasonable level of freedom and flexibility. Apologies to anyone who's had to put up with any teething issues.

...thanks for the feedback, im not real sure why it does that, maybe the self check is smarter than I thought. Would it be too much to ask to get you to take this up with the author of XFSE directly? I have way to much on my plate and the new code is pretty clearly commented where and why it's been changed. Code mods are released as BSD license (free to use, however you like..) or whatever suits the XFSE license better.

Modifying the ACF package data for a string that -only- XFSE needs is horrible. In any form. If anything, XFSE should share a new dataref that we can write to if we want to.

Both of those fields contribute valuable Copyright information to the package. It was an old trick to download someone else version 7 ACF, change the textures, change those two fields and re-upload claiming it as your own. These fields only increases in importance with payware. When you buy a product you expect quality support. If "the customer" modifies the product and somehow forgets about it and then starts reporting bugs it's frustrating for everyone. (Opening a 9.5 acf in Plane Maker 9.4 'just to change that field' could potentially lead to issues... who knows. History says it's safer to assume yes.) Our plugins work nicely with our products and they ensure quality support by clearly identifying a factory-sealed product. I've gone out of my way to extend a 3rd party plugin so that it can co-exist more easily with everyone's aircraft, everywhere, right out of the .zip. If the patch is adapated, in the near future, you can look forward to almost never having to tweak that field ever again. You're welcome.

Minimum license duration is 1 second. There are lots of options, I've tried to build a system that suits everyone. Programmers hate DRM to you know, perhaps more than most, it's not easy to write and it's utter hell to debug. This DRM system wasn't built by suits who don't care.

...been doing too many hours lately, sorry for the grouchiness. It's quiet because they're busy.

...I still say the gear needs more detail.

Selling Googleware isn't a very good business model.

: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/948813/lowi%20glider%20cross.mov ;D (Sorry for the poor quality...)

Installed please.

I don't think it'll hurt your FPS.... that's kinda the problem, the average yoke has more polys. :/ Heinz can do a lot better.

...he's actually just trolling airliners for photos and pixelating them a bit so they look photoshopped.

there's 4,000+ datarefs to audit. we're in a growing phase for x-plane where it is moving into a phase where plugins almost didnt exist to where they're basically required to do anything interesting. quirks like this are to be expected, its good to raise them, but its best to do it in a way that doesnt point any fingers to angrily.

They're probably using the much over-hyped "JERA" "technique". Basically they use a small rocket engine to work around the sound limitations of X-Plane and they make a huge fuss over it, with special labels and custom acronyms, ultimately its just a bullshit hack, if we labelled every tech-work-around we use to get stuff done we'd end up with product names six miles long.

This version of XFSE has been patched to allow use of a file called xfse_alias.txt instead of modifying the ACF description. Create a text file "next to" your .ACF file, fill the text file with exactly the same information you would normally put in the ACF description. Done. If there is no alias file the XFSE script will fallback to the old behavior and load the description data from the ACF. I have disabled the XFSE 'in-sim' updates so that you don't accidently over-write the patched version. I do not have the Python plugin installed and I have no idea how to thoroughly test FSEconomy so I have not tested this in sim but I have double checked it for bugs and hope that it will work as intended. If someone can please test this out and let me know if it works we can look at getting the changes accepted into the main plugin version. Thanks! PI_xfse.py

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus

What's in your computer? ......Abacus beads. As in: My old G5 is so slow that I might as well just do the calculations by hand, with an abacus. Now for the dry and technical version: Dual G5 2.7gzh, 2gigs ram. 256mb ATI 9650 Etcha-Sketch.

ha. I get about 30 fps with everything off And I do mean -everything-. I fly from water world. No clouds. 12nm vis. No shaders. No AA. No Anisotropic. All detail sliders on low. I think the only thing I don't turn down is the texture detail, but it sure isn't what I'd call pretty. Being able to see through UV map bleeding is the norm. The 2.7ghz G5 is probably the worst machine Apple ever produced, it's slower than the 2.5ghz model due to bus contention issues (it runs a bit too fast, everything else has to wait, queueing gets messy.) It's liquid cooled, and leaked. The replacement model has a fan system so loud that I have taken half of the fans out and it's still louder than the original G5 I bought. (It came with a delphi cooler, which are known to leak, it now has a panasonic cooler and a different fan speed driver.) On the upside, it means that any add ons I touch are FPS sensitive and you guys get a better experience for it. The Gizmo leak is somewhat of an exception because it's time dependent, because my sim experience is so bland I don't think I've ever flown around for more than about half an hour at a time.

Greg Hofer (Classic Jet Sims)already has a very well rounded out product that has been developed in conjunction with mil forces, either Canadian or USN, not sure. Either way, it's a class A product. It may be Windows Only though. I can't speak for Javier, he will do what he likes, but given that Classic Jet Sims model is both visually and systems accurate, it would seem rather pointless to do a cheap copy of it.

...Mid7night's got a payware A-4 in the works, dunno what the diff is with the K, perhaps, within the confines of X-Plane, the difference is a bit of fuel and a .obj?

...he was joking.

...that's just evil.

Captain. Please accept my apologies. The version of Gizmo as shipped -does- cause issues. This has been acknowledge elsewhere, it's an OpenAL thing. As author of Gizmo, my recommended course of action for now is to simple disable Gizmo by renaming or moving the Gizmo.plugin folder after your registration has been completed. There will be a new verison of Gizmo shipped soon that has resolved the sound and performance issues. It has been heavily debugged and tuned for use at Oshkosh and is currently getting hammered every day. Trial by the hottest of fires. Sorry for the hassle. I hope to release some updates soon that will make up for any bad impressions Gizmo has made on people.

...a fix will be out soon, I'm just trying to get the particle systems to work nicely.