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Captains, In the days since release of the Hot Start Challenger 650 there have been concerns that Gizmo and even the Challenger 650 plugins were causing a major performance impact. We went investigating this, and even got Laminar Research involved to understand what was happening under the hood of X-Plane to try and sort this out. As it turns out, Gizmo is NOT the source of problems, and neither is the 650 plugin; not directly, anyhow. What's happening is somewhat complicated, but I'll do my best to be descriptive, yet brief. X-Plane is programmed to use up all of your CPU cores in order to try and attain higher frame rates. In doing so, there's some major texture paging going on. The problem here is that it leaves almost no room for the Challenger to get its CPU operations done in the process, and mixed with a ton of texture paging, everything goes bust and tasks get stuck in a queue where X-Plane drastically slows down, things pause/stutter, and the experience becomes abysmal. If you happen to have your Plugin Manager open in X-Plane while this happens it will present itself as if Gizmo or the Challenger are using up an insane amount of performance, but this is actually just a mean trick when looking at it from a user perspective. X-Plane slows down so much that it LOOKS like our plugins are to blame as their tasks are not yet performed while X-Plane does other things. Before I go further, I should note, this is NOT applicable to everyone! Most customers here seem to have a great CPU/GPU combination that can handle all of this, but if you're one of the people on the struggling end of the spectrum, you'll want to keep reading this post! Version 1.1.0 of the Challenger 650 introduces a new installer that has a selection for GPUs with more or less than 6GB so we can best optimize your install for you. This will help with some of the VRAM/texture paging operations. That said, there's still more to the puzzle. Because X-Plane is using all the cores/threads on your CPU, it is not saving "room" for the Challenger 650 to do its operations efficiently and the CPU becomes oversubscribed. Laminar Research is likely to fix this issue for developers at a later date after X-Plane 12, so in the meantime we have a workaround to use that Laminar has sanctioned to give out to those affected. If you are affected by this issue, please do the following (this is for Windows users, as the issue seems most prevalent with Vulkan): 1. First, find X-Plane's application and create a shortcut so that we can create parameters. Right click on X-Plane > New > Shortcut 2. Right-click on your shortcut, and select Properties on its contextual menu to open the shortcut's Properties window. 3. The shortcut's Properties window is the place where you can add command-line parameters for that shortcut. Select the Shortcut tab and look for the Target field. 4. You will see a place that has the path to X-Plane labelled Target. X-Plane's path will be in quotes. At the end of the quotes, make sure there is a space after the quotes, then type/paste: --num_workers=n <==Replace the red 'n' with two less CPU cores/threads than your CPU has. As an example, if you have a 6 physical core + 6 virtual core CPU (known as Hyper-threading for Intel, SMT for AMD) for a total of 12 threads, you should put the number 10 in place of the red 'n'. Also be sure you have the TWO hyphens/dashes in front of 'num_workers'! 5. You can now rename this shortcut to something like Challenger 650 if you like. That way you can just click this one when you know you'll be flying the Challenger. If you are unsure how many CPU cores/threads your CPU has, go into your About Computer setting and Google your CPU model number to find out. Be sure to use the total number with Hyper-threading/SMT as your starting point! We know this is a bit unorthodox, but we're doing our best to make whatever solutions we can for as many people as possible. Hopefully this makes your flying more enjoyable!

Hi guys, had our pilots take this little video on the aircraft VID-20220510-WA0004.mp4

Thank you for keeping us updated! Really looking forward to this model!

Quick report. I'm moving things back oh so slightly. At this point, I'm updating the docs and working on the sound engineering. The sound is the long straw here, FMOD is a bit new to me and quite intimidating for first timers and taking a bit more time than I hoped to get up to speed..... and I'm quite picky about sound. I am still working on it daily and safe to say that when the sound is done, we'll get it out. I won't say when, but I myself will be quite disappointed if its more than 3 weeks. -tkyler

How about a time line(if possible) and an upgrade price from v1.9(if possible)? The reason I ask is because this plane has really piqued my interest in the MU-2 again and I'm not sure I can wait for v2, I might just buy V1.9 the pay for the upgrade later, depending on the timeline and upgrade price. If it's days I might be able to wait, if it's months there is no way I'm waiting.....

You're welcome. For anybody else wondering what is actually being discussed here, it's the flightplan equipment codes that indicate the aircraft navigation and communication capabilities. M-SBDE1E2E3FGHIJ1J4J5J7M3RWXYZ/LB1V1D1 M Medium Wake Vortex Category S Standard Com / Nav Equipment B LPV SBAS D DME E1 FMC WPR ACARS E2 D-FIS ACARS E3 PDC ACARS F ADF G GNSS H HF Radio I Inertial Navigation J1 CPDLC ATM VDL Mode 2 J4 PDLC FANS 1/A Mode 2 J5 CPDLC FANS 1/A Inmarsat J7 CPDLC FANS 1/A Iridium M3 ATC RTF Iridium (Aircraft Number on FPL) R PBN Approved W RVSM Approved X MNPS Approved Y VHF 8.33 Channel Spacing Z Other Equipment L Mode S Transponder with ES B1 ADS-B Out via 1090 ES V1 ADS-B Out via VDL Mode 4 D1 ADS-C with FANS 1/A PBN/A1L1B1C1D1O1S2T1 A1 RNAV 10 (RNP 10) L1 RNP 4 B1 RNAV 5 all permitted sensors C1 RNAV 2 all permitted sensors D1 RNAV 1 all permitted sensors O1 Basic RNP 1 all permitted sensors S2 RNP APCH with BARO-VNAV T1 RNP AR APCH with RF (special authorization required) DAT/1FANSER2PDC 1: FANSER Primary: CPDLC-DCL and en route clearances. 2: PDC Secondary (will be used if primary is not available) SUR/260B Compliance with RTCA DO-260B (Minimum Operational Performance Standards for 1090 MHz Extended Squitter ADS-B and TIS-B RSP180 Aircraft is authorized for Required Surveillance Performance RSP180

On a recent flight on our company CL650 I noted a small difference with our Hotstart CL650: the levers are silver rather than black. Apparently the 605 was black, but the 650 is silver. Can someone confirm this? Maybe Rich?