Sigmoid

That's weird, given that X-Plane kind of started out as (and still seen as) "the Mac flight simulator". What exactly is the problem with nVidia drivers? Is it still a problem? Are you a Mac user speaking from experience, or is it just hearsay? The search I did on the web came up with two year old problems saying that Lion came with defective drivers. It's been quite long since then, and I didn't see a single 2013 article about nVidia driver fault on Macs.

Haha. Well there is clearly truth in that, but I have used the noble XBox controller in FlightGear for some time now, and it was quite adequate. Anyway, it seems the Controllermate app solved my troubles. Maybe I'll get a proper flightstick later if I feel the need... XD

That's trivial, you want to subtract one from the other. Anyway, I figured that it might need a plugin, that's why I asked about disabling the "auto-rudder" function from a plugin. As an alternative, maybe I can do the merging at an OS level via an app I found (Controllermate) though.

Thanks, I read up on the plugins, and it seems that I can assign values to primary flight controls from a plugin. The triggers on the XBox 360 aren't "clicky" buttons, they are axes. (Like pedals for your fingers.) One axis is the right one, another is the left one. I guess I could read them from a plugin, and adjust the yaw of the aircraft. There is one thing I'm interested in though. According to the X-Plane documentation, if I don't assign a yaw axis, it will be auto-stabilized. Now to control yaw from a plugin, I need to leave it unassigned in the joystick setup dialog. Won't there be a "conflict"? Or does the plugin need to turn off auto-stabilization somehow? I didn't find much about this.

That was a quite interesting read, thanks! Though I'm more interested in the 3d structures (ie. roads and buildings), which weren't discussed too much. I've had a look around the downloadables and payware stuff, and my "chinese department store" feeling didn't abate much. A lot of it seems not only not worth the price, but actually inferior to the stock scenery. I wonder if there are any packages of autogen assets (road models, buildings, town blocks, trees, etc.) for various non-US localities, like African villages and Chinese slums. I didn't see any of those. What I did see a lot of was re-texturing the default green grass into, well, either actual satellite imagery, or random satellite imagery tiles, basically making the whole thing uglier than FlightGear (and that's pretty ugly). It goes pretty much against the very idea of how the XP10 scenery system was designed, doesn't it now? When I first saw the clean "model railroad diorama" look of XPlane 10, I thought "oh my god, this is definitely the future". Sure, it may look like a diorama instead of an actual city, but at least it doesn't look like something created by an insane patchwork artist, which pretty much all other flightsims look like. Paying money to go "back to the past" seems rather silly.

Geh... I just did a quick search, and it seems that the GPU in my 2009 iMac is 3 times faster than the one in the most expensive current Mac Mini. And the vastly superior, almost fully maxed out new iMac is just $200 more expensive than a maxed out mini + a thunderbolt display. So I might think twice about getting one of those. Anyway, I'm still curious if it would work at all. Intel HD 4000 seems like a pretty sad piece of hardware.

So the stock terrain is based on OSM? BTW, how does autogen work, is it pre-generated, or on-demand in runtime, placing building models as needed by the map? (Eg. if someone were to come up with an Africa autogen algorithm and models, then is it just "plugged into" the X-Plane autogenerator, or is it a replacement for the actual pregenerated scenery?) What do you mean night textures? Like skyscrapers with windows lit etc.?

When I watched the interview with Austin Meyer on youtube, I was a bit taken aback that he said that "this is a computer with only 1 cpu, WITH SIX CORES", and I was like OMFG. XD Currently I have an OLD iMac with a dual-core CPU, so it's no reference whatsoever, but I'm thinking of buying a new Mac Mini, one with a quad-core CPU and lots of RAM. So I wonder if anyone is using X-Plane on those. They have Intel HD Graphics 4000, which, honestly, sounds like bad news. Is XPlane runnable on such a config in any decent quality and FPS rate?

Well to be honest, I've never been part of the FSX world, and this level of extensibility and ecosystem is quite surprising to me at this point, and it feels a bit like wandering into a department store in China as a westerner. (...I think you might only get that one if you've ever wandered into a department store in China as a westerner, but... XD) So I'm wondering what exactly is the state and quality of the STOCK stuff in X-Plane 10, all the bagful of DVDs of it. What I've seen of the stock scenery on youtube seemed kind of awesome compared to anything else I've seen on the market or in Free Software. Still most discussion is about, and most show-off vids on youtube are chock full of payware and freeware add-ons. So I wonder how the stock scenery compares in a world of payware scenery, free OSM-based scenery generators, super-high-quality scenery improvers, etc. Also, what about the stock aircraft? I heard that in XPlane 9, the stock Cessna was so bad it hurt. Do they live up to any standard, or does one usually start by buying or downloading "proper" aircraft models?

Hi all, I have been using FlightGear for my flightsim needs so far, which is fine in its own right, but I'm thinking of buying X-Plane 10, partly because it seems totally awesome, and partly because I want to support Laminar Research. (I already did donate some money to the Uniloc defense. Being a software engineer, I have a soft spot for people creating great stuff.) Anyway, before I buy, I'd like to make sure that this sim is right for me. One thing is, the only joystick-like input peripheral I own is an XBox 360 controller, and that isn't likely to change unless/until I start training for a real pilot's licence. Now the XBox controller is great in its own right, but definitely not something designed for flight sims. In FlightGear, I was able to circumvent most of its shortcomings though, and I wonder if X-Plane also offers me a point of extensibility where I can modify/define joystick input in a script language. What I need to do is: Transform analog stick axes into a paraboloid shape (effective value := sgn(input) * input^2)Merge the two analog triggers into a single rudder axis (rudder := (rightTrigger - leftTrigger)/2)Generally be able to implement quickly whatever insanity or hack I come up with.