daemotron

The stock A330 has a few inaccuracies concerning the autoflight system. If set up correctly, the FCU should show "dash dot dash dot (alt) dot dash" pushing the speed, hdg and alt knob should engage the managed mode (dash dot), pulling the knob should engage op mode (number is shown and can be dialed up/down by turning the respective knob). This should also affect the flight mode annunciations on the PFD (e.g. CLB if alt knob is pushed in, OP CLB if alt knob is pulled and aircraft is in the climb phase). The PFD flight mode annunciations should indicate the status of autoflight modes: blue = armed, green = active, white = status indication, amber = advisory indication. The green light on the autothrust only shows that the system is armed - if the PFD mode annunciator already shows a green "speed", toggle the button off and on to reset the system. It should now show A/THR in blue in the upper right corner of the PFD. When advancing the throttle levers to the FLX (or TOGA) position, the autothrust system will (or at least should) engage. The armed mode should be either MAN TOGA or MAN FLX once the MCDU is loaded completely. Important note: the autothrust system requires the FMGC to provide speed data for the managed speed mode. This doesn't work with the Collins FMS in 12.04 and earlier.

It might depend on the aircraft type and expected flight duration / routing / weather conditions. One famous case where an aircraft was dispatched with an INOP autopilot (assigned to MEL) was ValuJet Flight 592 (the NTSB report states this in section 1.6.6). Generally the autopilot is not considered as critical system - the EASA e.g. classifies it as category D item (shall be fixed within 120 days), however with these annotations: So it's legal to fly with an INOP autopilot - not just when it fails in flight, but it's also legal to start a flight with the AP assigned to MEL. However, I cannot imagine airlines leave autopilots unfixed on long haul aircraft for several months, since it would limit the flight duration or require additional crew members.

Your comment regarding the manual is spot on - I looked at it and decided to not buy the aircraft. I don't have issues with online manuals, but there are tools to structure and organize them properly (e.g. Asciidoctor or Sphinx). Just compare it to the TOGA MU-2B manual (https://www.togasim.com/mu2docs/) which has been created with Sphinx.

In the past few winter months I made a trip from Rotenburg/Wümme (EDXQ) in northern Germany up to Lakselv Airport (ENNA) in northern Norway, mainly to experience the representation of winter in X-Plane 12. I chose the DA42 for this trip - reasonably fast, easy to fly, and - most importantly - equipped with a fluid deicing system. Oh, and available for XP12 at the time I started the trip... I flew with real weather (or what XP thinks is real), which gave me quite a few unpleasant days with low visibility, strong winds and permanent risk of icing up. I also tested the new ATC on this trip, flying most legs just VFR with flight following, and a few with an IFR plan. Overall a large improvement over XP11's ATC, but still a bit stubborn in some cases. The winter wonderland in the screenshot above btw. is fake - for one of the legs, I set the weather to manual and activated snowy runways. This was the only time I saw snow on the ground, although in reality northern Norway was covered with at least two feet of snow at the time I was flying there. My starting point, EDXQ, is approximately on the same latitude (N53°) as Goose Bay (CYYR) in Labrador, Canada, and ENNA is about as far up north (N70°) as Deadhorse (PASC) in northern Alaska.

Saba (TNCS, on a neighboring island to St Barths) is infamous for its incredibly short runway, ending at a steep cliff. Courchevel (LFLJ) in the French Alps has a short, strongly sloped runway. Sitting at more than 6,500 ft MSL means the air is getting pretty thin for normally aspirated engines... Barra Airport (EGPR) on the Outer Hebrides doesn't even have a runway - aircraft just land on and depart from the tidal beach (luckily or unfortunately X-Plane doesn't simulate tides). The airport in Nepal Rick310 mentions is the Tenzing Hillary Airport (VNLK) at Lukla, Nepal. The airport is the starting point for treks towards Mount Everest Base Camp. Sitting at a whopping 9,337 ft MSL, the runway is short, sloped, and can only be used from one side (the other side is blocked by the mountain, so going around is not an option there).

Personally I don't like the term "study-level", and I'm highly suspicious of developers actually using it to advertise their product. My rationale: the term can mean anything - and nothing. Does "study-level" mean you have to study a manual before you can use the aircraft model? Or does it mean you can study a real POH and apply anything you read in there to the model? Or does it mean you can use the model for studying how to fly the real thing? My personal expectation would be the second definition - number one's just goofy (build some stupid quirks into your aircraft the pilot has to read up in the manual - doesn't say anything about realism IMO). Number three is illegal, at least under EASA regime - you can't use a home simulator for real flight training. Certified simulators, yes - but I doubt the majority of consumer-level payware aircraft would qualify for a certification (since we're talking about "study-level" aircraft, the applicable purpose would be a type rating training). I prefer when developers are just straight about the level of realism and the features they built into their product. In most cases I won't be able to verify claims regarding realism, since I don't have access to real world aircraft represented by the majority of add-ons available (there are a few exceptions). I do flight simming for my entertainment, not to become proficient with a certain aircraft type. I do like studying manuals and dealing with quirky aircraft systems, but let's be realistic about this - I don't know anyone who'd be able to study a dozen of different aircraft types with the same depth required for a type rating, and keep all this stuff in mind. When I look at the aircraft models most appealing to me, then I'd say what makes them attractive is a mix of deep simulation, paired with certain game elements and some helpers to get around the limitation of being just one person without tactile access to cockpit elements. Let's take a look at a few of my favorites: The HotStart Challenger 650 offers really deep systems, as well as some great game elements (HotStart FBO with all the bells and whistles, walk-around including manipulating covers and stuff on the outside of the aircraft), but also incorporates further elements to enhance immersion (particularly the play of cockpit and instrument lights vs. outside brightness comes to mind). Truth being told, I don't believe I explored more than 10-15% of its systems yet - I mostly fly from A to B, without going into the wash of failing systems. The MU-2B is a completely different beast - game elements do exist, but are pretty minimalist (chocks, covers can be toggled from the menu). In return, the aircraft is quickly set up and ready for departure. The Moo isn't the most complex aircraft when it comes to systems and avionics, but what it has, is really well modeled in the TOGA rendition. Including its tendency to kill unheeding pilots Also I appreciate the different cockpit options the Moo offers. Among airliners, I'm currently not too happy with what's currently available for X-Plane - the ini A300/A310 were pretty good in my books. They weren't complete (like the Challenger), instead they focused only on stuff that would be used by pilots in daily A to B flying, and offered some nice game elements. Sufficient for my purpose, particularly since what they implemented, was pretty much correct. I did use the real FCOM to operate it, but does that make it "study level"? The IXEG 733 has the potential to take that position, but would need to catch up with certain aspects. Currently the place is taken by the Q4XP and Rotate's MD-11 - both not study-level in any sense, but complex enough to highlight the unique quirks each of them has in store for its drivers. The vintage airliner section has some better coverage - I'd count the Felis 742 and the upcoming LES DC-3 among the really good vintage aircraft (I can't judge how close they are to the original, so that's just by gut feeling). And finally, small GA aircraft - that's where I have the most difficulty with the term "study-level". Most of them come with pretty boring avionics (like in real life) - yes, the G1000 is a useful device; once understood it takes away one obstacle to switch from one aircraft to another. Great. So how to make a piston ASEL "study-level"? I see two trends there - some developers come up with unique and interesting avionics (like the Torquesim Entegra v8, or the Thranda DGS cockpit). Others try their hand at replacing Austin's recip engine model. While I do see value in the first path, I haven't understood yet the value of a "custom" engine model (except if you're an aircraft engineer). From a pilot's perspective, it all comes down that you will face terrible difficulties in starting those engines (because they're scripted to be like that). I appreciate if things like engine flooding, vapor locks and spark plug fouling are implemented and affect the engine and its performance output, but having a script make you run the boost pump for an exact number of seconds with the throttle in exact one specific position (so the script ticks off the "engine is primed" box) doesn't have anything to do with "study level" in my book. That being said, I'd still count the Torquesim SR22 Entegra among the best GA aircraft available for X-Plane, since it still ticks a lot of boxes - unique avionics, anti-icing equipment and convincing visual effects, paired with some game elements (tie-downs, covers and blankets) still make it a good package, despite of the stupid engine start thing. Its closest challengers are IMO the LES Sundowner (big plus: the engine...) and the different Pipers from vFlyteAir.

That information is a bit hidden - in fact the last update from Tom can be found over in the IXEG subforum. Quick summary - he's working on the 733 right now, and will return once the 733 update for XP12 is out of the door. Recent information indicate that this is no quick work though, so it might well take a couple of months before the Moo gets its XP12 update.

Funny, I never had issues with CTDs (apart from those caused by third-party addons, or by segfaults I built into my own plugins ) since the first early access version of XP12. I was expecting a far worse experience in early access, but found that (vanilla) XP12 was pretty solid right from the beginning on. After 12.00 became final, I stopped hopping onto the betas though, since I need a halfway stable platform for my purposes. What I will never get: people are disappointed to experience crashes when they run add-ons explicitly marked as experimental (e.g. Zibo for XP12), and then blame the platform for the experienced issues. If you want a stable experience with XP12, then restrict your flying to aircraft which are marked final by their developers. If your favorite aircraft isn't yet out of beta for XP12, stick with XP11.

I can fully understand developers being careful about releasing their upgrades now. XP12 is a great experience, but Laminar isn't really done yet with tuning and adjusting things. With Zink they even introduced a major change that was probably planned for 12.0 originally, but got delayed for whatever reasons. It has been the same with XP11; the first few post-release updates (iirc up to 11.10) were breaking add-ons over and over again. There is one more pending big change I see coming, and that will be addressing VR support (probably entailing changes to parts of the SDK). If that one's rolled out, things might settle down a bit (Laminar adjusting & improving things like VRAM management or AA won't break add-on aircraft).

X-Crafts is still developing for v11 - their upcoming E-Jets v2 address both simulators. But that's it as far as I'm aware - LES dropped plans for an XP11 version of the DC-3 v2 only recently - cf. this post: TorqueSim has two new aircraft in the pipeline (Citation and Mooney), but I guess they'll be XP12 only (iirc no official statement exists on that subject though, so I might be wrong). Aerobask dropped XP11 as platform for new products (notably the 8x) already last year. The COWS DA42 is XP12 only as well, the same applies for the other new developments I'm aware of. Other developers were caught off guard by XP12 (still not sure how they managed to miss this, but...) - FSS e.g. had a Cessna 421C in the making for X-Plane 11, but the project seems to have vanished.

Martyn from JF has posted about the order in which they're tackling the conversion. The three that just got released were the first batch. The next batch of three are going to be the PA28 Archer III, the Archer TX/LX and the Duchess 76 (I know you're waiting for the Arrow - the race is on, who'll be first to bring theirs to XP12: JF or vFlyteAir...?). In the same statement he also wrote they're saving the most complex aircraft for later, when they have learned about possible pitfalls and issues from the simpler ones.

I'd say it very much depends on the depth developers are aiming for. XP already has anti-icing on board. The easiest thing to do is bind a key for the various anti-icing commands. The easiest thing developers can do is installing switches in the cockpit and tie them to these default commands. These default commands can keep icing at bay, but do not necessarily represent a specific system, so the deicing capabilities will deviate from a specific real system.

Yay, IXEG 744 confirmed

I have no issue with paying an upgrade fee, given how long this product has been around. That being said, I'm sceptical when looking at the development roadmap. The items listed for the initial release don't convince me the 733 will become once more as relevant to me as it used to be back in XP10. The things I'm really looking forward to (FMS improvements, freighter version) remain vague. Throughout the XP11 cycle, IXEG hasn't exactly demonstrated a great capacity to perform incremental development. They now have that chance. If IXEG actually delivers what I'm looking for, I'll buy the upgrade.

Here fluid-based systems are still known by the TKS acronym, which stands for Tecalemit-Kilfrost-Sheepbridge Stokes - a British aerospace company which developed the first fluid based anti-icing system during WWII. It's possible to install FIKI certified fluid systems (larger fluid tanks and redundant pumps are among the requirements), but those are rather rare.

There are a couple of aircraft with TKS systems implemented. Here on XA it's the SR22 that comes with a functioning TKS system. The Diamond fleet (by Aerobask) also has TKS. Others have attempted to implement something, but not too the greatest effect (but hard to judge right now while XP12 still exaggerates when it comes to icing). Most GA aircraft with TKS though are not FIKI certified, so these systems are intended to allow escaping icing conditions encountered unexpectedly. For Arctic operations, TKS isn't sufficient anyway. Even boots have a limited effect. Heatable leading edges are effective, but hardly available for smaller aircraft.

Aircraft for XP12 slowly start to appear here and there. Some developers who stay close to vanilla X-Plane features (i.e. aircraft purely built with PlaneMaker and not or hardly using plugins, e.g. VSKYLABS) are mostly done converting their fleet. Light turboprops are a bit thin at the moment - only Thranda's Caravan so far, no PC-12, no King Air - but HotStart is working on their TBM, and TOGA will port the Mu-2 v2 in the months to come. Not sure about any King Air, AFL might upgrade theirs, but no official communication as of yet. Aerobask is (mostly) done converting their fleet (all Diamonds, but also their experimental jets and the Phenom). Indeed it's a bit odd we see airliners of all sizes being ported, even the HS Challenger (maybe one of the most complex aircraft models ever built for XP, potentially any sim) has been ported, while there's hardly any GA (piston or light turboprop) available yet (Aerobask being the exception). Quite a few are in the pipeline - TS is working on their Cirrus aircraft and the Islander, and vFlyteAir has the Twin Comanche in beta test. JustFlight and Thranda both said that converting the JustFlight fleet would be the next big project of Thranda after having finished the Caravan (which has happened by now), so we might see some motion there as well. Also LES had announced the Sundowner would come "soon", but that was nearly 5 months ago. That being said, so far we have more announcements than aircraft converted and ready to fly in XP12, and also XP12 itself is anything but mature. There are still a couple of issues Laminar has to solve (and yes, they're aware and working on it). I's say it's no mistake to wait until the end of the year, if stability is your primary goal. XP12 is really cool, but it's still mostly for early adopters who like to (or at least don't mind to) tinker with their sim. Back to topic: I'm not biased about aircraft class and size, I love them all. While I have a thing for light turboprops (gimme a PC-12 in XP!), I mostly fly in XP12 these days, restricting me to aircraft available there. In the past week, I had a blast flying the Challenger from Shemya down to Fairmont in British Columbia, via Anchorage and Pasco, WA. I mostly fly in FSEconomy, so I just fly where the (virtual) jobs take me. And while the Challenger is a great aircraft, I can unfortunately only fly it on weekends - it's an intense aircraft, and performing a flight (including planning and preflight) takes its time - more than I can spare on normal work days throughout the week. On these I did a couple of milk runs with the Caravan, which is relatively quick to set up and get airborne. For the summer I'm eagerly waiting for the LES DC-3 - this will be my go-to aircraft for my California routes in FSEconomy, with KNUQ serving as my hub.

This dropped pretty silently, but the XPLM400 SDK no longer bears a beta version designator... https://developer.x-plane.com/sdk/plugin-sdk-downloads/

Thank you Ilias, this is great news indeed! I'd have been a happy customer of the classic alone, but I love a good retrofit, so that second model is the icing on the cake for me. I'm really looking forward to flying its wings off.

IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt: I'd say if you publish something that's completely your own work, but enhances the experience with one of LR's aircraft (like a livery, or a plugin (REP comes to mind)), then you probably don't need express permission from Laminar (since your work doesn't touch any of Laminar's intellectual property). If you however derive your work from theirs (e.g. modify an object file or tweak one of their xLua scripts) and want to redistribute that, you'd be on the safer side by asking for their permission - an EULA would probably give you the answer; ironically I couldn't find one for X-Plane...

Current MU version hasn't been adapted for 12 yet, so that's not completely unexpected. Regarding landing technique, I'm not any wiser than you - I also tend to land her very firmly. Here's a video where you can see yoke and throttles during final and landing, maybe this helps figuring this out...

2023-02-10 15:44:12 CL650[except.c:225]: Caught EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION Backtrace is: 0 00007FF65CFE1447 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+0000000000A81447 () 1 00007FF65D0301C3 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+0000000000AD01C3 () 2 00007FF65D03F930 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+0000000000ADF930 () 3 00007FF65CE7CE9F D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+000000000091CE9F () 4 00007FF65CE7B3E9 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+000000000091B3E9 () 5 00007FF65CE4C8A4 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+00000000008EC8A4 () 6 00007FF65D58AB5C D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+000000000102AB5C () 7 00007FF65CF1AC68 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+00000000009BAC68 () 8 00007FF65DA7CD8A D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+000000000151CD8A () 9 00007FF65DA6FA82 D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+000000000150FA82 () 10 00007FF65DC2B40E D:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe+00000000016CB40E () 11 00007FFBDED626BD C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNEL32.DLL+00000000000126BD () 12 00007FFBE0B4DFB8 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll+000000000005DFB8 () --=={This application has crashed!}==-- --=={UUID: 6e8f7b59-f300-427c-9aa5-53bca3c894f6}==-- I suspect this is a segfault that happend inside X-Plane itself and was only caught by libacfutils, but not 100% sure, so I report it here just in case. debug.log Log.txt

Hm, I also use the TM Warthog throttle (same setup, without any intermediate software) without having the issues you describe. I have attached the control profile I use with the MU. MU2 control profiles.zip

The RXPs can be configured to draw power from one of the (standard) electric buses in XP. If the avionics switch doesn't hook up a standard bus, but instead uses some custom logic to power the other avionics components then indeed, this will become a rather interesting endeavor