avantime
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avantime last won the day on September 4 2017
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Great news, I hope it's getting along fine and we'll be flying it in XP12 soon. And I'm looking forward to paying for it and the (hopefully) fully-featured, fully-working 737 Classic. Please just finish it in a timely manner so we can open our wallets. For me money isn't a problem, I'll just go work some more and earn it back. It's the ~6 year long wait that really hurts. What I do want however is that the paid upgrade is commensurate with the development work done, not what will be promised in the future. In other words if you decide to charge, the work must be completed, and not "Oh it's coming in a free update later on, we promise". Hopefully with Tom back we'll see some real progress. One final word: If a significant code rewrite is necessary, may I suggest that you give some serious thought about porting the 737 Classic to MSFS in the future. INIsim's port of the A310 is working out fairly well for them, and they're transitioning to MSFS sales with their web store. I hope Cameron would consider branching out to MSFS as well, Asobo is a very talented developer and MSFS is really hitting its stride with the 40th anniversary update, and addons like the Fenix A320 are showcasing what the sim can really do. It doesn't take a genius to know where the money is going, and I only wish you guys more financial success.
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Please for god's sake make it a paid upgrade, if only to get you guys to be more financially motivated in your work. The IXEG has been languishing for years, and I've seen addons from other developers being released at an unfinished state, and those devs lose interest as sales slow to a trickle. I loved the 737 Classic and I would love to throw money at you guys if I can get a fully featured (i.e. proper VNAV and holding), fully functioning addon. I also want the -400 and -500 if you want to make paid extensions as well, like what PMDG is doing. Also some Brunner force feedback yoke support would be nice.....
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We're paying customers, not cheering fanboys. And IXEG and X-Aviation are for-profit businesses. We expect a finished product for what is a very expensive addon that we paid for. To put it politely and with full respect to the developers, after 3 and a half years of ownership this state of affairs is unacceptable. Additionally at this pace of development I'm of the opinion that by the time the FMS rewrite is complete most people would've have moved on to XP12 or MSFS2020. Remember XP10.51 was the last version of XP10, and we're now approaching XP11.50. Vulkan/Metal and the experimental flight models would probably become compulsory by then, and will most likely break this addon in some way. Developing addons for X-Plane is like running on a treadmill. If you don't update constantly, you're at risk of falling off and not be able to climb back up again. Even with the FMS rewrite complete the rest of the addon might become so old that it is unusable without much more development work. And that work need a monetary incentive. This is why early-access games on Steam often fail, because the money stop coming in soon after release. Unfortunately coming from FSX/P3D I find this trend to be all too prevalent in the X-Plane community. What I see is great, but squandered potential. When it was released it was the by far the most detailed addon for XP10, despite it being released in an incomplete "early access" state. From a long-time FSX/P3D user I can see that it has the potential to become PMDG-quality if finished, and this was the addon that got me moving to X-Plane. What happened afterwards was that the devs stopped releasing patches for 2 years while the addon is still in a relatively buggy and unfinished state, and customers like me were frustrated at first, and then progressively lost interest. I haven't flown the IXEG for so long that I forgot that I actually still have it, until today when I did some cleaning up of my XP11 installation. When you charge $75 for an addon, there's no excuse to leave customers with a buggy and unfinished product without an update for 2 years. At least release some quality-of-life patches and ninja fixes that makes their experiences better while you continue to rewrite the FMS. Because if you take too long on the rewrite (or it stalls due to other commitments), you might find that Laminar has already moved way ahead of you, and the rest of the addon no longer works. At least with more ninja fixes the customer would've gotten a bit more enjoyment out of the addon, while you rewrite the FMS. As I said earlier, time is against them. XP12 will come very soon as Austin needs more money, and a head-to-head competitor to the big MSFS2020 launch next year. Like the move from XP10 to XP11, the vast majority of the X-Plane userbase will move forward with each new release from Laminar. The treadmill is only getting faster and faster......
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Thanks tkyler for your comment. I understand the difficulties your team faced in developing the IXEG before release and I'm glad that at least we get to fly the 737 in somewhat decent form. However I believe that Shobhan's complaints are a strong indicator of what the customers are now feeling right now with regards to the current state of the 737, with loads of promises but no substantial updates, no future update timeline and no light at the end of the tunnel. Some customers have waited for 2 years for a finished product and are losing faith in the IXEG team. By looking at previous updates from the past year it seems as if the IXEG team is barely keeping up with Laminar's XP11 updates, and that bodes ill for the future of the addon as the FMS, as well as visual updates and other stuff like FO instruments, desperately require bug fixes. And I'm concerned enough that I'm satisfied with ninja fixes, if you can't spare the effort for substantial systems programming. This is because I've seen this downward trajectory before from other addon developers, as well as many early access games in Steam. You have developers release buggy alpha software with unfinished features and bugs, they get a big rush of money from customers, and then they lose motivation and abandon the project once sales have slowed to a trickle. That was what happened with Airsimmer, and is happening right now with Black Box Simulations. Coming from FSX/P3D it seems that this method of addon development is common in X-Plane, because AFAIK the PMDG DC-6 for XP10 is the only complex aircraft addon that is fully feature complete on release day, without the need for any substantial updates. I'm sure you guys will keep saying that updates are coming and that the 737 will be finished in due time, but my confidence in your statements is falling every single day without a substantial patch that isn't just about fixing what Laminar broke. At the current rate of updates I do not believe that the 737 will be finished (if it ever does) before XP12 releases, in around 2-3 years time. In a way I think that IXEG's decision not to charge for the XP11 upgrade probably compounded problems, as I think the team needed more money to finish the project. Maybe if IXEG went the same route as LES it might have gone a bit better, but then the Saab was pretty much complete by the time XP11 came along. Also IXEG should've planned the -400/500 extensions as a way to make a bit more money to keep development going, as bug fixing gets a bit better when combined with developing something that has a monetary payoff. I paid $140 for the FSLabs A320 for P3D and I just brought the Aerowinx 747 PSX for $450 (w/ shipping & tax) so I'm happy to pay up to $150 for a fully feature complete 737-300 and $40 for the -400/-500 extension. But right now I simply can't recommend this addon to others even at $75, because I do not see this addon will ever be fully patched and feature complete in a timely manner. Now with regards to the ninja fixes, for the FMS I'm somewhat OK with inaccuracies, what I don't want to see is really weird numbers like estimated time to ToD as 2500 UTC, or estimated fuel figures that are completely out of whack. And the buggy vertical deviation indicator which becomes hugely distracting during descent. All I want are numbers and indicators that look somewhat reasonable, and a PROG page that doesn't crash the sim. I would love to see stuff like fully working VNAV, holding and enroute winds, but you guys really need to fix the bugs first. Even if you guys can't fix the FMS programming, at least fix the visual model. Fix the cabin lighting bleeding through the cockpit door (just like the FlyJSim 732) and have the cabin doors open. I know you guys want to make a new cabin model but if you guys can't do it in 3-6 months then forget about it, just fix the lighting and make the doors open. And finally, please get in touch with XEnviro and fix the constant crashes. XEnviro is another $70 addon that I'm about to throw into the bin because the recent 1.08 rewrite introduced so many more bugs it's becoming unusable, especially with addons that uses Gizmo like the IXEG and the LES Saab.
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Sorry for reviving an old thread but I see that the FlyJSim 732 seemed to manage to have the cabin lights on, but with no light bleeding through the cockpit door. Is this something you can look into?
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+1 I would love to see the Saab on XP11.
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That's very disappointing to hear. To see the project in limbo with no light at the end of the tunnel I think dispirits many current and potential customers. You're correct, but some addons feel more finished than others. the PMDG DC-6 is one addon that feels totally complete right out of the box, without the need for any patches. Sure it's not XP11 compatible but IIRC the IXEG 737 wasn't supposed to be XP11 compatible either, and yet here we are with an unfinished, but XP11 compatible 737. I know the IXEG is much more complex and I appreciate the hard work of the team, but customers want finished products even if it costs more. I'll happily pay up to $150 for the IXEG (I already paid $140 for the FSLabs A320) if I can get a fully functioning 737 Classic, because I always liked the real airplane. Now can we please get an update on the XP11.10 compatibility patch? I'm having problems flaring the aircraft without the ground effect fixes in the XP11.10 planemaker. I needed so much force to flare that my yoke is sliding off the desk.
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With Oculus you're dealing with a Kickstarter company with no experience in international hardware distribution, owned by a social network of all things. With HTC you're dealing with a failing phone maker that is very short of cash, which recently spun off its VR division. With Harvey Norman you're dealing with a greedy chain store retailer who's more interested in selling you overpriced stuff on credit terms, in which the most profitable items are probably furniture. You're not going to get any decent answers from any of them. If you do live in a rural location then your best chance of getting VR is to either drive to a big city, or rent one and get it posted to you. In that case you can call up the VR businesses, post in the Whirlpool forums or Reddit, and ask if they hire out VR headsets and are willing to post the headset to you. I did a bit of Googling and this company have VR headsets for hire, and they deliver. The good thing about rentals is that you can simply plug it in to your own PC, and the rental period is flexible. If it's used commercially it may be recognised as an expense for tax purposes, like an operating lease. https://www.hire-intelligence.com.au/virtual-reality-and-wearables/oculus-rift-next-generation-virtual-reality-system
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Well it's up to you if you insist on going to Samoa as your only option. If I want a VR demo I'll check with local retailers, Google and online forums first. I'm in New Zealand and not only can I demo a Rift, I can rent one for a week as well. And sorry I took out quite a bit of text in the previous post, as I realised that I was posting in the Skymaxx forum, not the IXEG one.
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Most big cities should have at least 1 paid "VR experience" entertainment center. Just Google "-Your city- VR experience".
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It can be an easy money maker, and it depends how complex you want to make it. Either cosmetic only (like the winglets) or create new performance profiles. Given the sheer slowness of the update schedule I'm beginning to wonder if you guys will finish the addon faster if we pay you a little bit more money (a.k.a giving you a financial incentive). The IXEG is still not what I call "feature complete" 1.5 years after release, and it's a very pricey addon to begin with. In an ideal world IXEG would finish the addon for XP10 and charge a small sum for XP11 compatibility and extensions/DLC, but now we have an unfinished addon with free (but slow) XP11 updates.
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+1 I hope we'll see some news before Christmas.
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I sort of wish there's a workaround, like an IXEG menu option that switches all the good stuff from the Capt side to the FO side. Due to my hardware limitations (Brought a PFC 737 yoke second hand without realizing it's a FO yoke, with the trim switch on the other side) I can only fly as a FO....
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I use a separate tiller axis as my dedicated A320 joystick has a twist function. However the lack of a dead zone greatly pisses me off, the tiller axis often doesn't return to center even when the joystick is centered.
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I got xEnviro as well, and I'm experiencing intermittent CTDs. I concluded it was caused by problems with the weather updates, as the xEnviro log file shows the last weather update wasn't completed, plus the timestamp was missing a digit. I asked about this in the xEnviro forums and here's the response from suxumuxu: