StormyPilot

Just did a flight from a jam packed Heathrow on Vatsim in the late day arriving post-dusk at a quiet Bristol, and I noticed my co-pilot had adjusted himself to the changed circumstances. Next time your flight takes you through a transition from day to night, keep an eye on him, there's more life in this fellow than at first might appear. Hint hint 8).

I'm reposting my system performance details here from another thread as i noticed it is being collected here, also I added a little more detail. System: i5-2500K (quad 3.3 GHz), 8GB corsair ram, GTX460 1 GB ram, Windows Vista 64-bit Settings and add-ons: UK photographic scenery, converted FS9 airport scenery (including Heathrow/Gatwick Xtreme), no roads/traffic, pixel shading off, x4 anti-aliasing/antisotropic, culuminous clouds allowed, everything else more or less maxed, full screen (1920x1080). Results: FPS=30-60 FPS on airfield depending on weather during the day, drops very little with night lights. (tested on various medium airfields and Heathrow and Gatwick which are probably the most demanding airport sceneries available atm) Exceptions to the results: Sometimes when flying at high altitudes in bad weather some frame rate hit can be experienced, but that is possibly on account of the extreme texture resolution, photographic scenery and the detail range being large. Summary: In most cases I'm experiencing a very smooth experience and have nothing but good to say about this jet so far.

X-Plane crash on CRJ-200 load under Vista 64-bit solved! X-Plane (newest version as of today) would crash (and close entirely) as soon as the cockpit of the CRJ-200 appeared on the screen after loading. After reading through this thread and trying some of the suggested things I found the specific source of my crashing. As was suggested by a previous poster the cultrip is the plugin: XPUIPC.xpl XPUIPCOffsets.cfg As soon as I removed these from my global plugins folder ("X-Plane 9/resources/plugins/") the CRJ-200 runs without a hitch, at least from engines running status (just starting trying it out). So no more crashing. My version is from 27/11/2010, so I don't know if a new version of XPUIPC is out that might not present this problem. ps. Also tried removing Airport_Nav_Win.xpl, that had no effect in my particular case. On another note, on my first flight I was trying the jet out in various conditions, both for performance and general handling reasons. So there I was at FL180 flying through a blizzard when my cockpit windows actually iced over! And I thought to myself this is fantastic attention to detail, not only do you have functioning windshield wipers (and rain on the windows!) but icing has been implemented. Therefore I made my way to the forums to share what I found, so others may enjoy this great jet as well. In my humble oppinion I must say that the price is worth it, and in my case at least it performs well** as long as I turn off pixel shading, and it's handling feels appropriately "solid/heavy" for a jet. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot more IFR flights in the near future. **i5-2500K, 8GB ram, GTX460 1 GB ram, UK photographic scenery, converted FS9 airport scenery, no roads/traffic, pixel shading off, x4 anti-aliasing/antisotropic, everything else maxed, full screen. FPS=30-60 FPS on airfield depending on weather during the day, might drop a little with night lights. Tried this out on Heathrow as well using the converted FS9 Heathrow XTreme with the same result, which is great considering it's probably the most demanding airport scenery available atm.

Seeing as gyrodrift isn't modeled the readability for the compass isn't as important then, not to worry, though some longer lines for the halfway points between N W S E or something might make it quicker to read. I find the width of the lines good as they are, it's just that it was a bit hard to count the number of lines quickly, so mid-point lines or some such as mentioned above might help with that. That Saab looks promising, and the queen of the skies looks really nice as for a change of pace from GA flying.

I've had this aircraft for a while now and I must say after a few hours in the air and some cross-country flying I'm really enjoying it, great work as with the Sundowner. It seems you have caught and fixed most things I noticed that could be improved. Besides possibly two things. Control knob to adjust heading indicator to true compass heading: Now I've not flown any Beechcraft in real life myself yet but shouldn't there be a way to adjust the heading indicator for gyro drift. I've not figured out how to do this yet in the Duchess so am I to assume that gyro drift is not modeled to the instruments? Or does the heading indicator simply automatically tune itself to the compass heading, if so I wasn't aware that was possible in real life for analog flight instruments? Would it be much work to implement gyro drift and add a third manipulator by the heading indicator to adjust it to the compass. Clarity of the compass: I find it very hard to read off the compass due to lack of markings on the compass ball, don't know if this is modelled by the compass in the real thing, if so I suppose that would be something I'd have get used to, but adding some more numbers to the compass ball would make it a lot clearer and faster to read off from. I don't mean to go on about what may not seem like a big deal to some people, but I use X-Plane and it's flight models as a supplement to real life flight training so having all the instruments and flight models spot on (or as close as possible) is important to myself personally for those reasons. That aside, as I said before, great job and I hope you'll continue to release such high-quality payware and keep up your high-standard of customer support for the unforseen future. I for one will excitedly be following any future GA releases you might make. 8) StormyPilot.

Thanks for sharing this. I got some of the tiles to try them out last night (the higher resolution 16 zoom) and did a short flight between Berck-Sur-Mer and Calais on the norhtwest coast of France. I was not dissapointed, as a result I am now downloading most of France and getting some 1:500,000 VFR charts to cover. With UK Photographic scenery coming out any time now, this will make for some nice flights between the two countries.

Brilliant, thanks for that and the reply. Lot's of nice stuff coming with the update, looking forward to it. StormyPilot

Hey, I briefly commented in an earlier post that I couldn't find any way to set the heading indicator in the C152, after further attempts at this I still can't seem to find a way to do this. As any pilot will know being able to adjust the heading indicator to the magnetic compass to adjust for drift is quite important for VFR flying and navigational purposes. Thus this post to bring the question to bear, does the C152 model currently have no way to set the heading indicator? If so will it be remedied in the upcoming patch (it is a rather vital component to any modern aircraft)? Or is it simply the case that I'm being utterly blind and not spotting a obvious manipulator somewhere? : If it's still not implemented, are there any keyboard controls for doing this until it's fixed, haven't found any so far? Thanks for you time, StormyPilot.

Oh my I had no idea you got any problems on account of .zip updates, let alone such harsh and unjustly directed comments. I understand the decision you've made to release updates in .exe file format only given that and appreciate your reply on this matter. Cheers, StormyPilot

I've just noticed I've placed this post at an incorrect location, my appologies. The post was intended to be directed to all the commercial vendors that are covered by and have their support on these forums. Not sure where it would be best located, perhaps some of our fine moderators with the know how could move it to a more appropriate location? Would "general discussion" be the right place for wider posts intended for all publishers such as this? Thank you, StormyPilot.

Hello. As you push out updates for your aircraft it would be very appreciated if you would also include .zip versions of the updates that you simply copy and paste into your relevant X-Plane aircraft folder. I've noticed a recent trend to only push them out in .exe form. I am not a fan of installation .exe files, and was very glad to be rid of the endless installations and the connected problems that would sooner or later always occur related to them in FSX when I moved over to X-Plane. So by all means supply .exe files but please give us the option to use .zip files instead either as part of the downloaded package or in a seperate download for applying patches. Thanks for your time, StormyPilot.

Just noticed one more thing. While flying a short cross-country I was performing a FREDA check when I noticed I couldn't find any manipulator to adjust the heading indicator to adjust it for gyrodrift from the magnetic compass. Nice work on including a manipulator for the artificial horizon's aircrafts nose pitch attitude indicator though, you don't see that implemented often. Ta, StormyPilot.

Thanks for the quick response and possitive reaction to the post. I realize any fine work is a gradual process and a lot of small little kinks will only become apparent after launch, so seeing as I really like the aircraft I thought I'd do what I could to help it to improve further still. If the quality of work wasn't already there then I would not have put in the effort to make such a post in the first place. So it can't be said other than you guys certainly deliver the highest quality of aircraft for X-Plane and are a step ahead off the competition there and offer customer service to do them justice. I know I'm starting to sound a little to much like a fanboy to my own liking but credit is due where it's due. StormyPilot.

First of all I want to say thanks for the C152, it's very enjoyable to fly and fine work overall. I thought I'd bring to your attention some things that I feel might be improved from what I've noticed so far that hasn't already been reported. Artificial horizon missing turn lines (added in white on one side as example). Turn coordinator missing lines for standard turns (added in white on one side as example). The ball is also a little hard to see at a distance due to it's similar colouration to the background and/or lack of shading around the edges. Altimeter settings are broken, this is the lowest altitude I'm able to set (as QNH reaches 0 at this point). I use an add-on that shows the actual QHN (up on the left). This is the only aircraft I have of dozen, paywares and freewares alike, that has this issue so I'm assuming something has gone a little wrong in the altimeters coding. Addendum since first version of post: After some further testing of the altimeter settings I've found that it only starts showing the millibars in the little window at 3 o'clock on the altimeter at 3100 millibars at altitude of 670 ft. Then maxing out (altimeter wont turn further) while showing 2900 millibars and 1250 ft. Not sure if the arrow at 7 is an indicator of 7000' but then shouldn't the shorter arrow attached to the spinner be there as well? In any case there are signs indicating problems with the altimeter here, so besides a general fix it would be nice to see the altimeter setting figures at all times in the window at 3 o'clock. That aside I think I speak for most Europeans when I say that the addition of a window on the 9 o'clock for QNH would be something that wouldn't go unnoticed nor be unappreciated by us pilots this side of the pond. Are the two black areas intended to be blank? (circled in white) Is it just me or is the elevator trim rather slow to move in this particular airplane? Might be the same for rudder and aileron trim, not sure. And finally, is the attitude reaction to dropping flaps a little to aggressive compared to the real thing? Cheers, StormyPilot.

Looking very promising. You don't happen to be planning to include a livery paint kit are you? *hint hint*