Paraffin

I'm sure this has been said before, but the main problem with clear air turbulence in X-Plane is that it's a static setting -- either on or off -- not variable as in reality. It should be more random. Or maybe separate settings for "off", "random", and "on", for those who want to practice flying in turbulence without waiting for it to randomly appear.

Heh, yeah. I spent a few years in the passenger seat as an aerial photographer flying into real-world airstrips in the tropics just like that, where tree canopy or hills on a one-way approach meant the pilot had to drop quickly to avoid an overrun. Here's another clip where the pilot does a forward slip plus the power/pitch thing to drop over hill and trees. Look for the plane shadow over the trees to see how close he's cutting it: Ah, fooey. Doesn't Austin live and mostly fly on the east coast? What does he know about mountains? From where I'm typing this right now, on a clear day I can see the upper 2/3 of Mt. Rainier through my office window, which is just a few hundred feet above sea level. Google Earth's ruler tool says the peak of Rainier is 99 miles away from my window. Figure curvature of the Earth plus a 14,000 ft. mountain, about 100 miles... yeah, you should see it. Not to mention Mt. Baker to the north, and the Cascades range to the East, and the peaks of Olympic National Park to the West. But it's just not there in X-Plane. Visible ranges need to be longer. If not for v10, then at least eventually. Not just for realism, but to establish a "sense of place" in some areas. Puget Sound and the Seattle area just doesn't look right without Rainier dominating the landscape. It's like flying over NYC without seeing the Statue of Liberty, or San Fran without the Golden Gate Bridge. Or to get away from the regional bias: Fuji in Japan, Popo in Mexico, the Matterhorn, etc. If a flight sim is going to show terrain features at all, then it needs to figure out how to show the classic landmark features of a region.

MatthewS, I've heard somewhere that we may get longer-range scenery loads in v10. I sure hope so. I live in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, and Mt. Rainier is a prominent landmark at 50+ miles on a clear day. You really can't miss it. But it's practically invisible in X-Plane. By the time you get close enough for it to load in, you're already on the flanks of the mountain and it doesn't have that signature look. Same thing for any other prominent, solitary mountains (typically, volcanoes) like Popocateptl outside Mexico City. I know it takes more RAM and probably GPU power to load things at greater distances. I've wondered if it wouldn't be possible to just tag certain prominent features and have just that part of a surrounding tile load early, but I don't know if it could be done procedurally. Otherwise it would be a lot of hand tweaking. At any rate, it sounds like we'll probably get a brute-force approach that just takes advantage of increasing computer horsepower to do this. Yeah, I'd like to see how they'll handle things like desert sand dunes, rainforest canopy, African savanna, or mixed hardwood forests in the eastern USA. Conifers are easy, because they're aren't that many different types and they look similar unless you get close. Try modeling a realistic-lookng rainforest and I'll know how good your engine really is. I want to do landings like this: Getting even close to that feel right now, means hand-placing a ton of individual tree models that kills the frame rate. Procedural generation might do it, but I haven't seen anyone try it yet. Water textures are another missing feature, and I'd be interested to see how Outerra handles that. With current-generation scenery in flight sims, areas with clear water like the Caribbean and South Pacific don't look right, unless someone is hand-placing shallow water colors. I bought the RealScenery set for South Florida, but I avoid flying over one of my favorite areas in real life -- the Florida Keys -- because the water color is so ugly with the default X-Plane rendering.

I agree. It's the fine-grain vertical detail on the ground, like those eroded berms at the end of the runway, or the dirt roads and bumpy ground with the truck on their demo gallery. X-Plane and anything from MS like "Flight" will be taking the next step forward when they can do this kind of surface modeling, instead of sticking a photo on large flat surfaces that only look good at altitude. People who only fly airliners won't care about it. But man, this would revolutionize the experience of bush flying in the simulator.

That's amazing. So much of the feel of flight simulation is dependent on silky frame rates. It's basically what got me into X-Plane a couple years ago. I had been away from civilian flight sims for years, and was starting to get the itch again. I had an older machine and was sure FSX wouldn't run on it, so I stopped by one of the chain software stores in a mall, intending to pick up a copy of FS9. They were out of it, but had an X-Plane box. I picked it up as an impulse buy. I couldn't run it at full eye candy settings (not that there is much eye candy at all, in the stock sim), but it ran amazingly smoothly on my older hardware. I could feel the ground effect in a flare, the helicopter ground effect, etc. A few months ago I upgraded to a hot quad core machine and it's even better. Often the frame rates are in overkill territory at 50 or 60 fps, but that's just performance banked for whatever might be coming down the road, in future versions of X-Plane and the add-ons. But I sure don't want to be flying at 15 or 20 fps. The quality of my touchdowns starts to degrade at that point. I think there is a sub-group within MSFS that spends at least as much time cruising around in camera view at ground level as they do flying, so the frame rates aren't that important. The video demo on the ORBX site for their Concrete Muni WA scenery even starts with a drive around town in a car! I call it the "model train scenery syndrome," and there is a similar lack of actual people in the scenery. It looks like a ghost town after the Neutron Bombs finally hit. I know that's endemic to flight sim scenery, but it just looks weird to me. Once you get to that level of detail, I want to see people moving around. Speaking of which.... when it comes to representing reality at street level, none of the ORBX stuff compares to what you can see in a good videogame these days. I've been playing "Mafia II" on the PC. The game itself is so-so, but the look and feel of the 1940's era New York is amazing. Not just static buildings, but people walking around, cars driving around... people slipping on icy sidewalks, kids hawking newspapers. It feels alive, instead of lifeless like flight sim scenery. We may eventually get that kind of thing as atmospheric ground level scenery in a flight sim, but it's years away, and I can't ever see it being a priority over details that apply to actual flight. One thing X-Plane could adopt though, is the feel of driving around icy and snowy roads in Mafia II, including transitions from packed snow and ice to deeper, crunchier snow. The feel of X-Plane once the wheels are on the ground still needs a lot of work.

I don't think Laminar could afford the backlash if V8 and V9 planes couldn't be used in V10, since the community is so small (relative to MSFS) and there isn't a huge selection of good plane models. I'm hoping it will be something simple, like just opening the .acf file and saving it in Planemaker to handle any adjustments needed.

That's great news, Tom! I'll be standing in line here for the Caravan, credit card ready. (Edit): Oh, and it's also good to hear there will be a cargo version. That cabin view you posted is looking way to plush and comfy for my typical FSE bush plane ops.

Caravan! Caravan! Caravan! Caravan!!!! ;D

By dropping the word Simulator in the title, showing a biplane, and the whole tone of the voiceover, it seems obvious where they're going with this. Unless it's a fake-out, and the next trailer is an Airbus! More people love the sensation of simulated flight, than want to get too deep into the mechanics. So it's probably a smart move by MS, especially as a cross-platform X-Box/PC game. I could get interested if it included some good scripted missions. But it would have to be awfully good to get me to put up with the horror that is Windows Live on the PC.

I don't either; it seemed to me more of an honest mistake, not thinking it through. Or even just being in a hurry when posting the link, and forgetting to include the full URL to the review page. Been there and done that myself. On the other stuff... yeah, I'm aware of the tension between the .org and other sites, and that may be behind some of the reactions over there.

I didn't say that, and it's not what I'm assuming. I do think that even those who cherish accurate flight models over eye candy, are still capable of caring about some level of eye candy. It's not a binary world, and it's not so easy to place people in these discrete categories. I fly this sim instead of the other flavor because I like the way it feels when flaring over the runway, and the way helicopters work. But I'm not immune to eye candy either. Again, it ain't binary. Here's Austin talking about the screen shots he posted (from the .org forum portal page), which we're discussing here. These are not the words of someone who doesn't care about eye candy, as well as everything else:

My $.02... I've enjoyed reading the reviews and think you should continue. I'm especially interested in the new stuff on scenery creation because I might take a small stab at that soon, but the payware plane reviews are also very helpful. That said, I would suggest a few things about your review process: First, I don't think it's a good idea to get pre-approval from the developer. It's a trade-off. On the positive side, there is always a risk that you'll misunderstand something about the model, or miss an important feature that the developer could help correct for the review. On the downside, it inevitably puts you in the position of thinking about what the developer will think of your review, before you even make it public to anyone else. That puts the developer too much "in bed" with the reviewer, in my opinion. The best way to handle any errors or omissions in the review is with an addendum, where you can tag on any updates. Another thing... I feel the most trust in reviews by people who buy things anonymously with their own money, and then write about them. It's the "Consumer Reports" model, basically. You have maximum distance from the source, and you're on the same level I am, when I buy a payware plane. You may get some heat from being honest and critical, but that goes with the territory. Just don't say anything negative about the aliasing on Austin's latest work on v10, or you'll REALLY be in hot water. (cough, cough) As a last comment... one of the first complaints in the .org thread was about linking directly to your blog's home page instead of to the review. That wasn't framed well and it was unnecessarily nasty, but he had a point. It takes time to hunt through a blog if something isn't prominent on the front page. If I can't find something quickly that's been linked to, I'll bail out. Also some people may find a message like this months or even years later, so that's another reason for a direct link. A link to your blog's home page is difficult to distinguish from blog spam, and some people are very sensitive about that. Anyway, keep up the good work.

Read what I posted again. This isn't whining about what I personally like to see in a sim. It's more a concern for how it will look to people who don't fly X-Plane yet, and are keeping an eye out for any news of v10 as a reason to consider jumping ship from MSFS. And yeah, eye candy is a part of that, like it or not. Do we want the X-Plane community to grow, or not? Growing a larger X-Plane user base means showing your work at its best, when presenting new information. That's all.

The shuttle textures look nice, but what's with the aliasing/jaggies around the edges of the model? That looks awful. I hope it's just a wrong setting on the render options, or maybe it's a bad enlargement of a smaller screen shot? Austin needs to be careful about releasing stuff like this, because some people (like...er, me) will look for the flaws as well as the obvious eye candy. On the Orbx stuff... Someone will eventually do that level of scenery for X-Plane, but I wouldn't expect it in the stock program. I'd rather see the effort go into flight model, the overall render engine, weather etc. At the risk of offending the scenery builders here, I think scenery at that level of detail is mostly just a lot of grunt work on the production end. I love seeing scenery like that, and would buy it if it was available for X-Plane. I just can't help but feel that we're in a temporary era of hand-made scenery anyway. Eventually Google will figure out how to solve the privacy issues involved in mapping your neighborhood in high-res 3D.

If he's only aiming for sales to a smaller group like real life Airbus pilots, then that's his decision. But it's still going to mean fewer sales than a model with a 3D cockpit could have had, I think. There are people who use TrackIR, and who simply won't buy payware that doesn't include a 3D cockpit (I'm in that category). Free head rotation means one less button I have to push to change view, or zoom in and out, and I can focus 100% on interacting with the cockpit controls. Even for people who don't use TrackIR, a 3D cockpit has become a marker for quality, like it or not. It's one of the things that separates good payware from good freeware, regardless of the model's accuracy in other respects. Just my opinion... but I don't understand the decision to release a major payware plane these days without a 3D cockpit.

I prefer the light to medium GA end of the spectrum for plane models, not spending much time with jet fighters or modern airliners. But there's plenty of in-depth modeling available in that area, like the MU-2, Bell 206, BK117, even the Antonov AN-2 when it comes to getting that engine started. We sim pilots will always be able to fly a wide range of planes compared to real life, because there are no consequences for lack of proficiency. I can hop into something complex like a Concorde and fly it as poorly as I want. The sim lets me start planes with engines running and ready for takeoff, unless the designer has blocked it (and more about this below). I think this is a good thing. We all have different preferences for flying sims, so why not offer optional levels of diving deep into a simulation? I bought the payware Bell 206 because I enjoy flying helicopters and it's an iconic model that I've spent a lot of time in (as passenger) in real life. I appreciate the systems modeling, and at some point I will learn how to go through the checklist for a cold start. But right now, I just start with it running so I can enjoy flying it. Having to deal with that additional layer of complexity is an option, not a requirement in this model. I'm not sure I would have bought this model, if it forced a full cold start procedure every time. Payware plane developers will make the most sales when they can combine a popular model with optional layers of complexity, that can be peeled back and exposed at the user's discretion. As an example of how not to do it (IMO), consider the way the STM Husky is currently set up. The developer's plug-in forces the plane to start with avionics off, even if you have X-Plane set to start with engines running. From a note recently sent to purchasers: Great, now I have to remember that the Husky works differently than other light GA planes. The developer is forcing "good practices" on me, instead of letting me choose how I want to fly the sim. I don't think that's the job of the plane designer. The reason X-Plane has a hot start option is for casual flying. Deep simulation fans need casual users onboard too, so they can help provide the financial support for continued development. P.S. I didn't intend this to turn into a hardcore vs. casual gamer rant, because for one thing, I consider myself more hardcore than many when it comes to sims. But I like options. I don't like being ramrodded into someone else's idea of realism.

If you use one of the joysticks that include a virtualized driver and a command programming utility, like the ones from CH or Saitek, then you can easily program any keyboard command string on the hat switch. That's the main workaround for programs and plugins that don't directly support joystick buttons. If it's a more basic (non-programmable) joystick, you might be out of luck.

Okay, honest opinion: That is one ugly model (IMO). There is no surface detail texture, just a flat expanse of gray. The lack of texture makes it look more like a freebie user-made plane than payware, at least until you get into the cockpit view. Look at the skin texturing on the Aerosoft version for FSX for comparison, and that model only costs $10 more: http://www.aerosoft.de/_php_projekte/_php_screenshots/screenshots.php?sp=fsx&p=f16 The cockpit doesn't look bad, except for that awful blocky HUD display. No screen shots of cockpit night lighting effects. I don't know how well it flies, but (IMO) the author(s) should have charged $10 more and tightened up the graphics (assuming the flight model and systems modeling are good enough).

That's good news! BTW, the Twotter is coming back into production, so it's not just a bush plane relic any more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704334604575339352407468026.html?KEYWORDS=airlines I think a high-end C130 would be very popular.

Two reasons: First, I fly often in the more remote areas of Canada, South America, and New Zealand where NDB approaches are still used. Second, I've started flying in "FS Economy" a virtual GA charter pilot game with assignments all over the world. In FSE, you can rent or buy planes in three levels of avionics -- VFR only, VFR plus IFR, and VFR/IFR/GPS. The rental fees are scaled to the avionics suite, so when you're just starting out, there's an incentive to rent the lower level planes to maximize your profit on assignments. And some planes in areas I want to fly, just aren't available with the GPS option. When I have enough virtual dollars to buy my first plane in the game, I'll look for one with a lower-level avionics package to keep the cost down (it can be upgraded later). When you fly an assignment in the game, the plug-in will fail the GPS in X-Plane if you aren't renting a plane with a GPS installed. So even if your X-Plane model is tricked out with a glass cockpit, you suddenly need to fall back on old-fashioned IFR VORs and NDB's for navigation. So that's a big reason why I like having an ADF in any plane I fly in X-Plane, and I'll go out of my way to add one in Planemaker if it's missing, like on the PC-6 Porter model. It's also a fun way to be forced to polish up the 'ol VOR/NDB nav skills. FS Economy is dominated by FS9 and FSX users, but there are a few of us X-Plane pilots there. The numbers will probably grow over time, as more users shift over from the MSFS sims.

I mostly fly GA bush planes and helicopters, not the heavy iron, so I voted GA. I've just started messing around in the FSEconomy game, and there some big gaps in planes we can fly in X-Plane vs. the list of available planes to fly in FSE (which is based on the FS9 and FSX market). Based on that, I'd like to see these planes, roughly in order of desirability for me: Cessna 208 Caravan DeHavilland Twin Otter Antonov AN-28 DC-3, and yes I know we already have one payware version, but I'd love to see a more highly detailed model, with all the bells and whistles. Rockwell Aero Commander Dornier DO-27 (would be great for sightseeing with TrackIR) C-130 Herc