captain_alligator

Patterns and testing at my usual test airport (EGPK Prestwick), to get comfortable with it, then I'm not sure, it'll depend on the weather at the time and the scenery I have installed. LSZH to LEPA and back again is always a good one to do, using Aerosoft's Zurich and the brilliant freeware Palma scenery. But one flight I'm itching to do is repeat the EHAM-LOWI tutorial that I'm familiar with from the PMDG NGX - I think it'll be fascinating to compare the two aircraft and see what the similarities and differences are on the same flight.

Will you have any custom controls (e.g. yoke-mounted A/P disconnect button) which will need to be set up? If so, will you have an easy way of doing this from within your plugin? The reason I ask is that of all my X-Plane add-ons, I have only one (XSquawkbox, of all things) that has its custom control (push to talk button) assigned via the plugin menu. The airliners all seem to require me to hack around in X-Plane's dreadful control assignment system, hunting down the plugin and finding the custom command to assign to my yoke button. Even worse, every time I add or remove a plugin, or switch aircraft, it seems to lose the assignment so I keep having to do it over and over again.

There is an absolute ton of payware scenery out there for X-Plane, it's coming out now faster than most people's budgets will let them buy it, and the quality seems to be getting better and better. I'd rather support the scenery developers than giving more money to an aircraft developer after I've already bought their aircraft. There are also plenty other aircraft for X-Plane - yes, many are overpriced, some are incomplete and probably shouldn't even be on sale, but if you look beyond jet airliners there are loads of other aircraft and they are quite inexpensive. The price of 3 or 4 livery packs will buy you a half-decent GA, turboprop, military jet or helicopter to go and have fun with. How much fun can you have with a livery pack? Really, I can't think of a worse thing to spend money on than livery packs... Happy new year everyone, I'm off for a drink!

Other airliners for X-Plane have had click/drag controls that have been terrible to use and that's maybe why people are crying out for scroll wheel. However, the click/drag on FlyJSim's 727 and 737 is pretty good and shows if you get it right, there is no need for scroll wheel operation. Try setting the altimeter on the 732 Twinjet, it's silky smooth and really easy to get the setting you're aiming for. I fly X-Plane and FSX, and one of many great things about X-Plane is being able to quickly zoom in and out of the cockpit with the scroll wheel, combined with the right mouse button for panning - you can't do that in FSX. Where X-Plane aircraft have implemented scroll wheel support, the end result is when I'm trying to pan and zoom around the cockpit I sometimes grab a scroll wheel control by mistake and end up changing the speed selection or altimeter baro setting when I actually wanted to zoom in to read something. Honestly, having one physical control/movement doing 2 completely different things is really bad HMI design. So, good on IXEG for sticking to their guns, let people try using click/drag and if some people really, really need to have it work like an FSX aircraft then implement scroll wheel support as a switchable option. Also, as my profile photo shows, I've had a quick flight in a 737NG fixed base simulator - trust me, dialling in a big heading change with a quick spin of a mouse scroll wheel like you can in FSX aircraft is not realistic and a scroll wheel doesn't allow the range of movement or accuracy of the knobs in the real thing. My mouse scroll wheel only moves about 9 detents before I have to lift my finger and start again. So, how can I dial in 120 degrees heading change with one movement in the PMDG 777? Well, the answer is I can't. I can try, but I might dial in 107 degrees, or I might dial 144 degrees - I have no way to control how fast the knob turns in response to the scroll wheel. It's nonsense but it's all FSX has to offer. X-Plane is better than that.

Indeed it does! PFPX has a base aircraft type for 737-300, with 20K and 22K engine options. I guess there will be some small things to tweak like PAX capacity depending on the cabin configuration that IXEG go for, and equipment fitted (seems to default to X which means no DME and no transponder, which I don't think is right but then those codes are a bit of a mystery at the best of times...)

I too have a recent Navigraph data & charts subscription with over 320 days left to run, so I really hope you guys can come to some understanding with Navigraph. After the 737 gets released I will watch what happens with Navigraph, and if need be, I will post something on their customer support forum.

If somebody told me that screenshot was leaked from PMDG's X-Plane dev team, I would have no problem believing them! I don't usually bother with freeware but I think I'll be making an exception when this gets released...

I do hope a solution is forthcoming to this problem because it really stops me using SMP, certainly for airliners or any kind of IFR flying, the sudden weather changes are jarring and unrealistic - especially if the weather changes occur below MDA or when attempting any kind of visual procedure in marginal conditions. I am kind of hoping the PMDG connection with Active Sky Next means it will arrive at the same time as the 737NGX or 777. Then it would make sense for a future version of SMP to work with ASN. That would be a match made in heaven but I don't expect anyone to confirm or deny whether it's like to happen or not! I live in hope because SMP does... look... amaaazing....

By the time the A320 Premium version comes out, it will probably have to compete with A350 Professional series, and one or two really serious Boeings from the likes of PMDG and IXEG. I also think Aerosoft need their heads examined if they, as publishers of the DVD version of X-Plane and premium airport scenery packs, aren't seriously considering porting their A318/319/320/321 products over to X-Plane. How many Prepar3d licences have been sold at least partially because it can run the Aerosoft A320? Obviously it's a much, much bigger job to re-develop an FSX aircraft for X-Plane because of fundamental differences in the platform. But the rewards for Aerosoft go beyond the sales of the A320 itself, they'll also sell more copies of X-Plane and more airports as well. The point being, it's almost inevitable that sooner or later, Aerosoft A320 will end up on X-Plane. My hope is that QPAC have seen this as well and the reason things have gone quiet is because they are rethinking where they are going with this product. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this become the next joint venture with Flight Factor.

I'd love to see - or hear - a greatly improved sound package for the QPAC A320 to complement what you're doing with the graphics and systems modelling. The $70 price tag being proposed for the full Extended version will put this into a premium price category, similar pricing to FSX add-ons like PMDG 737NGX or Aerosoft A320/321, so it follows that the product needs to compete at that level. I know the QPAC A320 project has always been about making a serious, accurate A320 simulator, and that's still going to be the main selling point, but people will want attractive graphics and atmospheric sound as well. Very promising project though and really looking forward to seeing the 3D upgrade together with the Plus version.

Sorry but I have to disagree, particularly regarding static aircraft. If you fly on-line or use AI traffic, these just get in the way. At the very least I'd like to see Aerosoft offer an option to turn off static aircraft during or after installation. Even better would be an option in X-Plane's rendering settings to turn them on and off globallly...

Sounds like I have had a similar crash to others. Overcast is set to Medium and I am using the NOAA plugin, and was at cruise altitude when the sim crashed. X-Plane also generated a ".dmp" file in the output-->crash reports folder but this forum won't let me post that file type. However I have attached the log files from X-Plane and Gizmo. Log.txt GizmoLog.txt