SRSR333

Well, this update certainly came out of nowhere! Either that, or I haven't been following the X-Pilot forums (though I do use xPilot a lot... bad pun there, I apologise to a host of communities). I was under the impression that the IXEG was abandonware, and had been flying the Zibo ever since. Installing it right now, and I'll be glad to test it out with X-Plane 11.50b9 and further. Thanks, guys, and it's somewhat reassuring to realise a product I bought in 2016 is still being regularly maintained, more than 4 years after release.

Understood; that's only fair from the company's perspective. I look forward to the IXEG 737 v1.1; it's landing soon. Great job on the recent flurry of updates, to everyone here at X-Aviation.

Completely fair enough; that was my first question, if needing to renew a license was more effective at combating piracy than a one-time activation. You mean SaaS, or software as a service? I have my doubts about the subscription model, given that I'd rather pay once, and use the software forever—it is mine to do as I see fit, instead of being tied down to a subscription that may stop any time I have less money than needed in the bank (quite a common case for university students). But then again, that is my opinion, and obviously, given the popularity of Adobe CC/Office 365 etc, my views don't exactly reflect those of the majority.

I don't see how that is relevant, but... OK, if you say so.

My point exactly, that the X-Plane way, of having to 're-activate' an already-activated license is more troublesome than doing it the Microsoft way: activate once, then it's forever activated. No 'two week' timeouts whatsoever. I'm curious—is there a reason why the activations aren't done this way? Or does the Gizmo activation somehow tie in with the fact that the X-Plane copy it is running on is a valid license or not?

Why not do it like Microsoft/Steam/other software licenses, instead of the (rather more troublesome) X-Plane way? Phone home the first time only, activate the product, and that's it? Or would that be such a significant regression in piracy control that it is not done? I mean, the recent changes to how the X-Aviation store works are extremely welcome, but this still feels a little... dated, having to re-activate every time the license 'expires'.

Thanks for that! However, genuine question: what does Windows Defender have to do with GPU usage and the FMC? How was the fix narrowed down to this?

Hi guys, I was making a flight from LFMN (Nice Cote d'Azur) to LOWI (Innsbruck), and I took off, relatively smoothly and attained cruise. When I wanted to change my mach number, I entered digits (.600) into the scratchpad, and the EXEC key was illuminated. Then I noticed X-Plane was stuttering like crazy. The framerate dipped to the single digits, then quickly climbed back to 40+, dipped again, climbed again, so and so. When I went to check the GPU usage in GPU-Z, the usage also correspondingly dropped to zero percent. So what was a continuous red bar at 100% was now resembling a bar code, with red lines indicating wildly fluctuating usage. I'm not sure if the GPU usage dropped because the FMC made X-Plane lag, or the FMC lagged because the GPU usage went down. Either way, it is quite clear that once I confirm my action (press the EXEC key), the usage returns to normal. Is this a known issue to be fixed in V1.1?

Happy to have helped made a great product better, Captain Jan!

Hi IXEG, I was about to fly the 733 from Zurich when it was lit up in VATSIM, and I wanted to set up my frequencies, when I noticed this occur on the forward pedestal: There's a thin line of sunlight from the outside peeking in, beginning at the EXP VOR/ILS label, going just beyond the NAV1 display, turning a right angle to the right, and going into the CARGO DETECTION SUPPRESSION panel. This gives me a feeling that there's an error with the 3D mesh of the aircraft - or is this behaviour normal? For further information, I was at gate E 19 at LSZH, at approximately 1321 Z time, facing heading 280.

I'm really, really sorry, but this comes across as incredibly rude to a customer who has asked a valid question. I wasn't debating - I asked a question, and it was brushed aside with your response - quite literally, you just said: 'we know more than you, so shut up and use what you bought.' I've enjoyed the product so far, given it raving reviews on several other forums, and when I come here with a single question - it's deleted/locked without an explanation given, or rudely shot down like this. Why not elaborate on why we need hard-coded directories for the plane to work? In fact, I'm genuinely curious as to why this requirement is so singular to the 737, as well as the technicalities behind it. Honestly.

I find it interesting that you mentioned this, since I supposed that X-Plane was completely agnostic about the location of aeroplanes, so long as they resided within the Aircraft folder. When literally every other plane for X-Plane can be wherever the user wants it to be, I honestly saw (and still see) no real reason why the 737, absolutely has to reside within a single, particular directory. I apologise for being somewhat impertinent, but being directory-agnostic (as well as payware planes/scenery being bundled in .zips) is one of X-Plane's strengths and the lack of it, the competition's weakness. I already mentioned this when the IXEG 737 was released as an installer, but I resigned to having to use the installer to download the plane and install it, admitting that it was but a small thorn to bear. I feel that when freeware products such as 7-Zip, HWMonitor and similar products can have two different versions (an .exe/.pkg installer and a .zip for more advanced users), why the makers of the 737 can't do that... I also see no reason why the complex IXEG 737 needs to place its Gizmo64 within a separate folder when a similarly complex B767 from the competition comes as an all-in-one archive to be extracted at will by the user. How hard is it to code an extra dozen lines or so to scan the entire Aircraft directory for the B733.acf file, and for good measure, throw in an MD5/SHA1 check-sum check? Do we need hard-coded file paths in this day and age? Is the 737 Classic add-on so fragile that a different parent directory will break functionality? Take it just one step further and we might even see a future add-on requiring to be installed in C:\Program Files\ on Windows or /Applications/ on OS X, or else it wouldn't work. I hope you understand where I'm coming from. Regards.

All in all an excellent update, @Cameron; the ability to use VNAV without having a T/D is especially welcomed. However, this particular 'fix': felt more like a regression - I have placed my IXEG 737 add-on in the 'Heavy Metal' folder so that all my tube-liners (default 747, FF 757-777 and the 787, A380 and this IXEG 737) are all together. Why is it now a requirement that the IXEG 737 alone has to be in the Aircraft/X-Aviation/ folder? The aircraft has worked entirely alright while it was in Heavy Metal, so I see no need to have this... Do you mind elaborating on why this new behaviour was included? Thanks very much.

Oddly enough, I live in an extremely well-connected city with a 1 Gbps connection. In that case I might be experiencing connection throttling. At any rate, I need a downloads reset for my install of SkyMaxx Pro v3 - could the admins help me do it?

Hi guys, I sent in a support ticket requesting for a downloads reset or an alternative link to download SkyMaxx Pro v3.2 more than a week ago, but I still haven't received a reply yet. The issue was that the downloads would slow to 10 KB/s, and then stop altogether, leaving a corrupt archive file that I could not decompress. Could the admins please help me look into this? Thanks very much.

They're approximately an hour behind - probably uploading. Hope to download it and fly the IXEG 737 soon. This will soon replace the FF 777 as the most-flown plane in my hangar, as soon as I can study the manuals properly and get the proper procedures done, since I prefer short-haul VATSIM flights.

It's certainly in better shape than the VATSIM CTP website!

Not questioning your expertise, @Ben Russell, but I believe aircraft and scenery packages sold elsewhere, that use your own plugin (Gizmo), as well as others like GroundTraffic and AutoGate have the plugins in question built into the package, such as FlightFactor's planes and MisterX6's scenery packages. Can't the 737 Classic do this as well? Once again, one of X-Plane's strengths is its portability, and the self-contained nature of add-ons, but installers tend to muck up that self-contained nature by putting files all over the place, where they cannot be traced by the average user in case of a problem. Not to mention logging with the Windows registry, something that X-Plane's developers pride themselves on not doing. As for this - I have neither the expertise nor the entrepreneurship to start my own venture; I have also nothing to gain by 'proving anyone wrong'. I was simply pointing out that a compressed archive would make life easier for all - even the distributors, as they need not create an installer, but simply zip up the files once development is done, and upload them to the servers.

Reliable and simple - if the users in question use default settings for everything and don't tweak. That doesn't apply to a large proportion of X-Plane users, as well as those who would like to move their directories around, or move computers altogether. That 'complicated package' you mention could be simplified equally as well as an installer, by compressing the aircraft into an archive, and distributing it that way. If scenery packages at the .org as well as planes themselves are distributed this way, with no real repercussion to users, I see no real reason why the 737 Classic needs an installer (or the PMDG DC-6, by the looks of it). Decompressing an archive is equally 'reliable and simple' as clicking through an installer, if not more so.

Bit troublesome - once again, reminds me of FSX, which is not necessarily a good thing.

The arrival time is excellent for me - approximately 12 pm on a cool, cloudy Saturday. Looking forward to spend the rest of the afternoon drooling at the awesome cockpit. Still hoping it comes in a simple .zip file rather than an installer, which makes it very FSX-esque... @Cameron, any opinions?

Wonderful. I replied to the Progress Update topic not too long ago, and this news was a pleasant surprise to someone like me who hasn't really got much time, if at all, to simulate flights. This will be a day-one purchase for me, mark my words. Well done to the developer team at IXEG; special mention to @Litjan who painstakingly put up all those YouTube videos for us to enjoy and preview the plane. As I've always said, his slightly German-accented, but perfect English, is icing on the cake. I especially enjoyed the 4-part series where he semi-roleplayed as a captain of a 737, waiting for coffee, etc. That was hilarious, I must say. I noticed, though, that @Cameron mentioned there would be an 'installer' for the simulation. While I think an installer makes it simpler to add an aircraft, actually managing it will be slightly more difficult, as several people I know have customised their X-Plane/Aircraft folders. Releasing the 737 Classic as a compressed archive such as .zip or .7z, to be decompressed at will would be the optimal solution, as most payware aircraft have been done. Do the developers/publishers have any comment on this?

Of course, nothing is. But what I meant by 'bug-free' was with respect to other X-Plane simulations. For example, there's a rather well-known simulation of the B777-200LR in X-Plane (I don't want to mention developers) but cutting to the chase: it required a user to fix bugs (such as a wrong font - is it that hard to purchase the correct weight of Futura to use in the cockpit?) and completely re-model the 3D cockpit to more accurately match the plane; the plane still is rather buggy but I still fly it because my only other option is the BAW 777 in the Other Aircraft folder in X-Plane, which is even worse since it uses the default X-Plane FMS and a 2D cockpit. All I want is a plane that just works, looks realistic and flies realistically. Furthermore, if the plane messes up (or I mess up while flying it), I can follow the proper procedures instead of doing some half-baked unrealistic nonsense. I especially look forward to the IXEG 737 since it's halfway between a full steam and a full glass cockpit. I'm getting tired of pushing LNAV and VNAV and following the magenta line on the 77L.

I've been extremely silently following these Progress Updates since two years ago, and I've seen the IXEG 737 go from having steam engine gauges to the near-complete marvel it is today. I'd say this gives PMDG a massive run for its money, and hopefully it'll be a well-tested, bug-free release which I'll enjoy from the get-go. Well done to the entire IXEG team, from @Litjan, to @tkyler and @Cameron and others who've spent all their free time on this. Coupled with the x737 3D cockpit, my short-haul liner hangar will be more complete than it is now.

All I say is - hopefully IXEG sets a fair price for their add-on. I hope this is released soon... I cannot wait for it.