antti

In supersonic segments the camera is travelling at near supersonic speed, just shy of mach 1. As the plane matches the camera speed, you can hear sound as it reaches the camera and sound waves still move forward past the aircraft. Interesting phenomena, that might be on purpose, is that as the aircraft surpasses mach 1, all sound from the aircraft disappear although at subsonic speeds the sound still reaches the camera which is at subsonic velocity at all times. Once the aircraft goes supersonic, sound can be heard only from behind the aircraft, as it should be. Not exactly sure what creates the low rumble of the roaring/screaming jets as the aircraft approaches the camera faster than the speed of sound. I love flying this way in x-plane, the ability to let your eyes fly by your side while maneuvering the aircraft around yourself in an aerial ballet flying through dynamic changing weather is awesome. The physics, how contrails appear when the weather conditions allow for it, compressed air creating moisture around the leading edges of the wing, it's a visualisation of mathematics I find endlessly fascinating and I've been doing it since 1995. The fact that for the longest time this software was written by Austin Meyer, fuelled to my understanding by the same fascination of visualising mathematics in this manner is a testament to the fact that if you love what you do, you're not "working" a day in your life. How do you like to fly? X-Plane version: 12.0.9-rc-5. Antti

Hi all, Love this update and my prayers have been answered with the F-14 which is of excellent quality! I've spent some time trying to figure out how to navigate and operate the MFD system. Is there a comprehensive manual available somewhere, or if not, even a less comprehensive that would give a hint of an idea of what the various pages and button sequences are supposed to do. I suspect there must be some logic to it since most of the buttons of the sides of the MFD do actually do stuff, it's just that the logic escapes me. I do enjoy prodding around and trying to figure it out on my own too, but I'm not sure how limited the system itself is and where it is that I'm the culprit of fail. ;-) Thanks, Antti

+1! I'm here to express my gratitude for the care and polish that's been put into this. It truly feels unlike anything else I've flown in xp. Thank you so much for the great updates! MU-2 by night, all day!! ;-) Now, if there was a way to get that kind of finish for a classic fighter jet, like the F/A 14 Tomcat for example.. dreams...

I wonder what your DL speed has been on the torrent, I've been gettin a steady 120KB/s. What an agonizing wait with over 4 hours left on the clock.

Those G2XPL generated overlays sure look sweet! Are there any such generated scenery available for download without having to figure out all the command line trickery involved with the mac ie. GMaps? Just so the rest of us simpletons can dip in on the fun aswell. Antti

For example, you say "Straight" the 3d cockpit view centers to forward view from cockpit. you say "radios" and the view centers in to the radio rack in the instrument panel. You could record the 3d view yourself, just create command and choose view and press save. Voila. view pans smoothly from one to another. Then again, this probably isn't going to work too well if you're not using headphones since there's the default radio chatter and engine noise disturbing the command recognition. Antti

Hey all, http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/859768/pulseofxplane.mov Anyone else experiencing some stubborn framerate oscillation in 9.22 rc1 (or any other version). I talked to Austin about it and he said that if I hit 19fps in the sim the oscillating phenomena ensues. Ben Supnik also chimed in and I sent him some debug info so maybe something good will come out of this. However I was interested in hearing your experiences with this and what possible remedies you'd suggest. Madjason posted about optimizers and for me DBoost made the biggest difference in framerates. I'd estimate a 5-15 fps increase. But.. still, the darn sim dips below that magic 19 fps barrier in certain situations like when you happen to pan your view towards a direction with some 3d objects that take just a split moment to load but it seems that it's enough to spill the milk and it's off to restart x-plane for another try at a smooth ride. I should also mention that I'm running on a brand new top of the line macbook pro with 4 gigs of ram and half a gig of vram. I've even tried to decrease the rendering specs, but oddly that actually seems to deteriorate performance. I clipped that tiny video off the bottom screen edge to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Concentrate on a corner or an edge to best notice the effect. When you're looking at things off a 24" screen and things get j-j-j-jerky, it is a little distracting. Best wishes, Antti

That sounds very promising! Also, I'm not planning on bugging them beyond my initial query. In the meanwhile I guess I'm going to have to try it via bootcamp then. I've got the windows package and it may be just too much of a tease to hold off until the mac port sees the light of day. Something to do for my spring break then. Thanks for the info! ak

http://classicjetsims.com/F-18.html Anyone tried this system yet? How's it looking? Any recommendations, insights etc.? I wrote them a few weeks ago to ask about a possible mac version, but got no reply so far. ak

Well the MU-2 IS a lot of fun... You weren't kidding with that "you've never flown anything like this in x-plane before" statement, at least for me this has been a plane that actually feels like its mine, you know, as if I actually bought it and own it for real. Maybe that's coz I'm just an indoor pilot with no real piloting experience, but this thing got me closer to the real thing than I've been before so there you go.. fun. I fly other planes still, but the "moo" feels different. I like the fact that it has a detailed interior all the way and not just the cockpit, so I often hop out from the cockpit to take a seat in the passenger seats and enjoy the view from there while the autopilot is following its route. It's a great way to take my mind off of work (graphic design). How often.. hm, well I work a lot from my home so that translates into a lot of flying too.. I guess I'm on this thing some 10-15 hours /week... or /day if it's a good day for flying! So wasn't the story so that you guys actually fly the MU-2 in real life? How does the experience in x-plane par with the real thing? It'd be interesting to hear some thoughts on that, like I'd think that you probably get some sensory extras from past experiences that boost the "feel" of flying in x-plane too. Oh yea.. the *where* is a factor here too, so I absolutely recommend the corsica ortho-scenery available from .org, I fly there all the time, to the point that I think I really have to visit the rock one of these days! Thanks again for a great plane! I'll be on the lookout for the b7 patch.. 9.3 is looking like a great update! ak

Ok then.. Here's my contribution to the MU-2 video galore. ak