Dozer

Well, what is needed is a better system of reviews. More thorough reviews, and independent. Where the reviewer can highlight the strengths of the model where they're not obvious from the screenshots. A bit like what the xplane10 blog does.

Thanks for noticing the details. We have put great effort into details like this to make the instruments work just like in real. the digits are animated in a way that creates the appearance of little LED pixels that go on and off. Same effort has gone into the rolling digit's like the altimeter to make the numbers shift exactly like real. So even experienced in-type pilots will have a hard time finding inconsistency's in our instruments Small video clip of the ECAM in sim. ECAM video Oh my goodness that's very impressive. I love that kind of very close attention to detail! This aircraft will be bringing many people to X-Plane when it is released!

So... we'd pay to join PilotEdge, then essentially be paid back by PilotEdge if we fly often enough? (Assuming we're all reasonably competent or at least less incompetent than real PPLs can be...) I rather like the idea. It seems completely bizarre to pay for a service that would benefit from me using it, but I understand how it works and it does make a very pleasing kind of sense. I've been meaning to try PilotEdge for a while now but haven't had the opportunity. Is it still open to the unwashed public for free?

The stock Garmin 430 blights all of my favourite payware aircraft - in no particular order the Duchess, Falco, MU-2, BK-117... worst is when I'm obliged to use it to set NAV1 and COM1! The BK117 has two, and no ADF, so I have to use it for all my radio navigation! edit: the Falco scores major bonus points for modelling the GNS430's power switch, so at least I can turn it off and fly with NAV2...

I've just read the blurb on the .org.

Mid7night thank you for your very well-worded responses to this thread - they were refreshing to read. Especially the sentence I've quoted in bold. That's how Lord of the Rings was written. A playground for Tolkein's favourite hobby: inventing languages! I don't have a well-developed sense for flight models. If it objectively flies something like the performance charts say it should fly, and subjectively just 'feels right', then I'm happy. And I really appreciate good visual modelling, especially if it's both completely usable (ie, no blurry unreadable labels) and pretty. But I have no aptitude for 3d modelling, in Blender or Planemaker, for visual or flight models, or for building 3d cockpit objects. What I most appreciate, alongside a passable flight model and decent visual modelling, is the systems modelling. I appreciate a challenging level of complexity, as appropriate for the aircraft - which is why I really enjoy Tom Kyler's Falco. (It's probably the one of the most 'complete' aircraft presently, with excellent visuals and systems. I have no idea about the fidelity of the flight model but it's pleasing to fly, and the sounds I think are default.) Not that you must follow a five-page checklist to turn the engine on, but that the user gets they feeling they're sat behind a complicated bunch of components rather than the visual manifestation of a bunch of datarefs that come direct from the mouth of God. If I were to build an aircraft, it would probably be a grey cylinder with slab wings and a 2d cockpit made from generic instruments, but with all the cockpit furniture driven by my own plugins that would reinforce the system dependencies and allow a host of entertainingly baffling failure scenarios (ideally, recording exactly what went wrong and why into a log file to be viewed after you crash). So you can fly at 105% N1 if you choose, but you'll be flying a glider after fifteen minutes. Or that there's a chance the aft rotor power-transmission gearbox has had enough of this cruel life and is shedding bits of metal into its oil, causing the annunciator panel to light up in pretty ways. Or maybe it's the XMSN CHIP DET sensor that's broken. This is the kind of modelling I want to do. I don't think many people would pay $20 for the kind of aircraft I could build by myself... On a related note, are there any unique instruments in the Skyhawk that would need to be driven by a plugin? I might be able to write something suitable. My skills and experience are pretty rudimentary at the minute - the most recent things I've built are and a plugin to drive the analogue DME gauge from my avatar. If there was a particular instrument needing a plugin in the A-4, I could possibly write an appropriate plugin and upload it as GNU freeware to the .org. Can't guarantee anything as I'm about to move house and start a new job, but I'd like to find interesting stuff to model systems- and instrumentation-wise...

We'll see what we can do. Shouldn't be a problem That was an interesting question. Is the Duchess artificial horizon modelled on a specific real instrument?

There isn't much in the tutorial that's specific to the Duchess - you could use it almost word-for-word for any other aircraft with a constant-speed prop, and if you ignore the stuff about engines you can use it for radio navigation for any aircraft. (Disclaimer: I already know how to fly by radio navaids, in fact I don't use any other method in sims, so I just skimmed the article.)

FS9 doesn't have default sounds for things like moving a switch on a panel; they have to be baked into the individual components of the instrument panel by the gauge/systems programmer. So serious designers need to source a bunch of sound files themselves - I think the team for this aircraft included a sound recordings specialist. (Of course you can alias your sounds to one of the default aircraft, but that's the equivalent of using one of X-Plane's stock 2d instruments without retexturing it - it appears 'cheap' in a $30 product!) edit: the constant clattering noise in-flight is the elevator trim actuator. I'm pretty sure it was possible to mute it from the config program - certainly worth doing!

My favourite 727 was Dreamfleet's FS9 model from about 2002, about the same time as Captain Sim's (imo, much inferior) model. It had fairly sophisticated systems modelling and even a little failure modelling, in that there was a (configurable) chance of engine fire. Textures were beautiful for the 1024x768 era. It had a very well configured array of 2d panels. There was a large hidden clickspot in the top right corner of all the auxillary panels to close them, and there were logically-placed hidden clickspots to open the adjoining panel. For example you'd only see a small part of the overhead panel in the default view, but if you click on it, the entire full-screen overhead panel would load. Made navigating the panels very intuitive. You could also use keystrokes or an always-on-top view control panel to select different views. The sounds were excellent; there was a choice of about ten different voices for the co-pilot (who had a few dozen words to say at various points - "Flaps 5", "Engine 3 to 'Ground'" etc). People complained about the strange ticking noise on the flight deck, which was the agitator for the electromagnetic flight instruments and authentic, and the muted engine noise on startup - again appropriate for a 727! Flight model was probably as good as any you'd get in FS9. The aircraft shipped with a manual full of very usable performance charts, for the -100 and -200. Later in its life, the -200Adv version and wingletted Super 27 variants were included, which combined with Passenger and Freighter versions as appropriate gave a huge number of types to accidentally misinstall a livery into. There was a superb configuration utility to set passenger and/or freight loads, and fuel loadout, and to select which of the ten copilot voices you wanted, and whether you want EFIS or 'steam' instruments, and how much you'd like the engines to catch fire, and how loud you'd like the fire bell to ring when that happens. I loved it back in the day. But when I go back to any of the FS9 2d-panel aircraft, the jerky motion of the flight instruments is a killer. As someone who mostly flies IFR, I need to have a smoothly-animated artificial horizon, altimeter etc - and FS9 cannot deliver that like XP can. But other than the limitations of the FS9 platform, there's a lot for current aircraft developers to learn from that product... edit: just found a video that supremely illustrates the problem with FS9. Look at - it only animates in pixel increments, which is bad when the panel's designed to 1024x768! This isn't an artefact of YouTube, this is what the sim was like for me last time I tried to use it, which is why I don't have anything except XP9 installed now.edit: it also had a working weather radar from RealityXP. I'd forgotten so much about the awesomeness of the DF727!

Ahh. I wondered why you were quoting Umer instead of FirstOfficerTom. I didn't see any links in your quote, and Umer's post had been deleted before I read the thread. Mystery resolved (and we all love XPFW)!

Is that bad? (Is there some sort of feud between X-Pilot and XPFW??)

I don't get it. Is this spam for FlyingBadger's 727? Is it still alive?

That's rather stunning Morton! I especially like the scrolling LED readouts on the engine gauges. Can I ask how that's done - is it a sliding image of LED-matrix numbers, or does each individual LED appear to stay static and just switch on or off as appropriate?

Wasn't there suspicion that the T-Rex mesh was taken from somewhere else?

I could be wrong, but I think they're both 3D, but modelled on different types of instrument. The co-pilot's horizon looks like an instrument I've seen used as the backup in other aircraft. The pilot's one is possibly a higher-featured luxury version :-)

This is very encouraging news Tom! Can't wait!

That looks awesome Tom! Thanks for posting!

I loved flying with Simufly's Delco Carousel back in FS9 - entering waypoints nine at a time by typing in their lat/lon coordinates was an agreeable challenge! FMCs are less fun I feel.

Hi PapaMosh, I have never used those limits myself. I think the PilotView manual explains how to set up limits, though!

Exactly, and that's why I put a relatively contentless response on the thread - so I will get emails again in future. Which I now am. I wasn't trying to nag you or anything!

You misunderstood what I wrote.

That's very impressive! Nice to have another 'mission' for the Moo beyond executive transport!

If I reply to this thread, maybe I will get emailed when it is updated like it used to.

Very exciting Tom!