Dozer

D'oh! I'd been assuming that 100% of end-users MUST pay for Gizmo. I'd conflated this issue with the 'trial mode' Gizmo from last year that would shut itself down after a set period. Apologies for my slowness today. I blame the unusually warm weather. All the posts I've written in this thread up til now were on the basis that a user must pay (as I now know) $40 for the AA Q400 and then pay another $10 for Gizmo; I'd forgotten that 'pay $40 and put up with dialogue boxes indefinitely' was an option. To be honest that's a pretty rubbish option just to save $10. Please interpret my earlier comments in this light! Also I'd been thinking of the nag screen Ben suggested that comes back every three minutes but can be closed straightaway - in my mind that's worse than one that sits on the screen until you don't try to interact with it for 60 seconds. I could just go and have a cup of tea if I was too stingy to pay for a Gizmo licence. I think it would benefit Gizmo if other aircraft vendors could sell Gizmo-driven aircraft with the same method that X-A uses. I bought the Falco, received one installer for the Falco, flew the Falco, wrote enthusiatically about the nuances of the Falco on various forums. Gizmo was there but it didn't require me, the end user, to do anything for it to work. I think that's the ideal for a toolset like Gizmo - it's primarily a developer's toolset, isn't it? If a car manufacturer uses a groundbreaking engine from a specialist engine manufacturer to reduce the cost of developing the car, it's not ideal for them to sell me the car with only two pistons in the engine and then tell me to negotiate with the engine-builder for the other four. Even if I can also use the pistons as novelty coffee mugs and reuse them in any other car I buy that has the same type of engine. Presumably there are two versions of Gizmo behind-the-scenes: the X-A version that doesn't require a personal key, and the version used by Armchair and others that does. If the X-A version could be used by other vendors in exchange for $3.50 per sale (perhaps $2.50 to Ben and $1.00 to X-A for supporting Ben during Gizmo's development) then Gizmo would be taken up by more developers and retailers. Just looked at the Q400's page - it still doesn't mention that Gizmo will ask for a donation before giving the 'Buy now!' button and twenty screenshot thumbnails. Just looked at the manual - it looks like a good model. Just wish I could have been there in the beta phase to correct a handful of typos in the manual and on the model! I like that it has its own sounds.

Oh hi, did you change your name in that long thread that got locked? I was mostly thinking of what you wrote when I started this thread. I don't like it when people get accidentally alienated!

Nicola I was talking of a system where Ben gets paid at the point when a Gizmo-driven aircraft is sold, rather than after the user's gone home and taken their new aircraft out the box (metaphorically) and after they've been nagged. Ben owns Gizmo and if he decides each user should pay him $10 to use Gizmo that's his call - I just say it should be easier for the users to understand in advance they'll need to pay, and easier for users to actually pay. @Ben if other aircraft sellers (like the Q400's seller, whoever they may be) were able to bundle a Gizmo licence with their product you'd be basically doing the same thing - ie, $5 for the F-16 + $10 for the Gizmo licence. Would you still be selling the licence separately? I think it's a great idea! Seems like a good choice of aircraft to showcase Gizmo too!

Making a stink am I? I blame the unusually warm English weather today. I did shower a few hours ago... I thought the stars are broken & misunderstood & X-Pilot would benefit if they were removed. I don't really have anything else to say about it.

... just paid the peanuts Gizmo cost because it's really no big deal. I was speaking generally - the point is most people don't use forums. People have an amazing capacity to misunderstand, especially customers. You're right; end-users ARE responsible for reading the fine print. But if the fine print can be presented in an easy-to-understand way, and in 72-point font, you're less likely to alienate your users. How you approach this depends on whether you want to develop your customer's characters or if you want them to come back enthusiastically to buy your next product. I agree Ben should be paid for his work - I'm not arguing against that - but a system which can cause an end-user to be nagged is a system that hopefully can be improved to the point where no-one ever needs to be nagged! Part of that is to make it as easy as possible for people to pay for your stuff, which might involve bundling Gizmo licences with aircraft. I'd forgotten the bit where someone said that providing an aircraft that doesn't require the user to get a personal Gizmo licence is X-Aviation's privilege. I assume that means that an XA can use an XA Gizmo aircraft without their own personal Gizmo licence, but if they then buy Foo Aircraft's Gizmojet they will then need to pay for it. edit: the difficulty is that Bobby-Sue's Aircraft Foundry will need to explain to their customers that a) their aircraft use this thing called Gizmo they'll need a personal Gizmo licence c) they'll know if they've already got one if they own a Gizmo-powered aircraft that works properly d) unless that aircraft is from X-Aviation e) they don't need to pay $10 for each non-XA Gizmo-driven aircraft they own. They DON'T want customers put off their aircraft if they can't understand how Gizmo licences work - it's very well to say it's the customer's responsibility to know what they're buying but it's the aircraft developers and Ben who lose if the customer walks away. Or has a bad experience and complains on distant forums where the XA guys aren't on hand to explain. It would be better for everyone except XA if Bobby-Sue's Aircraft Foundry could reach an agreement with Gizmo Enterprises to allow their products to work without a personal Gizmo licence, in exchange for x dollars per sale or some other consideration. XA would lose the advantage of being the best place to sell a Gizmo-driven aircraft.

Did they? Last I heard straight from his mouth he liked them. Wasn't someone saying something about how none of the .org moderators have more than 3 stars here, then Ben said he gets 5 stars in one subforum and 1 star in another? I might have my wires crossed about Guy Who Changed Username. I may have missed an explanation of what they mean when I joined the forum, but in my view, if they're misunderstood they're a negative benefit.

Those little stars under the username... My understanding is they're automatically awarded by the forum software based on who-knows-what. I think they're meaningless and pointless, and they offended that guy who hysterically changed his username when he thought he'd been down-starred as a very petty form of attack. I suggest we get rid of them!

The idea is more like selling without a Gizmo licence (= cheaper) for those who already directly purchased from Ben. Yes. Those buying an aircraft without the licence will either be people who already have a Gizmo licence, be people who are going to see a lot of dialogue boxes telling them to buy a Gizmo license, or be people who disable the Gizmo plugin and see how well their new aircraft works without it!

Does X-Pilot need its own file library? Can't we just upload stuff to the .org, Avsim.com, Flightsim.com and/or Github (joke) and discuss it in the forums?

It would be easier to talk about this with clearer names for different tiers of development: Laminar | Gizmo | Aircraft builders | \ | People who make stuff like MU-2 Command | / End users-- That's four distinct groups who can all be titled 'developer'! What if the aircraft builders were loaned a small stock of Gizmo licenses, to be paid for and replenished as their aircraft sells? So, Foo Aircraft Ltd build their Gizmo-driven Wonderjet product and put two versions on sale: $30 for the basic aircraft; $40 for the aircraft and a personal Gizmo licence. Gizmo Enterprises PLC 'lends' Foo a float of twenty Gizmo end-user licenses to sell with the $40 aircraft. If no-one buys the Wonderjet, Foo Aircraft can just return the unused licenses and they're not out of pocket. But if it sells, periodically they return x times $10 to Gizmo Enterprises and get x replacement licences. If it sells a lot, Gizmo Enterprises loan Foo a larger stock of licences to keep them liquid. The point is, Foo don't pay Gizmo PLC up front for the end-user licences but after. I think this is similar to how supermarkets sell their merchandise. There is a forseeable problem in that more customers of the acf+gizmo product are likely to exercise their statutory right for a refund than pure Gizmo customers (who are more likely to know what they're getting). I don't know what mechanism Gizmo has for returning a 'used' key but it's probably illegal for Foo to say "sorry you didn't like the aircraft, here's $30 and Ben's email address for the other $10". Ideally, everyone gets paid, everyone knows up front exactly what they're buying and what it costs, and no-one has to see a dancing reminder box. No-one likes to be nagged! And for every 10 people who complain about something on a forum, there's 100 people who never post or read forums (although Cameron's probably the best person to comment on this).

I remember a comment made by a Soviet diplomat during the first year of WW2. It was something about how the European nations would write down Allied aircraft losses in one column, and German losses in another, and examine the difference in the losses. The Soviets would add Allied and German losses to the same column and add them up! That's the difference between the Hobbyist and the Professional's approach to X-Plane development. For the professional (such as you Ben) you must consider the return you'll get from people using your stuff against your time and effort in creating it. But for the hobbyist (such as myself), the time and effort spent creating is its own reward, and people using my stuff (and potentially paying for it, in the future, if I can build good enough stuff) is also a reward. If I were developing aircraft professionally it would absolutely make sense to use Gizmo to build stuff quickly and easily, and it's great that you've made it, and I look forward to the aircraft that will use it - I notice the IXEG 737 uses it, and that aircraft will be as iconic as the MU-2 was in 2009 and the CRJ is now! And if I hated programming, it would make sense to use Gizmo. But I enjoy C++ and learning how to solve problems in a more challenging environment. I'll enjoy the awesomeness of Gizmo as an end user rather than as an application developer! edit: sorry Tom didn't get your reply til after. I've just realised from the timestamps I spent twenty minutes writing this post. I need to turn off the PC and finish moving house...

To be fair to C++, once you figure out how to get PPL and OpenAL working, you can do the same with ALSoundBuffer boo("some/file/path/boo.wav"); boo.play(); The catch is: getting PPL and OpenAL to work. PPL works fine in my IDE now, but despite devoting a whole fifteen minutes to it I can't link to OpenAL's libraries. And the end result's not cross-platform or anything good like that.

Sweet! Here's what I needed flat windscreens for:

I've realised my mistake. Bought a 2-litre bottle of supermarket cola last night, which has now all gone. Spent about eighteen solid hours playing with Blender and Inkscape. I have made a very nice .svg of the face of the AWA VAN3 analogue DME indicator - life got much better once I learned where the command to rotate an object by an arbitrary number of degrees is! Now I am confused by the process of turning .blend into 3d cockpit... and also regretting not spending last night asleep...

Shelved the ATD-300 and am making a 3D version of my avatar DME gauge. Stalled right now on making an .svg of the gauge face. There must be a quicker way - and I am starting to hate Inkscape...

Very, very, VERY early days. But this is the greatest progress I've ever made with Blender! Meshbuilding is HARD.

I haven't a clue! Despite my avatar I'm not that aware of instrumentation from before the Boeing 707 era. I was just thinking of the photos I have seen of early blind-flying cockpits, which had a similar-looking artificial horizon and gyro compass centre-stage and with large faces rather like what you've got there. Anyone else able to hazard a guess? Unless it is the ADF... Excellent. (I wish it was possible to get hold of a database of navaids as installed in the 30s/40s/50s, along with charts, so the radiographic scenery matches the aircraft!) Well as long as the radios have separate tuners rather than using the GNS430's tuner, and the GNS430 has a power switch like Tom's Falco, and ideally an optional 'INOP' sticker to place on its screen, you could probably just make the one modern version... :-P Actually - in all seriousness - 'INOP' labels that are made visible or invisible with hidden clickspots are the future. I read an article about minimum equipment lists earlier today - it seems the flight crew might have 'INOP' labels to put on the broken non-essential equipment as a reminder to themselves and the next crew not to turn on the second air-conditioning pack until maintenance have fixed it. My ambition is to learn to make plugins that model an aircraft's systems in enough detail that it can easily generate plausible failed equipment when an aircraft is loaded in 'flight crew just boarded' condition, thus giving a reason to follow checklists to identify broken stuff, plan the flight around acceptable failures or hand the aircraft back to an amphetamine-driven Maintenance department who can instantly repair some particularly offensive failure if you want a simpler flight. So the 3d cockpit would have a hidden polygon textured with an 'INOP' label over every instrument and switch, which could be made visible when the plugin's in 'place INOP sticker' mode (to prevent the user accidentally placing stickers when trying to press a switch and missing). That said, a deep level of systems simulation probably doesn't apply to the DC-3, which is fly-by-wire in the mechanical sense!

That sounds great Keith! Seems a sensible system. I'm looking forward to trying PE now - it really sounds like you guys know what you're doing! Just looked at RealityXP's X-Plane GNS430W - it's €35 - I think that can wait until after I've paid off the credit card...

Pete thanks for putting all these resources here! I've attempted to learn Blender (following Dan Klaue's "how to build a plane" video tutorials) then gave up, deciding to retreat into the world of plugin design instead. But I'd rather like to be able to build 3d instruments - I'll give these links a detailed look! Thanks a lot! Exclamation mark!

Amen. May the Curse of the GNS430 not blight this DC-3! I've just gone through a stack of old aviation magazines - in one pile they'd have come up to my waist, and I'm 6'3" - removing the interesting articles and recycling the rest. An awful lot of ads for the groundbreaking new GNS430 in the mags since 1990! But I like tuning the radios with little LED readouts, thank you, or with numbers written on plastic dials or tumblers - not rendered on a simulated LCD screen...

Don't be put off because you're not one of those that can lear it all in 5 hours - some people's brains are wired that then can just absorb laws and procedures like... like... like a metaphor for something really absorbant! For 'normal' people it will take longer, that's fine. There was a learning technique I read about*. Learn a thing, then revise what you've learned straightaway. Then revise it again five minutes later. Then again fifteen minutes later. Then half an hour later, then an hour later, then two hours, four hours, eight hours, the next day, two days later, four days later, a week later, fortnight, month - the principle is, learn, then revise after a certain amount of time, then again after twice as much time, and repeat. The downside is you might never ever forget PPL air law, and that could potentially cause madness. Apparently, this pattern of revision matches the way your brain recalls stuff naturally. *disclaimer: I read about it in a highly recommended book whose title I have forgotten, but haven't done it myself...

Thanks! I have a... fetish? (there's probably a better word) for 1960s/1970s/1980s instrumentation, from the approximate time people started navigating by VOR until GPS and EFIS became widespread. I've actually turned my avatar into a working, plugin-driven X-Plane instrument and uploaded it to x-plane.org. I to fly the airways by mastering a lot of little needles and switches, rather than LNAVing along a magenta line... It seems strange to disable someone's account in order to encourage them to fly more. What if users pay a one-off fee for limited membership, which expires if they don't fly x hours in y weeks? That way, a PPL holder who flies once or twice a month will pay (say) $15 each flight, because their membership lapses between each infrequent flight, while a sim hobbyist who flies twice a week will pay $15 once and stay flying frequently enough for it to never expire.Or, each user pays (say) $15 for membership, but each flying hour accrues credit to claim against a discount on the next membership application. The credit progressively 'evaporates' when the account is inactive. So, Mrs PPL pays $15, flies three hours in a week and then doesn't come back for a month. Her three hour's credit is gone so she then pays another $15. Mr Hobbyist pays $15 and flies on average two hours a week* for four week's running, gaining eight hours credit, then goes on holiday for two weeks (meaning his account becomes inactive). On return the remaining credit is worth, say, $10 so he immediately pays $5 to reactivate the account - if he delays he'll be paying more - and starts flying regularly again. Hopefully such a system is easy to set up and automate and provide user info such as a graph showing how their credit will decay if they stop using the service. *I have no idea how much time other hobbyists can spend flying online... Also I have no idea what sort of rate hobbyists would consider appropriate to pay, I'm afraid. You're definitely and tangibly delivering a service, by having guaranteed controllers and traffic, so I don't think it would be hard for people to persuade themselves it's worth paying regularly. But people have a depressing tendency to start screaming at the idea of paying money for stuff they enjoy that's provided via internet... I'm quite keen to log in now and give PE a go! The problems being, I'd need some practice flights to make sure I can actually fly a SID/STAR with some degree of competence first, and I really really should turn off the computer and finish cleaning this flat so I can definitely get the deposit back. What's PE's policy on users flying 'dead' aircraft? There's a rather lovely de Havilland Comet on my hard drive, as flown by Mexicana until 1970...

What do you mean? This cockpit is state-of-the-art! Three artificial horizons! Three! I am curious about what radio navigation capabilities this panel will have though - my PC is too elderly to make VFR flight any fun (really ugly scenery and short draw distances...)

This work? http://www.avsim.com/pages/0411/ShadeTree/PC12.html Yes, very much so. I'd rather like to buy the PC12 now, when I didn't before. From that review it seems the generic-texture 2d instruments are the low-point for that package by a considerable margin. The BK-117, Falco, Duchess etc have instilled a bias in me - when I see screenshots featuring characteristic generic textures, I assume the entire package has been made with the same (lack of) effort as the instrument textures. Clearly I am wrong! I notice that Avsim still doesn't identify which simulator the aircraft is for on its aircraft review page. This is why I'd forgotten about Avsim - I don't want to wade through the many FSX reviews to find the handful of XP9 reviews. That said, it was an Avsim review (for the Mu-2) that brought me to X-Plane in the first place.

Back in the Good Old Days when Oleg Maddox would stalk the public Il-2 Sturmovik forums, his answer that became a catchphrase for how long it would take to complete any given task was "within two weeks". Nice to know he's not the only developer to think that way! Really looking forward to this Tom, it seems that you'll be releasing this about the same time as I'll have finished moving house! Very good. (I love animating needles, I wrote a class to add physics - in the form of friction, damping, variable actuator force etc - to instrument needles! Useful for - it probably should dance so much in turbulence - although XP9's turbulence is famously bugged.)