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Ben Russell

X-Plugins
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Everything posted by Ben Russell

  1. Stop and consider the logistics of this for a minute... Multiple third party X-P vendors, all with different data disclosure policies and laws that may completely prevent any sharing of customer details with Laminar. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of existing customers... And probably a steam purchase percentage slice to pay Valve to take into account as well...
  2. that works out to be about 15 seconds at 737 approach speeds... (assuming its a 737 on approach...) In any case, it's much much closer than I ever hope to be involved in. Imagine if the vis had been bad...
  3. Ben Russell

    CraynTech

    Good luck with your new venture! If I ever need new PC hardware I'll hit you up for a quote.. I hate trying to decipher/keep-up-with the spec' sheets.
  4. Post your log file. Disable EFASS real world weather. I have observed this behaviour when the cloud layer altitudes are changed even a miniscule amount. Your update rate may be low but who knows what the EFASS plugin is doing in the meantime. Disable it to be certain.
  5. beta software is by definition very likely to be broken or contain defects and bugs. The only company publishing payware product for X-Plane that supports beta release of X-Plane is Laminar Research. Notification of bugs is appreciated but it is beyond reasonable to expect that we will jump to attention to try and fix these and guarantee working software until the X-Plane release version in question is no longer marked as beta.
  6. Sim users want 90%+ of the real functionality at 1% of the price. Preferably with only a few months delay.... when the real companies have had decades. It's an absurd battle.
  7. By default you receive three hardware keys per purchase, this can be extended on a case by case basis by contacting X-Aviation.
  8. I'll bet $10 that people ask for a GPS or FMC retrofit within about 5 seconds of release.
  9. Install count is low because piracy rates are high. Machine count can be updated on a case by case basis and for 99% of customers 3 hardware keys are fine. Additionally; Activation keys stored on your computer last for six months. This gives a nice easy window for rolling hardware upgrades over time. There are better solutions out there. My personal favourite is iTunes "Five machines" that you can register and de-register yourself. This approach has it's own "costs". - Complexity in engineering. Apple can afford this. We don't have their budgets. - Connectivity. Every time you want to watch a rental movie you'll need to activate it and the key lasts for only 48 hours for rentals. Not sure how a purchased movie is dealt with. Our approach maintains simplicity in engineering and avoids the need for constant internet connectivity. A connection is only required at the time you hit the activate button. It is widely agreed amongst both end users and software engineers that DRM code is a poor use of engineering time. All systems can eventually be broken with enough time and effort, but so can the glass windows in your house, yet we all(99%) lock our doors. A brief investigation into places like The Pirate Bay will show you that piracy in the X-Plane community is unfortunately wide spread. Copy protection in small niche market places is required. Without it the prices would be absurdly high or the market place would simply die. Your grocery store applies a shop lifter tax to every single item you buy. This only works because they have a very large number of customers that can keep the theft-tax low. We don't have that customer count, that would lead to the theft-tax being absurdly high for it to have any meaningful impact. Thanks for your understanding. A lot of time thought and effort has been put into making the system as seamless as possible for as many people as possible. I hope this post has provided some insight. I don't want to debate the merits of DRM over again. I'm just sharing a little of the thought process and business reality behind what we already have. (I've already had several long forum battles over DRM systems in the past.)
  10. Correct. However, OS re-installs create a new unique identifier for your hardware. Get your OS 100% sorted before you start activating your products.
  11. Oh my god. How dare they charge for something of value... You think scenery curates and self organises while you're sleeping? If something provides you value. Support it. You'll spend more on toilet paper this week than that site is asking for.
  12. The flight sim market is a very very delicate garden. If all users resort to selling off their products to each other the result is that MUCH LESS money would end up being returned to a developer that is already invested in a very delicate market. This action on a wide spread basis would very quickly kill the third party products market. Regardless of law, DRM preference or ethical stance, the stark reality is that if you don't embrace the developers and show them support they won't be able to produce more product. You're playing with fire in a very fragile and flamable market place. Beware.
  13. Mainly politics. Best left at that... We aim to grow X-Plane by doing things that are occasionally outside the box. If X-Plane gains the ability to let us integrate the mixture levers into the standard controls config screens I'm sure we'll adapt our product to suit that as its easier for all involved. There are plenty of other artists making stuff with only what X-Plane provides. Some even go so far as to refuse to use plugins at all, they insist that X-Plane must provide the entire tool set. Someone has to clear the way... if that means we wear a few scratches and get bitten by some bugs, so be it. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
  14. @tomcat: Are you saying that we as creators of the Saab have some kind of responsibility to ensure that the Saitek products/plugins work?
  15. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. People want complex systems and aircraft. Complexity comes at a cost. Here's sparkers "announcement": http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=69728&p=765589 I did not write the systems code for the Saab so I cannot speak for why it is non-standard but it would have been done for good reason. We have better things to do than re-invent the wheel. If sparker want's to change his mind the doors are open.
  16. The XSaitekPanels plugin is maintained by a third party author. It has nothingto do with us and nothing to do with Laminar. It is my understanding that XSaitekPanels is modified on an as needed basis towork with complex models as they are released. "sparker", the author of the plugin, has stated that he has no interest inmaking XSaitekPanels work with the Saab because the Saab uses Gizmo64 andGizmo64 does not support Linux. Our product does not block or exclude XSaitekPanels. We are not using X-Plane in a way that blocks XSaitekPanels from working withthe Saab. The only blocking issue here is a personal opinion that "sparker" has decided totake against modifying his product to act as a gateway between the Saab systemsand your Satitek hardware. I understand that it would be better for everyone if it just worked. Beyond the fact that I cannot afford to support Linux(nor can I afford to modXSaitekPanels myself) it is absolutely no fault of ours what-so-ever that ourproduct does not work with XSaitekPanels. The blockage and incompatibility exists only due to sparkers personal decision.A decision he is completely free to make. If your complex products worked with your hardware out of the box withoutadditional third party plugins we would have something to discuss. As you have conceded that this is not the case there is no issue here. If you wish to see this item change I suggest you try and convince "sparker" toadd support for the Saab. His decision to valiantly carry the flag of 3% of users is hurting the other 97%of users.
  17. Are you using the Saitek plugin published by "sparker" with your Carenado and FJS products?
  18. Have you been using the official installer or are you dragging plugin folders around? Post your Log.txt file. (Use the attachments feature by pressing the "More Reply Options" button when creating a response...) If you can't figure out how to attach the file just copy and paste the contents into a reply in this thread. Attachments are preferred but anything is better than nothing.
  19. You guys need to contact X-Friese on X-Plane.org for help resolving this: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showuser=82559 He's the author of the plugin.
  20. Well, now that 10.30 supports physics hacks natively, I can share more info about how I did it back in 2010; Using weapon stations and a very small custom .wpn object with nearly no weight/attribs you can apply forces to the airframe using a script and the custom weapons datarefs. The math is a little absurd but you can definitely apply custom flight model forces this way. You basically push/pull on the location of the weapon-station by writing custom numbers into the weapon datarefs, this in turn applies forces to the airframe that include any torque values that result from placing a weps station on, say, a wing tip. I've used it to supplement clients flight models to more closely match their performance objectives. You'll need a custom script/plugin, plent of patience and you probably won't get a high quality result due to the math hacks required and the fact that you're after a near-complete override but there are ways to apply additive forces to the FM. Nice little boat by the way, looks like great fun and very manageable as far as storage/launching, etc... no mooring required... less fouling maintenance, all that fun stuff. Good luck!
  21. 10.30 offers an entirely new world of custom vehicle possibilities. Once it's out of beta expect to see some interesting things to do with cars/boats/vehicles.
  22. Guys, this thread was idle for nearly four years...
  23. http://ourairports.com/navaids/RR/Rotterdam_Locator_NDB_NL/#lat=52.02597344607035,lon=4.769050121307372,zoom=10,type=Satellite 405khz
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