Ben Russell

Both of those fields contribute valuable Copyright information to the package. It was an old trick to download someone else version 7 ACF, change the textures, change those two fields and re-upload claiming it as your own. These fields only increases in importance with payware. When you buy a product you expect quality support. If "the customer" modifies the product and somehow forgets about it and then starts reporting bugs it's frustrating for everyone. (Opening a 9.5 acf in Plane Maker 9.4 'just to change that field' could potentially lead to issues... who knows. History says it's safer to assume yes.) Our plugins work nicely with our products and they ensure quality support by clearly identifying a factory-sealed product. I've gone out of my way to extend a 3rd party plugin so that it can co-exist more easily with everyone's aircraft, everywhere, right out of the .zip. If the patch is adapated, in the near future, you can look forward to almost never having to tweak that field ever again. You're welcome.

Modifying the ACF package data for a string that -only- XFSE needs is horrible. In any form. If anything, XFSE should share a new dataref that we can write to if we want to.

...thanks for the feedback, im not real sure why it does that, maybe the self check is smarter than I thought. Would it be too much to ask to get you to take this up with the author of XFSE directly? I have way to much on my plate and the new code is pretty clearly commented where and why it's been changed. Code mods are released as BSD license (free to use, however you like..) or whatever suits the XFSE license better.

I have modified the DRM license server so that it will recognize machines that have registered before. If you lose your license key or need to re-install a DRM locked product for some reason, you should be able to get your old key back without the need to contact X-Aviation. If your machine configuration has changed significantly the 'fingerprint' we generate will probably change and the machine won't be recognized. If this is the case, contact X-Aviation support and we will look at it on a case by case basis. We're working towards allowing you, the customer, to manage a pool of machines with a reasonable level of freedom and flexibility. Apologies to anyone who's had to put up with any teething issues.

This version of XFSE has been patched to allow use of a file called xfse_alias.txt instead of modifying the ACF description. Create a text file "next to" your .ACF file, fill the text file with exactly the same information you would normally put in the ACF description. Done. If there is no alias file the XFSE script will fallback to the old behavior and load the description data from the ACF. I have disabled the XFSE 'in-sim' updates so that you don't accidently over-write the patched version. I do not have the Python plugin installed and I have no idea how to thoroughly test FSEconomy so I have not tested this in sim but I have double checked it for bugs and hope that it will work as intended. If someone can please test this out and let me know if it works we can look at getting the changes accepted into the main plugin version. Thanks! PI_xfse.py

That works with some versions of windows but not all, indeed, I started out that way, but then when using Win7 and 64 bit flavours of Windows, things didn't work. The old tried and true rules of where DLL's can live have changed in subtle ways and I have worked hard to provide the easiest solution for everyone. Additionally, there are step by step instructions and single file links on my Wiki for those that don't like installers. I'm sorry that there's an initial bump to getting Gizmo installed but that's what happens with something that introduces so much more to the sim. We've only barely scratched the surface with what we can do with it, I hope to show you a lot more in the coming weeks.

Download: Gizmo.plugin-Mac-10.3.8.zip This is a quick patch that addresses sound issues seen with the Falco package. This contains the Gizmo.plugin folder for Macintosh only. If you have previously installed Gizmo for Mac you will only need to unzip this new Gizmo.plugin and move it into your Resources/plugins/ folder. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Gizmo 10.3.4 is now available for download and install. Gizmo is a sim-level plugin. You should install the Gizmo.plugin folder into X-Plane/Resources/plugins/. Move the entire Gizmo.plugin folder, please do not play with the contents. For those who like to keep things simple we have prepared some software bundles. Windows: Download: Gizmo-Win-10.3.4.zip You will also need to download and install the OpenAL client libs if you haven't done so before. Download: Creative Labs OpenAL Client libs: oalinst.zip Macintosh: Download: Gizmo-Mac-10.3.4.dmg Linux: Linux version pending final beta tests internally. It builds and it will ship. For those who prefer doing it all by hand instructions and per-file downloads are available here. http://x-plugins.com/wiki/Gizmo#Install Curious? Intrigued? Good. This is one reason you might want to have Gizmo installed. There will be many more. Gizmo is a smart plugin and will only light-up for "Gizmo-enhanced" aircraft packages. You will start seeing these soon. Without being an approved developer there is not much you can do with the Gizmo plugin. You can read the Scripting API though, if you'd like.

http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/XPLMUtilities Re: "X-PLANE COMMAND MANAGEMENT"

Perhaps all I need do is make it explicitly clear that it doesn't solve the "HUB problem".. I have other obligations to resolve before I can release this though.

This project has been frozen. Why? Because users want a more complicated solution than I had initially planned for. X-Joystick, as it exists now, relies on X-Plane to interpret the low-level USB device details. It simply re-maps what X-Plane presents. To be a true solution to everyones problems, which include complex "multi device" USB chains, I would have to write a significant portion of code to deal with the USB device tree. I am not familiar with the lower level details of the USB HID system and quite frankly, don't want to be. While there are ways to work around this "perfect solution" and still come up with useful improvements to how X-Plane is today, I think for most people that really want this plugin any work around would fall short and they would still end up feeling frustrated at the need to remap their devices, even to a lesser degree. Until such time as I can work through the low level details of USB HID interaction and programming this project will not progress. As a work around, I would suggest investing in a powered USB hub with enough ports to satisfy your requirements of permanent device connection. Looking at Amazon now I find a significant number of 7 port USB hubs that are cheaper than I had planned to offer the plugin. Thanks for your interest, apologies for the disappointment.

I have banned 'mickthebike'. - User is a continual spoon-feeder. Shows no initiative. - User never says thank you. - User never contributes anything of value back to community. - User is arrogant yet aware of laziness and continual reluctance to read the manuals to learn how to use the tools at hand. It is my opinion that the user contributes nothing of value to the community while contributing much annoyance. Goodbye.

Because you piss me off.

Everything is on permanent, possibly terminal hold while I sort out living arrangements and a new abode. Very likely involving a new job, a new city and other exciting adventures. Whether X-Plane factors into it at all is yet to be determined. It's been fun.

...well I've been stretching the scripting engines legs by creating a test gauge with it. The gauge uses up 13 sample slots for aural warnings alone. I think 256 slots might NOT be enough. *laughs* This is "possible sound samples loaded and ready for use", NOT "voices playing at the same time". Most sound cards have a limit of about 32 hardware voices, high end cards have 128, software has no real cap, but you start chewing up CPU time. As for positional audio, we're definitely going to need that for things like subtle engine sounds as well as being able to move away from being in the cockpit and listening to the sounds go "past" with the air frame. Dataref triggers: This isn't like OBJ animations where you bind a sound to a specific dataref 1:1. This is a free-form scripting language with full logic/loop capabilities. It offers much more than simple dataref bindings.

3D position sensitive audio is a real pain in the butt. It requires a bunch of vector math that I simply don't have time for right now. However, as a step towards that, I have standard "omni present" sound already done. Pitch control and a few other nice little things are also fairly easy to add. Position control and all the subtleties that come with it will come a bit later. For now I can do a lot with omni.

Quick Q: ... is 256 custom sound slots going to be enough?

Sweet!

Free Language choices: - C/C++ - Delphi/Free (Obj) Pascal - Python, with a third party plugin. (Sandy Barbour's) This is a great choice for learning/prototyping but users sometimes have trouble installing it properly. - One or two others. I'm very close to completing my Lua scripting plugin which is designed to make a lot of common plugin tasks very easy. I also have a .NET bindings plugin that I aim to finish one day. See the SDK site for more information: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/Main_Page The SDK is powerful and pretty easy to work with once you grasp the concepts. There are always lateral thinking exercises to do to achieve what you really want though. Tools: Anything that can build a normal C-style .dll, .so, bundle or dylib. The gcc toolchain works nicely on all three platforms. Visual Basic 6 is out. As are all the .NET "Assembly style" .dlls, without a wrapper. OpenGL for drawing. There's no audio SDK calls so it's kinda roll-your-own, most people use OpenAL or Direct-Sound depending on how much compatability they want. Plugins for aircraft can range from the mundane to the very complex. Hope that helps somewhat.

I'll sell you a car, it's a real beauty, all it needs is a tune up and a cut-n-polish and it'll come up like new, promise.

Clarification: Nicolas informs me that the reason posted above is apparently not why Cameron was banned. However, from an outsiders point of view it certainly seems that way because up until that post was made Cameron had access rights. The straw that broke the camels back... As Nicolas did not mention exactly why Cameron was banned one can only guess at what could lead one to ban someone on the premise of something as trivial as a light jab at ones use of the flight sim.

Cameron was banned at x-plane.org because he questioned how often Nicolas flies the simulator after Nicolas had posted a series of screenshots featuring an aircraft over water. It's disturbingly easy to get banned, black listed, suspended or censored over there, which was a large part of the motivation for providing a new playground so that we can all sit around and enjoy threads like these. Indeed, I would go so far to say that, had you, Dave, started this thread at the org, when R.S. was a contributing advertiser, you may have found yourself black listed, banned, warned, etc. and the thread would likely have been deleted. As an ex moderator there, resigned of my own accord, I can say that I have seen people reprimanded for absolutely absurd things. As for your review, I am puzzled by the cling wrap effect... it's definitely rather glaring. As I own modest hardware I haven't tried any of the scenery, so I can't make any comparison, but it is certainly of some concern. I was going to suggest that it may be Gamma settings... but then the FS scenery you compared to is definitely designed for PC's and doesn't suffer from the same effect. The other item that I noticed is that in your review you do a comparison of an airfield (Tillamook) pre and post some processing you applied yourself to enhance detail. ( http://tinyurl.com/n6b77f ) This seems an odd choice of images to do detail enhancement with as the majority of the enhanced detail that you're pointing out will be filled in by x-plane anyway when it renders it's own airfield representation... I think an urban area with a similar level of "line detail" would've made a better choice. ... popcorn, beer, anyone?

Err... I'm pretty sure (99%) that QUADS support went out the window when we got OBJ8... A quad is just two tris, blender might draw them prettier but that's about it. Don't make me read the OBJ8 spec, it's too early in the morning.

...this guy rocks.

..I like pizza. ;D