Nicola_M

Thanks Alberto, I downloaded it and gave it an hour of fiddling with the settings. Along with FaceTrack, PilotView was able to get Roll axis working, but this is the one where you tilt your head while banking, so as to still keep ground view level. I didn't actually find a way to be able to move my head sideways and look along the side of nose of the aircraft. Maybe that is something specific to TrackIR. In any event, my system wasn't able to handle running PV and a webcam and FaceTrack and xplane all at once, and gave me some nice surreal graphic effects every few seconds. Nice to look at, but not while I'm trying to fly.

Jeez, Joe. Do you think he could've made them any bigger?? ;D

Isn't that what this whole thread boils down to? Someone's reluctance to pay the damn $10, under the pretext that it wasn't written up in large enough letters. Honestly, wait until life deals you a really bum deal then you get to see how trivial arguing over paying $10 is.

Thanks Alberto, that would be interesting to learn more about.

Well, I don't know what the answer is. All I can say is that I read enough about the Q400 to know that it used Gizmo, and that Gizmo was not free. I bought the plane, and I got nagged. Eventually the nagging wore me down so I paid. I don't feel angry, disappointed or peeved or duped about it, and I'm a bit confused why others would be. If the cost was something like $100 or something then they'd have a point. It's not as if it was a huge amount to pay, and no one forced me to buy the aircraft, or stopped me from reading up on the development - where I discovered about Gizmo - and in fact no one "forced" me to buy Gizmo. I could've still used it for free with the nag screen. I don't think anyone hid the facts from customers about Gizmo - they were there if you looked before buying - but maybe as suggested if Jack & Joe put it in big bold letters then there's NO excuse for anyone to say they feel duped.

Hmm, just beware of the hooha when the Q400 came out, I think it was derided for being a $40 aircraft. Imagine if it came sold with the $10 Gizmo licence on top, I can see a certain Blog going to town on the $50 aircraft. The simplest solution would be for Gizmo-driven projects to be sold via X-A; what's to stop Armchair going under the X-A umbrella? Ben's issue is the practicality of serial number generating for POS sales. He already said the time and effort outweighed the benefits, so it's back to the current system, or Gizmo aircraft going via X-A to the customer. Somehow you've got to make it as easy as possible to get the customer to part with $10. Short of giving it away, there will always be someone unhappy.

I want it! When's it out, Ben? When's it out?? ;D

Unfortunately the human nature is that people don't want to have to pay for something unless they either want to, or are forced to, are or nagged to. If that nag screen hadn't been there then Ben would've been $10 lighter right now. If he wants to be paid then unfortunately most people need to be nagged, me included. I do think you could put all of those clauses up on the site, and some will still find a reason to baulk and moan.

... just paid the peanuts Gizmo cost because it's really no big deal. I really can't see why so many are making a song and dance about this. When you enter into a contract with someone it is your responsibility to check what the parameters are. There was enough information out there for people to realise that the Q400 came with Gizmo and that it involved a donation. You don't go and buy a car without first working out what fuel it runs on, what it can do, what it can't. And then moan to the dealership because they didn't tell you that you had to replace tyres on it every so often..... Spoon-feeding is supposed to stop at a certain age, surely.

Um, I was aware the Q400 came with Gizmo, before I even bought the aircraft. I was also aware Gizmo was Donationware. I was also aware that by its very nature Donationware often comes with nagscreens in order to get people to, well, donate. (But it is only dollars, not testicles, guys). Maybe I was the only one for whom a nagscreen asking me to donate wasn't a surprise. I think I've now finally met the reason why McDonalds print "Warning - Hot Coffee" on their coffee cups. "Caution, Gizmo nagscreen donationware with this aircraft. Note, the aircraft may also leave the ground and require flying skills."

Well, I didn't manage to replicate it. Ran xplane again with FaceTrackNoIR and a series of aircraft and helis and all ran fine. Arno, whether it's WinXP or xplane I don't know. I'm just relieved it's not one of the aircraft at fault. Had me worried. Never seen so many "Fails" in a log text.... thx

It's really odd. I've just run xplane again, starting with the Q400 and all was fine, props turn. Loaded up the BK117 and rotors were fine. Then went onto the CAP232 and then the default C172 and again all was fine, props turn as normal. The only thing different from earlier was that I was running FaceTrackNoIR, so going to run that again now and see if the problem resurfaces. I'm glad it's not caused by the Q400 or T-28, because at least it shows that they are faultless. Beginning to wonder if FaceTrack's using up a lot of CPU power and if it's cutting out the first non-essential thing it can find instead, although I kind of expected the fog to be the first thing to show up.... Thanks guys.

Mmm, I've run xplane a few times today (owing to having the rubber landing gear syndrome on the BK117, which happens if I put too many liveries in the BK117 liveries folder) and the rotors on the BK have been fine. I only noticed the prop issue when I ran the T-28 (fine), then tried the Mudry CAP 232 for some aerobatics (still prop), then the Pilatus PC7 (still prop) and wondering what was going on I tried the default Cessna C172 (also still prop). Knowing the T-28 was ok, I then tried the Q400 and it was fine. The point is, xplane's been loaded about a dozen times today while sorting out rubber landing gear, yet the still prop issue surfaces after that many restarts.

Propellers no longer move - anyone got a clue? In the last 3 days, I've bought a Gizmo serial and updated the Dash 8 Q400 to v1.1, and also updated Khamsin and Arno's T-28 to v1.1. I noticed today that ALL the other propeller planes in my xplane now have props that don't move, even when the engine is clearly running, and the plane's moving down the runway! Oddly, the only two planes unaffected and with moving props are the Q400 and the T-28! And it's not affecting helis. Had a look at the log file and none of it makes any sense to me. Does anyone have a clue what's doing this? thanks Log.zip

However, I've been using this software now for a good few days and can certainly vouch for how effective it is. True, it's not as good as TrackIR, but for a free program which makes use of nothing more than a webcam it's still pretty good. With a number of changes made to the settings I can now use it to look down - essential for helis - but even if you keep your head still while down, it's very hard to keep it still, which makes aiming for the switches on the centre console quite difficult when they move out of sight the moment you get the cursor in the right hemisphere. The only shortcoming seems to be that FaceTrackNoIR cannot do sideways movement. Typical example when landing K&A's T-28 on the Nimitz as mentioned in Chip&Simon's blog, you need to be able to move sideways so you can see along the side of the nose. I haven't found a way to get FaceTrackNoIR to do this. Even though it has a "Roll" axis this is far from easy to get any satisfactory results from, and I've left Roll axis disabled. The use of a webcam brings another concern - although your webcam may be able to see you perfectly well in low light, FaceTrackNoIR cannot interpret the signal well enough to be useable. This means that if you do your flying in the evening, you need to have a well-lit room. This may not be great if you prefer to fly in a dark room with no distractions apart from your screen. An alternative may be either a NightVision or IR webcam. All in all though, for a free bit of software, FaceTrackIR really does help to improve your flying. If nothing else, it's a good way to see if TrackIR suits you.

My experience of Gizmo is that the nagscreen was extremely irritating. It began 60secs into xplane, counting down from 31secs. If I tried to move it out of the way so I could see what I was doing, the timer changed to 50-odd seconds and counting down, so this made the ordeal even longer. I paid and registered. $10 is a tiny tiny price for the time, effort and skill Ben's put into it, and for what it gives back. A very tiny price to get rid of the nagware screen. The Gizmo logo's so small, how intrusive can it be?

Okay, that is a really nice livery!!!! I was going to bin it, but if you want it it's on the downloads page http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=1906.30

Fictional livery D-NEUE This is a fictional livery I created as my personal livery, but I wasn't happy with it and was going to consign it to the "never used" folder. As at least one person likes it, I thought I'd post it up instead. File located in file library here: http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php/files/category/20-helicopters/ screenshot courtesy Kevin Mee

Landing practise

Don't think anyone's in at xpfw. Signed up a week ago to beta the MD80, but it's still pending but no email reply. Oh well. >

Hope I haven't stepped on your toes, Paul. Recoloured the bottom half of your masterpiece to make it look a bit more modern until you bring out a Sunseeker!

Yes, I did notice that. It's why I think it's not great on a laptop. It's not sensitive enough to give enough range when it comes to looking down. This is where a manual would have been beneficial.

The ONLY problem I can find with it is that it doesn't do "looking down" very well. In the BK I can't get to some of the switches on the center console because it can't look down that far. I think it's something to do with the settings, but as it's quite difficult to get the settings correct for looking up and down without it changing your seat position, I don't want to muck up the settings I've got. I've got no idea what "red.factor" does, and while it's got Yaw, Pitch and Roll settings, I dunno what X, Y and Z do, or what their sensitivity things are for. see pic If anything, this could really benefit from a user manual. It's not perfect, but it does make it possible to fly helis around a lot easier. I wouldn't get too worked up about this not being on mac, I would probably still go out and buy TrackIR, now this has demonstrated my pc can run it without killing fps.

Excellent find. It does work on xplane. Even I managed to get it up and running in half an hour and it works fine. There's no real manual for it, but experimenting with the settings soon works ok. Biggest issue I had was when I turned my head to look right, it then backed up so I was sat in the left seat. Fine tuning and now it's perfect. Can't recommend this highly enough. A cheap version of TrackIR for anyone considering TIR, or good enough as it is. I've held of buying TrackIR because I didn't know if the £150 cost was worth it if I got low framerates. This one has no effect on framerates whatsoever.

The Rotor Brake sign on the BK is spelt wrongly on the annunciator panel (Break). I've corrected it so the sign now reads the proper spelling - applies to both lit and unlit. Drop in three small corrected png files to correct. Image shows corrected version. Download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?n0p4zyg9cjwsicc Size: 83kb