Litjan

Copy and paste from my mail to you, as it may benefit other users: Hi Chuck, simply select all the items that are in the second entry (from the DSF) (use shift-click first to last one) and drag them up to where the items from the apt.dat are. Now you can just delete the old header from the DSF entry. You should now have a structure on the right that is: world/airport/all items from both apt.dat and .dsf file. The warning you get is when you try to export a wed setting where not all items are within the aiport folder. In this case the DSF stuff you imported sits in its own folder, but not in the airport folder. Does this make sense? When you "export" your file, WED figures out which stuff goes to the apt.dat and which goes to the .dsf.Same for when you upload to the gateway - in this case you MUST select the airport file line, though (you can tell you did it right when ALL objects on the main screen light up with those little crosses). Only then can you upload to the gateway (and you must select the "export target" correctly. first). Let me know if this works, Jan

Hi everyone, Work continues - as a matter of fact development speed has increased again over the last few days. There is really nothing big to reveal, on one end we are adressing the roughly 30 issues and remaining items we have, on the other hand we are fighting the uphill battle with the FMS routing structure. Before release there is also the documentation to be done - most of the content is there, it just needs streamlining and editing. Just last night we have improved the APU operation. We now have a moving air-inlet door, the FADEC will wait until the door is open before it engages the starter, and the APU can also be shut down with the firehandle or by switching off the battery bus - in that case the APU inlet door will stay open, though. A funny thing happened when testing the new behaviour - with repeated APU starts and insufficient time for battery recharge in-between, two of us have accidentially depleted the airplane battery. We initially thought we found a bug, as you couldn´t even connect the ground power anymore! But it turns out the behaviour of our simulation is correct, because without sufficient battery voltage you can not even close the relays to connect electrical ground power. This does happen in the real aircraft, too - if a pilot, eager to get to the hotel, forgets to properly shut down the aircraft in the evening (battery switch off), the next crew in the morning might find a dead battery. The only way to get the aircraft going in that case is to connect a DC source to the external DC connector. . We also worked on improving the GUI - up to now we had to go through the plugins menu to access preference or setup menus, now we have a state-of-the art sidebar that you can get to by bumping your mouse on the left edge of the screen. Some menus (ground and cabin-crew interaction) can also be triggered by following real procedures (selecting the correct interphone channel, enabling receive volume, toggling interphone or radio push-to-talk switch), but if you don´t feel like that, just use the nifty sidebar-menu. Our menu interface will be fairly spartanic, for example the "preflight" one will allow you to pick three states (cold and dark, turnaround, ready to fly), and specify zero-fuel-weight + CG and fuel distribution. We decided against some more elaborate "seat plan" where you can click on every single seat to place/remove a passenger. It would take too much time to make, novelty of it would wear off after using it once or twice, and really in the end all the real pilot cares about is the weight and the center of gravity. There will also be no "real time" boarding and deboarding of passengers, this is something that is very hard to get believable without actual 3D people moving onto the aircraft, which to my knowledge hasn´t been done totally believable on any flight-simulation to date. We do realistic fueling times (if the user chooses so), but weight adjustments (loading/unloading) is instantaneous. If you want to roleplay, use a stopwatch and a figure of roughly 5 passengers( = 500kg or 1100 lbs) per minute . With development speeding up again, I expect to start posting some more content and dev-blog type info more regularly. Jan

1.)The CTRL-numpad thingy works just fine - the view-changing window is acutally a remnant from times when XP did not have this feature yet. We will probably keep it, because some users might like it (i.e. not having to go through setting up views and remembering which key is which). Fwiw, you can also adjust and save those views in the view-window. 2.) The sound you are hearing is a combination of aircondition airflow, avionics vent blower, standby-altimeter vibrator and engines running on low idle. Jan Edit: Ben beat me on 1.) ;-)

Of course you can always request liveries. We won´t promise anything, but Morten is putting out some really great ones, and I think he is grateful for some suggestions. Jan

Peter, I agree with you. Everyone enjoys different parts of a simulation like X-Plane, aviation is a huge area and there are many different things to do. Thats why many add-ons are out there, catering to different tastes and likes. I personally would never think of getting an add-on that changes the colour of the sky or the cloudshape - I simply don´t care - I place my emphasis on different things. We make an aircraft that caters to the more serious and realistic airliner experience. I still believe that one can enjoy our product in many different ways. Heck, you could even just look at it from the outside in chase view and still enjoy it. Is that worth the price of admission? Everyone has to decide for himself. There are many features in our model (and the real airplane) that our users (and the real pilots) will most likely never ever see in operation or use. Examples: LGTU, PTU, Stby Hyd System, Alternate flap system, etc. I have flown the real one for ten years, and never needed any of those once. Why do we put those in our model? Because the real one has them. We will provide a complete model with as many realistic features as technically possible. We will not finish it at 95%, just because we get tired or because of user demand. We understand that waiting for it is hard, but the history of software is full of examples where developers have caved in to the din of "release it, already, we don´t care what state it is in!!", only to find out that indeed the user does care about the state it is in ;-) It will be worth the wait! Jan

Afaik that is not possible with X-Plane....yet. Jan

Hi, I am not using TrackIR in my videos, and I find it perfectly ok to manipulate the MCP with my mouse. I am using mouse-look, so holding down the right button will move the view with the mouse, when I let it go, the mouse moves the cursor again and its easy to "grab" buttons that way. The sensitivity of the knobs is tuned to the task, so more sensitive for larger selection range (like altitude), smaller for small ones (like VOR frequencies). Turning it one "unit" is fixed to a certain distance in space, so if you really want to finetune you can do so by "zooming in" with the mousewheel, then a certain on-screen-distance translates to a much smaller "distance in virtual space" to give you better resolution. Do the opposite when running out of space - move the viewpoint back, so a certain distance on your screen translates to a bigger distance in the virtual cockpit. There is still some trouble with these grab and drag manipulators at certain strange angles, but we are working on that. On the whole I find this a much more realistic and practical way of adjusting values - escpecially when using a head-tracker, where the view will wobble slightly and move the mouse-cursor off the sensitive spot. Also keep in mind that many knobs in the real airplane can not be turned through the whole range without doing a sommersault in the cockpit, either. Especially the FLT ALT selection knob is notorious for being a PITA to turn through the whole range, many grabs and turns... Usually it stays at typical cruising levels, only in the simulator we like to set it to 3000 or so, so we don´t get bothered by the OFF SCHED DESC so much. Thats when your wrist hurts from twisting that one (in realitiy you also have to push it in while turning...) Jan

Thanks for noticing, we spend a lot of effort to get the sounds just right, it is very important to me, because if it doesn´t sound just right, it will immedietly burst my bubble of "being there" :-) Jan

Last part is up: Jan

I tried some of that - when going to a 10nm final the aircraft will be at 170kts, but with flaps retracting from 5 to up. If you are quick, you can reselect flaps 5. And be pretty stabilized - definitely possible to do an approach from that setup. Of course the gear is down and the parking brake still set, so if you don´t release that, be prepared for a pretty short landing roll and some hot brakes! I also tried the "save situation" - but it does not capture any of the custom datarefs. So you would get the same position and speed and configuration - but most of the switch positions go back to the default you get when just loading the aircraft. I haven´t talked to the team about this, there might be a way to adress this. But of course its possible to set all the switches into the desired positions real quick as well. I haven´t missed the "save situation" yet, I find it easy to position the aircraft where I want it with the local map (pos, alt, heading, speed), then turn on the AP and autothrottle real quick, raise the gear, and voilá... We are going to provide ground vehicles to go along with our aircraft, there is already a GPU, a HP air starter and a pushback truck. I have to ask our artist´s permission to show them (already did a screenshot), because we don´t have the "wires" running from the GPU to the plane yet (Tom needs to cut the fuselage to make the ground-service receptacle). The vehicles will appear out of "nowhere" and disappear again when not used, so no fancy drive-up simulation - we feel the sight of a truck passing through buildings and other objects is not acceptable. There might be more elegant solutions, but as you said, we don´t want to delay release any more than necessary. Jan

To tell you the truth, I haven´t even tried to save a flight, I am not sure if all the custom dataref values are saved correctly - I would doubt it, but will try soon, curious myself. I "continued" the flight from a few months ago by recreating the same situation - and have done so for some of the other videos as well, I am sure if you really watch closely, you might catch some things that are a bit different between "takes" like the time, the fuel, etc. As for the release date - your guess is as good as mine, really. It´s like forecasting the arrival time when you travel in your car, but have really no idea what the traffic will be like. You know the distance, but you don´t know the speed . I can promise that we won´t hold it back when it´s done - but we won´t release before that point in time, either. Jan

Hi Tom, I´d rather answer you here than on youtube :-) The FD usage policy varies from airline to airline. I´d like to venture out and say that the more trust an airline has into the flying ability of it´s pilots, the less stringent the call for use of automatic flight systems is. There are some airlines that won´t even let their pilots use "manual thrust", arguing that the autothrottle is more attentive to the speed situation. How sad is that? Same goes for the autopilot and flight-director. I have seen people pluck themselves into the ground in the simulator with those cross-bars firmly centered. The autopilot is a great tool, and the flight-director can be used to improve your precision, but there are situations were both are inappropriate. The visual part of a non-precision approach is one of those. Jan

Hi Steve, iirc it is the "default" EDDF scenery by Aerosoft. It might not be included in all versions of X-Plane, I think there were some regionalized ones without the Aerosoft airports. Jan

Hi mtaxp, yes, you beat me to announcing it . A new one will come approximately every week - until we park at the gate in JFK. Jan

Well, I can´t make any new videos yet, because not everyone that saw the first part has also seen all the other parts. So I have to be courteous and wait until those "viewed x times" on all four even up, to give everyone the time to watch them in these busy pre-Christmas times. . Jan

Production on the sequels will start in a few weeks - pretty busy with development right now! If the aircraft is in V/S and speed drops too low, first the autothrottle will engage in alpha-floor protection (flashing A) and add thrust to stop the speed decay. If this is not sufficient, the airplane will revert from V/S to FLCHG to avoid the stall. Jan

New post up at the blog: http://www.ixeg.net/blog/item/34-737-wins-again Jan

I voted to have that initially as well. But I am totally happy with the current solution and I think that even people with an extra axis available can live with this limitation. X-Plane has the ability to adjust nosewheel sensitive in relation to ground speed, just like modern cars do. So you can steer the wheel to maximum angle whith your pedals while going slow, but sensitivity reduces during the takeoff run so you won´t overcontrol there. Jan

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. More than the monetary reward this is what is paying us back for the many hours cursing at our computer screens . Tom will release the third movie tonight (lunch time US) and the fourth one tomorrow. I already have some plans how to continue our little journey to JFK, but of course at the end the plane will be sitting completely dark on some tarmac again (hope I didn´t spoil the story by telling you the outcome ). After these videos I will start on doing the ones that accompany our written tutorials, and then I will do tutorial videos that focus on certain items in-depth. Nils might probably start doing some more fancy "showtime!" videos as we approach release next year, like the first one we published, nice music, nice effects, an artists touch. Jan

Well, its not staying cold and dark for 50 mins, fortunately .

Quick heads-up: I shot 50 mins worth of footage this morning to show a full cockpit preparation from a cold and dark (and I mean COLD and DARK) aircraft until the plane finally levels of at 7000 feet in the early morning sun - it will take another few hours for the movies to process, get reviewed by the team, and finally uploaded to youtube. Jan

Hi folks, no fighting or it´s off to your rooms! It looks like the next preview videos will be two at just over ten minutes each, showing a full "cold and dark" startup, terminating when taxiing out to the departure runway. I have done a "dry run" yesterday, and the team reviewed the video and we are implementing some minor tweaks and fixes to small issues that showed up during this test. One was some lit areas of the panel that were shining at night, even though there was no elec power, for example. I will explain as I go in my usual rambling style, and barring any showstoppers I will shoot the final version next Monday/Tuesday and it will go up on our channel shortly thereafter. If there is any system or process that you would like to have some more information on feel free to ask for it here, I will try to accommodate that in those videos. The rough idea is an early morning startup for a completely dormant, unpowered aircraft, including all system checks. Secondary objective is to point out the different sounds that we implemented recently, all the way from gyro spin to pack outlets. Jan

I think I can definitely rule out next two months... Again, forecasting a release date is like forecasting the weather in a few months. As Morten has said, progress is slow but steady, and I will probably ramp up my preview-video production again soon. I have some interesting ideas, and in a little while it may even be time to start on a series of "official" tutorial videos that go along with our written documentation. For that I need the cockpit to be a bit closer to its final form, otherwise people will get a wrong impression from the videos. Morten described the progress on the sound system, and I can only second his words, it is really immersive. We humans seem to rely on eyesight, but all the other senses are merrily feeding input all the same, so it is tough to create a "suspension of disbelief" on sight alone. Technology won´t allow us the "feel" and "smell" part (yet), but having a realistic sound environment helps a lot! Now the correct sound is of high importance to me, because I spent roughly 6000 hours sitting in that cockpit. Alarms go off in my head as soon as something is slightly off, so getting those sounds right is a high priority. And I also believe that some of you will be a bit surprised as to what sounds to hear and how. Let me give you two examples. First, the engines. Many of you have flown on 737´s as passengers and the experience of a passenger is very different sound-wise to that of a pilot. The cockpit is a noisy place, with lots of fans, airconditioning, standby altimeter vibrator and what not. You would be surprised, but when starting the engines, you don´t really hear a thing from them until they spin up to maybe 10-15% N1, the most sensory feedback on them turning is a low frequency vibration. Another one is the flaps. Everyone knows that "wheeeeeeee" sound when the hydraulic flap motor moves the trailing edge flaps, just watch one of the myriad "omg I sat right on the window next to the flaps just watch my 15 minute video of them doing nothing most of the time supercool video!". Now when you are in the cockpit, you don´t hear them move at all, unless all the other "big" sounds (engines, aircon) are off. We create the same effect, so if you move your viewpoint to the cabin, (or outside near the wheel well) you will hear the flaps move, in the cockpit only when it´s fairly quiet. I guess all I can say is hang in there, I sincerely believe it is worth the wait and you will not be disappointed if you are looking for a true replication of the 737-300. Jan

Me, too. Will see if I can find the time to do a tiny youtube movie on how I engage the CTOT and maybe you can spot the difference in what we are doing. Might take until Wednesday, though, still away from home flying... Jan

I don´t think its the joystick, as the engine controller will start setting the torque without regard to the power levers. You have the CTOT switches in "arm"? The condition lever is in the high power regime? Oh, and don´t look at the powerlevers - they will not move. Just look at the torque on the engine guages. Don´t confuse powerlever angle with torque (although they both count in %). Jan