Litjan

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

The power levers not only need to be over 64%, they ALSO need to be within a certain range of the set torque (25% iirc). I believe this is done as a safeguard, so that the engines don´t suddently roar to full power if you accidentially advance the levers a bit too much while taxiing. So after setting the desired torque and arming both CTOT switches you need to slowly advance the powerlevers until you can see the torque moving up towards the target level "all by itself". It works best when moving the levers slowly - if you slam them forward you might end up very close to the desired level, and then the effect of the engines holding that autonomously isn´t very pronounced. You wil also see that you were in CTOT mode when trying to reduce power after takeoff. The torque seems to "stick", until the levers are out of that 25% range, then the power snaps back. Thats why the correct procedure is to disarm the CTOT switches first. Jan

I am with you in welcoming new technology. I think the NG is a great aircraft, and the MAX will be even better. Thats just the way advancement in technology goes. For us the choice of simulating the "classic" came about with the availability of data for it, and the "iconic" nature of this aircraft. Plus the cool hybrid cockpit that seems to combine the best of two worlds (can´t beat big round mechanical airspeed indicators and altimeters for readability, even if you install a 50" plasma screen!). And don´t forget that in the last two years while we were developing this bird the real classics use was declining, at least with the major airlines. But I am sure the classics will keep flying in some parts of the world for many years to come. As an airline, the desire to operate new aircraft is paramount - less fuel and operating costs. As a simulation pilot you don´t have to worry about that (hmm, do I sense a great business model here?), so the option of operating newer or older aircraft is a matter of choice. I personally think that flying older or even vintage aircraft is a great way to experience different stages in aviation history, and I think that operating an older aircraft can be far more interesting than just watching a modern aircraft go through it´s automation steps. Jan

I have actually no idea why the distances are so different. I am sure there is a reason, but it´s probably technical. I always looked at the handle when setting flaps, and only set them wrong (2 instead of 5) once in my 10 years of flying the 737. The gates at 1 and 15 are there to prevent inadvertent retraction of flaps too far in a go-around situation. During a normal approach (flaps 30 or 40) the go-around command is "go-around, flaps 15" and the pilot monitoring immediately raises the flaps to 15. The gate will stop him from raising them too far by accident, because you have to set the lever down into the 15 notch before you can lift it out and further up again. The same principle applies to the single-engine go-around, where your approach will be with flaps 15, then on the go-around you will raise the flaps to 1. Jan

You mean why there are gates at 1 and 15?

Rest assured, it is about 5x more complex to operate the DCS A-10C compared to even a real 737. I have spent a lot of time with the A-10, and whenever I don´t fly it for 2 weeks, I have to start over learning the systems and controls from scratch. It is a nightmare in ergonomics, not quite as bad as russian hardware, but close. The 737 is made to be easy to learn and fly and not to give you a tough time when times are tough (unlike some more "modern" passenger airliners ). Jan