Litjan

Pilot viewpoint, a good subject. When you are in the real aircraft, you will try to position your seat in a way that allows you to see the bottom of the ND over the yoke (high enough) but also low enough to still see the yaw damper indicator. If you are too far back, the yoke will block the ND, if you are too far forward you can´t work the controls all the way (dependent on the size of your belly ;-) ). You also move a bit constantly, dependent on what you focus on - outside for landing, inside for IFR or manipulating switches on the various panels. While it´s not easy to find a perfect head position in the real aircraft, the problem is even bigger in a virtual cockpit. The closest you can get is with the aid of some virtual reality controller - I use TrackIR, and I am sure the future will see some really cool stuff (oculus rift?). If you can´t afford a technical solution like this, then preset viewpoints for various situations will be the next best thing. This (X-Plane allows you to set and store like 10 of them) in conjunction with right-click and mousewheel for zoom will allow you to adapt the view to your needs. Also, as Morten said, we have a UI panel that zooms you to some default view positions for various tasks (overhead, FMS, etc.) Jan

Yes, having the real Boeing manuals is certainly great - unfortunately reading official FCOMs is REALLY boring, and I sometimes struggle to remember the stuff I read a page ago . For me it works best when I put into context what I read - so if I read about how the logic of the pneumatic isolation valve works in auto mode, for example, I have a big question mark over my head - but when you get a chance to throw some switches and see the effect, it becomes crystal clear very quickly.

The 737 NG and the "classic" are very similiar in most systems, so if you are proficient in a NG you should have no problem flying a Classic and vice versa. I think the EADT 737 is an absolute masterpiece and work of art, so it´s definitely a viable option to get accustomed to this class of Boeing airliners. Jan

As far as the pure availability goes, we want to have a bit more option than that - just having the GPU plugged in already has an effect on the electrical system of the aircraft, so we want the user have the option of having it available or not. In real life you will have ground power at most destination you fly to, and using it is strongly encouraged as it saves precious fuel in APU use. But sometimes its not available, especially if you fly to an airport that doesn´t service bigger aircraft regularly (diversion type scenario). If worse comes to worst and your APU isn´t working, you´d have to service the aircraft for turnaround with one engine running. First the right one (so passengers can disembark on the left), then crossbleed start the left one again and shut of the right one (to enable fueling/cargo service). I fortunately never had to do that. Once I arrived at an airport where the GPU wasn´t working with an inop APU and we just had to shut down the engines and the passengers then disembarked under the gloomy lights of the emergency lighting system (I warned them beforehand ;-)). Jan

Yes, the passenger cabin will be modeled in full 3d, Tom already has a few rows of seats in, and you can move about in it. We plan on doing some ground equipment, but it´s not on the highest spot in our priority list, and implementation needs to be in a (sorry Austin) "plausible reality" way. We are unsure about stuff appearing out of "thin air", but would also be not happy with trucks driving through buildings and such. I guess we need to look at the competition and see how they do it . I personally could see the GPU wires come out of a ground socket like they do at many airports... we will see. Jan

On behalf of the team I would like to thank everyone for the kind words. I am also very excited about this plane - currently, as the designers are busy on 3D and textures, my job as a technical advisor has become a bit more quiet. Usually I will just add some input if I think something looks odd, but since all the pictures, movies and drawings are in our repository, they can do their job without my input, and a great job they do. This gives me time to just fly our plane - and I don´t want to tease you, but it is just so much fun! The systems are pretty much done, with the exception of some small stuff like the fasten belts signs, passenger oxygen, emergency exit lights switch and such. So I can operate the plane very much like the real one, and I fly it back and forth all over the place, different times, different weather, different approaches. I keep adding small stuff I find to a big list of minor quirks that will need polishing before release. The 3D is coming along nicely, and we will be able to show some really awesome detail-shots pretty soon. I also plan to do another movie in a bit, this time about the autopilot/flightdirector system and it´s modes. Jan

I totally agree with you, I enjoyed having the windows there. But the airlines did a survey on their necessity, and the verdict is that they aren´t as useful nowadays as they were back then when airliners still did more low circling approaches and had to rely on spotting other traffic more than today. So they decided to fill these windows with "plugs", thereby removing the need for maintenance on them and saving quite a bit of money in the process. There are nowadays no 737s in use at Lufthansa that still have those windows. Jan

I used to fly all 737´s that we have, so not limited to a certain registration. Also note that the real D-ABXX carries the name "Bad Homburg v.d.Höhe" - while this one has the name of my hometown. It´s more of a working livery to keep me amused ;-).

Is it just me or does anyone else have really no clue what this is all about?

Thanks - I was wondering why the views on it splurged ahead like they did! And thanks for everyone´s nice remarks - we are humans and definitely cherish the appreciation. Just like a soccer team plays better when they get cheered on by the homecrowd ;-) Jan

I hope it will fly as well as it looks! Very impressive, really looking forward to this! Jan

PROGRESS REPORT Hello everyone! We are back working a bit more aggressively on the 737 and I wanted to provide a short update. We are currently working on exterior 3D elements, flap mechanisms and soon to be texturing. In addition, we are filling in holes in some of our systems, for example in the electrical system we have now implemented automatic galley load shedding, the magnetically held ground service switch and ground service bus with automatic GPU disconnect as well as galley loads, so when the coffeemaker or hot-air oven comes on in flight, you will see this reflected on the overhead ammeter gauges drawing power from the generators. We have also implemented a custom battery drain model that works exactly like the real thing, even when in emergency standby mode. You will have to manage your power draw very closely within limits and think twice about when and if to try to attempt an APU start when running on standby power (battery only) as the APU starter engine draws enormous current. We have included the battery charger model with charging modes of T/R, charge and pulsing. When the battery gets close to full charge, the charger will pulse current into the battery and you can see this on the DC ammeter. In fact, when you do an APU start and deplete the battery a bit, you can then observe the battery charger immediately after the APU comes online once you connect the APU to a generator bus. If you have the GPU connected, then the charger will begin charging immediately after the APU start sequence. Current and voltage are tied closely so when the battery starts to lose EMF, the current will also get smaller. Generator heating with amp loading is also modeled, along with the IN/RISE indicator. If you ask yourself: "How will this affect my daily flying?", then the answer is "not much if everything works correctly". This electrical stuff works behind the scenes, and you would have to watch indications closely to catch a glimpse of all this. But the beauty of modeling it to this extent is that you get VERY realistic behaviour in non-normal situations. If you loose the ability to generate power all this becomes very important. Suddently your life depends on that battery that keeps your instruments going...Boeing guarantees 30 minutes including one APU start attempt. What if you are 60 mins from the next airport? What if the APU won´t start, or can´t be connected to it´s generator? Do you want to descend to assure it starts? But then you are too low to get to land quickly enough if it doesn´t! Will you turn battery power off to have some juice left when you get to that airport (you need power to run the ILS receiver!), but then you´d loose the IRS and your primary attitude information... a dire situation, and with the way we model this you can actually run through the options and see how it turns out. We will include some "special situations" like this on top of the tutorials, just to introduce you to the depth of the simulation and give you an idea of the choices you would have to face as the pilot of a 737-300... We will definitely get a movie or two out before Christmas, highlighting some of this stuff and showing you how far the plane is really along! Your IXEG dev team

Hi Dozer, all great ideas and we have discussed that already quite a bit. For our V1.0 this will not be included, we simply want to get this done with the basic (normal) functions as fast as possible. But functionality like that should be easy to add later, as a matter of fact Tom has already done a script that can deliberately "fail" any bus, so we can check the respective equipment going dead as it should. I know that the hydraulics is also coded in a way to handle "leaks", for example. Some default XP failures work as well (i.e. engine failures), and of course there are all the failures that can be emulated by simply switching "off" the system in question. Actual "degradation" of systems is not really something that is a big issue in passenger jets, except for the tires, maybe. Most systems either work flawlessly or they are replaced. If a system gives us advance warning by performing less than nominal we consider us lucky. Usually stuff simply fails. Jan

Hi everyone, development is going kind of slow these days. Working on the FMS is really tedious, this component is a total bug-generator! While just getting the "normal" operation working is challenging enough, the "what-if" scenarios are absolutely mind boggling. It is not suprising to me that the real FMS is already at version 10.7 and still quite a few documented bugs persist... To take a little break from that and to give ourselves the reward of making something visually more impressive we have recently implemented the outside lighting (minus the emergency exit lighting and wheel well illumination, those are still to come). I have created a little video for you, and would like to point out a few prominent features to look out for: - Outboard landing lights, with correct timedelay for extending and retracting - Inboard landing lights, all with correct angles and light cones as specified in the manual - Runway turnoff lights pointing outwards from the wing roots - Taxi light that turns with the nosewheel - Position lights, either powered from the transfer bus 2 or the battery bus, dependent on switch position - Logo lights in the wingtips, illuminating the airline insignia on the tailfin - Strobe and anti-collision lights, both with custom frequencies - Wing illumination lights to light up the leading edges (for ice detection) All lights are powered by the correct busses, so if you turn off engine 2 during single-engine-taxi-in you would (as in reality) loose the left inboard and right outboard landing lights, right runway turnoff lights and logo lights. Unless you have the APU generator power main bus 2, of course... The video was created with HDR on. B733_9.mov Jan

No, thats a NG in that video - airflow from gasper outlets is radically different on the classics on a submolecular level that will float anything BUT aluminum balls . Jan

Hi everyone, we are still deep into the FMS and it´s implementation - but we feel that we are over the hump and will have this section wrapped up within a few weeks. Tom, who is in charge of generating the lateral navigation (LNAV), has posted a new blog over at our website: http://www.ixeg.net/...ve-lnav-routing I just want to share this screenshot I took yesterday night when testing the path-drawing algorithm on an approach to EDDV (Hannover, Germany). It shows me coming in from the north towards the Celle NDB (CEL), followed by the RNAV transition to runway 27R. I named the screenshot "Childrenofthemagenta" as a reference to the excellent video that was linked to in THIS post by Andy Goldstein. This guy has it perfectly straight: http://forums.x-plan...11 Jan

Hi meshboy, an airway is like a "highway in the sky". It links various points like fixes and navaids and has a "name". So by telling the FMS which airway you want to procede on, it can insert all these single waypoints into the LEGS page for you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airway_%28aviation%29 Jan

Hi everyone, the last weeks have been more busy than ever - we are grinding through that big heap of coding mess called the FMS - flight management system. At it´s core is the FMC, and we know that this piece of hardware is very important to all of you. And it should be, because it is an integral part of "managing" your flight. While the FMS does more than just providing a nice curved magenta line to follow, this is propably the visually most appealing aspect. Therefore we want to share some of the pics we are getting during this stage of development. When we draw closer to release, we will get you more frequent updates and the occasional video. We have chosen these departures because they are quite complex - with a lot of conditional waypoints that are not simply a combination of latitude and longitude. If you look at the the DEGES1W departure in LSZH, the conventional description calls for a straight segment until you hit 2.1 DME from KLO. The FMS calculates this waypoint in dependence on the KLO VOR - it knows where KLO is, where the runway is and what the initial track will be - now it needs to find the point where this track intersects the 2.1DME "ring" around KLO. This is SO not trivial... Then it get´s worse. Turn left on a certain track to intercept the 255 radial. How large is your turn radius? How much do you need to lead the turn onto the radial? Where is the radial? Thank god I only fly those things ;-) Jan

Tom, Tom, Tom... first rule to learn as an aspiring airline pilot - when kids visit the cockpit (no offense, Meshboy! ;-) ) - ALWAYS turn on the "light test" for the "christmas tree show"! ;-) Jan

I hear ya, I hear ya....

Hi Flo, The engine is only rated to do so much work - when you make it spend a part of that to run packs or anti-ice it will have to deliver less power for forward thrust. That´s why you need to reduce RPM to keep the total power of the engine constant. In other words - you need to burn so much fuel to make the engine spin at a certain speed (N1). If you extract compressed air, the engine would turn a little slower even while adding the same fuel per minute. Imagine a car that is limited to 100 horsepower. You run at that horsepower and the speed is 150mph. Now you turn on the headlights, radio, window heat and a bunch of other things that use electricity and put a drain on your generator. The car will slow down.... Did I make sense? Hi Meshboy - we will keep your offer in mind and understand your desire. I have been running through two of several tutorial flights we are planning for the documentation (KSAN - KLAX, KTUS KTUS - KLAS). It´s a lot of fun to think of how to show people all the features, take pictures, write the text... and it is amazing to think that the plane is far enough to really fly it to do the tutorials already and not miss any features! Jan

Hi guys, These last few days we have been busy with the FMS again. You might know that all modern airliners have one of these - and while you can theoretically fly without them, they are very much a centerpiece to a safe and efficient operation. They are quite complicated and highly sophisticated - and while that is great when actually using them on board, it is also the reason why a realistic FMS has been the domain of very few and selected add-on making companies so far. Well, we are taking on that challenge. The quality and feel of our FMS is blowing me away every time our coders punch out a new page or feature. I have written about the thrust management before, today I will punch up a few more "preflight pictures" and point out what I think is special about them. Above pic shows the two CDU´s - note that they are still "floating" in mid-air right now. Every CDU can operate independently of the other one - show a different page, accept input, etc. Above pic shows the "PERF INIT" page, where you will input weights and other parameters of the flight. You can see that I am about to enter "FL240" as cruise altitude into the boxes on the top right. The FMS uses this data to compute various things - amongst them the takeoff speeds as you can see on the next picture: Above pic shows the TAKEOFF REF page on the left CDU and the N1 LIMIT page on the right CDU. You can see on the right that I have entered a TASS of 45 degrees - the FMS has calculated a reduced take-off N1 of 87.5%. It has also automatically selected a reduced climb thrust - otherwise the N1 would increase at the thrust reduction altitude. Also note the thrust mode annunciator shows "R-TO" to alert the pilot that a reduced takeoff thrust will be set. The left CDU shows the takeoff data - once you enter the takeoff flap setting (1 in this case) the FMS will calculate and suggest V-speeds, that you can accept with the click of a button or overwrite with your own speeds. This last pic shows the effect of those inputs on the EADI. V1 and Vr are automatically shown on the speed tape. V2 must be set manually with the MCP speed selector. Ready for a reduced power take-off. Jan

Hi everyone, back with a little update We are currently pretty much finished up with the EHSI. I posted about this before, but I can not emphasize enough how much the completion of this part has gotten our 737 more complete. While you could navigate the 737 "old school" with just the RMI, I really missed the different modes of the EHSI for navigation. You spend the majority of your time staring at that screen - so it being there and looking exactly like the real one does is a big step. Another thing we are working on is the FMS - we have just finished the FMS part of the autothrottle thrust limit computing. Let me explain for a bit - the 737-300 does not have a FADEC like more modern jets. It´s engines´ RPM is controlled by a hydromechanical unit (with fuel as transmitting liquid) and a power management computer. While the PMC helps a bit, it is still up to the pilot to control the engine. He does so with the thrust levers and the N1 indicators. N1 is the RPM of the outer fan - it gives you a very good indication of how much thrust the engine develops. Controlling the engine seems straightforward - but there is a lot to keep in mind. The CFM56-3B1 engine we are modelling is rated at a thrust of 20.000lbs. This is the limit to which it is specified. On a standard day at sea level, this limit is achieved with about 91.5%N1. So if you would firewall the levers to the stops, you might get a lot more thrust - but possibly damaging the engines in the process. It´s up to the pilot to avoid "overpressuring" the engine! As it gets hotter, maximum N1 increases, because warm air is less dense and will output less thrust. But at +30C the hot air entering the engine is compressed and burned to reach the maximum EGT - so as it gets warmer the maximum N1 needs to decrease to stay under the EGT limit. Booooring, I know. In ancient days, there was a flight-engineer on the deck to check the relevant N1 for the current conditions, and he would actually reach forward during take-off and adjust the levers to set correct power! On the 737 classic you have the FMS to help you out. It measures temperature, pressure, bleed air demand and pilot´s thrust derate input to calculate the current limit N1. This limit is sent to the autothrottle computer, which will then automatically set and maintain maximum thrust as specified. Now there are many different thrust limit. Take-off thrust, go-around thrust, maximum continous thrust, climb, cruise, reduced version of the above, and so on. Of course our model knows, computes, annunciates and sets these limits (flight-phase related and pilot-selectable) just like the real jet. On the screenshot below you can see the N1 LIMIT page that controls thrust limits. It looks like this before take-off. Notice how one N1 value differs from the other one - it is because the left pack is off - so N1 can be higher without overstressing the engine (due to less airbleed extraction). You will notice the N1 change with packs on/off/hi, engine anti-ice, wing anti-ice and so on... Just another example of a very complicated mechanism running behind the scenes that even most pilots take for granted The last few days I have also taken quite a few testflights to validate and sample climb performance - while we stay very close to the offcial numbers, there is just not enough data published to calculate climb performance through the whole envelope. We know you want your TOC prediction to be precise, so we have to account for different weights and different combination of climb speeds. An airplane climbs better at constant Mach, so a climb at 280/.74 will look quite different from one with 300/.72. You need to calculate the crossover point, calculate climb profile before and after that, and so on. Yesterday I took her for a ride from Westerland in northern Germany to Rome, Italy - just over two hours. While we still don´t have an LNAV route to follow (working on it as we speak) it was nevertheless a joy to follow the VOR´s down to Frankfurt, Zuerich, Genoa and then to chop the throttles at 110NM out (FL370) and glide right onto the ILSof 16L without touching the levers or the speedbrake again . Jan

Hi meshboy, the shot is taken in sim - shift-space to copy a screenshot as .png. I then resaved the .png as jpg to save size. No editing. Thanks for your kind words - I will make a video showing of all the features of the EHSI in a little while when it is done completely. Currently chasing some nasty OpenGL bugs. But you really have to see it in motion. It is VERY realistic! Jan

Hi everyone, we have another teeny little piece of news for you. Today I want to show you the work we have recently done on our EHSI. On the attached picture you can see the EHSI as the lower of the two screens. While the possibilities of displaying data on the EHSI are numerous I would like to point out what you are seeing here. The depicted mode is the "expanded map" mode, showing the area in front of the aircraft. The aircrafts position is the tip of the white triangle at the bottom of the screen. Look closely and you can see the "ground path prediction" lines extending from the tip of this triangle, they represent the path the airplane will take within the next 90 seconds (30s per segment) at current turn rate and ground speed. You can use this to make very smooth intercepts when using smaller map ranges. Comes in handy for the final turn from base during a strong head or tailwind... The selected range is 40NM (you can see the 20 on the mid range ring), the map can be displayed in 6 steps from 10 to 320NM. You can see the two tuned VOR´s show up in green - along with the bearing lines, the green dashed lines. These lines are selectable (tuned VOR´s always show), and a great way to check your map accuracy - since the lines bearings are directly taken from radio signal data (displaying radials) and the green navaid symbols positions are drawn from the map´s database. So if they don´t intersect - your map has probably shifted. Also displayed are the airports within the selected map´s section. You can select to show airports, navaids, fixes, etc. on the map with the help of pushbuttons on the EFIS control panel. The magenta dashed line is the heading bug - you can see the aircraft is turning towards that heading. The white line with the little rhomb at the top is the current track - look how it is influenced by the crosswind from the left. This track line will make it very easy to establish the correct wind angle when tracking along the localizer, for example. The wind is shown on the bottom left - but unlike default x-plane we don´t show the wind while on the ground. Why not? Well, the real airplane can´t do it either - the wind arrow is a result of vector calculation between IRS track and groundspeed versus heading and true airspeed. In other words, the plane needs to "sense" the drift before showing it. On the ground there is no drift - > no wind indication. Now you try explaining that to Austin :-) Of course we also don´t show the wind if its magnitude isn´t big enough - just like the real plane won´t. The top line will show GS and TAS, and also the current magnetic heading. Now if you really look at the bearing line of VOR 1 very closely, you can see another green line with the label "A1" overlay it. That is the bearing of the selected NDB - coincidentally pretty much the same bearing. NDB´s positions are not shown on the map, though. The dashes in front of the NM at the very top are the placeholders for "distance to next route waypoint" - blank in this picture since no route is loaded in the FMS. More to come soon, Jan