Litjan

Yes, I know that many other planes have things that make it more "convenient" and "easier" for the user to fly the plane. For us it is still a design choice to not make our plane easier to fly than the real aircraft. I am sure that real pilots would love to have "pop-out" instruments that they could suspend in front of them mid-air...but they haven´t invented those yet. You have to constantly glance up and down and going from instrument flight to visual flight with a low ceiling/visibility is a skill that needs to be trained and honed. I am aware that it is a bit harder in a desktop simulator to "look around" - and thats a reason why we have the "mini-pop-up" when changing a setting on the EFIS control panel. I would also like to have some functionality that simulates a second person in the cockpit, because flying the 737 alone is a challenge. We will add some options to sync the altimeter setting, DH settings and speed bugs, for example. I also know that resolution of a typical computer screen (1920x1080) is not really helpful when reading small info on your instrument - but hardware is on the way of "curing" all those limitations (4K displays, VR). I find it not difficult at all to find a seat position that allows me to see all relevant instruments during approach. I am certain that the designers of the other aircraft have their reasons for adding features and I won´t say that that is wrong at all - it´s just that you guys are stuck with a purist like me when flying the IXEG 737 and will have to learn to cope "the real way". Sorry Cheers, Jan

No you can´t. The 737-300 only has two certified take-off flap settings, and thats all the FMS will calculate (1 and 5). I am sure it can take off with other flap settings, too - but it is illegal to do so, and the takeoff configuration warning horn will blare at you the whole time. Cheers, Jan

I could - but I don´t want to to. I stand by the credo of "letting users experience what it is to fly a real 737". Mini-EHSI-popups are not part of that. Jan

Mfor is right - the wing-anti ice can only work on the ground when pushing the GND TEST - and even then it will shut off after a short time delay (to avoid overheating the leading edge). Real aircraft can only de-ice the leading edge - since this is the only place that ice will accumulate DURING FLIGHT. They can´t de-ice the upper surface of the wings - and thats where snow accumulates during ground time. To safely take off during icing conditions, you need to have the aircraft sprayed with de-icing fluid that has a holdover time - this is the time that the viscous fluid protects the wings agains falling snow. All this is missing in X-Plane - I think you may want to file a bug report with Laminar Research to implement a "spray with de-icing fluid" option that sets the wing icing to 0 for a set amount of time. You can check the status of the wing icing on the datarefs - and who knows, the value may even be "writable" with dateref editor (havent tried) - that way you could set it to 0 right before lift-off. Cheers, Jan

Its the way of progress! And you can resort to flying at night - the digits show then! Cheers, Jan

Errrm - no.

Hehe, I am not going to come after you if you do something like this . We are certainly not discouraging any modding and tweaking to your own desire, just don´t ask for support when something goes wrong. Cheers, Jan

Hi Tom, thanks for your kind words and the feedback. All of those things mentioned we are aware off and are planning to add/enhance them in the future. Personal preference varies from user to user, but few things are set in stone and we are always tweaking. Especially the sounds will one day get a complete overhaul when we transition to FMOD - whenever that may be. Cheers, Jan

Not much to add to mmerelles reply, spot on. One thing to note - some autopilot modes are "combined" modes - i.e. they make the autothrottle "do" something. For example, if you press FL CHG, it "kicks" the autothrottle into either going "full power" (N1) to climb, or "idle power" (RETARD then ARM) to sink. VNAV works the same way, if you do a VNAV PTH descent, initially the "combined" mode will be like a FL CHG descent and the autothrottle will always "try" to go to idle (RETARD) and once it has done that (can´t move down for a few seconds) it will go to "ARM", but be essentially dormant. In the real plane you can hold the thrust levers during their "RETARD" motion - tricking the A/T to "believe" that it is already at idle power. Cheers, Jan

Yes - this shows the "minimum" and "maximum" altitude of the terrain displayed on screen. Jan

I don´t have the FF320, but what I have seen in the videos is absolutely amazing. I fly the A320 family in real life (for 5 years now) and I haven´t seen anything "wrong" in those videos. I can´t comment on the flight-model, but it is certainly a day-one-buy for me! Thanks for the kind words about our 737 - I can assure you that work is ongoing. Just yesterday we have fixed a bug about the pressurization - now it won´t be possible to pressurize the aircraft if any of the cargo doors is open. And of course - if a cargo door pops open in flight (failure simulation some day...) -> rapid decompression. Also fixed the cargo door compartment only being lit if the ground service bus is carrying power... Cheers, Jan

Hi Javier, yes, this discrepancy is due to the missing reflections - they will be added in 1.21. Note - however - that the reflections in XP10 were a custom solution with a fixed "reflection image map". The reflections in XP11 are real reflections, so the effect will vary. Cheers, Jan

Hi Javier, not sure what exactly you mean with "flat" - the reflections for the displays are (still) missing in V1.2 and will be added in 1.21. But there is no other immediate work planned for the cockpit panels, they are the same as in XP10. We may look into adding more "material" properties to cockpit elements (like you can already see on the yoke), but that will have to wait until Nils is fully back online. Cheers, Jan PS: This is what it looks on my end today:

Tom is correct. There are no specific weights that we "built" this plane to. The plane is built to fly correctly at a big range of weights, whichever they may be. The only thing set in stone is the absolute minimum weight as shown in that other thread. Consider this to be the weight of the basic airplane with enough oil to run the engines - and two pilots on board. There is also a limit to the fuel you can load into the tanks (0-16.000kg) and then there is a maximum payload you can carry using the IXEG GROUND SERVICES menu, ca. 23.000kg. Using the default X-Plane weight menu you can even load way more. Everything else is up to the specific operator. Boeing has published "maximum weights", but they vary from model to model. You can pick which one you want to portray in your PFPX profile. Cheers, Jan

Yeah - I added a "feature request" for landing lights to light up clouds with LR, but of course they are aware of this. I doubt that much development will go into the weather engine at this point, though. I hope for a big "remake" just like everyone else, but probably not in the XP11 run. But I am just as clueless as the next person on their plans. If a weather-addon adds this effect - kudos to them. But polling the correct (better yet ALL external lights) is in their court, then. Cheers, Jan

No news on that issue, unfortunately. Cheers, Jan

Ugh, interesting - I will try that myself. There is a good chance that this doesnt work, we use our own custom altitude window, since Austin insists on moving altitude with 10 feet steps (something that real planes dont do...) Jan

I am fairly certain that with the manual N1 setting knobs pulled out, the pilot has to set N1 manually with the thrust levers - the autothrottle can only set thrust as commanded by the FMC. If the autothrottle controls N1 to the manual set values in our simulation then this may be a bug. The manual (the real one) isn´t very clear on this and I have never used the manual bugs in real life... So either both knobs in or both knobs out. Cheers, Jan

Hello Lude2Envy, first off, let me say that I am always very pleased to meet a fellow airline pilot. I just came back from a four-day rotation, and wasn´t able to chime in earlier (like I usually do) because my laptop is in the shop for a broken graphics adapter. Great. Being an airline pilot you probably had your share of CRM training - and if remember that, you may have an idea why our communication didn´t go into a very productive direction initially. We are just humans, too - and it rubs us in a bad way if we are being mocked about claiming to be a "study sim", but then alluding that we are not due to some real or perceived fault on our part. I see that you are from the Philly area and probably had to deal with all the snow and cold which can be a real hassle when flying - so I write our bad start off to that causing a lot of stress for you . Fortunately our winter here is pretty mild, so far. But - as we airline pilots are trained to do - lets put our initial rough start behind us and concentrate on the facts at hand, so we can get to the best possible outcome for everyone. Anyway, here we go. Much of this may not be new to you, being a certified airline pilot, but I explain it anyway for the benefit of other users that may read here. 1.) The weights When a manufacturer puts an airplane out on the market, he usually publishes limiting weights for it - most notably the structural weights, like maximum landing, zero-fuel, taxi and take-off weights. There is also an "empty weight", or a "dry-operating-weight", but these are dependent on the configuration the airline chooses (more seats + equipment + crew -> more DOW...). The maximum landing and takeoff weights can also differ, some airlines choose to limit these artifcially, because they can save on landing/handling fees that way. Our plane won´t break its gear or wings - I can guarantee that! Thats why we as IXEG don´t publish maximum weights - you can load the aircraft to 100.000kgs and it will still fly, take-off and land. We model our plane to fly CORRECTLY at every weight, though - so it will fly just like the real 737-300 would, if you load it to 100.000kgs. Hence our claim that you can "make up" your own weights - the plane will simply fly like the real one would. That being said, the "lightest" our plane will be (empty weight) is 32.831kgs, this is set in the aircraft model file. The maximum fuel it can load is 16.000kgs, this is also limited. There are usually two different weight sets published when looking for weights of the 737-300, the standard and the increased gross weight set (Boeing offered those later). Both planes will fly exactly the same at the same weight, though - so the question "which one do we model" is moot. Here are the weights my airline went by: Max Taxiweight: 57830 Max Takeoffweight: 57600 Max Landingweight: 52600 Max Zerofuelweight: 49450 So if you want to operate our aircraft "realistically", heed those values - or other ones you can find on other manuals or airline specifications. Our plane will fly correctly for all of them (the aerodynamics don´t change!). You can fill up the aircraft (using the IXEG menu) to a MZFW of 55.830kgs and then add 16.000kgs of fuel to that (total of 71.830kgs). This is a lot heavier than the highest maximum takeoff weight that I could find for the 737-300 (63276kgs from http://www.b737.org.uk/techspecsdetailed.htm) 2.) The engine We may not specifically point to the correct engine specification (we should, thanks for pointing that out!), but if you look at the IDENT page of the FMS, you can see the engine rating being specified as 20k. The only CFM56-3 engine that puts out 20k rated is the B1 variant (B2 = C1 = 23.500 and B1 = 18.500). The C1 was used on the 737-400, the B1 on the 737-500. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_CFM56#CFM56-3_series 3.) The video We generally like it better if users can post a short video here as a youtube link. All you need is a youtube account, upload the vid and make it so that you can only see it with the link (if you don´t want it to be public). The big benefit is that other users can also see it, and if they have the same problem - learn from this thread. If you absolutely can´t do that, PM the link to your download site to me and I will take a look at it that way. Oh, another CRM hint: Claiming "your airplane is doing it wrong" isn´t likely to assure a receptive and open attitude on the receiver of the communication, either . 4.) The flaps I will take a look at the "trigger" for the flap placard speed - which also drives the VNAV limit speeds again. If we can improve tolerance to spikey or imprecise hardware for flap lever axes, we will. 5.) The refund X-Aviation does not have a "try before you buy" policy. You can certainly try to cancel or revert the payment with your credit card company, but I think you may be up for a disappointment. At any rate, I would invite you to maybe fly the plane for another few days and we can try to get over our bad start and then you can still decide if you want to go down that route. I hope this helps you to get started with our 737, Cheers, Jan

Coming back to the landing-lights issue: I tried to verify this in XP11.20vr1, but there is NO landing light illumination of the clouds at all. Verifying with Ben Supnik shows that this effect does not exist in default X-Plane. Sky Maxx Pro may add this (Kudos for that!) but I don´t have SMP and if they "poll" the wrong light to trigger the effect, I would ask you to take it up with them to change that - my suggestion would be to poll ALL external light, to have an effect not only for one light, but for all lights that are likely to light up the clouds. Cheers, Jan

Thanks for the log. As far as I can see there is really nothing to see . Bam, crash out of the blue. Did it just dump you to the desktop or is was there a window that told you that X-Plane crashed and asked if you wanted to report it to Laminar? To tell you the truth, there is really nothing we can do about a crash like this - there is nothing to go by for us if X-Plane crashes to desktop, it could be anything :-( Sorry - maybe upgrading to 11.20 later on could cure this... Cheers, Jan

Yeah, I never used the "ref airport" feature in the real plane - just go to the RTE page, type in PASI, hit LSK1L and you are good to go for ORIGIN. Whatever is in the "scratchpad" (lowest line, where typed text appears) does NOT need to be selected by pushing LSK6L, it IS already selected and can be entered by pushing the relevant LSK (in this case 1L). Nevertheless - the code should never crash, so if you do something "out of the ordinary" and you get the gizmo popup - by all means please let us know!! Thanks, Jan

Hi John, thanks for your kind words and your post made me chuckle more than once - 47 years here and sharing your sentiments about automated flight ;-). 70h Cessna 172 IS relevant in my book, the underlying principles and problems in getting from A to B safely are pretty much the same! I am not saying that there is no possible code-change between 11.05 and 11.10 that could trigger a crash - possibly something as simple as a newly added airport going over the RAM limit... especially if the crash is repeatable. Could you possibly post your log.txt file here (just attach it) - it is found after the crash in your X-Plane 11 main folder. It MAY give us a clue as to what happened. We certainly have our share of problems with the gizmo-plugin throwing an error message (usually FMS-related), but hard crashes are rarely caused by our bird, with the exception of some plugin incompatibilities that are slow to resolve between us and the other parties. Cheers, and thanks for the feedback, Jan

When I do the same thing, I get a message on the scratchpad "PROBLEM SAVING FILE"... May I ask why you try to enter PASI on LSK6L? It is possible that Tom has already changed something related to saving route files, and that we get this message now for 1.21 instead of the crash...I don´t quite remember right now ;-) Cheers, Jan

The crash will most likely not be related to the version of X-Plane you are running - it is most likely a plugin-conflict. Cheers, Jan