Tonka

The AC3D plugin is long over due for an update, and while all of the new features for manipulators etc are in the code base, Laminar do not currently have the man power to devote to building releases for all 3 operating systems. It is my understanding that the code on github should build a mac plugin, but requires porting to Windows. Is anyone with the necessary skills able to take a look and see if this very useful plugin could be brought back in to development? Repo is here for anyone wanting to fork it - https://github.com/X-Plane/xptools Thanks!

Define stable. Doesn't sound like its stable at the moment...

It sounds like a Z Buffer thing You can specify a polygon offset in objects, and i think ground polygons to tell the GPU where to draw the ground textures in relationship to each other. See the Obj8 spec here. Can't find one for .pol atm.

Check the smart data for your disks. Might be worth swapping the SATA cables too, they fail more frequently than the disks themselves. Make an image of your OS drive when you're done with the fresh install, saves a lot of time when you hit errors, or fancy a refresh to clear out all the accumulated windows junk. Try Acronis, or Macrium, both make images and bootable recovery media, i think.

Cockpit work is continuing nicely, hoping to post an update to my blog in the coming weeks. I might look in to DCS, but no plans to do anything with FSX. Thanks!

Oh, sorry, i didn't realise this was posted in the IXEG forum, still trying to get to grips with this funky layout! As above though, you can alter the lateral field of view within X-Plane to suit any monitor aspect ratio, so its more a case of matching your settings to your monitor, not the other way around. Hope that makes sense...

Which aeroplane? You can adjust the lateral field of view to alter the 'roundness' of things in the sim.

Keep it in the bank and earn some interest on it for a while longer yet Sir, but we'll get there eventually!

#workhasnotceased

Are there any promo videos of this in action? A time restricted demo would be really useful for a product like this. :-)

(cough) Just moved to a new city and started a 4 year degree course at university (cough) :-) Seriously though, I'm a bit busy with real life at the moment, but work on the jag is just above stationary. I have a few bits of cockpit that I could show images from, but I'm never happy posting messy images. Good news is that I have full access to XX145, the ex ETPS Jaguar T2, so I can get some great info and more accurate dimension data with a short drive. Scotch egg, in return for your continued interest, I'll send you something to play with in the near future. Email me at the address on my blog and I'll be in contact as soon as I can. Cheers!

Thanks Mr Egg, and i'm sure we'll see an Arctic Camo scheme soon! Thanks for your comments, its good to know that i am not the only one who is excited about this project!

Hehe, that reminds me of medical assesments of the past. Cough please! In other news: http://x-planejag.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/update.html :-)

Ah, the whispering death, can't wait to see your progress Sir! Don't be put off by the long journey, research, testing, building and rebuilding all takes lots of time. I'm sure there will be times when you wish you hadn't started, but just keep everything backed up, and put in what ever time you can, when you can. Cheers!

Hi TinCam, Thank you for your comments. Regarding the high detail and high framerate paradox, most people i think would be surprised at just how efficient X-Plane is at rendering polygons. There are directives built in to optimise a fast path through the GPU, in the form of ATTR commands. Keeping all geometry single sided, or all geometry double sided is one of the key things to do to keep GPU state switching to a minimum. I also find that merging multiple objects into one for the export, and snapping multiple co-located vertices together to reduce overall vertex count helps with both frame rate, and z buffer thrashing. Removing surfaces that cannot be seen, or do not need to be seen, is also important - consider the floor of a basic 4 sided house object with a roof, we are always looking at it from the outside, removing the floor surface may only be one polygon in one house, but consider the saving when you have 1000, or 100,000 house objects in view. It is texture size, and the VRAM they use that can affect framerate more. One key thing we can do here is to ensure that ALL alpha is kept to the same texture, even if that means breaking up the model into multiple objects. Lastly, when one considers the polygon use inside the cabin of a large airliner, e.g. the default 747, with people sat in toilets etc, the type of aircraft modelled can have some bearing on where one can afford to spend their polygon budget. The Jaguar has no cabin, so i used the budget on the landing gear instead. Also, keeping some modelling crude when it is not in direct view all the time is important. Although there is a lot of detail around my landing gear, a lot of it is done in a crude fashion when compared to the 3D cockpit, the number vertices in a cylindrical object, for example. Hope that helps! Keep your eyes peeled for a Jaguar update in the coming weeks. Work has been ongoing, and external livery work is progressing very nicely, while the cockpit is beginning to come together.

http://x-planejag.blogspot.co.uk/

Very true. So many times i have typed a question out on a forum, usually this one, and solved the problem while i was typing. Didn't know there was a name for it though!

There already is a plugin to export from 3ds Max to obj. http://www.steptosky.com/forum/index.php?topic=22.0

Typo, remove the capital S on sim. Made that same mistake myself after copying and pasting datarefs a few times.

You get a much better spec from the HP machine, for less money. I can't comment on whether one brand is better than another, other than to say the support Dell gave one of my ex partners with her laptop was not bad. I've never owned anything personally from either company. Why not look for a local shop or website who can spec and build a machine for you to match the HP one?

Oh Gawd, from the link above; Cue the combat effects being removed from X-Plane again at some point then.......

Clear Skies was a plugin used to remove the framerate enhancing fog that was used in v9. When your framerate gets too low in v9, as decided by the Minimum Frame Rate setting, fog was drawn to reduce the visibilty distance and try and improve the framerate. Clear Skies just kept overriding the fog so you still see 25 miles out, even with a low framerate. V10 works completely differently. It continues to try and draw all the way out to the visibility distance you specify. Clear Skies is irrelevant for this. What you are seeing is the blurring that is used to fade distant land masses into view. Also, it looks blurry because outside of 25 miles, texture files are used to generate the landmass you see, there is no terrain mesh out there. I think LR plan to increase the distance to which actual terrain can be seen at some point, but do't quote me. Hope that clears things up.

Adjust the Tmax dataref with a plugin or in Gizmo. Adjusting thrust AND drag makes for a bit of a nightmare in tuning performance, but sometimes you just have to keep bashing away at it. The jet curves were next to useless for the engines i am simulating, FWIW. edit; sim/aircraft/engine/acf_tmax

Omega was the contractor i was thinking of. Their aircraft still have passenger windows, so maybe they're the last flying DC-10's that a passenger can travel on?