clavel9

I see this aircraft everyday flying out of Belfast City (EGAC) everyday in Manx2 livery. Nice to see it modelled in X-PLane.

Star Wars with Mustangs.

Cityjet RJ85

This sort of thing is not uncommon. When BEA ordered BAC 1-11's in the late-60s they had all the switches the other way round in common with their fleet of Tridents. It posed a problem when British Airways were formed as they acquired BEA's 1-11's and others from Cambrian and British Caledonian that had the switches mounted in the standard orientation.

Interior detail and modelling is of an extremely high order: kudos to all involved! My only gripe is that I think the normal mapping of the surface detail on the exterior doesn't work: rivets are far too large and "high". Flush riveting on an aircraft the size of a 747 simply doesn't jump out like that. Other than that, very little to complain about, it looks superb.

Interesting, though I've noticed no measurable improvement in X-Plane performance.

Nothing to report one way or the other. Seems fine.

I've been using X-Plane on an MBP for some time. There is very little you can do to stop the heating up of the computer. (Short of some of the hardware solutions listed above in previous posts.) I never use X-Plane outside of a well ventilated room, ideally near a door. Basically, you don't want to run the computer at sustained temperatures above about 80 C. I use a utility called SMC Fan Control which allows manual control of the fan speed (in RPM) and displays the temperature in the menu bar. I usually run the fan up to 6,000 RPM, keeping the temperature down to about 75-80 C. I usually leave the fan running for a few minutes afterwards to cool it right down.

The 737 is the gold standard of flight simulation. I don't think you can find a single individual who hasn't flown on this glorious bird. First plane I was on was a -300 circa 1986.

That suggests it's OK to criticise Photoshop or MS Office but not The GIMP or OpenOffice. Or to criticise Felis's Il-14 if I bought it last year but not if I downloaded it for free last week... Unless I go build my own first.

The level of argument being offered here is rather disappointing. I'm not interested in whatever exchanges have taken place between arno54 and fatherjack elsewhere: they are irrelevant here. Nor am I interested in accusations of trolling. That's a matter for the contributors in question and the moderators. One the one hand, arno54 challenges fatherjack/us to show him one aspect of the flight model that falls outside 3% of the given figures for the real aircraft. I'm happy to take his assertion that "you won't find any" at face value as neither I, nor I suspect, many others, will put in the hours necessary to test this assertion. On the other hand, he hasn't addressed the ten points that fatherjack did make above. For example, fatherjack points out incorrect engine position, foil sections, aileron size and tailplane dihedral. These are empirical data that can be easily found out and verified: the B-17 must be one of the most documented aircraft out there. (There's even a Haynes manual.) This means that these data were either ignored from the start or discarded during the design process to another end. This is important as it addresses the fundamental question of how X-Plane itself operates. X-Plane uses these data dynamically to calculate the ACF's behaviour, as we all know. Therefore, I think it's legitimate to question whether arno54 and his colleagues couldn't achieve their aims using the correct foil sections/dihedral/aileron dimensions and changed them accordingly or whether starting with the wrong data led to the need to correct the ACF's behaviour by other means. I think it's a question to which any ACF author or would-be author would be interested in seeing answered. I agree with Ben that sometimes you need to throw out the rule book. I don't think it's the first thing you should do though. Of course compromises will need to be made, and fudges fudged. No-one is saying otherwise. No one is questioning the amount of time and thought that has gone into the B-17. It doesn't mean that it can't be criticised constructively, or aspects of its design questioned. Criticism shouldn't be taken as a personal attack on the authors. It isn't.

An Emotional Fish

Looking forward to hearing people's opinions. It's exactly the sort of aeroplane I like to fly. I might splash out next week - finances permitting!

Being better looking than an A380 wouldn't be difficult but it's still pretty ugly.

Sorry to hear the news. I hope you do manage to get a new collaborator, but having had to deal with similar situations in work I know how difficult it will be. If I was in Javier's situation, I wouldn't be willing to release an unfinished product either, regardless of how close it would be to completion. Best of luck.

I don't think there's anything especially strange about it. I'm a professional designer and while I keep busy mostly, I do have down time and if someone approaches me to do something for them I'm more than happy to help them out gratis provided it doesn't interfere with my own work. In fact I often use it as an opportunity to brush up on some old skills and learn new ones without compromising my professional work. I have published a couple of repaints over the years and am working on some others and am more than happy to share them for free provided somebody else doesn't attempt to cash in. Looking at the pay-ware scene in general, the market will decide whether a product is worth paying for and determine the selling price. The pay-ware market isn't very mature yet (at least not in the MSFS sense) and it remains to be seen how it will play out in the coming months. Until recently, there was very little in the way of independent analysis/reviewing of pay-ware (or even freeware) - xplane10blog notwithstanding - while there are numerous magazines, online and print out there reviewing products for FS. I don't define whether something is "freeware quality" or "pay-ware quality": whether or not one has to pay for it is in one sense beside the point. However, by definition you must purchase the pay-ware product before sampling it. It's up to the buyer (or reviewer) to spread the word: good or bad. A pay-ware vendor must be prepared for a higher level of criticism than a freeware developer. One last point I will make is that most criticism nowadays seem to come down to the skill of the developer in 3D modelling and animation. Screenshots, videos and so forth can give the impression that there's a very polished product there but it might not resemble the real aircraft in terms of performance and handling. Now, in most cases pay-ware developers do pay attention to the technical parts of the aircraft, but I think it's fair to say the several hundred, even several thousand, hours flight testing required to get this right rarely gets mentioned.

It is a fine piece of work and you can't beat the option of a "head-on" view of the overhead and pedestal panels.

I'm pretty sure there's a fairly advanced 109 in development, or at least has been for some time. But, like the Spitfire, and indeed the Fw 190, there are huge numbers of variants to choose from.

Arguably there would be more of a market for Spitfire variants than almost any other aircraft I can think of, but as previously mentioned the amount of work to produce each variant would be immense. Tackling a later Griffon-powered Spitfire (e.g.: Mk. XII, Mk. XIV, Mk. 24) or a Seafire would be a good place to start though.

In my opinion, the An-148 is a much more polished product at this point. The RJ is very much a work in progress and while the new 3D model is quite good, the 2D panel needs work and there are definite performance issues and not muchl documentation. However, I do take Steven's point that it's an investment in the future and in that sense the RJ is worth supporting. I've always hated the term "payware quality" and the Antonov illustrates my point. The amount one pays for something doesn't guarantee a level of "quality" higher than something you can get for free.

There are also Michael Wilson's aircraft: http://www.forjets.netfirms.com/ and Peter Hager's: http://petersuv.vs120062.hl-users.com/

It's an impressive package.

I first ran X-Plane 5.32 on my 266 MHz "PDQ" PowerBook G3 in 1999-ish. I don't remember being that impressed at the time and only came back to X-Plane with v8.15. It's only relatively recently that I've had a laptop capable of running X-Plane comfortably. The G3 perished when knocked onto a terrazzo floor in Malta in 2000.

This poll is essentially meaningless in so far as there no either/or distinction in X-Plane if it is to be regarded as a simulator. A 3D model/object only gives evidence of the designer's skills in this area. The flight model still needs to be created and tested in Plane-Maker and may be enhanced with plugins if desired or deemed necessary by the designer. These are all distinct skills. Take this example: you could have a very fine 3D model of a Douglas DC-8, beautifully detailed, textured and animated. This model could be tied to a Plane-Maker ACF of an Airbus A340: both, after all, are low-wing monoplanes with four jet engines. So which is it, a DC-8 or an A340? You have to at least start with "under the hood", otherwise we're not talking about a simulator. I love to see beautiful 3D models, textures and cockpits as much as anyone else. But it's not a question of "either/or".

Some of the edges in the second image look too sharp. I think it would be worth loading the object into X-Plane to see how it deals with the geometry. That's where it's going to be seen, after all.