tkyler

Hey Mike, I'll jump in on this one. We have all discussed internally "theories" regarding documentation for the flight sim market. One approach is to basically copy the AOM. For us, this implies that if it's in the AOM, it must be in the sim and despite marketing claims of many companies, very rarely will everything in the AOM be in the simulation, probably barely half in most cases. Most developers are willing to take the risk that customers won't go in so deep as to discover where they come up short and would rather have the marketing value of saying, "our stuff is so real you can use the real AOM". Going this route means either copying a whole lot of info or licensing the information, which is usually quite overwhelming in its breadth. We have good perspective with Jan's consultation because I believe even he will tell you he doesn't read all of the AOM that close and indeed MANY times, we had to read it together to find out how to simulate something exactly. So we asked ourselves, "what satisfies best all levels of simmers" and here is where we are now. We will be writing our own documentation that is a slimmed down paraphrasing of the AOM but not necessarily light. It will follow the AOM roughly but it will also contain product specific stuff of course for installation mumbo jumbo and the like. We'll have a quick start so users interested in instant gratification can get some satisfaction. We will back off somewhat on explaining in depth how systems work and focus more on how to work the systems from the pilot perspective. We believe this will satisfy the majority of the simmers out there. We might include less information initially on backup and standby systems which most simmers won't get into. Now for the hard core junkies, we feel that being hardcore junkies, they either have the AOM or know where to go get it as they're not too hard to find. So the question we asked ourselves in this situation was "what if a hardcore guy gets the manual and puts on thick glasses and goes over it line by line". In that case, we said, "well our sim should try and handle it". So we use the AOM to develop the sim as best we are able with our resources but we will not ship the same volume of information as the real one. So what you will find shipping with the sim is more basic descriptions, typical operating procedures with paraphrasing of the AOM; however, becasue we simulated it according to the AOM, we have some overhead to grow and expand and I think over time, after release, we will certainly consider adding a supplement to the documentation based on feedback or include more specialized stuff, but even for us we have to ask, if it follows the AOM exactly, why not just include it? Our final response to that is that most simmers, ourselves included, don't want that volume of information to have to wade through to find info. This is a entertainment market and not a high risk liability market and therefore the documentation needs are different. We want documentation that caters to what customers will be doing most often BUT if one desires more info, then yea, grab the AOM somewhere and knock yourself out because if it's in the AOM and our sim doesn't work as described there, then that is fair game for questioning. We may tell you that we voluntarily chose not to simulate a feature, but we may have missed something also. We use the AOM to guide our programming so we are game to look at it all. All that said, it market demands dictate, we may eaily change our minds after some feedback and it's not like adding the AOM to the download package is a big deal, only a big licensing cost TomK

nevermind TomK

Steven, you are very much missing the context of my post. I did not say that you did. For example There is a HUGE difference between you having ulterior motives vs others BELIEVING that you have ulterior motives. In the latter, I clearly assert that others can believe you have ulterior motives and I CLEARLY assert that I think you do not but that does not change the fact that others think you might becasue of your beta testing status. If I were to come out of a house where it was just a beautiful young lady and me for an hour in the house.....but I was only lecturing her on drinking....could that not be viewed by others are improper no matter the reality? Best to avoid the situation IMO. Did you not get called out and questioned on it by Jim? He picked up on it...so did I, but it appears that you did not and asked to the relevance and I simply explained it. Not once in my post do I question you or your motives, but only explain how others might and in the blink of an eye you're in defense mode. My entire post is filled with similar rhetoric and I am VERY VERY careful about the words I choose. Thank you for your kind words on the MU2, but you were not a beta tester though and if you were, I would have asked you to not comment (EDIT: not comment your opinions) in public like I do all my beta testers. TomK

Steven, it has relevance in that when a person in this type of industry lavishes praise on a product, then your association with the product via beta testing can be construed as a conflict of interest and your assertions as to the products desirability can become questionable. For all we know it could be you have been offered free access to Carenado products in exchange for your beta reports and your good word publicly dosn't hurt. If you therefore influence a person to buy the aircraft through your praise and it is less than advertised or has some problem like the MFD issue , but you didn't say so becasue you didn't want to damage your beta testing status with Carenado for example, then in that kind of situation, you are, in a way, deceiving the public whether intentionally, unintentionally or by omission. Now it is irrelevant whether or not things are actually this way or you view them this way or not becasue I personally believe you have fine and true intentions but the issue is one of appearances and making positive public statements about a product while being a beta tester of that same product can easily come across to others as potentially containing ulterior motives. TomK

I can't claim that one Rhydian, that's Nils Danielsson's work, easily at the top of class IMO. TomK

and a sneak peek at some cockpit texturing currently underway. 3rd video on autopilot will be posted by the weekend also.

its on my todo list that is for sure. TK

Good riddance....that project was a piece of junk anyhow!

A sneak peak for fellow 3Ders. This 737 cockpit is mostly done and is getting UV mapped and textured at the moment. This should really bring the cockpit together nicely. Not much remaining...the galleys and cabin refinement, then basically small details. We might trade polygon detail for texture detail as we progress, we'll just have to wait and see, but it is usually easier to remove polygons than add them in my experience. TomK IXEG

EDITED: No longer relevant TK

Hey Airfighter, yea I do think its good work. One thing that has not quite taken off in the shareware community with x-plane is widespread adoption of new technologies like manipulators, 3D interactive cockpits and the like. I really like that you have endeavored to provide a complete "addon" with 3D, texturing and custom programming where everything isn't "flat". I'd like to see more of that in the community and good scripts / training are part of that of course and still needs to be done. TomK

Pretty much yea. The presence of winglet shapes in x-plane do not change the range or efficiency of the x-plane model in any way simply by 'adding the winglets'. If you want to simulate in x-plane the performance enhancements that winglets give you, then you have to simulate that with other parameters of x-plane like fuel flow or lift / drag adjustments. So yes, an author could put winglets on their x-plane model and it wouldn't do anything to improve efficiency. TomK

Winglets do not affect x-plane algorithms / output in x-plane as the phenomenon they address in reality is not modeled in x-plane. For "winglet" equipped airlines, you can match performance numbers for these models, but you'd need the full range of performance data before hand to do so. TomK

Could be all sorts of things. The back of the cockpit isn't model yet so casts funny shadow patterns. Regarding the aliasing, that's usually a function of shadow quality setting which is of course dependent on your hardware abilities, but also camera position. In addition, it takes a lot of resources to screen capture while running x-plane. The final result shouldn't look like that but the big thing is computer hardware. My computer is a bit on the low end so I don't even turn on shadows / HDR and I think this almost looks better, at least on the aircraft, not so much for scenery, which really benefits from shadows. Tom K

They're retrofitted and so could be on any -300 at any given time depending on what the airlines want to do. I have winglets modeled yes....not sure if they'll make it out on the initial release though...depends on timing...but wouldn't take long to stick them in. They'll make it in at some point.

New video up on the autothrottle

The FCOM is certainly viable that is for sure...I know we read that thing line for line as much as we can to make the plane work exactly as how things are described so that is perfectly acceptable. But also as Jan says, we'll be rewording things a bit in our own docs to expand just a bit so we can cater to a broader spectrum of learning styles. TomK

Moving across the exterior putting in detail stuffs....wing tip lights, slats and slat actuators, etc. Nils knocking out the engine texturing. Jan has a new video that will be up soon on the autothrottle too.

32 and 64 bit for the Version 10 run as Cameron says....64-bit only for Version 11+ TomK

The short answer is yes....the MU2 1.5 will be xp10 64bit compatible. The longer answer...The MU2 1.5 uses the latest version of Gizmo for a lot of its customization. The latest version of gizmo is 64bit compatible. There are a few other features in gizmo I am still waiting to be complete before I can release the MU2 yet. Gizmo relies on several other software packages and the port to 64bit has been a huge endeavor for Ben. Reliability is very important to all of us and work steadily continues on making sure this all works....and when it does, we will have a solid foundation to build on for the future. Tom K

if other aircraft developers buy the IXEG 737, then we'll consider the plugin shared. Seriously, it's not some "generic fix" for x-plane's friction...it's a variable regime model that is specific to the 737. Tom K

I can't speak for other features as that's Morten's territory, but wing flex is not being pursued for the initial release. The shorter wings of the 737 are less prone to flexing than their longer span cousins, but of course they do flex a bit. The ROI for this feature is incredibly small at the moment. We do have ideas on how we could do it and I suspect we'll get to it eventually. Morten will have to comment on any ground specific work done. TomK

When it comes to "usable UI", we certainly have lots of competition; however, that is not our most immediate focus. Given time frame 'x' and a choice to either make a nicer UI, extra ground animation or make our simulation more accurate, we'll choose to make our simulation more accurate of course. What I anticipate is once revenue comes in and we aren't so hounded by our spouses to get this thing out the door, we can go back and say, "lets add a failures module, or more interactive or pleasant UI" etc. Once the simulation is complete and that monkey is off our back and we don't have to reinvent those wheels, we can go on to invent new ones and get in more fun features. TomK

Hi Wayne, There is no way to scale an agp entity. An AGP simple references an existing object. Also, there is no way to tell how many heights a facade has currently. These are issues that have been discussed and noted and finishing up / cleaning / organizing the default scenery library is on the short list of things to do. Over time, we'll add more variations of objects....i.e. longer hangars, bigger hangars etc. Tom K Laminar

Are you comfortable with working with WED by any chance? If so, I might have a starting point for you. TomK