tkyler

Those symptoms means that the plugin is not running due to DRM. The Falco has not been updated to 64 bit yet. If you run X-Plane in 32-bit mode, I think that might work. Please give that a try and let us know how it goes. We are still actively working on the 64-bit version of Gizmo but it is almost ready to go. Best, Tom K

I'll ASK if I can make them available here. I need to get an OK from BenS. In the meantime, I have a "guideline sheet" I wrote a few days back and will post it later today. This guideline sheet it kind of "biased" to my preferences....I even call it, "the x-scenery way", but it's battle tested on Laminar aircraft, the MU2 and the IXEG 737 and has shown to be very reliable on projects of any size and it also is very conducive to collaboration and open source contribution becasue of it's standardization of many things. It's an evolution of processes given every headache I've ever had in development and is now to the point where there really is no more headaches or pretty close anyhow. This guidline sheet will set you up for using the scripts but doesn't limit you should you not choose to. Call it, "best practices". I'll try and get that document up later today. As far as letting the community make tutorials, I certainly wouldn't care, but at the same time, when the community goes after something "free for all", it's usually chaos, one-offs and not as much gets done as could be done with a organized effort. Lots of folks make tutorials for exposure or self-gratification reasons and a lot of time, do more damage than good by leaving out pertinent or incomplete info. I expect that will happen as folks like to tinker and that's fine of course. What I am after myself though.....is to eventually establish an organized "guild" membership where projects are managed and organized, tutorials are linear, structured and organized and projects will therefore have consistency and predictability and steady progress and yield the best results IMO. TomK

Cameron has pointed out to me that the chronology of some of my recollections are a bit off...such is my memory nowadays I guess, but we also both agreed that it was close enough to the story

I would put this in the developer section, but it applies to both scenery and aircraft developers alike. This is just my personal report and opinion of where I think the scripts will go in the future. Ben Supnik and I have been working on them recently and we've talked about the future. This is in no way a "Laminar Statement", there are too many unknowns, but I think folks would be interested just the same...it's just my opinion and observation as a "3rd party developer" and not a laminar developer. First a bit of history of Blender scripts for scenery and aircraft dev. 1.) Jonathan Harris makes "blender2xplane" and maintains it for all sorts of 3D development, BUT stops short when manipulators are introduced in 2008. 2.) X-Aviation develops it's own private strain of scripts for blender 2.49b that support manipulators. Implementation of manip support is quick and dirty and gets the job done but not intuitive. 3.) Sam256 develops his own strain of scripts for blender 2.49b, instigated by Dan Klaue with it's own manipulator support and interface....no longer supported. 4.) Ben Supnik rewrites the blender2xplane 2.49 exporter to be about 5x faster. This rewrite goes into the XAviation strain of scripts. (Don't know if it is in Sam256 strain) 5.) Sam256 develops scripts for new breed of Blender, 2.5+. Currently work in progress, not sure of it's level of implementation of manips. Known inefficiencies in the exporter exist. 6.) Ben Supnik further modifies the blender2xplane scripts for internal laminar use. Supports V10 technology for scenery development of AGPs and multi-object exporter as well as other new features. 7.) Ben Supnik modifies the XAviation strain of blender2xplane to support aircraft and scenery development with a single export command if desired, for internal Laminar usage currently. 8.) Ben Supnik modifies the XAviation strain of scripts to incorporte Sam256 2.49 work and create an agnostic "super strain" of 2.49 script that supports multiple workflows (but not both simultaneously...pick one or the other). Not yet released as of 3.16.13 Because I work for Laminar, Ben Supnik makes sure that the scripts I use are up to date and current with the latest tech, optimization and efficiency tools, not to support X-Aviation....its in Laminar's interest to see that I stay productive. The downside? It's for Blender 2.49b only and the manip implementation is still cryptic and limited. There is not enough incentive to port it to Blender 2.6+ / python 3 as the workload it too great for the possibilities of the future. What are the possibilities? A new object format! This means scrapping the existing line of scripts. We're probably years away so the question to ask is, will Blender 2.49 be a viable animation / export platform for a few years till a new format? We feel yes, so we put time into developing the 2.49 scripts. We leave the development of Blender 2.6+ scripts to Sam256 and I believe that Ben Supnik will work with him to keep that one up to date, efficient and current when he has time until a new object format ensues way off in the unknown future. For now, the community has easy access to Sam256 scripts for both Blender 2.49 and Blender 2.6+ and of course the original blender2xplane scripts are available I think without manip support. These scripts are not as optimum or feature rich as the Laminar internal ones. We want to get the Laminar ones into folks hands but the current barrier is training and documentation time. These scripts are sufficiently different in their implementation to require training / documentation to accompany them and we have not time for that yet. time is money when we have families and we must endeavor on doing what pays our bills at the moment. I am entertaining ideas to fund my time to teach the community how to use the scripts but that probably won't happen till after the release of the 737. When a new OBJ format inevitably comes out, I expect Laminar will take it's years of experience with add-on devs and come up with solutions that allow the creation of reliable exporters for multiple 3D applications. That doesn't mean that laminar will write such exporters for these apps, only that it will facilitate some "common intermediary technology" making it much easier to write exporters....and work with those who would write them. Such new object format would allow mesh manipulation, which video cards support and almost all new 3D apps. Can you say human animations, cloth simulation....we're talking "per vertex" animation. X-Plane is way behind mainstream 3D game titles in this regard. Thank goodness we have Ben Supnik who wants to keep up. Don't look for this for some years yet though. For now though, I think we have several good years of "OBJ 8" left. Those that feel they want to embrace the Laminar scripts when we get around to making them available should stay comfortable with Blender 2.49 for animating and export. I'll do tutorials on these in the future. Those that don't want anything to do with 2.49, I'd say get comfy with Sam256 Blender 2.6+ scripts. It IS possible to develop in other 3D apps, export out through the wavefront / lightwave into blender 2.49, then animate and set up manips in blender 2.49 and export. When the time comes for us to put out the scripts, I for one, will try to put out comprehensive training on it. For those interested in scenery creation, I'd say keep 2.49 close at your side for object setup and export. Model in whatever you want, but plan to "organize, setup and export" in 2.49. Most of the tools we have in the internal laminar scripts are for scenery dev. it's used for all of the autogen development as well as airports. It has tools to allow you to export out 1000 objects at a time, set up AGP scenery groups and control draw order and layer grouping, import library items for referencing, etc. The same script allows export of an aircraft in one command, including cockpit object...allows you to set the path of the exported object should it not be in the same folder as the blender file.....export out a scenery object AND a aircraft object all at once and into different folders. (not sure why anyone would do this, but it can be done). So pick your poison. stay comfy with 2.49....get benefit of Laminar workflow when the scripts hit...or move to 2.6+ and Sam256 scripts and get benefit of 2.6 work environment. It probably wouldn't hurt to learn both! EDIT: IF you're wanting to do casual 3D cockpit work, then Sam256 scripts for Blender 2.6+ supports many more manipulators than does the 2.49 version and it probably a better bet for getting interactive 3D cockpits done but it is a WIP so "stalls" may be common while waiting for features. If you use blender 2.49 scripts for cockpits and do not roll your own manip code, you'll end up post processing (hand editing) the xported cockpit object file...no fun, BUT at least there's lots of experience around these issues. Tom K Laminar / IXEG

Most people don't jack...they just think we're all jerks by nature here For those curious as to the x-pilot split from the org, read on for my version of the story. Those not interested probably are the better for it. This is just written history so my fingers and mind can stay busy while I break from dev work. I think there are multiple factors that led to the split but I'd say it all started with the MU2 and it's related development of manipulators. Manipulators were new at the time, no tools existed for aircraft authors to implement manipulators and they had to be done so by hand, not really practical at all. The MU2 had about 70+ of them and I could easily spend 2 hours hand editing the exported object...and I was exporting every 10 minutes or so during final tweaking. It was ridiculous and obscenely annoying. This meant that x-plane add-on aircraft had no 3D interactivity and limited animations. So imagine me with this vision of a nice aircraft, interactive in 3D like FSX stuff and no way to realize that vision due to lack of tools. Marginal, the author of the blender scripts did not support manipulators and had seem to have disappeared from the community so we were all kind of in limbo. I forged ahead and begun talks/negotiations with Nicolas about selling on the org while still working out the manipulator delimma with Ben Russell and we eventually came up with a rough manipulator framework in blender. Now let me tangent for a second... I have always believed that were all add-ons equal in FSX and X-Plane, that a user would prefer x-plane to its rendering quality and smoothness. The problem is that things were not equal....FSX has 10x the addons and the market share. So the only way to get my beloved x-plane to that same level of support was simply to get more people to look at x-plane. If x-plane had low quality...and no features that FSX had, why in the world would anybody want x-plane? This posed a problem. It was my singular goal with the MU2 to send a message to the FSX community saying, "look what x-plane CAN do" and get more people to look at x-plane. Recall at this time that FSX had not been cancelled so we were going up against a juggernaut and needed every advantage that we could get. So I made what I believed to be a nice product, comparable to some decent stuff in FSX, wrapped it nice, wrote a nice manual. Ok, back from the tangent. while negotiating with Nicolas, I observed a couple of things and interpreted them thusly. 1.) He wasn't very professional in his communications. His replies were untimely, never answered my questions directly and were generally evasive. I took a more direct approach by asking more direct questions like: "How often do you pay? What forms of payment do you provide? Do you provide sales reports? How do you handle marketing?" and I would get back responses like, "We pay monthly, a lot of vendors are happy with it". I viewed this kind of as a "I'm the only game in town, you do things the way I want you to do them"....and well, I didn't like that. I would be bringing HIM money and expected a bit of service. His market share alone wasn't enough, it wasn't all about the immediate quick cash flow to me. For many developers I know that it is and that is still affecting the situation to this day IMO. Going with the org means quick up front money, but I still believe it comes at a higher cost in credibility....at least to FSX users and they are still the larger market and I don't think the org is helping the x-plane growth. Nicolas will say it is, growing quickly under his tenure, but his tenure happens to coincide with XP10 dev and FSX canellation. He may have had vision to see the potential growth, but he's definitely not responsible for it in any way. So, I also noticed that Nicolas was marketing stuff with a bit more hype than I found agreeable, almost deceitful IMO, claiming some of his products to be the "best of x-plane" as he still does to some extent, but not as much anymore. Well I could go on other forums and see folks say things like, ".......that's the best they got?" or they'd buy one of his products and immediately feel like they'd been duped by marketing. When they'd voice their displeasure on the org, both the user and their post would "disappear". All that was left was glowing reports and not "counter point". I definitely have a problem with that at a community I helped contribute to. So we began taking screenshots of these posts before they were wiped out and Nicolas has alluded to our "screenshots" as silly and childish....but it was our way to say, "hey man, we're not making this stuff up, Nicolas is burying people for speaking out" and the community is oblivious. It gave x-plane a bad image IMO. Sure there are people who feel they get equal value for their money but remember, I'm looking at growing x-plane and the FSX crowd looked at XP as a play toy. The only people who seem to think these were good values were x-plane fanboys who didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings or get banned. This wasn't the way to grow x-plane IMO......and is probably the philosophical base for our differences to this day. So here I am working on the MU2, an org member, no x-pilot yet.....I have these scripts with manipulator support thanks to Ben Russell, things are going south with Nicolas and he's started to become more and more gustapo on the org when people bash his stuff. They just "disappear" and nobody is the wiser. So I need a place to sell my MU2. So I call up Cameron who founded x-plane freeware at age 13 and has e-commerce programming experience. This guy is passionate and talented and good at what he does. He shared my ideas of promoting x-plane quality in a higher light than we felt the org was doing. As talented as Cameron is though, the task was ambitious to set up a new web store and Ben Russell completed our technological tri-fecta. The one thing we decided though was to not share our Blender scripts for a couple of reasons. 1.) We needed a competitive advantage in these early days of "market positioning" knowing the 1000lb Gorilla, x-plane.org was about to outcast and try and crush us and 2.) the scripts were (and still are) cryptic to implement manipulators. If we put them out, we'd have a plethora of users complaining on how to use them and overwhelming us with support, stealing our development time. The license was open source but only upon distribution. So by not distributing, we weren't violating anything. One person that really needed manipulator support though was Dan Klaue. He was working on his stuff but didn't have manipulator support and it really stalled his work. I later found out from him directly that he thought our hoarding of our own fork of scripts was way uncool and it .."upset him greatly". Dan was shaping up to be a staunch supporter of Nicolas and the org and this added to the emotional divide. Now I'm a good ol Texas boy as we'd say in the US, meaning I'm a simple "straight shooting" (says things very directly) kind of guy..... work hard, enjoy the fruits of my labor and don't ask anything of anybody...and I do love to share, my history on the org shows; however, I can't share if I'm not stable enough to survive. I looked at it as I "don't need to share YET, but the time will come that I want to very much".....and a topic for another day, the community here is about to find out that I have every intention of sharing, scripts and everything I've learned over the years using them......BUT I still have to survive and I do long to help and see a new level of shareware begin to take shape and watch people engaging in the hobby of development. Dan's attitude to me was one of, "give me your hard work (Ben Russells actually)". I might have, but philosophically, he was supporting someone who was engaging in really bad behavior in the banning of it's membership. Granted it was passively, I don't think he had any discussions with Nicolas about the matter and chose to keep to his blinders, thereby maintaining plausible deniability. Money was at stake though.....standing against Nicolas means loosing lots of money up front and it's not easy to walk away from without a hit to your pocketbook. To me, it's a tether around your neck though and you don't break from oppression with that technique though so to me it was just a matter of Dan choosing his side and living with the consequences of his choice, nothing more. I certainly have taken consequences from mine and that's just the way it is. Ok...so here we are, you have me with my MU2 and manips, not wanting to sell with Nicolas on one side......and you have Dan, already determined to support Nicolas on the other side.....and there was some animosity here....not by us so much. I had nothing to be angry about. I have my MU2, I have my manips, I have a store to sell on, I'm good to go. The one thing I did do though that really fueled the fire was I implicated Dan's work as inferior....NOT a good way to make friends, regardless of the truth. Now I didn't do it directly, never called Dan a bad developer, never explicitly said a piece of his work was bad, BUT I did point out technical areas that were deficient compared to the standard FSX users were used to. Dan's inevitable response was "why would you do such a thing"....and a very fair question to him. This was one of those difficult moments for me. I could 1.) Play nice and make sure everybody felt good.......while watching x-plane continue to grow slow because Nicolas called works like Dan's, "the very best of x-plane"....or I could stand up and say, "no, this is not the very best of x-plane". People's feelings hung in the balance and I chose to go my route. Selfish? possibly.....do I regret it? certainly not. I think there are a great many people out there who fully understand that exposure is paramount in marketing. It had to be done so I did it, knowing full well a lot of folks probably wouldn't be too comfortable. As long as I could get this message out, get x-plane add-on quality up a level through good old fashioned free-enterprise competition, then everybody would benefit. This was my only driving factor. Dan's work today is fantastic I think. He would probably agree that his work today is better than it was then and that he's learned more and has better resources. I am very happy for the work he is putting out. It does x-plane proud. so that was the environment right before the MU2 came out. Tensions were high because of my insinuations of inferior quality and Nicolas banning ways and we knew it was only a matter of time before we were out of there. So we kept our head low, built x-aviation and then built x-pilot as our inevitable forum outlet. So sure enough, the MU2 comes out, Nicolas finds out, shortly later, I'm banned, Cameron's banned, the MU2 is the first all 3D plane with manips and it gets some good reviews and lo and behold several people say the Mu2 is the reason they came to x-plane. I feel justified and vindicated...yet pretty much hated by many org members. Now don't forget that x-plane.org is STILL the 1000lb gorilla in the room and when a 1000lb gorilla gets upset, you go into defense mode real quick. Every time we got attacked (always passively with deleted posts by members or a banning of a x-aviation supporter), we counter-attacked. Everything we did on our end we felt was defensive only, BUT we were the more aggressive publicly as that's all we had....if we played on the org playing field, we'd be wiped out. Product quality and freedom of speech is all we had at the time, one thing Nicolas doesn't quite subscribe to. Nicolas used guerrilla tactics, we used bombs. Folks see what we do, they don't see what he does, he operates the org like a mob boss, in the shadows. Bad stuff gets done, but as long as no-one sees it, nobody knows. That continues to this day. For us here at x-pilot and x-aviation, the mission is the same. Show the FLIGHT SIM MARKET.....not just the x-plane market what x-plane is capable of and we'll all benefit. So as time passes, you see Dan get Sam256 involved and eventually Dan gets his scripts and manipulator support and things keep on rolling. By this time, we're going our separate ways back to back but there's still tension to this day, like North Korea and South. All we ever did was want to elevate x-plane's add-on image and quality outside the x-plane arena as this was the real flight sim market in our opinion and when we left the org, we got attacked and we came back very hard and aggressive verbally. This is why you see no apologies from us save one, from me to Dan for sweeping him up in our issues with Nicolas. Later on, the announcement of the changes in FSX changed the landscape in x-plane. I got picked up by Laminar and got caught up in that instead of doing more add-ons. In the time it took me to do the scenery and four aircraft, I might could have done two other add-ons, BUT I was forefront in XP10 tech and this was a bonus, I was help shaping methods that benefit all developers, for the org developers too. In the end, my path in all this will have a good community effect that has yet to be implemented. I plan to take all my knowledge, experience, evolution of the scripts, documentation and do video tutorials and written tutorials and teach folks how to develop high quality stuff in a hobby fashion for the community. Will this be detrimental to payware developers? Absolutely not in that payware level has gotten to demand a LOT of detail and time. What I'm looking to do is get folks making shareware like the King Air or Baron and possibly in an open source capacity where we can increase community involvement in a more "guild" style environment. Very nice stuff can be done with default tools and I for one think it would be cool to have a big download library of aircraft of the King Air and Baron level. We might implement this in a low cost subscription based environment which provides tremendous value for the dollar. As a parent of 3 kids in college, I have to take care of my family in order to have time to do anything for the community. In the end, all I want is higher quality in x-plane . I do not subscribe to the "everything for free" model though. I have always provided "some free...some not" to balance it out. I've taken for free and therefore feel the need to contribute some for free. At the end of the day, I am interested in a 1.) Vibrant community with great social interaction, mentorship, and culture of quality shareware development and 2.) Providing great value for the money whenever money is exchanged for anything I have a hand in. So that's where x-pilot came from in my version. It started with the Mu2 and my refusal to sell at the org because of what I perceived to be a strategy detrimental to x-plane growth. Cameron and Ben felt the same and we all headed out. In the separation, bad feelings ensued and this little settlement here is the result. Like the org though,in the end, we will go where the community lets us go. Best, Tom K Sorry for the ramble...but it was a good opportunity to spill since you asked Jack

There will be shortly. I'm working on the King Air Autopilot this week...as well as a few other quality control things. We've been revamping our export tools to ensure one-click export consistency for the entire aircraft and it should help keep things reliable. Tom K Laminar / IXEG

One caveat is for mac anyhow, it's power PC code, which means that it runs in emulation mode and therefore not nearly as quick. I don't think this is a big deal though as it's hardly animation or video processing and one might not even notice on modern hardware. I'm giving it a shot! Not sure about the windows versions though. Tom K

If I can find them Andy, sure. I meant to dig those out earlier, but seem to have misplaced the blender file I have them ...or forgotten which I'm not sure. I'll post here when I hunt them down. I have a relatively unwavering ritual of waking up, heading out for morning coffee to study for a few hours, then I settle into my day (GMT + 6). At some point today, I'll try and dig around for those. Tom K

One caution to that approach is the entire pol file will take on that attribute, so you'll have hard surfacing on the pol rectangle, grass included if your POL is an orthophoto with grass areas. , This is not necessarily a bad thing if you never get off the taxiways. So that method will work if you don't mind the result. Putting a taxiway underneath the pol should work fine though. One thing about WED...if you're turning things off and on to see what you're doing in WED, then WED won't export things turned off. I've missed this more than a couple of time so that's something to watch out for. What you DO want to put in your POL file though is a "layer_group" directive to tell your ortho photo / POL where to draw relative to your taxiways that you place in WED. If you want your orthose to appear over your taxiways, then you need to set your layer group entry appropriately (can't recall the commands off the top of my head). Alternatively, if you want your orthose to be below your taxiways, then that option exists also. Tom K Laminar / IXEG

OK, I thought this is cool and worth posting. We just got around to tying in the reversers to the hydraulics. There are 3 hydraulic sources: Engine power, Electric pump and a standby pump...each pump weaker than the next. Well how fast the reversers deploy is tied to how much hydraulic power is going into them. So the reversers will deploy nice and fast with the engine pumps. Not so fast with the electric pumps...and just downright slow with the standby pump. So lets say you have one systems down...the 'A' system on the left side. In this case, the left reverser won't deploy...not good on landing (sort of...the standby pump cuts on automatically under certain conditions but I'm making a point . You CAN; however, turn on the standby pump and use that to deploy the A reverser, BUT it will take a bit longer than the B (right) side so on touchdown, you'll have a bit of asymmetric thrust as you deploy the reversers until the slow reverser opens up fully....but only if you advance the throttles though. You could "pull into reverse"...wait a few extra seconds to let the slower side deploy, THEN crank back on the reverse throttle. If the standby system has to power both sides, then the extension time is doubly long.....almost such that you won't get significant reverse thrust till you're a good ways down the runway. You can play with the hydraulic switches, turn pumps on and off and see the reversers deploy at different rates. When I was testing it, I deployed the reversers, turned off system A....commanded the reversers closed and sat there for about 30 seconds staring at the reverser lock annunciator waiting for the other one to close before I realized I hadn't turned on the standby pump. very cool! Tom K Laminar / IXEG

Wombat....I know your last post was over a year old....but I have an 'old' BD-5J in progress, or did anyhow......EXCEPT the gear, because I didn't have any good references. Don't suppose you want to put these guys together to add to the x-pilot file library eh? We're kicking around some ways to implement an "open source / community projects" type of scenario with mentoring and training and these little aircraft would be good candidates for experimentation. TK

Sorry to hear Zymurg. It is almost hard to believe isn't it? I mean, for years, people thought we just made up this stuff...some of the things that have come out of the admins mouth at the org just makes me blink in amazment. Anyhow, we're glad to have you here and look forward to your contributions. We are kicking around several things here to try and get add-on building tutorials and training going and bolster the community sharing of great add-ons using some of the newer XP technologies. Tom K

Thank you cyrille. I am "keep going" right now, working on the last few parts of the exterior model even today (sans landing gear). We should be providing some in flight exterior screenshots in the upcoming weeks. Tom K

Already happened, sort of. Nicolas didn't actually ban me, he just revoked every single privilege except viewing of the forums. The last time I was banned in 2009, ......for selling my Mu2 with x-aviation instead of them (I think I hurt his feelings), there was a bit of a backlash from some users who couldn't figure out what happened, including me. I had a good history of helping others there for some years, and the banning had no justification other than Nicolas being a baby....so he reinstated me with a warning, "I've got my eye on you". Well I definitely got real vocal after that little stunt as many here know all too well. If Nicolas didn't have a reason to ban me the first time, I definitely gave him one after that. Every time he decided to act like a baby, I'd call him on it and eventually he had enough of me and pushed the big red button. In this way though, nobody knows I'm "soft banned"...they just think I don't post there and nobody will question him on it. Sly devil that guy! Tom K

Generally if you have anything "in writing" against the org in the slightest negative way, then you are likely at risk for being banned. If you participated in the rant section here and had anything negative ( in their eyes) or even the slightest bit obstinate to say, then that is your probable cause. The org generally does not tolerate criticisms of any kind, especially if directed in the slightest way towards management or org vendors, but to ever really know for sure, you'd have to have a org representative who knows about it to sound off. They're not in the habit of explaining to members whey they're banned, they just cut the rope and keep on moving most of the time. TomK

Sorry Larry, I just caught your post. Yes, X-Plane uses GL, but also uses shader technology which is hardware driven and such shader technology is only present on "DX11 capable cards". These cards support both DX and GL APIs, the shader technology is common to both though and saying "DX11" implies that card has the required tech. That's a simplification, but the general gist of it. Tom K.

There are two adjustments you can make. FOV as described above is basically "camera zoom"....and the other is akin to "head tilt up or down". The "head tilt option" is found in Planemaker under the "Standard > Viewpoint" menu item. This will bring up a dialog screen with four tabs. Go to the "View" tab and look for the horizontal box undneath the 3 boxes on top. Its called, "SCREEN-CENTERS" and it's the values in the middle called, "View center". I'm sorry I can't remember if you change the values to be higher or lower, but do know it's the equivalent of "tilting your head up or down" to see more or less of the panel. The official description of the value is "where the horizon is on your screen". Thus a horizon very high on the screen means you're looking down more into the cockpit. Play with these values along with the FOV values and you should be able to adjust the default view to fit your screen how you like. Tom K

Asso X jewel.......er...millenium master....um...I mean Blackshape Prime....well all those are correct but most correct is Blackshape Prime. The design started out as the Asso X jewel in wood (my favorite of course), then a composite derivative evolved called the millenium master, whose molds were later sold to Blackshape and has finally become the Blackshape Prime. I've always been a huge fan of this Vidor design. Super performance on a 100hp motor. http://www.blackshapeaircraft.com/ http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/blackshape-prime-p-95.html

We really don't know when. We know when we would LIKE to have it out, but our experience over the last 2.25 years has shown that you never know what comes down the way. Sometime in the first half of 2013 is desired by the team and that's really all we can say. We are very much committed to not cutting corners and providing a complete product. Work continues regularly however. I am nearly finished with the exterior and maybe in the next four weeks we can put up some screenshots....I'll work towards that milestone. Tom K Laminar / IXEG

This is not correct....or at least not a good way to do it as the trip from 2.6 to 2.49 looses all sorts of data blocks. Instead export out of 2.6+ in the "Wavefront (OBJ)" format...then that will import very well into 2.49; however, as airfighter pointed out, once you start creating animations, then this is no good as the animations will not make it through the migration from 2.6 > wavefront > 2.49. The geometry comes through great and any UV mapping done generally does too. Tom K Laminar / IXEG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL_M28 or thereabouts anyhow

I don't mean to steal Intrance thunder AJ. I just happen to be here in the forum. Sorry Intrance! Nothing wrong with being overprotective. The MU2 (which I'm familiar with) uses a similar type of engine as the J32....and the "book" calls for turning on de-icing whenever you are in icing temperature range and there's visible moisture. Certainly better safe than sorry. Icing is always associated with moisture.....and temperature of course, those two being the mix that causes icing. On a micro-level, if you flew in and out of clouds at below freezing temperatures, your would be at icing risk in the clouds but not out of the clouds....at least in reality. True "icing conditions" are a bit more complex of course. X-Plane has no concept of "cloud volume" though and can't simulate icing on a "per cloud" basis. x-plane does keep track of temperature and precipitation and has a range of this combination where icing will accumulate, probably at a steady rate if I know Austin. TomK Laminar / IXEg

AJ, To elaborate a bit on Intrance response, a turbine engine "combustion reaction" is self-sustaining....that is fuel is fed to the "combustion process" which is already underway. There is no spark to ignite the mixture after the engine has been started. It just pours gas into an already existing fire in the combustion chamber. When in situations like rain or any type of moisture as Intrance pointed out, the moisture might "put out the fire". In this case, fuel is still being fed into the engine, but there is no spark/fire to ignite the fuel. In this case, you DO need a spark to light the fire. This is what continuous ignition is all about. It is designed to provide a source of ignition in situtions where there is excessive moisture pouring into the engine tries to extinguish the combustion. It is literally a fight between moisture trying to put out the combustion and the continuous ignition trying to keep the fuel lit. It is common to turn on continuous ignition before turning on engine anti-ice on aircraft where these functions are independent of one another. This is because if you turn on anti-ice on your engine and some ice melts and then flies into the engine...it could cause the engine to flame-out. X-Plane does not simulte this scenario by default though so it is unlikely what you've observed. It can be simulated with custom programming. Now as far as XP anti-ice goes. You can investigate this onscreen using the data in/out feature whereby you can print the icing ratios onscreen while you fly. X-Plane will display the amount of icing on the wings / engine / inlets and such. You can monitor these and see if ice is accumulating or the anti-ice system is not working. My gut tells me that x-plane is not detailed enough to consider the rate of icing. (I may be wrong) only that icing is accumulating or melting. So I see it unlikely that the anti-ice is working yet the icing is still going up. If I am wrong and x-plane can accumulate ice faster than the system can melt it, I would be surprised and impressed. We have overhauled some de-icing datarefs as recently as 2 weeks ago and introduced two new de-icing datarefs because of a bug in the de-ice system. It may be that Javier utilized the broken datarefs and has not implented the new ones, being they're only 2-3 weeks old. Javier? Tom K Laminar / IXEG

HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering is a user-settable rendering mode within x-plane that provides advanced shader features and effects like blurred engine exhaust, night lighting and atmospheric effects. It is also called "deferred rendering" which is terminology more meaningful to the programmers than the end users. So for simplicity, when we say, "HDR", we mean we have the fancy rendering effects turned on in the renderings settings of x-plane. Using HDR requires a "DX-11 compliant" video card so not all computers can use the HDR mode. Basically if you have a modern video card, it will support HDR, but how much you can squeeze out of it performance wise is dependent on the card and a matter of trial and error playing with x-plane options. HDR usually eats up some FPS when it is turned on....at least during the day. Night lighting performance is usually better. Tom K Laminar/IXEG I'm sure the download is great to you Michael, but a lot of people aren't you, particularly Mac users. A lot of products have a history of being rushed out the door come Christmas time in order to snag those Christmas sales. X-Plane is guilty of it last year and incomplete or hastily done products are not uncommon at the org there this time of year. As long as such shortcomings are disclosed, then of course that's fine and buyers can make informed decisions but personally, I think it makes x-plane add-on development look amateurish in the eyes of folks eyeballing x-plane as a purchase. Just exercise buyer beware and read the print so you know what your are or are not getting. TomK Laminar / IXEG

glad to help mGN and glad you're up and running and enjoying the scenery. ask anytime, we'll be here. TomK Laminar/IXEG