tkyler

Jim, There's a tool called "FS2XPlane" found HERE I haven't used it myself, but I do believe it comes with some thorough instructions.

Howard...I really couldn't say one way or another because so many people enjoy so many different aspects of the sim. As a commerical developer, I wouldnt' even tell you my work is for you because it just may not be. That being said though...if we went with pure statistics...then there are a few standouts. King Air B350 (freeware) by Jan Grundke is a great aircraft. Great custom sounds and a wonderful flight model http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=5641 x737 (freeware) by Benedikt Strattman is on the cutting edge of systems simulation. About 30% or so of systems are modeled in my estimation. http://eadt.eu/ My MU-2 (payware...and I'm biased) has the most thorough GA simulation and the most interactive 3D cockpit thought it's not 100% simulated. http://www.x-scenery.com/ and of course several xplane freeware (XPFW) aircraft are well done free airliners...especially the 757 http://xplanefreeware.net/ The Hughes H500 helicopter is especially outstanding (freeware) http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=3130 and the french xplane group has lots of cool stuff too (freeware): http://xpfr-aeroplanes.dtccorp.org/ I'm sure I've left out many capable designs and I apologize. Do check out www.x-plane.org for tons of other free stuff and some good cost-effective payware:

Man that guy is something else. I didn't know that...thanks Dave.

You know...I think my "unofficial" aviation experience throughout many years skews my perspective here. When I went through my engineering education, it was quite easy to couple my aviation experiences with my curriculum. So in hindsight, I'm sure I'd agree that a pilot's perspective for judging a sim is superior to an engineers...especially consider that I wouldn't trust many engineers I've worked with to tie their own shoes. In school, I specialized in engineering modeling. It wasn't aeronautical in nature, but physics is physics and we are talking about a fluid....however I let Laminar worry about that part and I pick up after aero forces are applied to the model, applying what I know. One thing I do different than many other authors is I do not hold fast that the flight model in Plane-Maker must match the real aircraft visually or explicitly in its parameters, i.e. just because an elevator deflects 23 degrees doesn't mean I'll deflect it 23 degrees in the sim. Such a methodology places unwaivering faith in the accuracy of x-plane's algorithms, which I know are quick approximations; therefore, I have no issues departing for hard specs for the interest of better simulating a specific aircraft. Also, I'll use any trick in the book when I'm trying to match known performance....even deploying speed brakes to simulate braking from a constant speed prop. I would think the airflow situation is probably a bit complex in that scenario and not captured so you have to resort to other tactics. If you remember than in the end, the net effect of all inputs results in forces and moments you can start thinking a bit more outside the box. I'll admit Larry, you're description on AVSIM was as thorough as I've EVER read from a real world pilot...that's valuable stuff. Oh..my real world experience. Officially? about 20 hours in a 172! Unofficially? 3 years helping dad pilot our 172 around Texas when I was 13-16. Another lot o hours flying various light aircraft with my brother, a Harrier Pilot, some Pitts S2 time with a fellow college buddy over a few month period and about 35-40 hours MU-2. All the "unofficial" time is right seat, many times handling the controls, many times not. My favorite time, not surprisingly, was the MU-2 time. One of my good friends was the pilot and really liked to have me pilot the aircraft after a while. I thought he was just being nice but turns out, as a cargo pilot, he enjoyed the mental break. I was sad to see that opportunity go after the cargo contract was terminated by the Federal Reserve.

LA....Great to have you here man! I certainly see your point and for your case would agree. My commentary really isn't as much about one skill or the other as much as it is about one's being a pilot not being solely "enough" to qualify a perception. People's skills and perceptions vary widely and one's ability to interpret, analyze and verbalize is unique to each person. I would respect your inputs....others I would not. Speaking of which, did you catch my post on the "other" forum. I sincerely would like to try my suggestion, not for determining right or wrong reasons, but for the purpose of exploring the flight model a bit further in x-plane and formulating some observations and improvements.

I would agree there's lots of "regimes" in which x-plane just plain doesn't handle. I'm hoping to meet with Austin in the next few months and discuss some of these and get an idea of the algorithms and how we might could beef these up. Particularly things like spins and your example would be good ones to examine. Airflow is quite complex though and the approximations make full regime airflow modeling difficult.

Although I've only recently begun taking flying lessons, I've spent a good amount of time in aircraft because I grew up around aviation, pilots and my family and many friends of the family owned aircraft. Because I don't have a private pilot's license, some people would argue they're more qualified to judge the accuracy of a flight model, especially if they have lots of hours. I would vehemently disagree with this type of assertion! It's very typical for people to post "their resume" when making commentary about a flight model. "....I've been a commercial pilot for 40 years"....or " I'm a pilot"....like that will automatically mean their opinion is the final stamp of authority on the matter. As a developer, I tend to be very keen on these types of comments...indeed I've had people tell me the MU-2 is a horrible flight model and proceed to tell me why it is a horrible model...even with their zero hours in one. NOW...while I will not discount the perspective one has from being a pilot, my assertion here is that BECAUSE one is a pilot is not enough of a reason to give unequivocal allegiance to their conclusions. All of us have a general sense of physics and motion just from walking this planet and looking around. We don't have to have any flying experience to theorize that a 737 making a 90 degree change in direction in one second is unnatural looking and probably "not realistic". Then there's the issue of performance envelope. If one flies an aircraft well within it's performance limits, then how do you know how well the flight model really performs? All flight models are pretty accurate in straight and level flight. I would guess the "thing" most people key on when judging the flight model is the lack of the feel of "mass". This is not a limitation of the sim, but usually the oversight of the designer. Austin has provided the means for an author to tweak the "feel" of the mass of the aircraft but very few developers actually take advantage of it. I'm referring to the "radii of gyration" which is related to the "moment of inertia". Why would many developers ignore such a thing? One reason is a undying trust in Austin's flight model algorithms and another is that these concepts are the realm of engineering and calculus. How many engineers are developing for x-plane? I can think of at least 3 off hand. Other than that, it's generally pilots and hobbyists. Take note that aircraft are designed by engineers and flown by pilots. Being both is a plus. I bring this up probably a bit defensively because as an engineer myself, I am frequently at odds with pilots who feel that being a pilot gives them credibility to judge the accuracy of a flight model while I, not being a licensed pilot, had to take the position that my engineering background qualifies me more. Well now that I've started flying and am well into my training, and having soloed, will say that my views on aircraft flight models thus far have not changed. My final point is that a pilot's input is necessary to judge the quality of a flight model, but just because one is a pilot does not mean they're automatically qualified to comment and you must take the nature of the commentary at face value. It may be exactly right or it may be way off base.

So you're ready to create some 3D content and help the x-plane world grow? This post should give you a minimal overview enough to get curious. All the 3D content in x-plane is of a file format we affectionately call, "object 8". This is because the file format was first introduced in x-plane version 8. This file format is a plain-text file that is human readable. The file extension of this file format is *.obj. This is NOT to be confused with the *.obj file extension associated with "Alias Wavefront". Many many 3D program support the Alias Wavefront *.obj format, but be aware that this is NOT the same as the native, proprietary object 8 format. Currently, only two 3D programs will export 3D models in the object 8 format: 1.) AC3D (http://www.inivis.com/) 2.) Blender 3D (http://www.blender.org/) The exporter for AC3D, a low cost payware 3D program, is developed and maintained by the author of the object 8 format and can generally be considered the "official" exporter for object 8. The exporter takes the form of a plug-in for AC3D and can be downloaded at the following: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/scenery/tools.php The exporter for blender, developed voluntarily by Jonathan Harris, takes the form a series of python scripts but comes with an installer that easily places all the files for you. The exporter scripts for blender can be downloaded at the following: http://marginal.org.uk/x-planescenery/ 3D content can be created in other 3D programs, but you'll have to get your 3D content into one of these two programs to be able to export it to object 8 for x-plane. Blender is free and the more powerful of the two programs and the highest quality work is usually done by Blender users rather than AC3D users; however, this is not to say AC3D can't produce good work. Blender has more robust modeling and organizational tools that allow a modeler to be a bit more productive and produce more complicated projects. The trade off is that Blender takes a while to learn and the user interface is unintuitive. The reason the program has popularity is because once the interface is learned, it is an extremely fast 3D program to use. Animations are also performed in AC3D and Blender. The animation structure for object 8 format is proprietary and animation mechanisms in other programs are not transferable to Blender or AC3D. For users who prefer to use other 3D programs, their workflow will mostly likely consists of all steps short of animating...either modelling only or modeling and texturing and then moving the work to blender / AC3D for animating before export. The object 8 format allows one texture per one exportable object, with UV coordinate mapping. The one texture needs to have width and height pixel dimensions that are powers of 2, i.e. (2, 4, 8, 16......2048) and any one dimension, width or height, cannot be larger than 2048 pixels. The end “product” you will use within x-plane will consist of an object file and it's associated texture. 3D object files that are to be used with aircraft are generally placed in specific locations within the aircraft folder and 3D object files to be used for scenery are generally placed in a specific folder used for scenery. For aircraft, these 3D objects are applied to the aircraft using the “Plane-Maker” application that comes with x-plane. For scenery, the 3D objects are added to the x-plane world in a couple of ways. The most preferable way is by using a 3rd party application called “overlay editor” by Jonathan Harris. This application can be found at the following: http://marginal.org.uk/x-planescenery/tools.html Another more painful way is to convert the binary file that contains the object placement information into a text file and hand edit the text file with the placement information (latititude, lontitude & azimuth) then reconvert that text file back to binary. So why would you want to take the more painful route? Well simply put, “overlay editor” is 3rd party and Laminar Research can not count on 3rd party solutions so they must develop their own. Laminar has a WYSIWYG scenery editor about 95% complete called “WED” that will be used for placing objects into x-plane graphically. This “WED” application is available now for creating airports, runways and taxiways, lights, markings, etc, but does NOT currently allow the placement of 3D objects. The “units” for object 8 format is meters, so a value of 1.0 in a 3D program would equal one meter in x-plane. Thus far, the descriptions I've given are of a very general nature on how 3D objects are created and exported to object 8 format for x-plane to be able to use as well as how they are brought into x-plane. What I have not gone over is the intricacies of animating objects from within AC3D and/or Blender. I also have not covered the specifics of folder structure and exactly where to put your objects and/or how to name them, though this will be necessary to get your objects in to x-plane. Custom scenery creation involves a few more specialized topics regarding custom texturing of the landscape as well as controlling the placement of trees, forest, roads, etc. This post does was not intended to cover these topics in depth. So to recap, the general procedure for getting some 3D content into x-plane is as follows: FOR AIRCRAFT: 1.)Create your 3D content, in any 3D program you choose and texture it there if you want. 2.)Get your 3D content in to Blender or AC3D and texture it if you haven't already. 3.)Animate your objects (note that animations are associated with x-plane variables called “datarefs”) 4.)Export your object to object 8 format. 5.)Place your object and texture in the proper folder within your aircraft folder hierarchy 6.)Open the “Plane-Maker” application and add the object to your aircraft and save. FOR SCENERY OBJECTS: See steps 1 - 4 5.)Acquire “Overlay Editor” application and place your objects with it. This posting was intended to give you a broad overview of creating custom 3D objects and the generalized procedure for getting them into x-plane. More specific posts will follow covering the process in more detail in the future.

This topic has been moved to Support. [iurl]http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=71.0[/iurl]

So you're finally ready to try x-plane and see for yourself what it's all about? Through this posting, I hope to give you a general idea of what you can expect and towards the end of the post, attempt to discuss the direction x-plane might be heading. So let's just start at the beginning with a bit of esoterica. The x-plane installation consists of a few key executable files along with a whole lot of support files. The key executable files are in the root x-plane directory and are as follows: 1.) X-Plane 2.) Plane-Maker 3.) Airfoil-Maker The support files are things like the terrain database, the aircraft files, bitmaps, plug-ins and a myriad of other files most users will never interact with. If one is hoping to become a developer, then you will have to become acquainted with all these files and what they do and there is a web page for that, but for people who simply want to fly in x-plane, you generally need not concern yourself with anything other than the "X-Plane" executable. The x-plane package is available in four different "versions". There is a “Demo Version”, a "DVD version", a "beta version", and a "updater version. Sound confusing? Where here's some examples to help clarify. If you wanted to try a demo version of x-plane, you would go to www.x-plane.com and download an installer file. You would run the installer file and the demo version of x-plane, along with limited scenery area around Innsbruck Austria, would be downloaded and installed in a directory of your choosing. You could then run x-plane for up to 10 minutes in demo mode. There are no limitations on the demo mode other than being geographically limited to Innsbruck and the 10 minute time limit whereby x-plane displays a dialog box and negates any control input, but all the aircraft are available to you. So if you decided you liked x-plane and wanted to buy it, you'd order the latest DVD version of x-plane which will net you 6 DVDs. 95% of the data on those DVDs is the world terrain database. Now you can choose which parts of the world you want to install and a full install of the world terrain will eat up a good 60GBs of your hard drive +/-. Any part of the world where scenery is NOT installed you CAN fly in but you will only see water and no land; however, the airports will be in place. X-Plane has an installer that will walk you through the installation. I'm not saying it's easy but it seems everybody gets through it somehow. Feel free to ask question in these forums if something eludes you. So let's say you've installed x-plane and your part of the world. Well the version of x-plane you purchased on DVD and just installed is probably some 'stable' version chosen by the x-plane developers.... let's say 9.20, which is the current DVD versions available online. An older version like 9.00 might be something you'd buy in Wal-Mart. The x-plane authors figured these were as good of versions as any to put on DVD so they did it. NOW....here's one thing about x-plane you really need to understand, and that is X-Plane is updated CONSTANTLY. Once a stable version get's "burned" to DVDs and ready for shipment, the x-plane authors go right back to programming in more features and lots of cool new stuff. So rather than let these new features build up and disseminating them in one big release in the future, they elect to offer frequent updates. So while you may have installed version 9.20 or 9.00 off your DVDs, chances are there will be some new update to x-plane already or if not, then probably in a few months into the future. There are usually announcement on common forums when an update to x-plane is released. Now whenever an imminent update is about to be released, the x-plane authors first release what is called a “beta version” for public testing. This is a chance for people to test the software and report bugs. Do NOT expect this beta version to work correctly “across the board”. If you desire to try the beta version, then you should be prepared to report any bugs you find...that is the purpose of the beta “phase” of the release. After some period of time has elapsed and the x-plane authors feel that no more significant bugs remain, then they will declare the release “final” and that release will become what I previously referred to as the “updater version” So then to recap, the procedure for new x-plane owners is to install x-plane from the DVDs and then check for updates or beta versions. If you were to do that as of this posting, then what you'd find is that you would probably install version 9.20 from DVDs...and the current “updater version” would be 9.22 and the most recent beta version will be 9.30b7. When 9.30 goes “final” i.e. all the bugs have been handled, then 9.30 will cease to be a “beta version” and will become the “updater version” and the x-plane authors will go back to adding more features to be released at some unknown time in the future in a new beta version. So this post will now assume that you have the latest and greatest version of x-plane installed and you're ready to launch x-plane. After launching x-plane for the first time, x-plane will place you at LOWI, the Innsbruck airport, which is the same airport as is the demo and you'll be in a Cirrus Jet. At this point, you can select another aircraft or another airport or both. Generally though, the first thing you'll want to do is set up your rendering settings. X-Plane has a myriad of rendering settings that vastly affect the quality you see on the screen. The rendering settings you will choose are directly dependent on the power of your video card. Some of the common settings you'll want to experiment with are the “texture resolution”, the “anti-aliasing”, “aniosotropic filtering”and “pixel shader” pull down menus......in that order. These four settings have the biggest effect on the visual quality you'll see. You can expect to have to quit and relaunch x-plane to have these settings take effect as this information has to be loaded into the video card during x-plane loading. After your rendering settings are set, you'll probably want to next set up your hardware if you have any. If you do not, then x-plane will still allow you to fly using a input device such as a mouse or trackball in conjunction with keystrokes for various functions. If you do have hardware, then x-plane has a setup screen that allows you to select which buttons on your hardware control specific functions within x-plane. You can also map commands / functions to keystrokes in another setup screen. Once you have your rendering settings and hardware setup, you're ready to start “flying” so at this point, you can select a new aircraft and/or new airport and begin flying. The first thing you'll probably notice in x-plane is the lack of any buildings / structures at airports. Airports are just flat expanses of “pavement”...taxiways and runways. Where's the tower? where's the terminals etc? Well x-plane, like other sims, creates it's airports from standardized information that allows it to populate the “virtual earth” with all recorded airports....5000+ in all. It is impractical for the authors of x-plane to create individual airport details. At this point in time, it is left to 3rd party contributors to create 3D scenery for airports. The x-plane authors are working on creating generic, default airport structures but for exact replicas of specific airport scenery, 3rd party solutions will always be the only option. I will NOT go into scenery development here, but I will say that all tools and technology exists in x-plane to create as much 3D scenery as one could desire. In addition,there are tools available that allow one to convert scenery made for MSFS into scenery usable within x-plane. You might also notice that common famous landmarks are not available either. This is because the market traditionally targeted by x-plane was not the “visual world” as we know it but this is changing. The x-plane authors have recognized this and there are aggressive efforts to provide famous landmarks into x-plane. You're next impression of x-plane will come from the aircraft you've chosen and the performance characteristics you experience. All aircraft in x-plane are highly customizable and just because an aircraft is included with x-plane as a default aircraft doesn't mean the flight model is accurate or fully developed. X-Plane has demonstrated the ability to model aircraft flight very well when the time is taken to tune a flight model thoroughly. So if you're first impression of x-plane is negative because the particular aircraft you selected did not seem to perform as you expected, then just know that aircraft can probably be further tweaked to perform even better. You also may note the lack of virtual cockpits on many of the x-plane default aircraft, where only a 2D panel exists. This is due to the “transition” x-plane finds itself in where flexible 3D functionality for virtual cockpits has been provided by the developers but has yet to be implemented into the default aircraft. Laminar is currently engaged in an aggressive effort to update it's default fleet to include 3D virtual cockpits for it's fleet. Another shortcoming of x-plane you may notice is the lack of AI (artificial intelligence) air traffic. Now x-plane does have a basic system of AI air traffic, but the system leaves a lot to be desired. Again, the developers of x-plane realize this and the AI portion of x-plane is being revamped. Up to this point, we've discussed what can be expected to get an “up to date” version of x-plane running on your computer, but I suspect there will be lots of features you WON'T see and wonder what's the story on these features. Well what we haven't addressed is what x-plane CAN do. X-Plane CAN do anything almost anything MSFS can do. The x-plane developers have spent the last few years creating a code base and infrastructure that will allow developers to create very powerful results. What x-plane lacks is development by 3rd parties. In the same sense that a road is paved into new territory, until that territory is populated with desirables, it will take a while to grow. The “road” has been built...but x-plane needs developers. This forum has several experienced developers that are ready to help and assist new users who might have interest in contributing to this simulator and its growth. As time goes on, x-plane add-ons will increase...we're seeing that now. High quality scenery will come available...Ortho-photo scenery will come available, 3D airport scenery will come available, AI traffic will become available. It will take some time, but the technology is there to develop it.