andyw248

Great thread, almost like a dataref tutorial... thanks Cessna729 for explaining all this!

As was stated in other posts a lot of trimming is necessary, all three axis. This doesn't seem unusual, if you have enough levers on your joystick / yoke / throttle quadrant I suggest you just assign them to the trim axis. The roll and pitch rates seem a little aggressive so I have reduced sensitivity by 20%. Works like a charm and feels like I would imagine for a plane like the JS31. Also, I wouldn't be too sure about correlations between weight and twitchyness... I've flown C172 and Bonanza in real life, surprisingly the Bonanza is much more unstable than the Cessna, even though it's much heavier. Different ballpark than the Jetstream of course, just to illustrate my point.

Thanks Tom, great insight into the genealogy of the scripts! Personally since I'm only doing scenery I'm fine with Marginal's script, and editing the resulting .obj files manually. Yes, it's archaic, I know ...

What's that thing on the left side of the cowling? Is that a cow horn?

Great stuff! It's really gaining shape now.

It's funny... had there not been the smiling pilot in the cockpit some sequences made me think this video had been created in a flight simulator. I think it is the purity of the shots, just the water surface, the sunset, and the plane that made me feel this way. Most real world aviation videos have this moment of imperfection that makes them look more "real" than what we see in a sim, but this video here does not have any imperfection, it's just 100% perfect.

Yes I've been enjoying it a lot for the past 2 years or so. Some observations: - The flight and engine models are mostly excellent, and they have been getting better if you compare early planes with later creations. The torque generated by rotating engines is modelled very well. The fact that they are all taildraggers requires some good landing skills. Forward slips feel very much like the real thing. The lack of many of those steam gauges that we are used to requires you to look out of the window a lot (well, they don't really have windows do they?). - The flight environment is modelled very well. Turbulent air feels realistic, clouds are not too bad, light effects are nice. The airstrips are bumpy which makes for some good taxiing; they come with grass as well. There's a mission editor that lets you create your own airfields which is good because the default ones are not densely populated; you might want to add some hangars, vehicles, triple-a's, and villages, to look it more realistic, and to give you more visual clues upon flare. Hint: create a mission with a lead plane so that you are his wingman, and try some formation flying... - Dogfighting is modelled very well. Having used CFSI and II, only when I started flying rof I realized how difficult it is to shoot down other planes. Also, even if you prefer the pilot's seat you may want to check out the turret gun, it'll make you realize how hard that job was. - Performance. Frame rates tend to be very good, on my system as good as with x-plane. After all at times I found it hard to return to x-plane, but rof covers a totally different flying context, seat-of-the-pants flying a hundred years ago. It is at real as it gets, but then I still want to simm in a contemporary flight environment, with navigational aids, instrument approaches, and ATC, so x-plane is just so much closer to what I would normally fly.

There's a keyboard command, I think it's either 'i' or 'L', that let's you illuminate the cockpit so you can find the battery/master and light switches.

That sounds exactly like me before starting working on my instrument rating. Now, about 35 hours into it, I'm amazed how I can fly for an hour and a half without ever getting off the assigned altitude by more than 50ft and the assigned heading by more than 5 degrees. To me it seems it's just practice... ...but in a sim it also depends on the equipment. Do you use yoke and rudders? Makes a huge difference to using the keyboard, is expensive, but also yields huge rewards.

I just came across this new book: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118105028,descCd-buy.html. Looks like real world instruction books start to include x-plane.

Did you ever consider one of those introductory flights that your local flight school might offer as a gift for him? Experiencing the real thing might get him even deeper into this...

Great news! I still find the previous versions of the MU-2 pretty decent, and the Falco is my preferred single engine model, mostly due to its stunning cockpit. I'm sure these two combined will blow away most of the other offerings in the market...

Looks great, that's gonna be fun to fly... Are you going to add placards to the dash?

What kind of avionics will it come with? ADF and one VOR, but no ILS?

Question: Will you provide a radio range finder?

Correction to my above statement about the screen flashing: This is not specific to the Carenado planes, it appears with other planes as well, with both 2x and 4x standard anti-aliasing. Must have something to do with my graphic drivers...

I'm using Carenado's PA28 for checking out XP10. So far it works well, except for one easily fixable issue: When using 4x AA (without any HDR) there is some screen flashing; switching to HDR with FXAA fixes the problem and everything looks correct.

Here's what I would expect: - A resolution good enough to show details of the grass areas between runways and taxiways. A grass surface that is not blurry is important not only when flying choppers but also adds to the depth perception on approaches and during the flare. - Real 3D grass on the grassy areas. In case you haven't seen it Rise of Flight has some grass on their airfields. Since it's a WW1 sim it's essential for them but it would add to the immersion in XP. - Better runways. Bill Womack has written a tutorial that explains how to do it for FSX. But the same principles apply to XP. - Real buildings or facades. Sceneries based on orthophotos typically suffer from flat relics of buildings and yards. Ideally a scenery should be composed of fragments of different landclasses, just like XP does by default, but much more granular, and then you build your objects on top of that, rather than having them interfere with flat relics from orthophotos. Just my 2 cents. If I ever had time to work on my many unfinished scenery projects I would tackle these first. And of course this is from a VFR and occasional chopper flyer's point of view, low and close:) Cheers Andreas

Just to add to this sentiment --- I also moved to x-plane 9 after having used all the other sims, was bitterly disappointed by the planes, and then discovered your MU-2 which blew everything away, including all the high priced planes that are available for the other sims. I'm really looking forward the the updated version and I really appreciate your effort of keeping it at the leading edge. Thanks for the sneak previews! BTW you may have heard of it but there is a product out there called TrackIR that allows you to lean forward a little bit so you don't have to hide the yoke... just in case

Thanks for the comment! Yes, 120 kts on final feels like the lowest possible speed, below that it would get really mushy.

Seems you are making good progress. Nice to see the latest on your website! Keep it up!

From what I'm reading about flying the MU-2 on final approach it appears that ~120 knots would be a good approach speed with flaps set to 20 deg, and torque set to ~20-25. Flaring will get speed down to ~105 kts, without cutting power too much, resulting in a soft touchdown. Works well for me in the sim, except that I can't seem to trim the plane to 120 kts; just running out of trim range. Does this correspond to the real world behavior? I played a bit with planemaker and changed the settings in the control geometry window as follows: - elevator trim down then up: down 0.25 -> 0.35 / up 0.55 -> 0.75 - trim speed ratio: 2.00 -> 3.00 This makes the elevator trim a bit more sensitive and extends the trim range. Makes me feel more comfortable on final, but this might just be my personal opinion. Cheers Andreas

Air Canada Jazz is a must, given that they come in various colors!