Goran_M

Should be sometime within the next 7 days.

So, you mean that Saab will be available only in June-July? The Saab will hopefully be released and on sale from sometime next month or July. Also, we're going to try working on 2 projects at once. While I start optimizing the mesh for the Saab, Theo will probably start UV mapping and texturing the 747. Once we finish that, we swap over. Theo textures the Saab while I animate and program the 747-200. It should push the 747 release date forward.

Thanks guys. It was a hard year, but I'm glad it's all finally coming together. Kesomir, somehow, I dont think Rapidshare would have been my first choice. I think I'll wait for Cameron to get back.

Well, now that the Sundowner is finished, we have rolled straight into the Saab. A lot of it will be re textured and I plan on optimizing the mesh some more to get rid of the excess polygons. Not to mention going over the animations that have been done and adding animations that need to be done. No definite timeline, but we hope to have it ready by sometime in the 2nd half of next month. Then it's straight to the 747

Another quick update and answer to your question. The Sundowner is now finished. However, Murphy's Law has beaten us and Cameron is out of town and cannot add the Sundowner to the X-Aviation catalogue until he gets back. Sometime in the next few days. The closest match to the Sundowner would be (possibly) a Piper Archer or Bonanza A33. The manual which has been made for the Sundowner has all the Specifications necessary.

http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=55 Who guessed this was going to happen this soon?

Just a small update. The sundowner is pretty much finished. We're putting it through it's paces and we found a few little gremlins and we've had to get rid of some things that were added as a novelty but haven't worked out and have made things more of an inconvenience than a cool feature. Theo is hard at work trying to refine window and gauge glass textures and I'm wrapping up the checklists. Manual is done (minus screenshots). Screenshots for the manual will be added in the next few hours. We're both aiming to have this done, ready and on sale within the next 24-36 hours. Then its on to the Saab full time.

I've said it a year ago and I'll say it again. FSX is dying. X Plane is going to explode with lifelike visuals very very soon leaving FSX in the dust. http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/xplane.html One can only imagine what this will do to x plane!

The XPJets guys are working on a completely new payware version of the 777. Please see their forums for details on this website. It is impossible to give an accurate time for the 747-400. We're looking at sometime early in the new year. Goran

The 747-200 will have a Delco Carousel INS. It will be fully functional with real time alignment procedures and waypoint input for up to 9 waypoints at a time. All gauges will be modelled and animated in full 3D. No animated textures. No FMC will be used for the 747-200. It will be a 100% 747 Classic. The 747-400 will have a fully functioning FMC that will be programmed to work specifically for this project. No external FMC software will be used. Almost all systems will be modelled. I say almost because I don't know what our programmer has in mind with regards to the extent of his programming "vision". If you want to follow the thread for the 747 series, please check back there as we will be posting many things in the near future. Goran PS. As Dhruv said, the XPJets 777 will be a very high quality, fully functioning 777 with FMC and all systems. Their 777 will most likely be finished before the 747-400 so keep an eye out for that one.

Both 747's will be "study sims".

Just got this from Theo. Getting close...finally I'll see if I can get a video up soon of a few of the features.

As of January, it's just me and Theo. Unfortunately, no sleep yet. While Theo finishes off the night lighting and manipulators, I'm splitting my time between the manual for the Sundowner and the Saab 340 animations. Then it's on to the 747 and Hawker 4000. THEN, I might sleep a full 8 hours.

The handgrip over the window....I MADE THAT! ;D Andy, it's extremely close to being finished. Nothing more for me to do on it in the way of animations and modelling, but the night lighting is another exercise altogether. That's the last thing on the list. Once the night lighting is done, we'll do a quick check of everything, make sure everything is in place and working, finish up the manual, and it's done. Goran

Looks like I'll be re installing Ubuntu again.

I actually wanted to make one for fun! But other projects forced me to put it off. And I wanted to make a highly detailed obj version. I still might do it sometime, just don't know when. Thanks for that.

I have seen some screenshots of the ERJ in the org forums and I noticed people complaining about the "marching ants" effect. The marching ants is almost definitely a mesh problem. ie. duplicate objects occupying the same space. Dan has said it is a texture issue but I don't know what kind of texture issue he is speaking of. The ERJ looks to have somewhere over the 200 000 polygon (triangle) mark. Duplicate objects would push that to a maximum of 400000 if ALL objects were duplicated. Add that to a bunch of 2048 ^2 (and no 1024 ^2 textures) texture maps and you're going to have fps issues. However, he has said he will be coming out with some kind of patch somewhere down the line so I guess people will have to wait a little bit. I don't mean to criticise Dan's work and that's not my intention. If it was a small handful of people with these problems, then it's a hardware problem. But there are at least 6 pages of fps complaints on the org forums so I suspect it's a problem with the add on.

I can safely say it's a matter of days now. Lots of testing going on. Tying up a few loose ends. There are a small handful of things we have to tidy up and align including night lighting, and 1 more tricky animation that needs to be done, but everything works as it should and I have done quite a few flights, including YHOX-YSCB (Hoxton Park to Canberra) which was my 2nd ever solo flight.

AFAIK, ordering from x-plane.com using express shipping provides tracking. In any case, you're in good hands with either method.

You forget the extra screens on the panel. ;D

We'll get the most popular repaints out first, but we don't really want to delay any kind of release due to us making particular (special request) repaints. We will, however, make these repaints available after the 742 is released. In saying this, if we have time to do special request repaints while I still work on systems and animations, then I'll try to get Theo to do them before the actual release. Goran

quite unusual problems you are having. Can you clarify whether you are seeing just empty spaces or do you actually have broken link images? If they show a broken link, what happens when you try to right click the icon and go directly to imageshack to view them? Quite a few of us on the forums are using Mac's and not having these issues. Goran

Don't even ask. After the Boeing projects are done, I'm sleeping for a month.

I have been given the all clear to finally announce this. A few months ago, I was in talks with Nick from XPFW about a possible collaboration. As many of you may or may not know, XPFW were making a 747-400. The project has turned into a rather major workload and it is unreasonable to finish it to a high standard and to make it freely downloadable. So, we have all decided to make a package Boeing release. We have actually been working on this for a while and the 747-200/747-400 can be purchased as a package or individually. It is a rather large undertaking and there are at least 5 of us working on this project. For this reason, I have decided (my other bit of news) to finish the Saab once the Sundowner is finished, then move straight to the 747-200 while ocassionally working on the Hawker 4000. I think the mid sized jet market is getting a little full for now. So, for any questions, comments, etc...please feel free to post them. Both projects are quite far along at the present time and we are hoping to have at least the 742 released before the end of the year. The 747-400, sometime early in the new year. And some screens...

How's this for lateral thinking? http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=794.0