jonrd463

Terminator joke. Michael Chang is a full time student doing this for FREE. Be happy he's even working on it. Or you could make one. Reality check: No one owes you anything. These aircraft will be done they moment they're done, and not a second sooner.

Early morning off the coast of northern B.C.

Excellent video, and awesome scenery by MisterX6, as well as the remarkable HD Mesh 3 by Alpilotx. You know, this may come across as crass, but whenever I see sceneries and scenery combos like this, the first thing I think about is "What the hell is an Orbx, and why should I give a damn?" All the time, people from the "other" sim say they want Orbx stuff for X-Plane before they'll even consider it, yet with all the tools freely available, like World2Xplane, or the resources like the HD mesh and Simheaven's scenery packs, what we have well exceeds anything a commercial developer from the "other" sim could put out.

No one ever likes the sound of their own recorded voice. I can personally attest to that. But if you're concerned about your accent, you've no worries. Perfectly understandable, and the video was very well done. I have the advantage of most hard core X-Planers in knowing most of the details already, but this video should be included in all "Getting started with X-Plane" info dumps.

Aha, thanks John! I had a HDD failure about 3 months ago and decided to hold off on rebuilding my X-Plane install until after 10.30 dropped, but the bug caught me. First up after getting everything back in order was to get MaxxFX, and WOW, what a difference it makes! My next thought was to try to tweak some of the default settings, because for a couple of them, I wanted to adjust one or two settings just a smidge, but keep the overall feel. I was just getting ready to post the question about adding that functionality in an update, when I found this post, so thanks again! Your stuff is gold, absolute gold!

Ditto on the warmup comments. Absolutely, put it in there, but if it's possible to circumvent, win/win. Heck, speaking for myself at least, even the more hardcore among us sometimes want to just get in the air when time's a factor. Really can't wait to see this baby in motion!

Well, this is embarrassing. Would you believe I work for Boeing? Though not on the 787 directly, so I don't get to see them in progress. I guess I was basing my observations on the fact that fasteners don't dimple into composite material like they do in aluminum when countersunk, making for a smoother aerodynamic surface once paint/clear coat is applied. Carry on.

That normal mapping looks fantastic, but I have to point something out... and I hate to do this because it's not a criticism of the artwork itself. The 787 uses a semi-monococque composite construction for the fuselage, including the nose. The real plane doesn't have near as many fasteners as your model shows, which is part of the weight saving scheme of the design. Again, the artwork itself is beautiful, but the representation isn't entirely realistic.

WOW! Oh my sweet baby Jesus, those look amazing! You really ought to post those in the Avsim screenshots forum. I want to see some virtual heads explode.

My eye is on the JAR one. Best of luck to the other group, because competition is good for us consumers, but JAR is springboarding off of lessons learned from the A320 NEO. They have already established that while the initial product may have issues here and there, they're more than willing to frequently update and improve. I'm not familiar with JetSim's work, but if they can pull off a nice 'bus of their own, I say more power to them!

YES! This will be a day 1 purchase for me, assuming it's payware. Will there be variations, i.e. "Hard Winter" versus "Temperate Winter", and will latitude have any bearing on how much snow will be around?

Well now that's a Merry early Christmas! Can't wait to see those beautiful clouds reflected in the water! I have to step out and run some errands right now, but the download is waiting for me when I get home.

I like what you've got going so far! The middle and near east is an area that's woefully underserved in all flight sims, so it's good to see a project like this in the works. I did have a question about buildings, though. I know it's still early yet and that this might change, but I was curious if there was going to be more variation in building heights?

Sometimes when certain things suddenly get remarkably good, those things that are lacking show up in sharp relief. The good: SkyMAXXX Pro clouds shrouding the high def mesh. The bad: A distinct lack of white on that high def mesh, particularly in the northern reaches like Alaska, BC, and northern Europe this time of year. I will pay good money, equal to or greater than for SkyMAXXX, for a decent set of winter textures. I have to admit, the lack of seasonal textures didn't really bother me that much up til now, but since it's about 18 degrees out there as I type, and I've been doing a LOT of flying in XP lately, this is now the next thing I'm looking for the most. John, I seem to recall you were doing a little something for winter back before SkyMAXXX Pro became top priority. Any chance of revisiting that while winter is in the air?

I hope my original post didn't come across as a slam against PMDG. On the contrary, they have shown to be not only capable in delivering high quality products, they're also conducting themselves with the utmost integrity regarding the proper approach to licensing products for use with P3D. My biggest issue is with people who demand the same high end fidelity out of the relatively newer X-Plane developers, and who completely disregard the efforts that already exist. Sure, there's nothing on the market right now that matches their 777, for example, but the stuff that IS available is still worth a look. Maybe I'm taking it too hard on behalf of the X-Plane developers. I just have to imagine that anyone dismissing something like the Flight Factor 757, for example, as not worth the time simply because every single switch and function isn't modeled has to be demoralizing to the developers-- both Flight Factor themselves and anyone else who would like to get into addon development. Edited to add-- Just to clarify, I have every reason to believe that XP developers, both present and future, will mature in their craft to levels equal and greater to PMDG. But just like PMDG had to mature their own skills to get where they are to day, so do our folks, and that doesn't mean that the stuff that's being released right now is garbage. That's kind of the attitude I'm seeing in a lot of posts criticizing XP 3PD. The reality of it, in my opinion (ill-informed as it may be), is that there's plenty of so-called garbage on the MSFS/P3D side of things as well that people are charging money for, but you don't see the entire platform and addon development industry for it getting poo-pooed as inferior.

Can't wait for this one. Andras Fabian's HD Mesh-enhanced British Columbia practically demands a Beaver for exploring all the nooks and valleys.

Serving a community and making money isn't mutually exclusive when one is talking about a for-profit business. The money is made by providing a product or service that people are willing to pay for. PMDG are more than capable of doing that, and like I said, I welcome their entry into X-Plane development. That's the part that bugs me. This expectation that everything must have the same polish and deep systems detail as a PMDG aircraft only serves to close those folks off to other products that are every bit as enjoyable. I mean, it's great that you can simulate fuse 245 blowing due to the boss's wife having a bad day last Tuesday, but how many people really use that level of detail in day to day simming? It wouldn't surprise me if the vast majority of people claiming some kind of value in a robust failure model operated with failures turned off most of the time. I can't wait for the IXEG 737 to be released. It's looking every bit the study sim-- if not moreso-- than PMDG's best products, but you'll never see that acknowledgement from any of their fanbase.

With the release of the HD mesh and SkyMAXXX, X-Plane has become even more photogenic than before, and more and more non-X-Plane types are starting to take notice. I'm seeing this over in Avsim, but there's something about this newfound interest that bothers me. Now, those of us who have been using X-Plane for a long time through many versions, along with those of us who have come to embrace X-Plane since version 10 (I fit in this slot) are very familiar with the quality developers for the platform. We know of LES and JRollon. We fly Flight Factor Boeings. We're getting our glass cockpit mileage with JARDesigns' Airbus. We're salivating at the chance to get yoke time in the IXEG 737 Classic. Simply put, we know that we've got some quality players in our arena, and they're only going to get better the more they develop. So what's bothering me is a common comment among the MSFS-entrenched that "X-Plane looks like it has potential, but they need PMDG quality aircraft before it'll take off." What. Don't get me wrong, PMDG make quality products and I'm happy to see them make a move towards X-Plane development, but for the rabble to completely ignore, discount, and discard the efforts of developers who have already shown they're up to the task seems almost like a slap in the face. Hell, we've got people putting out amazing work with teams a fraction of the size of MSFS addon developers. In fact, Fly J Sim is ONE PERSON, and the 727 is heralded as a triumph by those who own and fly her, including a major MSFS product reviewer, Froogle. I dunno... I'm glad X-Plane is getting attention, and I'm glad people are taking notice. What I'm leery about is this idea that X-Plane somehow needs to be "fixed" before it's considered "worthy" by the high and mighty Flight Sim Elite. What do you guys think?

I forgot to change the livery before heading off to Martinique in an IcelandAir DC-3, so... yeah, not a very likely shot. I saw no reason to ditch this gorgeous sunset shot over such a small detail. The view from the office with the lights of Le Lamentin in the distance was spectacular. And another "fish out of water", so to speak. Pretty far from the Pacific, this one, but the Goose is my all-around go-to Bush or generally "poke around" aircraft. I love the colors in this one.

Thanks! I'm using Hazy Dayz High Contrast in that one.

Been spending a lot of time in British Columbia thanks to Andras' HD mesh. Combined with SkyMAXXX and John's magic, flying is an absolute joy in X-Plane now!

Great news! Will be keeping an eye out. For now, the plugin on/off trick works good as a stopgap. Thanks again!

Thanks for the prompt reply, John, but you know what? It's Thanksgiving. Take a day off. I'm hangaring the sim for the day myself, so no rush. Have a great day!

Hi John, I wasn't sure if this needed its own thread, since it's visibility related, but my issue seems to be the opposite of Bill's. No matter what kind of weather I set, my max visibility doesn't appear to be more than about 5 nm max, even when I set everything to clear with a 100 nm visibility in the weather dialogue. Here are some shots showing all my settings, and what it looks like in the sim: All plugins besides Gizmo and Silver Lining are turned off, and my altitude in that shot is FL230. Also, while I was trying out HDR to see if it made a difference at the time I snapped the shot of my render settings, I usually run with it off and the visibility issue is the same. The weird thing is this seems to be new, so I'm not sure what to make of it. The only changes I've made to the sim since installing SkyMAXXX is installing the HD mesh. Any idea what might be causing this? Otherwise, I'm loving the heck out of it, at least when the actual weather has that kind of visibility. Thanks!

Sometimes it's nice to just get back to the basics.