As a developer I'd have to state that you might want to reconsider your lack of agreement.The primary reason I find X-Plane unworthy of development time is the fact that a simple point release can completely destroy the functionality of a complex addon aircraft. X-Plane development has a well known lack of concern for whether or not they do something that breaks the functionality/useability of any third-party addons.That's an extremely unstable development environment and completely not cost effective.So, sorry... he's right, you're wrong. :(

Warped....you can't say he's right because you share his reasoning...there's till five other companies listed there and they haven't sounded off here. In addition, your statement of a simple point release completely destroying the functionality of a complex add-on aircraft needs to be supported. The MU-2 IS the most complex add-on for x-plane by any measure we care to discuss and I have gone through every point release since 8.x and not one has cost me more than an afternoon to address (Austin's time to fix / implement notwithstanding)..... that is in reference to your adjective "destroy". Now...for NEW features; however, I have had to invest a good amount of time to implement new features...so that can take some time, but does not destroy anything. Please give me an example of someone's complex aircraft that was completely destroyed by a point release...not partially destroyed...but completely. Your deliberate use of that adjective invokes imagery of a developer's total inability to keep up with x-plane point releases which I claim is false and I'm calling on you to defend it with an example....at least n+1 examples more than my 'n'. I have seen flight models destroyed by a change because they were not properly modeled in the first place...I have seen that.Now I have successfully developed aircraft for x-plane and will continue to do so....so if I can keep up with point releases...does that mean I'm just way more talented than those other guys? Stupider? Luckier? More flexible? Smarter? I take your wink in good spirits though Warped...I'm entirely sure I'd love to meet each and every one of you....I just want others to see some evidence of your claims as opposed to be blindly influenced by the certainty of your verbage, i.e "he's right and you're wrong".

Hi Rob,AFAIK, TrackIR should be natively supported in the current version of X-Plane. However if you have issues, you can use Sandy Barbour's "pilot view" plugin( http://www.xpluginsdk.org/pilot_view.htm )Instructions on installation: http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/03-enh...me-x-plane.htmlIt supports 5DOF (the roll axis is missing).I have the same joystick. There's a plugin called x-force feedback ( http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?autoco...mp;showfile=294 ) that lets you decide how the forces are ramped up according to speeds, Vne, etc. though I haven't still tried it in version 9.Marco

Hey Marco,Thanks for the links and info.. I will give them a try this weekend when I have a little more time.Rob

tkyler-Would it be possible to post the changes needed in plane maker to make the mu2 work with the beta?I also spent a month getting my Baron to fly right-now it doesn't. Any clues what changed and what needs to be done? Thanks!

tkyler-Would it be possible to post the changes needed in plane maker to make the mu2 work with the beta?I also spent a month getting my Baron to fly right-now it doesn't. Any clues what changed and what needs to be done? Thanks!

Hey, Geof,I do believe it had something to do with a torque model, but I may be wrong. The best way to deal with these questions is to email austin at x-plane.com and tell him how your aircraft is reacting differently since the last version. He'll have an explanation, or concede to a bug and fix the issue.Cam

Geoff,It depends on what the problem with your Baron is. There has been several engine changes and trim model changes. As far as a fix for the MU-2, I posted an explanation over at x-plane.org found here:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showto...0&start=662Post #662

Probably off topic, but anyhow, unless I'm misunderstanding the question, I've never known it not to. Assigning different colors to verticies will have openGL linearly blending the results into a gradient between the verticies.

I suspect that you have -in fact- misunderstood the question. The code snippet I posted is one-hundred percent vector drawing code. There are no static bitmaps involved... :( For "glass" gauges, the only bitmap I ever use is at most a bezel. Often, I don't even have that, but use the background artwork to supply the bezel... :( Of course one may use a bitmap with the "gradient blending" Photoshopped in, but it's never as crisp and "banding free" as pure vector drawing.BTW, thank you for the compliment regarding our deportment; we are mostly professionals here and strive to keep discussions such as these on a mature level... :(

Of course one may use a bitmap with the "gradient blending" Photoshopped in, but it's never as crisp and "banding free" as pure vector drawing.

There is no problem displaying a live updated bitmap in XPlane using OGL, be it an image, or a vector render.For the more technical savy, you can even draw vectors like with GDI+ directly in OpenGL. Furthermore, when doing it with fragment code and pixel shaders, you can get a fully hardware accelerated vector drawing renderer. Amazingly though, I've been particularly impressed to see Reality XP's own True Display XP vector drawing technology faster than OGL Hardware Accelerated vector drawing, except past a certain amount of poly fill surface estate (in this case, Vid Card fill rate is faster than CPU fill rate in sys mem). This means that for most gauges like Sandels, Boeing/Airbus EFIS or the like, TDXP is always faster (mostly composed of lines and few filled surfaces), while for gauges like analogue or others with many bitmaps, OGL is faster.I admit though, it is more complex than using GDI+. However, should you want to stick with slower rendering technologies like GDI+, you can still display the render in OGL, pretty much like you'd do with FS already.Case in point, some screen shots to illustrate:

Geoff,It depends on what the problem with your Baron is. There has been several engine changes and trim model changes. As far as a fix for the MU-2, I posted an explanation over at x-plane.org found here:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showto...0&start=662Post #662

The problem with my Baron is opposite the mu2-it banks to the left. Also left alternator goes bezerk. I tried downgrading to the release version-it was interesting-the alternator problem went away (along with all my joystick settings-grrr)-but not only the pull remained but all my instruments were low res and blurry-so obviously the beta has a huge resolution improvement (like supporting my monitor resolution).At this point it is frustrating-I am flying a 1600 nm trip next week and want to practice on a sim. Right now it looks like I'll go back to fsx for now-though I'd prefer to use xplane at this point.

Jean Luc-Really looking forward to this-xplane really needs a real working gps! Looking great! :(

I'm personally working on a few projects myself, can't disclose what they are at the time, as I don't want anyone to be let down if I decide to abandon one, but I'll put it like this, 9.3 is a major change to the flight model, but that is RARE, most of the times when the FM changes, it's adding features like automatic cowling flaps, or something along those lines. Most XP releases actually don't screw everything up, and usually the fixes needed only take about an afternoon, as has been said earlier in this thread. What developers don't seem to see is that they don't see the difference in how the FM changes and by how much at a time. The main reason the aircraft that ship with X-Plane are so screwy is most of them are using flight models from back around v7 or earlier. Yes sometimes things break, but not as often as most people fear, and not as bad as most people fear. The fact is that it actually takes less time to fix an aircraft for a new version than people think. If something is screwy, odds are it's a small fix that won't take more than a day or two. Developers like PMDG and the like fear that the changes are major, and thats not normally the case. Most times if a major flight model change happens, it's something that is a rare event. 9.30 looks to be like one of those rare events, and hopefully by the end of the beta, there will be a few more changes in the FM. I know for sure that people are overblowing the change levels of releases. I strongly suggest to the developers of aircraft and the like that are saying that a change will screw everything up to actually create a testbed aircraft, and experiment with it between versions and see just how much needs to be done to fix FM differences. 9.30 seems to be an exception in some instances because of the level of changes being done, but because it's so rare to see changes on that level, well, i'll just say that right now, the "fm changephobia" is just because people don't actually take the time to test it themselves rather than just saying that it will screw up completely between versions. Heck, the best part about the FM changing like it does is that it usually does fix issues that are caused by problems. As long as you have the numbers accurate, and the aircraft accurately designed, it won't take much to fix major issues normally.

Case in point, some screen shots to illustrate:

That's looking good, Jean-Luc! I was somewhat surprised last week to find another developer in the X-Plane community who's apparently been using the Garmin Trainer for their GNS versions for quite awhile already. I had to go googling to retrieve the link again:http://ross-park.net/xgps/However, it appears that this requires the GNS to be run on a dedicated machine via a LAN connection, and cannot be integrated into the a/c's panel system.

That's looking good, Jean-Luc! I was somewhat surprised last week to find another developer in the X-Plane community who's apparently been using the Garmin Trainer for their GNS versions for quite awhile already...However, it appears that this requires the GNS to be run on a dedicated machine via a LAN connection, and cannot be integrated into the a/c's panel system.

Thank you for your kind words Bill! Actually, like the website says:Much of the software is old versions that are no longer supported or distributed by the authors, and so not easily available elsewhere.what they are doing is a plugin that interfaces XPL UDP data back and forth to the the way old and defunct FSGarmin product based on the 16bit trainer (this is not a Reality XP product).

Wow...what a thread! I can't believe there's so much discussion about X-Plane. That's good. I'm reinstalling it this weekend because I just bought the MU-2. Looking forward to "working through all the hiccups.Stan

Wow...what a thread! I can't believe there's so much discussion about X-Plane. That's good. I'm reinstalling it this weekend because I just bought the MU-2. Looking forward to "working through all the hiccups.Stan

Stan -let us know how you do.. I went back to fsx today and must say the fm for the Baron really let me down after spending almost a month with xp (and tuning the model).It would be nice if we could make avsim's xplane forum an alive place...

There is no problem displaying a live updated bitmap in XPlane using OGL, be it an image, or a vector render.

It seemed that no one* was going to give me a simple, straight answer to the question I actually asked, which was "Does OpenGL support gradient blending now."Edit: after re-reading the thread and the code snippets, it appears that there was a bit of "language barrier." It took awhile for me to realize that what GDI refers to as a "Point" is called a "Vertex" in OpenGLSpeak... :( A bit of googling yielded an answer, finally:

glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);glLoadIdentity();glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);glLoadIdentity();glBegin(GL_QUADS);//red colorglColor3f(1.0,0.0,0.0);glVertex2f(-1.0,-1.0);glVertex2f(1.0,-1.0);//blue colorglColor3f(0.0,0.0,1.0);glVertex2f(1.0, 1.0);glVertex2f(-1.0, 1.0);glEnd();

This is very similar to the GDI+ example I cited earlier, so apparently the answer to my question is "yes..." :(