Hi chaps,

 

Kyle has told us in previous posts that the circuit breakers will be implemented in the DC6 and I'm sure I remember him or Rob saying that CBs can't be implemented in FSX/P3D. I am really interested in how the PMDG renditions are designed and made and I just wondered what exact technical aspects allow CBs to be implemented in xplane but not the others. To put it in infantile terms, what does Xplane have that the other sims don't that allow CBs to work? There have been circuit breakers in other FSX/P3D products but knowing PMDG, they will have refused to replicate those on account of the fact that they're somehow not accurate enough, but why is that? What is the technical aspect that means PMDG shy away from the kind of CB implementation that you have in, for example, a certain DC9 product?

 

Thanks chaps always fascinated to get a wee glimpse behind the PMDG hangar doors now and again :smile: .

 

 

To put it in infantile terms, what does Xplane have that the other sims don't that allow CBs to work?

 

Short version:

X-Plane doesn't have an implementation of click spots that brings a sim to its knees.

To expand on what Kyle said a little, the FSX/ESP platform suffers a performance penalty for every unique click spot. As you can imagine, a circuit breaker panel adds a lot of click spots which many people will never use. X-Plane doesn't suffer from this problem. So it isn't really anything to do with how circuit breakers work or would be modelled. It could be done, it just isn't worth the performance loss.

 

Majestic took a different approach in their Q400 to get around this by having all circuit breakers on a panel share a common click spot which opens a 2D panel which circumvents the problem. 

Ah I see the answer was rather more pedestrian that I thought! Thanks fellas

The odds of you ever really needing to touch a circuit breaker on a 777 or pretty low anyways... I don't miss 'em.

 

A2A has them on their 172/182 and in hundreds of hours of flying them, I've never had one pop.  I've also never had one pop on any of the 172S/Gs that I fly regularly these days. 

Short version:

X-Plane doesn't have an implementation of click spots that brings a sim to its knees.

My question here is this -

 

Why do every knob on the aft overhead and radio panel if a lot are just volume controls? Surely they are not needed in FSX, as they don't influence anything really. (Talking about the 737 here). I am not sure if the reason they are there and causing no fps loss (if this is the case) is because they are not linked.

The community has spoken. Circuit Breaker Simulator 2017.

 

 

Why do every knob on the aft overhead and radio panel if a lot are just volume controls? Surely they are not needed in FSX, as they don't influence anything really. (Talking about the 737 here). I am not sure if the reason they are there and causing no fps loss (if this is the case) is because they are not linked.

 

I can see your point in a vague sort of way, but let's be honest: the number of click spots for those panels (most of which actually are functional) is paltry compared to every single circuit breaker. I know people think it's simple, but it's not. If it were, it would be done by now.

Yup I can see it now...... "Support request for fatal errors on CB's...... Panel 4 row 67 CB 93". PMDG..."Do the other CB's cause fatal errors? Please test each one and let us know."

 

The aforeshown pic was gathered from http://airsoc.com/articles/view/id/5536db89313944bb2b8b456c/ailes-anciennes-toulouse-visites-cockpit-april-2015

I can see your point in a vague sort of way, but let's be honest: the number of click spots for those panels (most of which actually are functional) is paltry compared to every single circuit breaker. I know people think it's simple, but it's not. If it were, it would be done by now.

True

I don't see the point in simulating CBs when they aren't part of many, if any, pilot procedures. There would be no reason to pull them, so why bother simulating them?

Many planes will have fuses, in addition to CBs. The idea is, that you won't be messing with them in flight. If the problem is serious enough to blow a fuse (such as a direct short)...........trying to reset a CB  ( if it's a CB instead of a fuse) won't help.  

To be honest, I do not see the point of incorporating cb's in flightsims

As others have said on here, there are far to many to incorporate in a sim. To be honest flight crew have no business even touching them unless instructed to by their relevent maint control, or engineering providers so in a sim, they kind of become redundant, and just become memory hoggers for commercial developers to get around.

Plus these days aircraft manufacturers are incorporating electronic cb's that are reset through the mcdu's etc and in certain cituations crews would not even be aware that one has popped.

And from a personal rant after the week i've had, the less crews are allowed to interfere with things the better.

 

 

the less crews are allowed to interfere with things the better.

Everytime I see the work circuit breaker, I think of the Northwest Captain in Detroit who tripped the breaker and paid for it with his life and the lives of 155 other people in the plane and on the ground. The CB in question furnished power to an aural alert system warning about takeoff configuration. When the throttles advanced beyond a certain EPR a warning sounded which indicated that the flaps were not deployed for takeoff. Sometimes during taxi a significant amount of thrust was needed. The EPR was exceeded and the warning sounded. This was quite annoying. He probably tripped the breaker and forgot to reset it for takeoff. The MD-82 made it to Romulus Ave before coming to a rest. There were other factors that contributed to this accident but the last stopgap was disabled. The NTSB never said in the report that the CB was tripped. As a matter of fact they don't know why the warning system never sounded. But when you think about human nature...