XP11 pb3 - Bird strike oddities

[Paraffin 2,197]

Just wondering if anyone else has had this happen. I have bird strikes off in the failure menu. Everything is set to default "always working" in failures. 

 

On my most recent XP11 beta flight I was climbing in the Turbo Goose out of CYYJ at around 1,000 ft, when I saw a small flock appear off to the right through the windscreen, followed by a sudden sound of breaking glass. No actual damage to the windscreen (the damage modeling isn't THAT good). Engines were still fine, and that's usually the damage caused by bird strikes followed by black smoke. So I thought damage was minimal. Then I noticed all the instruments had stopped working. I guess that's the sim's way of saying a goose flew into the cockpit. 

 

I double-checked my failure mode settings, and strikes were definitely off. I turned them on (red light) just to check with the plane on the runway, and was suddenly surrounded by a huge flock of birds. Looked like a Hitchcock movie, and the engines started smoking. Turned off bird strike failure mode (green light, like my flight mentioned above), restarted on the runway, and they were gone. 

 

So, two interesting things here. First, there may be a bug with strikes happening even when that failure mode is disabled. Second, it looks like there are two different strike modes -- engine strikes causing damage and smoke, or windscreen strikes with a broken glass sound effect and all instruments failed, but engines still working. Maybe it's been that way since v10, but since I always have strikes off for flying in the FSEconomy game, I've never seen that second mode before.

 

So I'll file a bug report about the failure setting not working. I wanted to mention this in case anyone else has seen it. I sure hope Laminar hasn't programmed some low probability of a strike even with this failure mode turned off. That might be realistic, but it will ruin anyone's day who flies in a virtual airline.

[Denco 48]

Go to your "OUTPUT/PREFERENCES/X-Plane.prf" and set  "renopt_deer_birds" to 0. It's at the bottom.

 

Regards

[Paraffin 2,197]

Denco, thanks, I'll try that!

[ricka47 611]

I had a nice flight, landed safely and then a flock of birds flew right in front of me as I was turning off the runway shutting down my engine!

[caaront 109]

My first flight in the default 747 was greatly anticipated as I have not flown the 747 model since FS2004.

 

I throttled up, lifted off, heard the glass and continued.

 

Shortly afterward I was losing power, changed to outside spot view and had lost the engines.

[Janov 2,383]

I think "random bird strikes" and the "bird strike" failure are two different things.

 

If you have "birds and deers" on (currently only way to toggle off is through the prefs.txt) you will get random bird strikes.

 

If you turn the failure "bird strike" on, you will IMMEDIATELY get a bird strike. This is to simulate a "training session", where the instructor can set the occurance of the bird strike very accurately (at a certain height, speed, button press, ect).

 

Jan

[Paraffin 2,197]

I think "random bird strikes" and the "bird strike" failure are two different things.

 

Yep, it looks like an unintended consequence of burying what we used to have on the Rendering Options in v10  ("Draw birds and deer in nice weather") inside the X-Plane.prf file. I always had that option turned off in v10.

 

I still think it's weird that something that used to be on the Rendering Options can actually damage the plane. Anything like that belongs on the Failure menu. And this is going to catch a newbie by surprise, since it defaults to "on" in the sim unless you edit that file.

[sizziano 172]

Yep, it looks like an unintended consequence of burying what we used to have on the Rendering Options in v10  ("Draw birds and deer in nice weather") inside the X-Plane.prf file. I always had that option turned off in v10.

 

I still think it's weird that something that used to be on the Rendering Options can actually damage the plane. Anything like that belongs on the Failure menu. And this is going to catch a newbie by surprise, since it defaults to "on" in the sim unless you edit that file.

 

 

I really hope the missing options are added soon.

[Paraffin 2,197]

While we're on the subject, there are a few other flight-ending failure modes that I think should be user-adjustable, and right now there is no way to disable them (AFAIK). For example, in-flight icing, or vortex ring state for helicopters. These can end a flight prematurely and spectacularly!

 

It's great that the sim models these things. I'd like even more failure modes modeled like mast-bump for twin blade helicopters. But there are times, like on a FSEconomy assignment flight, where it should be possible to turn these situational failures off.

 

Right now we only have "Remove flying surfaces with over G" as a Damage setting on the General menu. It makes no sense to have that one setting exposed, and then bury these other things like icing or VRS so you can't turn them off if you want to. It doesn't even make sense to have a Damage setting on the General menu in addition to the other settings on a separate Failures menu. It's a schizophrenic UI design.

[Patriot3810 182]

does anyone know how to disable random failures in x-plane 11, in x-plane 10 we had all these option's.I am a little confused on why x-plane 11 would make it so we have to go to config files to disable or enable certain things. a lot of the configurations should have been added to the new x-plane 11 ui.

[Paraffin 2,197]

does anyone know how to disable random failures in x-plane 11, 

 

Right now, and probably for the final XP11 release, all you can do is turn everything off in the main Failures menu, which covers almost everything, but not a few things like in-flight icing, blown tires from hard landings, and vortex ring state for helicopters.

 

Also, the bug is still there (according to a Jan 29 post on the dev blog) that causes failures from birds and deer, which are supposed to be just a cosmetic thing. For now, this should be manually edited in Output/Preferences/X-Plane.prf" by setting "renopt_deer_birds" to 0 instead of 1. This should be fixed before final release, but I'd suggest making that edit if you don't want surprises.

 

in x-plane 10 we had all these option's.I am a little confused on why x-plane 11 would make it so we have to go to config files to disable or enable certain things. a lot of the configurations should have been added to the new x-plane 11 ui.

 

 

From the end-user standpoint I agree, but I can also see Laminar's reasons for simplifying and grouping settings together in the new GUI. It's intended to standardize the configuration by balancing settings that work together for faster frame rates, instead of allowing users to select settings that work against each other. It probably helps reduce the tech support load too. The reasons are explained in this dev blog post:

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2017/01/where-have-all-my-settings-gone/

 

We can still manually edit most of the settings we had before in the config file, and that overrides the GUI. Unfortunately there are still those few failures like in-flight icing, blown tires, or VRS that aren't exposed in the config file, and we never had a way to turn them off in XP10 either. I've never understood why they don't let us enable or disable failure modes like that.

 

P.S. note that some aircraft models include special failure modes driven by plugins, like damaging engines in the LES DC-3 or Hydroz PBY Catalina if you don't watch your manifold pressure on takeoff. The X-Plane failures menu has no control over that.

[caaront 109]

My first take off at Ksea in the 747, I was excited because I have not had a 747 since it was a default in MSFS, forget how long that has been.

 

I throttle up, say to myself "Oh, look at all the birds." 

 

Upon rotation I hear the sound of glass breaking, I lift off and the plane then descends to the ground and off the edge of the runway.

[Patriot3810 182]

i must be stupid, where is the main failures menu at, i looked through them all i thought. could someone post a screenshot maybe.i setup a flight and had a bird strike right after take off

[Paraffin 2,197]

i must be stupid, where is the main failures menu at, i looked through them all i thought. could someone post a screenshot maybe.i setup a flight and had a bird strike right after take off

 

With a plane loaded, it's under the top left menu Flight, then Edit Failures. Make sure everything is set to "Always Working," and turn off the checkbox at the bottom for "Set global mean time between failures" just to be sure.

 

Note: Bird strikes come in two flavors right now, when there should only be one. There is a setting on that Failures menu to enable bird strikes on-demand or at some interval. That should be off by default. There is another kind of birds (and deer) that's supposed to be strictly cosmetic and random, and that's a setting in this file:

 

/Output/Preferences/X-Plane.prf

 

Look for "renopt_deer_birds" and change that to 0 instead of 1. This is not intended to cause collisions, just eye candy, but right now it's bugged and causing them.

[Patriot3810 182]

thank you, i don't know how i overlooked that, but i appreciate it.