How can we tell if an aircraft is compatible?

[turner112 52]

That's my question... I assumed all were, but apparently, that's not the case.

[edpatino 1,959]

Even if some aircraft are being announced by its developers as P3Dv4 compatible it seems that some part of them are not yet, and produce unstability in P3D and crashes. In principle aircraft are the piece of the sims that need more work to make them compatible with the new platform, mainly dut to its *.dll gauges, that need to be recompled to 64bits. IMHO, unless the aircraft in question is from a reputable developer (PMDG, AS, MilViz, QW, to name a few) and they say it is P3Dv4 compatible, you can assume they are, otherwise look for information directly from the developers, and if they don't mention anything about, it's better not to install them on P3Dv4, unless you don't care about crashes .

Cheers, Ed

[turner112 52]

Thanks... how about X-Plane?  ;)

[RXP 2,336]

3 hours ago, turner112 said:

Thanks... how about X-Plane?  ;)

It depends on what you mean with "compatible"!

First and foremost, the GNS V2 is compatible with X-Plane. It is aircraft-agnostic in the sense it does not deal with the aircraft specifics. In short, it is designed as a real LRU (line replaceable unit), although once you fly with it, you won't need nor want to 'replace' it!

Now some aircraft are (or will) offering virtual cockpit integration, with 3D model of the bezel and the knobs. This gives you greater visual integration. Please note in the case of the GNS, every single aircraft can be equipped with the default GPS and our manuals guides you through simple steps to replace such default GPS with our GNS V2.

This means you can take any aircraft with the default GPS, and in about 2-3 mins, have it re-configured with our GNS V2 in the virtual cockpit, bezel keys working!

[turner112 52]

Hey Jean-Luc! Thanks for answering so quickly.

 

That's good news

I ask because, having used the product (actually, all gauges, plus the 530 and 430 with crossfill for FSX) for some time, I could, at least, set up a 2D panel.

However, I saw that Aerosphere indicated to someone that it wasn't "supported" with their Archer III - here:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/119875-reality-xp-430-in-3d-cockpit/

I'm not exactly sure what that means.

Cheers,
Andrew

[edpatino 1,959]

4 hours ago, turner112 said:

Thanks... how about X-Plane?  ;)

Ooops, wrong forum!

Cheers, Ed

[RXP 2,336]

40 minutes ago, turner112 said:

I'm not exactly sure what that means.

I'd guess they don't officially support the integration, in the senses that if something is not working, they won't help you, or more simply, that they are not offering a 3D bezel in the virtual cockpit for it!

[turner112 52]

57 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Ooops, wrong forum!

Cheers, Ed

I still appreciate your help! I use FSX and P3D V4 as well. Well, not FSX so much any more. : (

[turner112 52]

32 minutes ago, RXP said:

I'd guess they don't officially support the integration, in the senses that if something is not working, they won't help you, or more simply, that they are not offering a 3D bezel in the virtual cockpit for it!

In the case they don't have a bezel, can it still be integrated into the panel... but without a bezel? 

Or does the "bezel" contain some type of critical components?

Thanks again, and by the way, it's great to have you back.

Regards

Andrew

[edpatino 1,959]

4 minutes ago, turner112 said:

not FSX so much any more

What's FSX?

(Just joking!). Cheers, Ed

[RXP 2,336]

14 hours ago, turner112 said:

Or does the "bezel" contain some type of critical components?

I thought I'd answered this a few posts above:

Nevertheless, in FSim, there are panels, there are gauges that can be configured on a panel, a gauge is a flat render surface where bitmaps are drawn to and animated over. In the virtual cockpit, FSim automatically translate and renders the flat gauge surface to the 3D polygon of the panel. From a gauge point of view, it doesn't make a difference, FSim does this behind the scene. For the user point of view, just add a gauge to a VC section of the panel config, and FSim displays it.

In X-Plane, there are panels only, and stock gauges/parts only. Everything else is custom-drawn on the screen every time X-Plane redraws the screen. X-Plane has 2 different panels: the 2D and the 3D. Each offer a 'render surface' and it is up to the aircraft 3D model to tell a particular rectangle area from the render surface gets drawn to a particular polygon. Compared to FSim, there is no user-accessible way to configure a 3D panel.

Our plugin has to do many things on its own, but in this department, it internally re-creates the notion of 'per aircraft panel' configuration (our RealityXP.GNS.ini file). With this, it can have per-aircraft configuration, which tells on which panel(s) and at which coordinates you'd like to render the GNS gauge (2D/3D). However, if an aircraft model does not map the 3D panel render surface to a polygon, unlike FSim, you won't be able to display the gauge on the 3D panel. To this effect, we've been discussing with X-Plane developers and they are willing to find a way for plugins like ours to be able to 'create' a 3D panel render surface from the plugin even if the aircraft model lacks it.

Next comes the bezel and the mouse interaction. Our plugins (GNS and GTN) offer 3D panel click spots. This means than 'drawing' our gauges with their bezel, you get a flat rendered gauge with working clickspots located on the gauge bezel. It would then look like a flat rendered texture but it is working. A 3D model of the bezel gives the depth of the actual gauge, and permit you configuring the GNS/GTN to render 'screen only'. It is just visually more pleasing.

[turner112 52]

Ah - thanks. I didn't know if the 3D bezel was simply cosmetic.

3 minutes ago, RXP said:

wever, if an aircraft model does not map the 3D panel render surface to a polygon, unlike FSim, you won't be able to display the gauge on the 3D panel.

Ok - so that's the thing... how can we tell if this is happening in a particular aircraft?

[RXP 2,336]

To my knowledge, you can't tell unless you try out modifying the 3D panel with plane maker. In fact, there is a great chance if a model does not have a gauge rendered onto the 3D panel surface (seen in plane maker), the remaining areas available on the texture sheet won't be mapped/used on the 3D panel.

This is why we're looking forward the capability we've been discussing with X-Plane devs so as to be able to 'create' such missing surface directly from the plugin if none is avail/used in the model directly.

[StefanH75 23]

What I have seen is that Carenado birds with G500 and GNS530 are not compatible. Their G500 can't read the flight plan from the RXP GNS530.

[RXP 2,336]

11 hours ago, StefanH75 said:

Their G500 can't read the flight plan from the RXP GNS530.

Obviously they can't and it is normal: there is no "magic" way to transfer data between the two plugins. Both plugins must agree on a "communication protocol/interface".

The lowest common denominator would be the XP own flight planning system, which could serve as a shared "conduit" between the plugins. Provided our GNS changes the default XP FMS/GPS flight plan at runtime, any plugin displaying the default FMS/GPS flight plan would display ours instead.

We just don't do this yet for a single reason: we are waiting until XP11 stabilizes its new flight plan SDK, which is a major changes compared to XP10 and XP9.

In the meantime, our solutions already implements exporting (extracting) the current route (up to 31 legs with the GNS and up to 100 legs with the GTN), there is just no "RXP interface" publicly available, and no aircraft vendor has endeavour to contact us to get it either...