X-Plane Developer Q/A 01/2018

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

I have yet to see it, but i thought i would share it for now :)
 

 

[kneighbour 32]

could not hear what they were saying - very poor audio

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

Thanks for posting this.

I like the concept of flight/engine model versioning. Life will be much easier for developers, and Austin will have the freedom to make advances towards better physics without breaking thing at each version. Great times ahead!

Cheers

pascal

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

I haven't finished listening to it yet because of the poor audio as well. Hopefully some kind of transcript will show up soon or later :)

[twojastara 85]

There is nothing surprising coming from this Q&A, to be honest.

1. LR team will appear on some event in Las Vegas in June. Everyone would be able to test new XP11 VR version there with couple of VR sets provided.

2. Now, they are preparing a new VR version with lots of bugs corrected (including few major visual ones). They call this version VR2. There would be no new performance improvements in that version. There would be a mouse support and you would be able to assign actions to your touch controllers just like for your joystick.

3. About Vulcan - nothing specific so far, Ben said that they are getting closer and closer to transition with every release. They are modifing and rewriting crucial parts of XP code to be Vulcan compatible and it would be easy to switch at some point.

4. Austin have no idea what is wrong with ground handling. He said it could be various of reasons, but if you think there is a bug you should file an official bug report with detailed description of what you do and what you think is wrong etc.

5. They work on the new, improved ATC. They have a breakthrough with using new synthetic speach algorithm. So progress should go faster right now. They have major logic implemented so far, but they need to go back and polish things.

6. Austin is prepering a new turbo jet engine model.

7. Cloud transparency bug - they are aware of where the problem is, but it is not a trivia task to solve it in the near future.

8. They work to improve networking latency. Algorithm would be smarter, trying to guess your location, so you would be able to fly in formation without lags.

9. They like scotch, bourbon and rum ;).

I have written those topics out from memory, I am not sure if this is all.

I am surprised that Austin didn't mention about his lawsuit case =D.

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

5 hours ago, twojastara said:

There is nothing surprising coming from this Q&A, to be honest.

Thanks for the "translation".  Even though I am english speaking, it was awfully hard to understand parts of it (because of sound quality) and I think you highlighted it very well.

John

[olderndirt 2,295]

Certainly is reassuring to hear that Austin has "no idea about ground handling".

[mjrhealth 820]

Adding to other post.

 

also fixing up Jet engine model as there are issues with lag between fuel flow itt, etc.

ATC they rather use synth voices, tech pretty good now, makes it far easier to add new phrases , saves having to organize recordings every time a new one is added.

Ground handling, they have added a restriction on rate of rotation of nose wheel, which is in current ver probably why taxying to much easier, but still not quiet sure what the other issues are, prop wash, tail wind effect etc etc

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

A rather complete list of what was discussed:

https://flightdeckx.com/recap-of-last-wednesdays-qa-session-with-laminar-research/

Cheers,

Pascal

[ryanbatc 12,770]

3 hours ago, olderndirt said:

Certainly is reassuring to hear that Austin has "no idea about ground handling".

This is sarcasm right?  

[olderndirt 2,295]

5 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

This is sarcasm right?  

Just quoting item 4 from "TwoJastara"'s post above.  Granted, there is a smidgen of sarcasm but it's more discouragement at how this sim is making the developers look bad.  This ground handling is becoming an epidemic with disgruntled comments and bandaid fixes from various aircraft owners.  It's great to be a stickler for aerodynamic perfection but, when it don't work, you've got to fix it.

[GusRodrigues 1]

16 hours ago, twojastara said:

6. Austin is prepering a new turbo jet engine model.

Not a new. He is improving the current code for jet engines, and adding a lot of requests, including N1-N2 gearing, i.e. the N1 vs N2 curve.

He is also expanding the turboprop model to the Free turbine (PT6A) and the Fixed Shafet (Garrett) 

 

1 hour ago, olderndirt said:

Just quoting item 4 from "TwoJastara"'s post above.  Granted, there is a smidgen of sarcasm but it's more discouragement at how this sim is making the developers look bad.  This ground handling is becoming an epidemic with disgruntled comments and bandaid fixes from various aircraft owners.  It's great to be a stickler for aerodynamic perfection but, when it don't work, you've got to fix it.

I would say the X-plane is half responsible to the ground handling issue, and how we control the aircraft in sim is responsible for the other half.

If you change the default cessna nose wheel to take at least 2.5s to turn to it's maximum, there will be a lot of improvement on how you handle. But crosswinds are indeed, not good.

[jcomm 5,880]

Just to add something more on another subject that has recently been brought to light by a few users and developers, myself ( as a user ) included, I would lust like to leave here what I also just posted at another thread, at the .org, on the subject of "ground effect", based on the precious collection of data done by Murmur and Dan Klaue to have more insight into the "problem".

Murmur and Dan's graphs and tests were forwarded to Austin, who promptly started examining it, and came to a conclusion which, pretty much, agrees with what is supposed to be, after all, the real world "physics of ground effect" for typical aircraft. Of course fine tuning would always be required to get it "just perfect" for a given model...

--> "An aircraft with a low horizontal tail and with it's C of G at the forward limit may get a strong pitch down trim change when entering the ground effect" <--

This is extracted from "Principles of Flight", Section 4.3.4 on "Ground Effect", and is indeed consistent with my own experience IRL, flying T tail gliders vs "low" horizontal stab ones.

Landing an as-k21, a Phoebus, a Grob-103, Phoebus, Astir Club... requires less pull on the stick tan landing for instance a PW6-U with it's "low" tail.

So, after all, and although I myself have been tricked about the way this effect is modelled in X-Plane 11 in v20 vr1, and although I still may think it is a bit more pronounced than I would expect, truth is, it is actually more consistent with Real Life than it isn't, meaning that Austin is modelling it with the "correct sign", each aircraft requiring it's own fine tuning.

I also think of the induced pitch down I modern airbuses in the last 30 feet on their landing path, to overcome the tendency of the FBW to maintain the pitch angle, and give the pilots the sensation of the usual pitching down tendency that obliges to pull the yoke / stick during the flare...

This all ground effect "problem" is probably no longer a problem. There was actually something wrong in 11.10, but after the latest updates I believe Austin pointed it in the right way.

Now, we just need to find out how to fine tune the effect for each particular aircraft, something that is not always easy to achieve in X-Plane because it does it's own calculations, based on the rather sophisticated BeT approach followed in it's FD engine, as opposed to using a collection of "empirical" parameters we can use to fine tune a given model...

Again, thanks to Murmur and Dan Klaue, and Austin who is actively participating in this discussion sending emails with his own views, for the exchange of ideas that have made me, sort of turn my track, well, heading, almost 180º of what it was initially :-)

[ryanbatc 12,770]

On this ground handling 

my friend flies a c172 and also for a major us airline. He says in xp, if the wind is 120 at 15 kt he'll line up on the runway and with brakes released, the plane will weathervane into the wind.  Example departing Ry 9.  Turn on RY and stop.  Release brakes, plane veers to the right.  

That doesn't happen to me in real life in any small single that I've flown.  Is anyone else seeing this?

[Murmur 3,940]

44 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

On this ground handling 

my friend flies a c172 and also for a major us airline. He says in xp, if the wind is 120 at 15 kt he'll line up on the runway and with brakes released, the plane will weathervane into the wind.  Example departing Ry 9.  Turn on RY and stop.  Release brakes, plane veers to the right.  

That doesn't happen to me in real life in any small single that I've flown.  Is anyone else seeing this?

Yes, in my opinion the reason is that many aircrafts in XP have an exaggerated directional stability, leading to uncontrollable weathervaning on ground. So, it's unclear whether the ground physics are related with this behaviour at all.

Since in XP the directional stability can be modified by modifying the aircraft geometry (vert stab area, airfoils, fuselage shape, etc.), even if it may be necessary to depart from the geometry of the real aircraft, I'd say 3rd party aircraft designers should tackle this issue when designing their aircrafts.