1 hour ago, RamonB said:

The fact is that both Citation Jets are bugged. No question about that.

To be fair, I would hazard a guess that Ricardo knows that the planes are bugged, but he does a workaround - reducing the power to allow the jet to have a climb rate nearer to "the numbers".

In a way I think this draws a similarity with Aggressor Squadron pilots flying their aircraft to reflect other types - dissimilar aircraft training - using an F-16 to represent a MiG for example.

2 hours ago, cwburnett said:

The FDE and avionics have a variety of problems, however, we can't fix them because this aircraft's FDE is encrypted due to being premium content.

That is surprising to hear. I don't have any premium content as I have the standard version so cannot see the folders. Are you saying there are no cfg files at all in the simobjects\aircraft\ folders at all? Or maybe they are present but not editable? I don't get the rationale behind this if it so. Do you have an idea about how they are encrypting the FDE?

2 hours ago, w6kd said:

It's actually not a bad objective test, and not at all unscientific...you've experimentally determined that the MSFS Longitude climbs at an *average* rate of 6667 fpm all the way from SL to FL430.  That result is simply absurd...the modelled thrust is not off by a few percent, it's off by several hundred percent.

How do these folks expect us to take their flight model seriously with built-in acft that are this massively off-scale wrong?  I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the initial release of a sim platform touting new, cutting-edge atmospheric and flight dynamics modelling to bring with it models that demonstrate something actually resembling the advertised capabilities.  This is a grossly-deformed caricature of an airplane from a performance perspective.  This aspect of the initial release (flight dynamics) is proving quite disappointing.

It does take quite a long time to test aircraft performance once you have an approximation of a flight modelled performance. I remember spending long evenings just fine tuning climb at one particular loading. No-one expects that of a default aircraft but I think it is ok to anticipate performance that is within 10-20% of reality in a default aircraft.

Many real aircraft typically out-perform the manufacturer's specs because the makers are cautious about over cooking their POHs and also wish to avoid legal action or customer complaints. Most customers are pleasantly surprised when their pride and joy out-performs the POH, but tend get a bit shirty when they under-perform :)

29 minutes ago, robert young said:

That is surprising to hear. I don't have any premium content as I have the standard version so cannot see the folders. Are you saying there are no cfg files at all in the simobjects\aircraft\ folders at all? Or maybe they are present but not editable? I don't get the rationale behind this if it so. Do you have an idea about how they are encrypting the FDE?

The entire sim runs in a virtual file system, so all scenery, simobjects, gauges, panels, etc etc are loaded into a virtual file system. This is what enables mods to be deployed that amend an aircraft via the community folder. The sim reads the manifest.json and layout.json files from each add-on package in the Community folder, reads any dependencies, then replaces files in the virtual system that were loaded in from the Official folder with those from the Community folder.

The virtual file system also has DRM and encryption capabilities, and these capabilities are used to un-encrypt and load into the virtual file system the encrypted files for the premium content aircraft. So for the base package aircraft, the entire simobject folder is in the open on the hard drive in the Official folder, we can make copies of these files that we want to modify, create a new package for the modifications including only those files we modified and deploy that in the Community folder. However, for the deluxe and premium content, those simobject folders DO NOT contain all of the files that make up that sim object; only a subset of them. Key components that Asobo/MSFT have decided are to be protected, like the models and flight model .cfg files are included in separate files at the top of the package that are encrypted and can only be read by the virtual file system. These are locked with a key tied to my Microsoft account. This prevents me from zipping up those aircraft packages and emailing them to you to install in your non-premium installation.

This is why I was able to amend the CJ4 engines.cfg and panel.xml files and publish those for others to be placed into their Community folder, while (despite the many requests) I can't do the same for the Longitude. This is why the amazing group that's working on the A320NX project can't do the same for the 787.

While this is mildly irritating to me, I understand the need to protect their premium content from pirates. We've already seen pirated materials make their way into the new sim with people posting modified versions of FSX planes, etc. It's a big bad world out there and software companies are going to protect their assets. And I much prefer this preventative approach to some other approaches that have been taken in the past.

All that said, I wish they'd just lock up the 3D model. Why lock up the cfg files? Surely there's no deep IP there - it's not like they did a good job with it. I've submitted a ticket to this effect.

2 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

All that said, I wish they'd just lock up the 3D model. Why lock up the cfg files? Surely there's no deep IP there - it's not like they did a good job with it. I've submitted a ticket to this effect.

Thanks for that very useful summary cw. I'm wondering whether there is a way around this by simply creating for example a new flight_model.cfg file and renaming or "backing up" the encrypted one?

3 hours ago, w6kd said:

It's actually not a bad objective test, and not at all unscientific...you've experimentally determined that the MSFS Longitude climbs at an *average* rate of 6667 fpm all the way from SL to FL430.  That result is simply absurd...the modelled thrust is not off by a few percent, it's off by several hundred percent.

I'm not arguing that the Latitude is good. After all, I took a swing at the CJ4 also, but can't with the Longitude. However, the test would be a bit more objective if it was conducted within the engine parameters as displayed in sim. If one doesn't exceed the ITT limit of the engines, climb performance is within the margin of error I expect from a default aircraft.

However, you'll also find that you get the best range by cruising at about 20,000'-25,000' because the fuel flow is all buggered up by some new parameters in the engines.cfg file, so...who needs to climb to FL430 when efficiency is best in the low 20s...

1 minute ago, robert young said:

Thanks for that very useful summary cw. I'm wondering whether there is a way around this by simply creating for example a new flight_model.cfg file and renaming or "backing up" the encrypted one?

You can't even see the encrypted files, they're bundled into little archives with multiple files in them. However, I did test basically what you're describing, by build all new flight model cfg files, deploying them in the Community folder, naming the Longitude as a dependency - basically exactly what I did for the CJ4, but it didn't work. It also doesn't work for adding liveries to these aircraft. There may very well be a way within the SDK to accomplish this, but as you know the SDK docs are very incomplete and so far, there's nothing in the SDK on this subject.

Possibly we could delete the file bundles, edit the manifest and layout.json files and then replace the files if we could guess which files are in each encrypted store (there are three per premium plane). Not sure it's worth it for these default planes, though... and I wouldn't want to break the sim trying.

1 minute ago, cwburnett said:

You can't even see the encrypted files, they're bundled into little archives with multiple files in them. However, I did test basically what you're describing, by build all new flight model cfg files, deploying them in the Community folder, naming the Longitude as a dependency - basically exactly what I did for the CJ4, but it didn't work. It also doesn't work for adding liveries to these aircraft. There may very well be a way within the SDK to accomplish this, but as you know the SDK docs are very incomplete and so far, there's nothing in the SDK on this subject.

Possibly we could delete the file bundles, edit the manifest and layout.json files and then replace the files if we could guess which files are in each encrypted store (there are three per premium plane). Not sure it's worth it for these default planes, though... and I wouldn't want to break the sim trying.

OK that's interesting but a bit of a bummer.

BTW when I edit a flight model I can now use the SDK "open new project" then open aircraft editor, I don't actually see an editor but I can minimise the sim, open the flight_model.cfg, edit it, save it then maximise the sim and click on "Resync". This reloads the aircraft with the edits. If I just swap aircraft then re-swap back the edits do not show. Before discovering the resync method I had to quit and restart the sim which ended up taking 15 minutes just for one edit! Do you use a similar method?

52 minutes ago, robert young said:

OK that's interesting but a bit of a bummer.

BTW when I edit a flight model I can now use the SDK "open new project" then open aircraft editor, I don't actually see an editor but I can minimise the sim, open the flight_model.cfg, edit it, save it then maximise the sim and click on "Resync". This reloads the aircraft with the edits. If I just swap aircraft then re-swap back the edits do not show. Before discovering the resync method I had to quit and restart the sim which ended up taking 15 minutes just for one edit! Do you use a similar method?

Yes, the resync function works well. There's also a developer mode for launching the application that skips the initial graphics, though I haven't mastered getting that to work.

1 minute ago, cwburnett said:

Yes, the resync function works well. There's also a developer mode for launching the application that skips the initial graphics, though I haven't mastered getting that to work.

The dev launcher doesn't work for me either 😞

1 hour ago, cwburnett said:

However, for the deluxe and premium content, those simobject folders DO NOT contain all of the files that make up that sim object; only a subset of them. Key components that Asobo/MSFT have decided are to be protected, like the models and flight model .cfg files are included in separate files at the top of the package that are encrypted and can only be read by the virtual file system. These are locked with a key tied to my Microsoft account.

If a significant percentage of the deluxe and premium a/c are deemed to be 'broken' by those who know how those a/c should preform, and those a/c can't be 'fixed' by talented users like yourself, it sounds like just buying the standard sim version makes better sense, at least until Asobo demonstrates they are willing to make the necessary changes.

Al

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by ark

1 hour ago, cwburnett said:

You can't even see the encrypted files, they're bundled into little archives with multiple files in them. However, I did test basically what you're describing, by build all new flight model cfg files, deploying them in the Community folder, naming the Longitude as a dependency - basically exactly what I did for the CJ4, but it didn't work. It also doesn't work for adding liveries to these aircraft. There may very well be a way within the SDK to accomplish this, but as you know the SDK docs are very incomplete and so far, there's nothing in the SDK on this subject.

Possibly we could delete the file bundles, edit the manifest and layout.json files and then replace the files if we could guess which files are in each encrypted store (there are three per premium plane). Not sure it's worth it for these default planes, though... and I wouldn't want to break the sim trying.

Why would they encrypt?  

3 minutes ago, ark said:

If a significant percentage of the deluxe and premium a/c are deemed to be 'broken' by those who know how those a/c should preform, and those a/c can't be 'fixed' by talented users like yourself, it sounds like just buying the standard sim version makes better sense.

Al

I totally agree. The only benefit to the diamond platinum encrusted version are the airports. All my favorite planes (in sim) are in the base model.

By the way, you can see in one of the cfg files for each aircraft how 'developed' Asobo deemed them. Some are listed as 'work in progress' others 'final' etc - so you can get a sense of at least where they think the planes are in their development cycle.

Part of me really wants them to fix them, but the other part of me wants them to focus on bigger fish like weather, well documenting the SDK, performance (the CPU spikes) and maybe the avionics.  Frankly, when we start getting third party planes, I'll care less and less about these default planes.

Just now, Dreamflight767 said:

Why would they encrypt?  

To keep me from zipping up the premium plane folders and sending them to everyone that only bought the basic version.

18 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

To keep me from zipping up the premium plane folders and sending them to everyone that only bought the basic version.

I can certainly understand the need for piracy protection, and I like your middle ground idea of at least making the cfg files accessible.  I would think Asobo might even appreciate the help, like your work on the CJ4.

20 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

By the way, you can see in one of the cfg files for each aircraft how 'developed' Asobo deemed them. Some are listed as 'work in progress' others 'final' etc - so you can get a sense of at least where they think the planes are in their development cycle.

If some of the planes in the Deluxe or Premium category are marked as works in progress, then MS had an obligation to let simmers know up front that's what they were paying extra for!  

Al

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by ark