JaneRachel

Am I missing something? looking for the documentation and clicking on the popup in-sim takes me to a github login.. Do I need to set up a github account to read the manuals??

many thanks

Jane

27 minutes ago, masaki said:

Regarding the cabin crew annoncement cutover in the flightdeck, in one of the streams V1 simulations mentioned it's correct, happens when the power switches from APU to engine gen .

thanks for that info Stefan, appreciated!

Has anyone noticed the aircraft wobble (almost like asymmetric thrust) when reducing from FLEX to CLB power on takeoff? Started happening with me after SU15. I installed the new version today and it is still there. I have checked my throttle calibration (TCA Airbus throttle hardware) and reconfigured in the MCDU and checked. The problem persists though in the new build for me.

I am also seeing the cabin crew voiceover cutting out again in this build with the engine starter cutout overriding the safety announcement and losing the safety audio. 

Jane

23 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

Is this comparable to path finding? Each leg and the subsequent legs to transition to contain, a good amount of information on how to sequence between them (like whether to make a left turn, how big of an arc to fly etc. etc. path finding needs to figure this all out). Also the FMS uses a specific set of math formulas to draw the magenta line (as-well as fly it) based on this information and data from the ADIRS. This is all then done on an avionics suite with CPUs less powerful than consumer hardware due to hardening and longevity requirements.

Now I don't work with PMDG, nor do I know it's internals. Though the code should be replicating or if possible (depending on data availability) just reusing these math formulas to replicate the same way the real aircraft would. If that were the case, I'm not see how a more powerful PC here matters. You're not trying to be more accurate with the computations, you need to compute it the same way the real aircraft would.

I could be way off here as this is just my perspective on it but with you're relationship with PMDG may be useful to give us an insight on areas I may be wrong.

Morning,

To be clear, I don't have or ever had access to PMDG code in any way, so I cannot speak for their internal code.

You are, of course, quite right about the CPU in avionics kit being less powerful than consumer hardware, but the difference is that those CPU's are dedicated to avionics, whereas our CPU has to render the aircraft, the world and do everything else also. I also agree on replicating maths formula. That formula though can get expensive and I would argue that a level of accuracy is required, in interpretation of ADIRS data etc.

I defer to your knowledge though in the sim (as I have never written this code for an aircraft, only in "mainstream" games as a games AI and pathing developer).

Morning Gang!

With my game developer hat on (my day job), I wanted to quickly comment on the pathfinding algorithm.

There is always going to be a trade-off on a home simulation as to put it simply, perfect pathfinding is going to eat all your processor time. The more processor budget that is spent on this, the less time for anything else getting done. Perfection costs! So you have to balance CPU cycles across all the competing needs. The pathfinding at PMDG has come an awful long way over the years, both with the rise in computing power freeing up more cycles and Vangelis and the team really honing their craft (I started my relationship with PMDG in 2003 on the beta for their first 737 and beyond). We have come a long long way. There is still  more to be done but much of that will need greater computer power as we iterate through new generations of PC's. I have spent a large part of my life creating pathfinding algorithms for commercial products and I look back at my previous work on this (such as Alien Vs Predator - 30 years ago this month) and cringe, but its all the processor I had to play with.

Bottom line is that we always rob Peter to pay Paul when it comes to resources. Processor has to be balanced across so many competing needs in a sim. The guys have done amazingly well as have other developers with the level of fidelity we see today.

I have seen the "jiggling" over the waypoints, which is much less pronounced on the 777 than the 737. I am speculating, but this may be linked to waypoint precision. Code tries very hard to hit a waypoint exactly. Quite often (and we see this a lot in videogame pathfinding, be it Call of Duty or a racing game etc), the position slightly overshoots. Lots of reasons for this, which would eat up a whole post on the technicalities... The code then tries to bring the position back. So you get the little jiggling with the overcompensation. One trick to help alleviate this is to add a little damping as you approach close to a waypoint to avoid oscillation and over-correction trying to hit the waypoint on the nail. I am sure the guys will continue to tweak it. It is a very common issue in pathfinding algorithms when you are aiming to hit a waypoint in 3D space very exactly. Again, the smarter you get with this, the more processor it will cost.

Bottom line, until we are all running supercomputers (and I used to make a living writing games for computers with 1k of memory!) we are going to have to live with little trade-offs to manage performance.

Have a great day everyone,

Jane

57 minutes ago, Fielder said:

If you have a switch that stays on or off, then assign set parking brake to it. Guaranteed to work!

I spent some time with a guy from the MSFS dev team early this morning. It turns out not to be a parking brake issue.

Its a weird calibration thing on the pedals themselves. We had to recalibrate a number of times and then it works. I can confirm for anyone seeing this, don't mess with your parking brakes, it is a red herring. Resetting the parking brake on and off just temporarily resets the toe brake calibration.

The poster above was correct in that in the game device calibration, you have to ensure that after calibrating your pedals the cursor in the calibration window sits and the bottom right hand corner of the window. It took us a few attempts to convince it today! Once that calibration is finally successful the problem goes away. (We tried this with a number of pedal manufacturers). It seems to be an issue in the windows game device calibration.

Again, it is not a parking brake issue, that just temporarily unsticks the brakes, so avoid going down that rabbit hole if this happens to you. It is a pedal calibration issue confirmed now.

Hope that helps others who may see this issue! Happy to help out anyone who also sees this happening.

all the best (and thank you Fielder for your help!)

Jane

this is now happening to me since SU15...

any advice would be most welcome,

many thanks

Jane

A quick update, as it may be useful for people.

It transpires that GSX can cause seriously bumpy taxiways!

A solution is posted here...

Troubleshoot - GSX Causing Bumpy Terrain, Double Parking Spots & Broke – Macco Simulations

1 hour ago, Mace said:

Although I don't have that scenery, I would experiment with Photogrammetry ON vs. OFF and see if it helps.  Photogrammetry setting is in MSFS options under "Data".

 

thank you, I will give it a try!

Hey All,

Has anyone else seen an issue with this scenery? All of a sudden I am now facing sudden hills and craters on the taxiways (so steep the aircraft can get stuck!).

I have reinstalled but to no avail. Also turned up the mesh resolution as far as it will go... but still huge issues.

Any advice would be most appreciated,

many thanks

Jane

5 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

im sure theres not 100s of people working on su15.

Typically these days we have a primary product team, then a much smaller support team to do the followups. The support and tidy group is usually entirely separate from the teams leading flagship titles. We are lucky that the sim has proven popular in sales, which makes a support team cost effective to create all the service packs. Sometimes in the lifecycle of a product we have to draw a line on service packs simply because the cost to develop the pack outweighs the current strength of sales revenue, based on a calculated "per head revenue" generation of everyone in the team. Keeping service teams smaller really keeps the costs down and drives that equation of salary vs revenue contribution for each dev to something manageable.

4 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

As some people have mentioned, the roadmap changed when SU 15 was delayed.  If it's true that they are trying to release MSFS 2024 this fall (according to people saying Jorge "slipped up" in the Twitch Q&A a month ago and accidentally inferred the release data for MSFS 2024 was this fall), they are heading into crunch time for MSFS 2024 this summer, trying to polish it off, fix the bugs, and cram in the remaining features before it's released.

They simply don't have time to do an SU 16 release in the summer, and release MSFS 2024 this fall, unless they are way ahead of schedule for what they want to do for MSFS 2024.  But for a large software project involving hundreds of people, it's almost never on schedule.  It's almost guaranteed that they are behind schedule, or probably barely struggling to keep to their schedule. That's the nature of software projects.

Mind you, even for much smaller software projects, like all the planes that are released for MSFS, those are often delayed (ie. Randazzo thought the PMDG 737 could be released in 2020, and it was finally released in 2022). For larger software projects where hundreds of people are involved, it's almost guaranteed those projects fall behind, or the project lead and the end customer eventually decide to "cut" features so that they can stick to the schedule.

Its very much the nature of the games/sim industry. In 44 years in the games industry (and sims too), its not the spec that kills you, but the bugs that suddenly defy squashing. I had a major title held up at EA with a crash bug that took my team weeks to find. It was a simple thing, in a couple of lines of code, but brought the entire project to its knees. We had pretty much every coder and myself hunting through code to track down. Conversely, I have seen bugs that look like they are going to be mega difficult, that I have ended up fixing over a cup of coffee in minutes. You are right about hundreds of people, although in terms of many issues, that boils down to just a few talented programmers to fix, with the majority of teams being art, design etc etc.. The specialist programmers are a minority on most games and sims (for lots of reasons, but I wont write an essay 🙂 ) 

Back when people paid me to be a programmer, rather than to run studios and publishing companies, we had all sorts of issues, for example, with Alien Vs Predator for Atari. It was coded by just two of us, myself and Mike (a very talented programmer). Some days it was bug city which we had to splat like the Aliens. Other days life was smooth. The moral is you can never tell and projects have a life of their own when it comes to shipping dates, despite so many processes we now have in place in the big studios. I routinely factor in a 20% time contingency on every project with the studios that I lead (which indeed can be hundreds of people now).

Its why sometimes that many of us wish that we made business software which is an order of magnitude easier than 3D software and games, that come with animation, physics et al 🙂

Jane

5 minutes ago, Aamir said:

Hm, weird one - but I know Ben from our team who is responsible is tracking and attempting to fix these issues. I'll double check with him.

The spawn issue we know about, trying to recreate and fix but it's a slippery one.

DEST data is a correct prompt, I'm guessing you've uplinked your winds and not overwritten the already inserted wind data in the APPR page - it's reminding you to update the wind with an actual entry as opposed to an uplinked one. 

thank you Aamir,

Learn something about this bird everyday. Appreciate the response!

all the best

Jane

Loving the update..

A couple of things I have noticed. The aircraft seems to often spawn at the gate with the gear up and promptly slams in to the ground, requiring me to go back to the main menu. I have tried Heathrow and Manchester, same result. It is not every flight so looking for an obvious cause and will report back.

A slight bump on the taxiway and the aircraft sometimes goes a few feet in to the air, even at very low speed (just had this again at the payware Manchester a few seconds ago).

I keep getting repeatedly asked to enter DEST data in the MCDU, even when already entered (I saw this on the previous version also)

Pedantic, wishlist item - button repeat on the MCDU pls so I can scroll through the flight plan etc by keeping the button pressed as per the real unit :)

Fantastic work guys. Such a lot of hard work here that is appreciated by many,

all the best

Jane

A head up for anyone having issues with tablet functionality.

The 787 mod (787-XH) needs to be removed from the community folder and you should be good to go. This particular mod creates conflicts, which are currently under investigation.

all the best

Jane

1 minute ago, Luis Hernandez said:

I have them both. I fly them both. I love them both. Apart from the lack of WXR and MCDU popups (MSFS limitations, AFAIK) and well, there are not so many differences between each. Well, the FSL VC is too feature-happy for my liking, and that results in me using the 2D panel instead. Not so with Fenix.

I agree with you. If you have P3D only fly the FSL, if you have the new sim fly Fenix. If you have both, feel free to fly both 🙂

Are both perfect, of course not. They are though, both incredible pieces of software and we have to realise that both are developed in a completely different environment within each sim, which imposes limitations and quirks courtesy of the coding of the host sim.

I spent over 15 years as Deputy Editor of PC Pilot magazine and reviewed every airliner release during that time (including the very first release by PMDG way back when). I also spent a large part of my career getting paid to do flightsims for major publishers. My honest opinion is that right now we are in a new golden age of airliners in simulation. We are flying on the desktop with an unprecedented amount of realism.

The standard right now from many developers including Aamir and his team is just incredible. It is great giving feedback to developers to help them grow (nearly all quality developers love you to feedback to them!). Just remember though the incredible standard we are at now from all of these guys. When we can nitpick over minor variations in N1 to the keyboard repeat rate on a CDU, we know we are in a really great place!

It is a great time to fly regardless of your choice of sim and aircraft.

Jane

2 hours ago, Aamir said:

"Feel" is always going to be quite interesting and subjective, I find. If it's one thing I've learned during the course of development, it's that pilot consultants will more or less often have completely different feedback from one to another. What is "perfect" for one, is "no, this doesn't feel right" to another. A lot of the times that comes down to control configurations, calibration, etc, but also interestingly, perception. We've built something that satisfies the majority of them in different areas, but I've certainly run into the case of completely opposite feedback more than once during the basic development of the aircraft. 

I also think it's slightly disrespectful to the media guys and pilot streamers to insinuate that they're saying the flight model feels great just because it brings them views. I'd offer an opinion to the contrary, I used to be in that industry after all, and controversy brings far more money and clicks overall. 

All said and done, I'm always happy for qualitative feedback from type-rated pilots, so if you have some points that you'd like me to look at in specific with regard to feel, drop me a DM with the details and I can have a look and see what can be done!

Agree with Aamir here,

Some years ago I led a team with a Red Arrows simulation with the Hawk. We had the entire current Red Arrows team try it out and they were mega impressed at Alpha stage (it was a sim for the RAF to use internally).They were really gushing.

I pointed out their team leader that actually there was a lot still left to do including flight dynamics tweaks and we weren't happy yet. His reply was that they had no idea those things could be done to that standard on a home computer. They were totally in love with the sim as not one of them had any understanding of just how realistic things could be and set their expectations of a high bar lower.  Once we told them what we could do, their perceptions changed considerably and we went from gushing to real technical feedback.

Happy New Year everyone,

Jane

Guys,

As you know we were very lucky to have Colonel Doug Champagne, America's most decorated contemporary fighter pilot with us yesterday at Flight Angels. He flew 157 combat missions around the world, including both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan and was the response pilot sent after flight 93 at 9/11.

His talk using the Aerosoft F-16 was INCREDIBLY popular with everyone who saw it yesterday, so by popular request here are some edited highlights of those talks (he spoke for nearly 4 hours flying the F-16 all time! about his combat missions as an F-16 and A-10 pilot and operations commander)

By popular request, here are a couple of videos - (apologies for the quality, it was the best available at the time). Just listen to Doug's stories, he is incredibly engaging and at the end of each video he does an amazing aerobatic display with the F-16 including a vertical climb to 37000 from the ground in less than a minute and "dead stick" power off landing demonstrations in Afghanistan!

Anyway, I will let Doug speak for himself, so without further ado, here are Doug's talks yesterday, all filmed in cockpit -

https://www.facebook.com/FlightAngels/videos/309022579459213/

https://www.facebook.com/FlightAngels/videos/309017006126437/

Remember, Flight Angels is an ongoing cause - so please continue to donate, especially if like me you appreciate Col Champagne giving us 4 hours of his time to fly yesterday!!) as every penny, cent and euro goes to the kids

www.flight-angels.com/donate

THANK YOU SO MUCH AEROSOFT FOR PROVIDING COLONEL CHAMPAGNE THE SIM VERSION OF THE F-16! - THANK YOU TOO AVSIM FOR THEIR UNENDING SUPORT OF THIS EVENT!

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR SUPPORTING FLIGHT ANGELS - WE ARE DOING THE FINAL COUNTS AND WILL GIVE YOU THE GRAND TOTAL SHORTLY!

I enjoyed it so much he is fabulous! we are back at 2 eastern and 6 eastern US (7 and 11 PM UK). It really is worth seeing.

I am so glad that you enjoyed it Scott!!

Hey Jane,

 

Can you guys enable lost password on flight-angel.com.  I did create an account on there but I forgot to write my password down.  I can use another account but was wondering could that option be enabled on the site.

 

Thanks

I will ask the web team now for you, if not, its not a problem, if you PM me for anything you signed up for I will make sure you get access.

You don't need to register to view the main live stream, it will be playing direct from the homepage for free. Anything else you registered for just let me know PM and I will sort it for you

Guys,

Flight Angels starts tonight at 7PM Eastern (midnight UK) and runs for a FULL 24 hours of non-stop streaming, prize giving and interviews.

We have over 2000 prizes which will be either auctioned or given away over the 24 hours! including MANY new releases from the big name teams!

We are supported by YouTube, PMDG, A2A, Dovetail, ORBX, Turbulent, AVSIM, VATSIM, Just Flight, Aerosoft, IRIS, Airline2Sim, Excalibur and many many other publishers and developers!

We have Robert Randazzo from PMDG talking live about their new 747-400 Queen Of The Skies II

We have A2A revealing their new Lockheed Constellation

We have Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft giving a talk on the state of the industry and entertaining us all

We have Colonel Doug Champagne, America's most decorated serving fighter pilot talking with you all live about flying the F-16 on interception flight of Flight 93 on 9/11 and numerous F-16 and A-10 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan

We have Colonel Hardy, WW2 Tuskegee airman who flew the Mustang and his team to share their experiences of flying warbirds in combat!

We have literally scores of other guests and activities!

and of course, we have the finest hosts in fightsim to host this great event, with Froogle, Novawing24, Northern Alex, Bel Geode, Matt Peddlesden, Catstrator, Ben from Airline2Sim

What we need is you! Please join us, it is easy - all you have to do is go to www.flight-angels.com and watch the live feed directly from the site, courtesy of our partner YouTube.

Please give generously as all donations, auction bids and every cent, penny and euro raised goes directly to sick children around the world - ALL OF EVERY DONATION straight to the charities

watch this space for the guest schedule!

Again, all you have to do is go to www.flight-angels.com watch and donate using the donate buttons on the website, simple as that!

See you there! Looking forward to seeing you all!

just a reminder, the only thing you have to do to enjoy the event is turn up at the website and the live feed from YouTube will be right there for you on screen. Simple as that!

There is only an extra donation requested for people attending the many workshops and flying on the multiplayer server. The main event, is completely free and open to all - it will be streamed live across the page on the website from Friday night. PMDG, A2A Connie et al will all be there on the live feed. I am also quite excited by one of the most amazing speakers in flightsim Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft who will be speaking to us on Saturday afternoon. He is VERY enlightening and entertaining, so don't miss his talk with us all!

All times of guests - and we have many - product unveilings etc to be announced tomorrow

incidentally, we have over 2000 prizes now to share with you guys as you bid and donate! so you can pick up some amazing sim stuff whilst donating!

There will also be FREE giveaways of aircraft from the major publishers and developers! Every hour there will be a major FREE giveaway of top selling titles from the top teams!

www.flight-angels.com

a thread discussing the A2A unveiling the first glimpse of the Connie! thanks everyone at A2A!

http://www.avsim.com/topic/494981-a2a-simulations-lockheed-constellation-exclusive-first-look-at-flight-angels/

I'm becoming quite excited about this.  It seems to be THE flight sim event this year.  Very slick and for a good cause too.  I'll be watching.

please remember to donate and tell you friends too and spread the word

I am excited too, I still haven't shared half of what is going on!

just to let you guys know, the amazing team at A2A have just announced they will be sharing the first screenshots of their new Lockheed Constellation to the world at Flight Angels on Saturday night! (disclaimer here - I had a preview and I hope it is not breaking NDA to say WOW WOW and WOW to what I saw :-) )

www.flight-angels.com