anthony_d

Just bought this plane. It's my first G1000 plane, so I wanted a modern GA plane to complement my steam gauge collection. I've only completed one circuit so the remarks below are only first impressions. The good points: - It looks good - Flight characteristics feel very stable. There's no twitchy responsiveness here. Stall speeds with flaps up and down are fairly close to the book. - G1000 features a big step up from the default displays. - Sounds are very convincing. It sounds like a smooth modern engine compared to the rough old pistons. Bad Points: - Frame rates dropped massively from 65fps in my Baron V35 to 25fps in this plane. It seems like CPU has a much bigger draw time compared to the CPU. I hope this can be improved upon. - Brakes are very twitchy. If you just touch the brakes on the rudder pedals, you'll shoot off to the left or right because of differential braking. - The parachute system is not modelled (in so far as if you pull the handle, the flight will reset). It's not a feature I'd use often, but it was a ground breaking headline feature for the real life version of this plane. Parachutes are modelled in xplane, so it's a shame this feature isn't implemented. Uncertain Points - Conversely nose wheel steering is very sluggish. Looking at the design of the plane, I get the impression that the nose wheel probably has no steering capability. In which case I'm wandering if the rudder should have any effect at all at slow taxi speeds. - It's not a fixed blade prop, but prop speed is linked to throttle. There's no constant RPM with this propeller.

Impressive! Will this scenery consume even higher system resources than the V2 scenery? (especially when the visibility limit eventually gets extended?

It's nice to see my airport contributions appear in X-Plane finally. You can fly to the western isles of scotland (e.g. Barra) and a few other highland airports (e.g. Inverness, Plockton) and see some of my work now. Also check out Humberside, Ronaldsway and Guernsey airports for examples of my work. I submitted all my works about 8 months ago, and in the meantime others have uploaded their own works for these airports to the org. In hindsight I should have done this too.

I'm interested to know what kind of impact this will have on the functionality of 3rd party aircraft. There are a lot of aircraft specific tweaks in the release notes. I also noticed the absence of DSF scenery draw distance - which is my biggest irritation with the sim right now. Going back through the blogs it does suggest this will be in the 10.30 release. Overall, I'm going to let others report on whether it breaks 3rd party aircraft or not before I dive in. I'm hoping the 3rd party developers have had prior opportunity to test in advance of the public release.

I've spent decent amount of money on aircraft. But I've never spent a penny on airports. Reason for that is simple. Money spent on a plane lasts a lot longer (in terms of time spent on that plane) than money spent on an airport that I may fly into just once or twice given my flying habits. On top of that, there are quite a few decent freeware sceneries to fly to (e.g. Zurich). And just to put the final nail in the coffin, it's often the case that some payware airports suffer quite badly in terms of performance. This is partially due to location (e.g. major airport in big city), and partly due to authors being far too heavy on detail at the expense of performance. The payware aircraft that I spend money on suffer that problem far less acutely.

Nice offer! Couldn't resist and bought it. A quick flight round was planned, and I realised that there's a lot of figuring out / reading of manuals to do before I could even start the engines! In terms of performance, it's a little bit more demanding than the FF757. On my machine that's no sweat. I'm impressed with the sounds. I've never flown in a 340, but I've done plenty of miles in a Dash 8 (200 to Q400). Assuming these are the same engines, I'm darned impressed - all the subtle notes during taxi and beta operations leave me feeling like the only thing missing is the smell of freshly brewed coffee and some warm buttered rolls. Now back to the manuals.... why does torque drop off during the take off run.

I don't think he's done any posts about his planes any time recently. There is this issue of the (ongoing?) patent lawsuit to factor into the equation. Last thing I read (early last year), was that he was fighting the lawsuit.. That alone is a massive distraction to x-plane development, and he's advised not to comment on it ....... thus we'll hear nothing on the matter unless there's a courtroom victory (or defeat).

Excellent!

Montenegro (LYPG) to Fiji (NFFN). FF 777. 9000 miles, 20+ hours. This is part of my "fly to every country by approximate order of population size" project. Due to runway length at Montenegro, I had to throw some passengers off the plane. Started flight at 21:00hrs UTC. Faced 90 knot headwinds at start. Went to bed, and awoke somewhere over siberia at 07:00 UTC with 45knot tail wind. Set the Pause T/D button, and then drove to work. Returned from work at 17:00 UTC and landed the plane. I could really do with finding some winds aloft charts so I can plan my legs better.

I often do that, only problem is if you only want to remove a few metres of road, you find that several miles have disappeared. Anyway, I guess that's a discussion for the scenery design forum.

Here's a couple of examples of the smaller airports: Isle of Skye Broadford. Very undeveloped, basically it's a runway with a pile of gravel by the side. I tried to bring out the character of this airfield as best as I could with the tools provided by wed. It's still used by private pilots, and there's even talk of upgrading it to accommodate a scheduled service to Glasgow in the future. Coll. A *very* small airport. Nothing more than a house, carpark and airside. The public road I can do nothing about - it's actually a single track road in real life. But this is what I'm able to achieve with the tools I've got. It's not bad, and certainly a lot better than no objects at all. And it's accurate to where things are placed in real life.

Evening all, I've been busy since the release of 10.25. Prior to 10.25 I've submitted the following airports which you can goto right now. Mount Pleasant, Falkland Islands San Marino Aeroclub - works best with Alpilotx's new mesh - NEW to global airports database. Liechtenstein Heliport Monaco Heliport. Since the release of 10.25, I've submitted the to Robin Andorra La Massana Heliport - NEW, but somewhat tragic that this sits on slope, rather than a terrace. Humberside (EGNJ) Isle of Man (EGNS) Guernsey (EGJB) Colonsay (EGEY) Tiree (EGPU) Coll (EGEL) - NEW Airport in Global airports Database Barra (EGPR) Benbecula (EGPL) Stornoway (EGPO) Isle of Skye Broadford Plockton Glenforsa - Isle of Mull Dundee Inverness I'm hoping they'll appear in the next release. I'll try and get some screenshots of each (can't right now since I'm flying my 757). Inverness is on my todo list for making some custom buildings. There's a file on the org for Inverness right now, but it's looking basic and "old hat" so I reckon I can do it better. Some of the airports (e.g. Humberside) I've noticed a user called Renair as released his own version to the org. So it seems like I have some competition! But, everyone gets my contribution.

I concur with comments about the 757. There's lots of small details that you don't see in the previous 777. Example, when your air conditioning packs are running at the desired cabin temperature, dial the temperature up or down and hear the packs growl louder to cope with the extra heating / cooling load. You can drive the Chief Flight Attendant beyond madness in various different ways :ph34r: FMC is good, but still some issues when it comes to VNAV descent. There's more fidelity when it comes to VNAV descent profiles in the Level-D 767 (which has an almost identical cockpit to the 757). Flight director: Doesn't appear. Until you check the manual - you need flight director and auto-pilot to be engaged on different air data computers for the director to appear on the PFD. Details Details Details..... She flies nice, but in terms of frame rate - it exerts a heavier load compared to the 777. Not that I notice much on my rig - it's the difference between 50fps and 60fps. Fuel consumption is very close to amounts obtained from fuelplanner.com. High altitude climb rates with a heavy plane can be painfully slow above FL320 Engine sounds are convincing, sounds nice at low / moderate thrust, sounds like a growling vacuum cleaner at high thrust - just like real life. There's no TCAS - no Traffic Traffic, monitor vertical speed, climb - climb NOW, descend. Nope, nothing but the usual X-Plane "BurpBeeeep TCAS Alert". Things I miss from the Level D 767. Auxiliary menus include options for maintenance (you need to top up fluids etc...), and checklists are interactive which saves needing to print paper. I do however think the menu accessibility was somewhat quicker to grab and nicer on their previous 777. Also, it's not possible to turn off failures altogether - so overnight flights while I'm in bed often end up in calamity! Some simulator crashes. Low Engine Oil Pressure --> High Engine Temp after a few moments --> Engine Fire and simultaneous plane / simulator crash. Not good. But I'm sure they'll fix it. 747 I'm not going to buy. Cockpit looks underwhelming in the screenshots. If they can't be bothered with textures, it makes me wonder how well screwed together the rest of the package is.

I'm very impressed by what the tool can offer x-plane. But I'm under no illusions that world traffic is exactly that - a tool. Community support for the tool, (i.e. releasing AI traffic packages), is somewhat lacking. I count 82 packages in total on the org site. Compared to the early days of fs2002 when we had the likes of Project AI, the number of packages available is not only small, but there's a lack of cohesion that you see on other AI sites elsewhere. What this tool needs is community support along the lines of world-of-ai,com , where hundreds of airline ai packages are available to download. For that reason, I've not considered buying this package, impressive though the demo version is.

It's a terrific improvement in the scottish arena. There's a more convincing look to the way the features and landclass combine. Forests, streams and rivers are very well defined now. I'm also pretty sure that some villages have now arrived on the scene which previously did not exist. However, the power pylons are often finding a tendency to group together and bunch up just like the early betas in x-plane.

I've now submitted Colonsay, Coll and Glenforsa (Isle of Mull) to Robin for inclusion in global airports database. Here's a teaser of Coll (EGEL), a NEW airport to X-plane. Hopefully it shows what can be done with small airports. The WED default library can sometimes be limited, but so far it's only come up a short on options a few times. It's not the choice or quality of the tools that matter - it's how you handle them! I'm considering what scottish airports to do next. I'm going to avoid (good) airports that are already available for download on the org library (e.g. Oban). On my list to consider: - Benbecula, Stornoway and some of the smaller Shetland / Orkney islands. Might consider those contenders for the worlds shortest commercial flight. I'm offshore right now (no, not on Khamsim's rigs, but a floating vessel), and it can leave me with plenty of time on my hands...... so why not get creating!

Here's a preview of Humberside airport. I've now submitted Broadford, Plockton and Tiree airports over the last two days. Hoping to submit Colonsay, Coll and Barra airports in the near future.

I've submitted a few to Robin for the next release (Humberside, Isle of Man, Guernsey and Andorra La Massana). I prefer manual methods of manipulating my airports over an aerial photo than any automatic methods that exist. Did you know: - You can pick and choose your walls on your building facade. Tick the box "choose walls". The select a node on your facade and choose what wall type you want. Great for getting your warehouse doors facing the right direction.

There's a newly created video tutorial here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16978 Skip the part about aerial images from Geotiffs - unfortunately for the UK you have to do this manually - by dragging the image over the existing airport for best fit. I think step one in any successful scenery project is a good quality background image of the airport you're working on. I stitch together screenshots of aerial photos in gimp, and use the resulting image as a background template in WED. I've created Aberdeen before: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16978 I made custom objects for Aberdeen, which takes many days of effort. Humberside is an endeavor which I'm making entirely from the default objects, and takes less time. You can fly to LSXB, LNMC or SMTO to see other examples of my work in x-plane.

I think there's only two criteria being considered for submissions to Robin. - The scenery package is valid when run through the validator. - X-Plane doesn't crash. To be quite frank, while minor modifications are not what is hoped for, it doesn't detract from the x-plane experience either. In the meantime, I'm working on Humberside airport (EGNJ) on WED, and you've reminded me to add some taxi signs.

Yes, I was reading a tutorial on Vertextool. The procedure was long and complex .... and fragile if you took a wrong turn. I tried it without success. IMO the whole mesh creation procedure that needs some development.

I'm somewhat pleased to see my two airports and two heliports have made it in. This is the way to get your work out to everyone. If you upload to avsim, or the org - only those who download can enjoy it. Send it to x-plane and now *every*last*x-plane*user* can enjoy it! I do like the way I can now see cities from high up now. That's a big improvement.

I'd love the ability to modify terrain mesh from within WED. Plenty of runways in the world that are sloped in real life, but a disaster in X-Plane (e.g. Lukla, Nepal). Basic workflow I'd like to see would be: 1. Import dsf section into WED workflow that sits inside airport boundary (or nearest vertices outside airport boundary). 2. Visualise mesh layer in WED. 3. Adjust mesh vertice positions and heights to suit (adding new vertices if needed). 4. Export to local DSF file - which overrides global scenery DSF tile.

I was having a rummage through the autogen folder in wed trying to pin down some ideal facades to use at a heliport I was making. I couldn't find what I wanted, so in the end I made a wed file with a polygon for **every** facade option I could find. I now learn there's a lot more to facades than just a texture file applied to a blank wall! - You can make car parks out of facade polygons with perimeter fences, flood lighting, and a warden's shed all built in. - Many facades have objects bolted onto them (e.g. warehouse facades can have lorries sticking out of the the goods entrances. - Some industrial building facades will have small chimney stacks rising out of them - The objects added to a facade may or may not be there depending on the size of the footprint. - I haven't figured out the radio tower facades yet - but it'll be interesting to see what happens if I make a big enough footprint out of it (I'm hoping for tower, with gravelled area around it, fenced off, and a building next to the tower). It's worth playing about, you can find some surprising options. Now, applied to autogen I can see a lot of potential to make things even more interesting - and that's just the existing artwork.

There was a Wed Contest at the org. This airport was the winner. http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=19831 ... and this airport won 2nd place. http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=19810 Both airports should appear in the beta, along with many other good pieces of work.