coastaldriver

So to get serious about matters icey thought I would take a look at Mt Erebus in Antartica via McMurdo Sound Ice Runway (NZIR) in the RW Designs Twin Otter (Still in need of an XP12 fix up in some areas), Need Antartica4XPlane to see anything in XP12 though another one of those polar parts Laminar chose to omit, Behaviour on an ice runway - odd started to slide assymetrically with engine start and needed reverse to hold it steady but otherwise controllably realistic it appeared. Ice looks like ice. Remainder well Erebus is a very large volcano and needed to go to F160 (LSALT) to get an appreciation. Anyhow struck it clear and bright - sort of!

Nope the aeroplane became an ice encrusted brick!

I did took the Twin Bonanza from Eigesfajordor to Rekyavik. Cavok on Departure. Nice midnight high latitude weak sun, Picked up icing 100 nm from BIRK. Got steadily worse and worse. Boots and de-ice could not manage, eventually full power and by this time some 15 minutes or so nothing stopped the inexorable slide into a stall then spin from which it would not recover. Think thats been done before. Finally some shots of ice accumulating on wing and nacelles - again another XPlane touch that just well - astounds you actually.

Boy, the weather can be awful in Iceland. Same again today BIRK 260/36-60 knots raining BKN 2000 RASH/SNSH/CB's - and so it is the same for rest of week at the moment. Sunrise at 11 am Sunset at 1500hrs, Not much to work with in terms of daylight there at this time of the year at all.

Well thought I would do some aviating in Iceland in the C-47 (AWX). Hoping for some light and clear skies - nope - blowing a gale, raining hard and cold as heck. Checked out the Douglas and in the gloom of the night cockpit heard and watched the rain sweeping over it and watched the wings rocking in the wind. Easy - not going anywhere today in this weather. A liquor and a hot fire would be more interesting.

Um well first time I have actually seen this - jet eflux heat and smoke out of exhaust pipes on the L188. Neat touch of realism. And lose an engine get then get smoke in cockpit (extinguishers did not solve the problem)- so this is what it XP throws at you! And it was all going so nicely!

Me n XPlane. Location Balikpapang (Seppingan) getting ready to go to Unjung Pandang across the water on another island. The first cast of light and then dawn breaking. Caught my breath. AWX C47.

Gusti Semjyari to Undung Padang Indosesia, Manky1 Dash 8 Real weather bit of cloud forecast but haze and reduced vis - guess thats what it looks like!

Completely different part of the world XP12 today, real weather ON, remainder what it does except the Thranda Beaver. Out of southern Borneo area, late afternoon, heavy scattered thunderstorm activity, shear and turbulence and non stop rain. Looked like I thought it did once - thats a wet tropical sky

Light, cloud and shading looked spot on to me. Seen that sky a thousand times for real in the air- the second shot in particular is well like being somewhere else but a sim. We all have a pretty amazing flight simulator there!

Agree, it is fixed with what I can only call a Hot Fix. Yes it was a big deal. Another gent has spent several days recoding the word not allowed thing and SASL - not yet released or made it available, guess he will not be impressed either!

This is becoming a real can of worms at the moment. XP12.08b3 clearly fixed the issues in pure XP12 models and some XP11 updates but only some! For aircraft that were designed and built for XP11 that have not been gone over by the developer with a fine eye and carefully or not all! It is showing that some (not all) developers model builders need to update SASL and revist the underlying datarefs as well. I cite the example of an updated product for XP12 (that shall remain nameless - the vendor just said well thats what you get your using the Beta version! in other words bad luck for you) that now has some really crazy behaviour with the power and mixture levers if moved will not resynch and just freeze in the wrong position. Exactly the same thing for an non updated product that worked fine until 12.08 and is now basically busted with both the livery issue and the crazy power lever issues as well. Sigh!

Thanks for the reference to the FAA Handbook - I had forgotten about these invaluable books and manuals. So far getting along, sort of, still writing off Robinsons so I switched to the freeware Bell 47G2, nice machine and seems a bit easier to handle in the sim too for some reason. Reading and practice - still fun! I had not realised you run the engines in these machines basically at full blast all the time when flying (contrary to fixed wing flight) those old pistons must have had short lives!

Okey Dokey! My Bad

Sorry I was talking generally here is the link to the pics I was referring to: https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/registration/VH-HYD The white one, Is that not an XPlane model? I stand to be corrected! But have not seen any with markings like that except in XPlane pictures

XP12 is so good in terms of image quality lighting etc that appears to have fooled a couple of folk who run aircraft type picture data sites (Airliners.net etc) I was looking for a picture of a particular type (The Schwiezer 300 actually) and livery. Found some and looked at the first, yep ok, then the second (different location and rego) took me a little while to realise it was not a real photo of the real helicopter but was in fact a screenshot from XP12 and of the Schweizer. So close to real that it fooled them! I did not have the heart to tell them! When avid aircraft nuts get fooled you know its word not allowed good!

Pe11e Indeed found the Helisimmer site, lots of good stuff. Now I am just practising, practising, practising. It is a dimension of the sim that I ignored for a long time but no more. Thought the Schwiezer 300 was a lovely looking model!

I saw this elsewhere but remain skeptical. The NVIDIA control panel already has a variety of settings for you to play around with 3D why hide it or is it already in there. Maybe its my eyes but I could not see any alleged improvement in sharpness!

All good advice, thankyou. The visual thing in 2D is a real gotcha - I find it easily confuses you because you get a high ASI reading but the look outside does not equate to what my mind is expecting to see in terms of movement got to learn to ignore that instrument except as a quick check for transitioning! I will work on the joystick setup (good to see I can save it as separate user profile in settings).

Thanks will do this. Discovering this the hard way back to setting up the controls (try and try again) All over the place at the moment with my joystick (Logitech Pro3D) Slightest touch and off it goes on you. I had heard that flying a chopper is like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time - seems very true. Good thing it is a sim, written off about a dozen Robinsons so far and haven't even got out of the airport environment yet. Being a real helicopter instructor must be a very hair raising experience! The pro's make it look easy even more impressed with the skills!

After many years of real world aeroplanes and simulation flight in fixed wing aircraft I needed a change and thought time to take up Helicopters. I had downloaded a couple including the Bell 47 and the Latest Schweizer 300GI Trying to stay simple at the beginning. So I thought I would start with the one and only lesson in Xplane - sort of helpful but not very to my mind a few clues but not enough! Search of the Net did not provide all that more but a couple of good intros to pore over for awhile. Seems a lot depends on the control set up and as I only have a Logitech Pro 3D setup seems a few little addons may be required to address the peculiarities of rotary wing aircraft. The Youtube video mentioned a little addon called HELI-TRIM - seemed like a good start but would be compatible now with XP12, that I do not know. The issue of throttle and collective is also perplexing at the moment so I guess to set up a completely different joystick profile for Helicopters would be the sane way to go - that an a bit of study about helicopters in general! So excusing my complete ignorance here any other bits and pieces one needs other than just to perservere? It looks like a lot of fun and likely to add a completely new dimension to my sim flying!

Saw this one managed to get it for redeeming points but would have got it anyway. Looked great! Time to start having some fun and learn how to fly helicopters in the sim! Was getting tired of airliners (and waiting for developers to upgrade some classic aeroplanes to XP12).

Initial response over at XPlane.org that it appears something is happening when the relevant or a dataref is accessed to change a livery! What is going on they are not sure! I might add that for me it is affecting all models but for most including Laminar the loss was not great but still present (lets say 70 back to 46 for example). See where it goes.