Jimmy RFR

I've never seen the <frozen> thing before, but the stuck <paused> thing sounds like an inadvertent / messed up joystick button assignment, as in you now have a button that's toggling on the pause function continuously. A few months ago I had a similar issue where I had a random button assignment apply and try to load the X-15 scenario immediately after launch. I ended up deleting my preferences to fix it.

Yes, I hope so as well. I know that they are aiming for a 10.51 release to include a round of airports updated with the new version of WED once it goes final, but I do hope they have another round or two down the road as well.

The static aircraft impress me yet again... Working on a Gateway airport in B.C., a private strip run by a helicopter company. Fixed wing is limited to one small apron only, the rest of the airport is helicopter-centric. Being able to place helicopter-only parking spots, and have them fill up with static helicopters, is quite nice. This feature only needs larger a larger static aircraft library to be really amazing. Wouldn't of been able to do this previous to 10.50.

Yep, you can. You just select a 'final' and choose "NONE" on the next screen, or even "NONE" on both of the next screens. Just to test, as I'm typing, I was able to successfully create a flight plan to an airport with IAP's, but no STAR's. The SELECT STAR screen just had "NONE" as the only option. It's pretty flexible, but yes, as you noted, you do end up selecting the STAR after the approach. But for hacks like me, I don't mind picking my approach in advance, since I don't generally use RW weather in X-Plane. :wink: The one thing I'd really like to have, however, is a 'step-through' of the waypoints, displaying each on on the map in turn.

My gaming interests are annoyingly diverse: - Racing sims, such as rFactor2, Dirt Rally, ProjectCars, etc - Trucking sims, both ETS2 (w/ promods) and ATS, although I've set aside ATS and am waiting for the map resizing before I give it anymore serious time - Train Simulator - Space sims (backed Star Citizen for $60 way, way back, hoping it turns into something worthwhile one of these days, would definitely call it more sim-like than Elite, which I'd consider an arcade game & doesn't really hold my interest). - Shooty sims such as Arma This is on top of all the non-sim stuff I enjoy, like strategy, rpgs, arcradey stuff like Rocket League, odd-ball stuff like BeamNG. I just recently bought a new (well, new to me) FFB wheel to replace my really old and out-dated one, so driving games have definitely been taking front stage lately.

Yep, that's actually the only Aerobask aircraft I don't own, so I'm following it's development with interest. It would be nice if the terrain feature made it into the Skyview units themselves, but as they already have a bit of a noticeable performance impact, I'm okay without. It'd be highly fictional, but I'd love these Skyviews in the DA42 as well. I know they've indicated that it's not happening, but I can always hope. :smile: That flight I took the pic of went without a hitch, absolutely flawless. The new E1000, especially with those improved 'touch' Skyviews, is just so nice to fly. Will take the same flight in the Victory tonight. That's kind of what I was trying to angle towards. Although I feel bad that there's aircraft that are going to be ignored (I don't think I have yet to ever regret a X-Plane purchase), the main reason for ignoring them isn't primarily due to developers, it's due to the fact that the technology being modeled is just so much nicer to use. It's the same reason why going from RXP GNS units to the Flight1 GTN units in FSX was so much of a step up - they're still an extremely accurate 1:1 model of the real units functionality, it's just the the real world units are so much easier to use.

I also think some sort of crowd-sourced model for landmarks would be superb, and a limitation on triangles would be a good way of ensuring that performance killing objects don't creep into the sim. I think there would need to be another limit, or perhaps a density setting available to the user, for example, because there would certainly be areas where there could be a potential for a *lot* of unique buildings or landmarks, and even with a limit on model complexity, an area could quickly become a performance sink. But the bigger issue I think would be something else entirely: There would be no possible way to moderate the submitted 3D models and textures to ensure that the submitted works were indeed usable, and not stolen or breaking some sort of copyright. It's one thing to have those issues on a separately downloaded freeware item, that can be taken down by a hosting server if questions or issues arise. But if those sort of issues crept into the release version of the sim itself, then not only would it possibly open LR up to maybe potential litigation, but each instance that did arise would also necessitate an update of the sim as they pulled those offending objects out. Sadly, I think that would be a nightmare to manage.

It's pretty impressive when a developer can take an already good aircraft and turn it into something truly special, but I gotta tell you, the brand new 'touch-enabled' Skyviews in the Aerobask Victory and E1000 make already great releases into what I can only call sublime. The aircraft themselves are already very well done, but the new avionics are very impressive to say the least. This is the first time I've ever used anything in XP that comes close to the GTN units I have in P3D/FSX. Entering a flight plan is a simple point and click affair, choosing SIDS, STARS, approaches, etc. View waypoint info, send frequencies to radios on a click, type in heading / course via on-screen keypad, it's pretty darn nice and really an accomplishment. I have no idea how close they are to a real Dynon Skyview unit, but they sure work smoothly, and for usability they are simply so sweet to use. I think a new bar has been set. Sadly, it's going to make it tough to fly any of my X-Plane G1000 equipped aircraft. I feel bad, since I know there's certain developers that have worked so hard on their G1000 implementations, but this is comparable to the GTN's in FSX & P3D - once you fly them, you never want to go back to anything else. My current flight in the E1000, that's cruising along in the background as I'm typing this:

Mario, that's a very well written explanation explaining the thought process behind your reviews. I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I accepted, with enthusiasm, months ago, a role to do X-Plane reviews here at Avsim, and have since managed to have absolutely zero reviews completed. Although this is partially because summer, vacation, and family have taken most of my time recently, it's also due to the fact that writing a proper review is really, really hard - a lot harder than I thought it would be! I like to write, but trying to filter my personal experience with a product into something useful for other people to read is proving to be very difficult for me. Your process in regards to taking into consideration the different levels of interest of users of varying experience is really interesting, as is the example you've used in the Alabeo G1000, where by applying your personal preferences, it would of received a lower score that might not be as useful to certain segments of user groups.

From the menu bar - Aircraft > Aircraft & Situations, choose the second tab which reads "Other Aircraft". On that tab you can choose # of aircraft, keeping in mind that '01' amount of aircraft is just you. As you increase that number, the sim will visibly load each aircraft. To change which aircraft shows up, click on the square to the left of the aircraft name. When you exit that window, AI will appear either parked and ready for immediate taxi, or they will be in the general area in-flight. To be fair, the Gateway airports, at best, are much like the FTXG freeware airports but with less variety in terms of library objects. It also can be rather hit-or-miss in terms of the quality of Gateway submissions, some of them are excellent, some are less so. Regardless, I still love the purpose of them - the idea that you can have a decent looking airport with an accurate layout that is installed with the sim is a great feature. I spend far too much time working on my submissions, but I take comfort in knowing that anyone flying to them is hopefully going to have a good experience. That, and I know that I can fly in my home province pretty near anywhere and have somewhere to land that I'm happy with. :smile: One of my personal biggest wishes for XP is that they expand the default libraries a bit more - I would love it if there were some hangars sized in between the small and mediums, for example. More objects would make gateway airports even better. I know I could use freeware libraries and submit elsewhere, but I think it's important that the base sim have more than just 'flat' airports. CYZH Slave Lake, with industrial areas CYPA Prince Albert CYXH Medicine Hat, with remaining WWII era BCATP taxiways & foundations CER3 Drayton Valley I've also noted that by hijacking my own thread to talk about Gateway airports, I've definitely confirmed that the new 10.50 static aircraft do NOT show at airports unless the airport has been rebuilt / recompiled to take advantage of the new feature. None those above airports have been fixed yet, and none of them show anything other than the static aircraft that I may of placed by hand.

There's some things I'm not certain about regarding the feature - I haven't tested, but it's possible that you haven't noticed yet because the sim is set to only place static aircraft at airports that have been compiled with the new version of WED, and therefore have the proper sizing info in place on parking spots. Which would kind of make sense, since you are able to restrict spots based on both type and size. Older airports wouldn't have this info, and if the sim placed static aircraft that was airline-sized in small GA prop spots, people would likely get upset. :smile: Since user made airports designed for 10.50 with the new version of WED aren't going to be included until 10.51, you won't see any new user made airports in the sim yet. I think that a lot of people are going to underestimate this feature. With a fleshed out library of static aircraft, it will go a long way to make airports seem 'alive' without the overhead associated with AI. While I enjoyed watching AI come and go on occasion in FSX, I never thought it was worth the performance hit and so I pretty near always had it turned off. Orbx airports always compensated for this by having a collection of static GA on their small fields, but the ability to have the sim toss a certain amount in random parking spots seems so much more lifelike and dynamic - that same field I took the pic at, shows two static 172's, one static helicopter, and I had one B58 active as AI. On the previous reload, there was a single B58 and a helicopter parked there. Now the trick is going to be trying to figure out what I need to do to extend the library. I have a few low poly GA models all ready for painting Canadian registrations on, and I'm eager to figure out how to implement them.

With all the posts lately that seem to have such a negative spin on X-Plane, I thought I'd share something from the newest release that I'm really liking, especially for small GA fields: The new static aircraft display. If the airport you're at is newly configured with a decent amount of appropriate parking, the option in Settings/Rendering Options to "draw parked aircraft at airports" looks like it loads up the parking spots about 1/2 full of static aircraft. Combine that with one or two AI aircraft, and all of a sudden, even a little GA strip can look like a busy place, without having a ton of AI headed for the runway like a herd of cattle. The feature listens to the options used within WED quite well - a developer can configure heli parking, and only helicopters will spawn there, and appropriately sized aircraft will spawn in appropriately sized spots. Static aircraft simply doesn't spawn anywhere that you pick as a start, or where AI spawns. Anyhow, I've been pretty pleased with it, and am busy redoing my Gateway submissions to include the new features. On a side note, the ability to specify within WED an airport as 'always flatten' is also a pretty nice feature. The only thing that could of landed on the below airport with sloped runways on but not flattened was a helicopter. Even with HD Mesh, it resembled a rollercoaster. :wink:

Depending on where, yes, I noted it too in W2XP scenery from Simheaven - but even before 10.50.

Each to their own. While I would consider this to be of a lower priority than say, seasons, I'd like to see it improved as well. I love taking early dawn or dusk flights, and the time required to fly in such is often wildly off, at least where I live. And... if there were proper seasons in the sim, giving me a reason to fly at different times of the year, it would be of even more importance.

I switched back to the release channel, and the buildID number stayed the same, with the only change being that the 'beta' tag was removed from the title within Steam. When I open the sim, I note that if you open the 'About/About X-Plane' screen from the menu, it shows the version inside X-Plane as being "X-Plane 10.50r3 (build 105009 64-bit)". So I'm guessing that the RC3 build was turned into the release version on Steam as well.