Scramjet333

Here's your fix for massive aircraft lights. After this, the lights become more believable pinpricks of approximately a pixel or two large. It's a bad bug with XSquawkBox (amongst others like terrible aircraft matching), which is already old, dated software. It's a reason why I've begun seriously considering paying for a PilotEdge subscription.

They're working on v1.1, which will apparently include plenty of 3D model fixes (I myself submitted such a bug, Captain Jan replied), hopefully a less buggy FMC, and some other bells and whistles. Best to check the X-Pilot forums.

Hello gents - I was flying the IXEG 733 from Britain to Vienna a while ago, when I realised that my performance suddenly degraded - from 45-50 FPS, the simulator dropped to 20. On a whim, I went to GPU-Z to check the status of my GPU, and lo and behold - the chip was running at a significantly lower clock rate than it ought to be - around 900 MHz instead of my GPU's 1300 MHz. Is this behaviour reproducible in any of your computers? Furthermore, I find it odd that the GPU-Z sensors do not report a VRAM usage value, when they usually do when running other games. See attached screenshot: What gives?

Some newer GPUs can handle X-Plane very well, and are fairly small, as well as very affordable. Case in point: GTX 960 and AMD RX 480.

Thank you very much for saying that, Mario. In turn, I regret having made a mountain of a molehill. Nevertheless, Cameron's rather incendiary replies made me feel quite terrible. I ought to bring it up to him. Fair enough - even PMDG has done it with their DC-6. I use plenty of freeware like 7-Zip, HWMonitor, and try to use the .zip versions whenever available. I feel it's a rather unfortunate trend to tend towards installers, but when the tide goes one way, we have no choice but to adapt and follow. You have a valid point there, Mario. Could we then call it a limitation of X-Plane instead - the way plugins are handled? Hypothetically speaking, could Laminar restrict all plugins to go into the /Resources/plugins folder, to ease updating and have only one instance of each plugin running? I myself have wondered why I had five instances of GroundTraffic running.

I'm sorry, but you mean being baffled by new behaviour, and finding it unnecessary = elitism?

Fair enough. The 737 Classic is a work of art.

Ladies and gents, thank you for all your replies. Before you get out your pitchforks/tridents/assault weapons/ballistic missiles - please hear me out. I have nothing against X-Aviation as a whole, or their products, which I know are truly superior to what other X-Plane developers have offered since. Their customer service, when it comes to updates, is spot-on, and when we request for a downloads reset, barring server issues, is responded to quickly and professionally. However, I have personally seen smatterings of elitism and pompousness from developers and support staff there and even at the x-plane.org forum, who simply say, 'you're the customer, we do it our way, and if you're not satisfied, don't use our product'. Unfortunately, I'm not even an adult yet with a fairly large salary to just write off a purchase and move on with life. I'm in my late teens, and am a conscript who is given a paltry $400 in allowance. I spent nearly a quarter of that in purchasing the IXEG 737; I can't just stop using it or not notify the developers if I feel a decision they've taken is, I feel, wrong - I'm obviously not getting my money's worth, then. As for why I brought this up, the reason was simple - I wanted to keep all my large tube-liners in one directory, simply for organisation's sake: GA planes in one place, fighters in another, props in yet another, and so on. Certainly, as a few of you have mentioned - a relatively minor issue. I just felt that requiring to have a plane in a particular directory was strange, and completely uncalled for at that point in time. I've used X-Plane for six years now, and this was the first time I'd ever encountered such behaviour. I then realised that the 737 installer as well as the updater also placed the Gizmo64 folder in /Resources/plugins/ which was probably the cause for all this. If the Gizmo64 folder had been placed with the 737 aircraft folder, and was installed with the 737, à la how SASL works with Flight Factor's planes, then we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, since the plugin would simply go to its parent directory and perform the update. Now, however, Gizmo64 goes to one place, the 737 must go in another, and we have the uninstaller for the plane in yet another place, in the X-Plane root directory. If anyone has run Skyrim (or any other recent Bethesda game) with mods and add-ons, you might understand why I am being pedantic about directories - a seemingly minor matter. Until a virtual-directory manager came along called Mod Organizer, mods would tinker directly with the game files and result in a terrible mess when several different add-ons, changing conflicting files, were used. In fact, we can look even closer - I (and probably several others of you here) have heard horror stories of how people wanted to change disk drives, or clean-install an operating system, and how tedious it was to migrate their FSX install with all their tweaks, plugins and add-ons over. With X-Plane, we have it simple. Even in this very forum, a short while ago - Tony expressed amazement at how easy it is to transfer an X-Plane install from OS X on one system to Windows 10 on a newer one. I am just afraid that with the advent of installers in X-Plane, we will lose this immense flexibility we have. It's one short step from requiring custom directories, to writing to the registry, to installing in a different directory altogether. I meant no offence to any of the staff and developers at X-Aviation, some of whom have been genuinely pleasant to see in action (specifically Captain Jan Vogel). However, some of Cameron's ad-hominem attacks (calling me lazy, ignorant, borderline stupid, etc.) were genuinely hurtful. If I were truly lazy, I'd simply have changed directories and moved on with life, instead of even bothering to type out such a post. Mario, thank you for a developer perspective, but I really hope that you understand where I'm coming from. My (a customer's) view is simply as such - if many developers do it this way (use .zips, stick to one folder location and keep things tidy), and it follows X-Plane's ideals, then why does X-Aviation have to do it differently and result in headaches for itself and others? Your post here, Mario, puts perfectly into perspective what I'm trying to say. I likened X-Aviation's actions to MNCs because this reminds me of a highly anti-consumer and even anti-OEM policy that nVidia implemented with a driver update last year: notebook GPUs were locked from overclocking. This caused a huge uproar, causing nVidia to go back on its tracks and release a patch to re-enable overclocking. nVidia's reason: laptops are too poorly cooled to allow overclocking to happen. Users' reply: No, we have thick, powerful, well-designed laptops (something like this) meant to push hardware to its limits; some of our products were even advertised for overclocking. To be clear - X-Aviation's actions are nothing like what nVidia had done, but it felt restrictive. That's all, everyone. I hope you understand why I made this post and the one at X-Aviation. Now, obviously, I'm resigned to moving the 737 Classic out of Heavy Metal, and creating a 'X-Aviation' folder just for one plane, or create some sort of symlink. Oh well... you gain some (now we have VNAV without needing a T/D! Excellent!), you lose some.

Certainly, if there's a technical requirement, then that's fine. If you head over to that thread, you and everyone else can see the entire conversation (on page 1 - I'm 'SRSR33' on that forum. I asked for a technical explanation, and Cameron dismissed my request equally rudely. I'm really really disappointed.

Hello everyone, I believe everyone has experienced their fair share of good (and equally bad) examples of customer service. Earlier today, the IXEG 737 was updated to v1.0.6, and I scanned through the list of fixes, noticing that the VNAV behaviour was altered, so that it could be used even without a T/D. I excitedly downloaded, installed and applied the update, only to be shown this window, which cannot be closed or moved around otherwise: I returned to the changelog for v1.0.6, and then noticed this under the list of 'fixes': I then proceeded to the X-Pilot forums, and enquired about this even asking for the technical justification for this hard-coded nature, and while I attempted to maintain my cool, Cameron appeared to become increasingly hostile, eventually ending with: ​ I'm disappointed, to say the least. It might be the last transaction I ever do with X-Aviation. EDIT: I understand that some of you might say: 'but Scramjet333, why do you waste your breath? Why not just put the aircraft where they want it to be and be done with it?' But then that just sounds like the customer bending over to the huge multi-national corporation. I very strongly believe in customer rights, and X-Aviation, as has (unfortunately) been demostrated several times, have displayed this 'you're the puny customer' behaviour over and over again. Take that particular line one step further, and imagine if the 737 Classic required to be installed in C:\Program Files\ or worse, C:\Windows\, or for the Mac equivalents - the /Applications or /System folders. Would you accept it? X-Plane's strength is in its directory agnosticism, and X-Aviation's practices are undermining it.

I really like the new UI - makes X-Plane look like the ultra-professional sim it really is. Not that the current UI doesn't look nice, it just has a slightly dated, Mac OS X Tiger-esque look to it. Now, if only they fixed the weather. I still haven't seen a decent towering cumulonimbus, even with the new SkyMaxx Pro.

The X-Plane 10 autogen since 10.0 has always used OSM - it's just that the authors' interpretation of the data was worse than what W2XP does (similar to X-Plane's default weather and Real Weather Connector). The third-party implementations are just greatly improved versions of the original, which has great potential.

Excellent - I have been looking forward to this for a long while. It may not be a day-one purchase for me, since I just burnt 90 bucks on new RAM, but I'll probably get this in July.

These shots were taken at about FL250, climbing out of Vienna, en-route to Geneva. Noticeable add-ons used were Real Terra Haze, SkyMaxx Pro v3.1.2 (with the 'Fast' clouds rendering, instead of 'Crisp' which is the default), Real Weather Connector and of course, the excellent IXEG 737 Classic v1.0.1. The Austrian and Swiss Alps are visible in the background.

I would love to see a B787 by IXEG - it would be a quantum leap from the 737 Classic, going from a half steam/half glass cockpit to an entirely electrified plane, so much so that even the FMC is on a screen and all the buttons are touch. Something on the level of the QW 787 for FSX in X-Plane would be a godsend. The Heinz 787 has a decent exterior model, but I've been spoilt by the detail and accuracy of the IXEG cockpit; I just can't step back into the 787 any more (or, for that matter, the FF 777).

Hey everyone, Just as a large proportion of the X-Plane community has, I purchased the IXEG 737 immediately upon release. Quite frankly, I am amazed at the level of fidelity that the developer team has achieved, from the sounds to the quality of texturing. I hardly need even mention the systems depth and accuracy. The plane even bounces a little when it halts to a stop, something I've never observed with any other payware aircraft. Now, my main question is - as a person who has solely flown the B777 (and not to mention various GA aeroplanes) in X-Plane, how do I begin to make sense of the 737 cockpit? For one, the overhead panels seem to be completely different. In the 777, there appears to be a sort of up-to-down, left-to-right flow to it, but the 737's overhead panel looks more...cluttered. A lot more cluttered. The tutorials included help a little, but I still stumble quite a bit when it comes to simply powering on the aircraft. Next, with respect to the FMC (or FMS) - I can't seem to enter VNAV after positive rate and gear up, with PERF/VNAV UNAVAILABLE on the CDU scratchpad. There are no discontinuities; I don't think it's an FMC bug either. What do I do? In the B777, I received this error only when I had a shortage of fuel (or too much of it). However, I refuelled the B737 to 4800 kg when performing a 290 NM flight from LOWI to LSGG - and found that I couldn't engage VNAV at all. Finally - how do I open the cockpit door?

The clouds especially look great. I'm looking forward to what LR has cooked up for 10.50. Hopefully the DC-6 and the IXEG 737 are released by then

In all the arguments over twin-versus-quad, Why not hexajets? Sharadh Rajaraman

Excellent narrative, Kyle, and I can just hear the roar of the radials as you describe them. Looking forward to release day. Also, did the plane actually cruise that low back in the day, or was it because the flight you took was short? I mean, I can't imagine doing a trans-Atlantic flight at 8000 AGL, sounds a bit scary... Sharadh Rajaraman P.S. Just in case: here's how to take a screenshot. That manual in general has been very useful, I've found... Or you could just do it the Windows way, and use Alt + Print Screen.

Excellent. I'm assuming that's X-Plane, of course - how does your Las Vegas look so good at night? Mine looks comparatively terrible...

All I want is a decent 787. I have never seen so many of an airliner's systems being electrified and 'glass'ified - even the FMC is on a screen! QualityWings appears to be making a very good job of simulating the 787 for FSX - hopefully we have an equally competent developer for X-Plane.

Lamar, As others here have said - X-Plane can be installed anywhere on your system, provided the drive has enough leftover storage capacity and the drive is writeable by the system. Make sure to read the X-Plane manual, many questions that you might have will probably be answered there. In fact even seasoned users should refer to it since it's not just written for the new user, but as reference material for veterans who might've forgotten some detail of the sim. Overall a very useful document to read. There's also a PDF version here, as well as within your X-Plane install directory itself.

Jan - I've been avidly waiting for this add-on for a while now, and I've followed every one of the IXEG team's videos on YouTube. Did I say it's very pleasant to listen to your German-accented English? The plane is beautiful and a work of art, really. I look forward to paying for it and flying it. Just one question - I noticed the fire alarm button is slightly lopsided (while watching your Engine Fire videos) - is it meant to be that way?

I don't think it's fair to divide all flight simmers into just two camps, namely, as someone else said here: 'Vorsprung durch Technik' (excellent metaphor) or 'visual beauty'. Flight simulation is just that - a simulation. The programs (be it FSX, X-Plane, DCS, P3D, War Thunder, FlightGear, etc.) all aim to mimic the experience of actually flying a real plane, with all the goodies that come with it, including flying low over your own real house and viewing the scenery all around; programming an FMC; accurately and properly managing an emergency on a flight (like an engine fire or flame-out), or even inspecting your plane for defects. The keyword here is 'immersion'. If the flight sim can trick our brains well enough into believing that we are actually flying and not in a simulator, then we have achieved perfect simulation. These camps are just two different manifestations of immersion - technical, and visual. I would say they are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they complement each other. As a case in point, just take a look at EADT's x737 add-on. It's highly technically accurate, and the exterior model looks beautiful, but the cockpit is 2D. All the panels are nearly 100% simulated, but still - the cockpit is not three-dimensional. It absolutely kills the immersion; I don't know what others might say, but I have a strong aversion to 2D cockpits. I like following checklists and proper technical procedure, especially on online flights. But the lack of the visual environment prevents me from fully enjoying the technical aspect of the plane. I want to see and hear switches, not a flat .png image. Another case - look at X-Plane's empty airports before the Gateway was opened. There were no buildings or sometimes, no taxiways too. This prevents me from taking advantage of the so-called technical aspect of airport diagrams, hold-short procedures and online ATC instructions. I participated in Cross the Pond Westbound in March this year and landed at Boston. I didn't have a decent-enough scenery for it, and I had to get special taxi procedures. Felt really odd. Then, sometimes the lack of technical fidelity prevents me from enjoying the visual aspect of a scenery or a plane. For example, Heinz's (RIP, Mr Dziurowitz) B787 has a great external model and a decent 3D cockpit, but the systems simulation pales in comparison to what QualityWings has been showing. Beautiful cockpit, excellent systems depth and all the technical stuff. Finally, this is both technical and visual. X-Plane's weather rendering system is anachronistic. With just three cloud layers and extremely clear stratus bottoms (which certainly do not occur in the real world), the weather is not realistic. I think it's safe to say that neither I, nor anyone else here, has seen a decent anvil-shaped cumulonimbus cloud in X-Plane, nor a huge storm front which you fear of flying into. It is neither good-looking nor realistic. Hence, I believe that this dichotomy is invalid. There aren't two camps, or three camps, or any 'camps' of any sort. I believe there's only immersion and mimicry and a clever way (again, as someone else here put it) of playing with electricity to trick us into believing that we are in a giant flying machine and at 35 000 feet MSL. it just depends on how good the simulator is at tricking our brains.

I never meant it in a negative connotation, but unfortunately you took it that way. :( Interpretations would vary, ah well.