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IcemanFBW

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Posts posted by IcemanFBW

  3. Posted

    10 hours ago, sobor said:

    I have tried all versions. The problems start with the battery switches. At first, the left will not start but the right will. I wait several minutes and the left switch will then start and turn on. The APU master is slow to turn on but eventually does but the APU start button does not. I can shortcut the problem with the battery switches by turning on the external power but this is not correct as the batteries should not depend upon the external power. 

    Can you give this a shot and let us know if it resolves the issue?

    https://docs.flybywiresim.com/fbw-a32nx/support/reported-issues/#autopilot-fadec-electrical-systems-not-working-as-intended-utf8-issue

    • Like 1

  4. Posted · Edited by IcemanFBW

    4 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

    I do agree that it comes down to add-ons in the end.  And to that end, what decent weather add-ons will ever be possible with Asobo continuing to stubbornly refuse consideration of third-party access/improvements to the weather engine?

    "It's coming" is the hoarse-throated battle cry of the MSFS community, but Asobo has pretty much told us "it's never coming" when it comes to bringing the smartest guys in the room in to fix the weather limitations in MSFS.  I still see weather as the Achilles heel of MSFS.  I wish there was a better path forward.  And who knows, maybe if we could get the weather under control, the buildings would stop melting like wax figurines in the hot sun...

    From what I can gather, it seems like a binding contract with Meteoblue is the reason for not allowing weather customization - quite a shame in my opinion to lock out customization while at the same time not offering something of a similar caliber. The lack of ability for third party developers to customize the flight model is also a long-standing issue we've brought up time after time.

     

    In my opinion, it seems as though management at MS/Asobo is mainly focused on prioritizing functionality for paid DLC/expansions rather than missing core sim features.

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, MarkW said:

    According to their website it costs them USD $34,000 per year to operate the servers.  So we should all donate a little something to keep the good times going.

    This is not how much the servers cost to operate - the budget is how much money OpenCollective projects us to receive in a year based on current balance and recurring donations. I would say the figure is closer to $15,000 USD at the moment, the main expense being CDN costs.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    12 hours ago, WestAir said:

    Is there any talk amongst contributors to add a copilot, like the Flight Engineer from PMDG's DC-6, or the FO from FS2Crew?

    The A320 is a multicrew aircraft requiring two pilots. It would be a serious increase in immersion to be able to go through flows / run checklists with the PNF.

    We plan to add an option for a PF/PM callouts - e.g. "positive rate, gear up", etc in the future. But I would say an automated copilot is out of the scope of our development, especially given how automated much of the workload is in an Airbus, compared to three crew older aircraft such as the DC-6.

    • Like 6

  11. Posted

    2 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

    Responding to arrogance with arrogance (which Randazzo did) is rarely productive, but I'm not sure it's fair to pretend this was one-sided.

    The FBW dev injected his opinion (as fact) on another dev's work, claiming that he knew everything about what PMDG was trying to do, and since FBW didn't have the same problem, it must not exist. 

    And yet, FBW is demonstrably NOT trying to do the same thing PMDG is (bring a complex WASM/C++ airliner to both PC and Xbox).  Therefore the basic premise of the FBW dev's statement - that he understands everything PMDG is doing and no problem actually exists - is false.

    I'm not sure the response was any more arrogant than the original comment; I found them both pretty cringeworthy.

    Also, discussion is fun but in the end I really don't care about the personality of either of these people. I'll never be sitting down to have a beer with either of them. I just want my toys.   😁

     

    1. I never claimed I knew everything PMDG was trying to do.
    2. I did not state the problem did not exist - I simply said I was certain that an SDK limitation was not at fault (which is true, as confirmed in the Q&A stream).
    3. FBW is developing a complex airliner that makes use of WASM and C++ (you can take a look yourself), and had thoroughly investigated the possibility of bringing the aircraft to XBOX but realized it would not work, mainly due to licensing and workload concerns.

     

    I hope this clears up any misunderstandings - have a wonderful day!

     

     

     

    • Like 15
    • Upvote 1

  12. Posted

    3 hours ago, JB3DG said:

    I do have a gripe with the limitations we are getting with the display drawing as they won't provide us access to the internal D3D rendering pipeline like P3D does. I wrote the hardware accelerated 2D vector and raster graphics library in use internally at Milviz and it is leaps and bounds ahead of NanoVG both in performance and ease of use. On the one hand, knowing by experience how hard of a task it is to create a 2D graphics library from scratch I have some sympathy for those like NVG's creators who undertake the endeavor, but what I have seen both with NVG and Direct2D is API designers overcomplicating the task considerably and not taking advantage of hardware capabilities to the degree that they could. There are some displays, particularly on the newer Garmin, Proline, and Honeywell big screen displays that get far too complicated for GDI and NanoVG to handle without turning performance into a slideshow. Custom shaders and draw call batching become critical to simulating these massive and complex displays to the degree we would like to do.

    Out of curiosity, is your internal graphics library built on top of the existing low-level graphics API provided by MSFS? I was looking into the possibility of experimenting with NanoVG in some displays (currently using HTML gauges) to improve performance, but from what you're saying it doesn't look too promising and it might be worth making our own, like you guys are doing.

  13. Posted

    13 hours ago, bendead said:

    Latest Robert reply to this message : 

    Marvin- That is cute. So in reality, he knows nothing about what I'm talking about, yet he is confident enough in his lack of knowledge to mis-attribute the blocker I referred to as being SDK related when in fact I mentioned specifically it was platform side... When you have as many wrinkles, grey hair and aching joints as I do- you have watched a fair number of people stride confidently into the plate-glass door of their own ineptitude. We have just watched one more. LOL - RSR

    https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/157360-11jan22-happy-new-year-probably-let-s-get-started?p=158050#post158050

    Things really start to heat up, not in a good way and we still don't know what the problem/blocker is exactly.

    I'm going to preface this with a disclaimer: whatever opinions I have expressed in this thread are those of my own, not necessarily the FBW team.

    The SDK is synonymous with the platform in the context of MSFS - the SDK is the developer-side interface to the platform. If the sim (platform) is lacking functionality or implements functionality incorrectly, then the API's available through the SDK will also lack that correct functionality. IBM defines this relationship as follows: "SDK stands for software development kit. Also known as a devkit, the SDK is a set of software-building tools for a specific platform." [1]. If something isn't available on the platform, then it won't be available in the SDK.

     

    I see no reason to comment on this issue any further - I simply stated the truth, but Randazzo felt the need to resort to straw man [2] and ad hominem [3] fallacies in his frankly unprofessional response.

    I wish the PMDG team the best of luck in their development, and look forward to flying their aircraft.

     

    [1]: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/sdk-vs-api

    [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

    [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

    • Like 7
    • Upvote 5

  14. Posted · Edited by IcemanFBW

    11 minutes ago, Keirtt said:

    I highly doubt you'll see them abandon the current project to redo it in WASM. I feel confident that RSR will get what he wants... it'll just take a few phone calls/emails to sort things out.

    They already are using WASM. That's the only way to compile a C++ gauge in MSFS (the alternative being an HTML gauge, which doesn't obscure the source code - not ideal for payware). It replaced the old way of compiling into a .DLL in P3D/FSX, which was also unsafer. However, this doesn't affect how the code is written at all, only how it's built/compiled into an executable format once it's ready to be put in the sim. It's as simple as specifying some different command line options, as you can see in our code:

    https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx/blob/master/src/fbw/build.sh#L26

    https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx/blob/master/src/fbw/build.sh#L61

    https://github.com/flybywiresim/a32nx/blob/master/src/fbw/build.sh#L114

     

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    3 hours ago, WestAir said:

    Iceman, no offense brother, but how can you comment when you don't even know what the showstopper is? 

    I'm not saying you're wrong, but your comment forces us to believe either you or Rob. 

    I can comment because I know the SDK inside and out, specific to aircraft systems and avionics development. There are simply no showstoppers from the SDK side aside from a weather API (which we have already requested from Asobo and is expected to come out this year).

     

    I have no ulterior motives or anything to gain from speaking my mind here - I contribute to FBW in my free time, not for a paycheck. I just want the community to know the truth and read another perspective here. Anyone who sells a payware aircraft on the other hand, has an obligation to sell as many copies as possible to recoup investments and increase profits, so they naturally have a motive to maintain a good public image of themselves, even if it means deflecting blame onto others in some cases.

    • Like 20
    • Upvote 3

  16. Posted

    48 minutes ago, Ridvan Celik said:

    That definitely is not a good sign. Asobo needs to pull their heads out of their you know what. 

    I'm not usually one to comment on issue involving other devs, but I feel the need to point out something that simply isn't true.

    There is absolutely nothing regarding the SDK that presents a blocking issue to aircraft development besides a custom weather radar API.

    I can say that with 95% certainty having worked with aircraft development in MSFS for nearly a year and a half, and having spoken to numerous other devs and with Asobo developers themselves. Although we primarily use HTML gauges at FBW, we also use WASM gauges for systems and autopilot/fly-by-wire, the same technology that payware aircraft use for all of their code. And if Aerosoft is able to put out the CRJ as a complete product (with the exception of WX & terrain radar), I don't see why others cannot do the same.

     

    Also, in my personal opinion, Robert's message borders on unprofessional. Having had contact with Asobo developers for quite a while now, they have been nothing but helpful and nice. There are obviously cannot fulfill every one of our requests at once, but are understanding and help out as much as they are able, given the constraints of working on such a large platform with countless other third party developers to communicate with.

    • Like 16
    • Upvote 3

  17. Posted

    A phone number requirement is necessary for us as an active Discord server with over 50,000 members, in order to moderate effectively and combat scammers and trolls - it's not something we did without carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages to our community. Phone numbers are solely used to verify that you only have one Discord account, and that you are human and not a bot - nothing else.

     

    For those who cannot verify a phone number, our new documentation site should cover almost all frequently encountered bugs and questions, providing solutions to them, in addition to comprehensive tutorials. Important announcements are mirrored on our Twitter and even here on Avsim.

     

    Our Discord originally arose as a platform mainly for us developers on the project to discuss development, but grew far larger than we anticipated. For those not too familiar with it, or comparing it to forums - I would say a more apt comparison would be to IRC, as conversation can flow fairly quickly and is separated by channels. For those who need support or have a question, you can get it answered in a matter of seconds or minutes rather than hours/days/weeks on traditional forums. Almost all support questions get addressed - if yours happens to be overlooked for a while, there's no harm in politely asking again/bumping. For less ephemeral methods of communication, we use announcement/progress channels, as well as our Github for tracking issues and features in development.

    • Like 5

  19. Posted

    9 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

    If anything, it’s the FBW A320 that is probably competing against the Fenix A320.  As for the Fenix A320 vs PMDG 737, they are not really competing, IMO.

    I wouldn't say we're competing with Fenix at all. We're just a bunch of developers and pilots working on this plane for fun in our free time, and giving back to the community. We don't have any investors or partners to answer to, and no investment to recoup. I would say this applies to pretty much any freeware project.

     

    On the other hand, payware companies ARE competing with both payware and high quality freeware projects, as either of these which offer significant functionality can compete with sales, and payware companies do have an investment to recoup, and profits to turn.

     

    Just my two cents.

    • Like 17
    • Upvote 5

  22. Posted

    5 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

    Wondering who’s backing this financially. They’ve already used quite a bit of cash I imagine, the 3D scans alone must have cost an arm and a leg.

    It costs a around a few hundred to rent one for a day, not too bad - you just need to know the right people to haul one into a real airliner cockpit. We've been planning to do some real scans for a while for our A32NX remodel (from scratch), and we might as well get some A320 CEO scans too while we're at it (all funded by donations).

    • Like 11

  25. Posted

    I'll throw in my two cents here. I'm obviously biased towards MSFS though, since I'm heavily invested in development at FBW.

     

    MSFS has revolutionized consumer flight simulation by improving the overall experience and addressing many pain points that we just grew to tolerate with previous sims. No more downloading terabytes of ZL17 ortho and buying new hard drives for it or paying exorbitant sums for small regions of high quality payware ortho. No more paying for 3rd party plugins to improve weather accuracy and appearance to a decent level. No more paying for 3rd party plugins for basic ground services, lighting, autogen, sounds, etc. And no more paying for navdata from other providers when the sim should ship with updated cycles itself. And no more hassle dealing with updating all these plugins and finding out which one is causing crashes, or even organizing scenery order in multiple folders.

     

    With the continuing improvements being made to the rough edges of MSFS, and more 3rd party devs realizing this platform is the future, I don't see how X-Plane can viable compete in the long term, in the home desktop simulation market. Even more so given Austin's dismissive thoughts on streaming ortho and scenery (something that even FlightGear, a free flight sim, has a very rudimentary implementation of). I would love to be proven wrong by the XP team however - competition is good for everyone - but at this rate, I stand by my prediction.

    • Like 9
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