Passing through from the boat to Montana, I stopped off at the casa in North Carolinaville and ran across a few things worth taking note of, so let’s do a quick run down…

First, the ever intrepid Steve Winslow offered a new take on the term “vaporware” over on the X-Pilot forums, a broadside which generated more than a few idiotic replies, but perhaps eschatological drivel would be a more apt phrasing? I guess “who cares” was the general attitude we heard expressed outside Chaos Manor, where apple-ginger cider appears to be the order of the day.

Next, frede announced that his upcoming revision to this Eglin AFB file will be his last outing in the XP scenery development arena. Fred advises he’s going to concentrate on writing, and we wish him all the best knowing full well that the XP scenery development scene will never be the same. Adios, amigo, and may your imagination never run dry.

Then we received a bit of news from Ramzzess concerning his (and Phillip’s) forthcoming 757 series, and while this isn’t exactly new gnews it might be worth repeating, just in case you’ve missed out on things of late:

In his note to us, Ramzzess advised: “As far as the systems are concernedyou can tell your readers they can expect everything they saw in the T7 and more. 2 FMS, 3 IRS and over 200 custom failures. All plane’s systems are completely modeled, including intercom and PA. Some failures will last between flights and will require maintenance operations. New rain, ice and more complex reflections effects are also there. We have all 757 variants, including the -200, -300, RF and each will be available with winglets or without. Four engine types will be available.”

You can follow the comings and going on FlightFactor.aero’s FaceBook page, located here.

ramzzess asked that we remind readers that this “new” company name, FlightFactor.aero, does indeed represent the work of ramzzess and Phillip, the original team behind the Trip7.

Also note that the program is deep in Beta-testing, and is scheduled for a June 2013 release.

A final note: neither Simon nor myself have been engaged in Beta testing this file, so we don’t have any pre-release insights to offer this time out. My impression after looking over the panel images Roman sent is that he’s further improved his already formidable modeling skills, and of course with Phillip onboard you know systems integrity is bound to be first class.

I would think that my feelings for this aircraft are pretty well known, and this is one of those files I’ve been waiting for…and waiting for! Anyway, when it’s released I’ll try to get a review out – if I’m anywhere near land, that is!

+++++

Another group tackling cracks in the scenery development dam is SceneryTechXP, and their latest package (after earlier work in Europe and N America) is Africa. This file aims to fill in the OSM data set for the entire continent, and you can see some of their work here, at the sales site. They’ve provided a copy to X+Sim+Reviews and we looked it over. Here’s the Cape Town, SA area with default XP10 OSM:

Now, here’s the area with the SceneryTechXP files added (large image, click to enlarge):

I’m not sure what’s been added, if anything, to the default autogen land-class textures, but here’s the area north of Cape Town from FL250 (large image):

Urban areas are more densely packed with structures, that much appears certain, but I’m not sure what’s been added to the land textures. Maybe the developers can chime in here in the comments and add a few insights?

At any rate, this is more a product announcement than a review. If and as we get a chance to look over more relevant urban areas we’ll get fresh images posted. Also note that XPFr has a ton of really good African airports available to fill out your African ramblings (not to mention a new file in France, LFIK + Ribérac Saint Allay, which we’ll look at soon).

+++++

And the MD11 Team has a new paint for the default 744! Pictures are worth a thousand words, aren’t they!

Anyway, signing off for now. Thanks for dropping by, and we’ll see you again soon. C

All pics from Emmsie at the FTX forum.

And deep fried, BATTERED chips. Bloody nice!

John Venema has posted some incredible previews of Orbx’s FTX Global, stop reading and view here

Oh, and more spectacular autogen images HERE.

This is due out at the middle of June, not too long to go. It’ll cost $99 for the entire planet, with another $20 for a very interesting OSM data addon that produces accurate looking streetscapes and land class usage, hmm, just like Xplane has been doing recently.

Carenado showed off its new manipulator tech:

Cool! No more barriers to using the Oculus Rift visor! Full 3d stereo and able to twiddle every actuator, I may never take off.

Just in case you’ve missed it, here’s a new recording of Rob Randazzo’s speech to FANCON where he talks about their excellent working relationship with Ben and Austin of Xplane and some similarly obliging, but very secretive developers of new simming platforms that are being worked on at this very minute. I think we are all gonna burst with anticipation! Could they be Aeroflyfs? MS Flight mkII? Who knows. Whatever they are, they must be capable or else Rob wouldn’t be teasing us. I told you 2013 would be a fun year!

Just took this pic on the way back to Herrington a minute ago, before we take a train up to NYC. Isn’t technology amazing?!

Check out this great interview with Robert Randazzo, PMDG’s CEO and all around very nice guy. He gives a charming account of his experiences working as a pilot and then working full time on his business.

In the video Robert confirms their continued working on an Xplane conversion of a secret plane. Skip to around 20:50 for where he starts to talk about this.

Even bigger news is his mentioning of a couple of secret flightsims being worked on that he seems to think will be a home sim for their products, very promising. And no, he’s not talking about P3D! 2013-14 could be a huge year folks. I personally hope someone has purchased the rights to MS Flight, that’d be a relatively smooth transition for many developers. That was an excellent sim with huge potential, nerfed by Ballmer and team.

Don’t forget to donate to Tony’s cause, severe medical costs are still a challenge. Great idea for the fly-in Mr Froogle.

Speaking of new sims, I see that Lockheed Martin has released a 64 bit SDK for P3D developers, removing the polygon limitations that used to limit P3D and FSX models. Could this be the first evidence of their imminent release of Version 2 of P3D?

Please place your bets as to the secret sims that Mr Randazzo refers to, he mentions ‘a couple of channels’. I’m busting to find out!

Here’s an excellent ground attack demonstration video by one of my favorite presenters, ‘Dslyecxi’. Can’t wait to get back and get this baby! Then the Mig-21 should be out this year as well, with the same level of extreme fidelity.

Well here we are, Chip and I, back in Annapolis after a trip from hell and back to Cape May, right at the edge and beyond of Delaware Bay.

There’s heaps to recount after already 7 days over here, however the days are so full and exhausting that I’m unable to do them full literary justice. The below pic sums up my impressions of America, from its daunting scale to friendliness and variety of attractions. Truly a must- visit destination, and all this in sleepy downtown Annapolis:

The half-pound lump cake….ON CRACKERS made me guffaw out loud, you gotta be joking mate??

Chip nearly killed me going up the Delaware, my God the US Coast Guard forecasts were monumentally bad. 5-10 knot winds and calm? More like 30 and 6 foot washing machine waves! Thank god I didn’t get seasick! Falling over in his kitchen was bad enough.

Flightsim Snippets

The flightsim world seems to be continuing nicely, with some sectors seeing ever more addons and developments happening, for better or worse.

FSBREAK closing

Some sad news I just saw is the closure of the FSBreak podcast, that came as quite a shock to me as a very early adopter.

Then again, their extremely long format of over 2 hrs was unsustainable for just Eric to support, and as Eric says, all good things eventually need to end and change is inevitable, especially when it comes to the lives behind these things- that’s just as relevant to me. Such major community inputs take up a huge amount of personal time, sustainable

In a way their closure might be good news, it’ll leave an opening for other smaller operators to cover things in more concise ways. Heck, I might look into video coverage and streaming of a few chats myself on return. Anyway, I wish Eric in particular the best of luck for the future in whatever he does, and thanks for all your hard work and innovation.

OUTERRA PROGRESS

Yes this game engine is taking an eternity to develop, but seeing this video featuring a well known Xplane developer’s plane (DDenn) flitting between the procedurally rendered forests got me very excited for the engine’s future.

There’s a fair bit of progress to be made, eg they have a developer starting to work on more varied 3d trees and terrain, as well as amazing looking rocks in the terrain. Importing real world road and other data is yet to occur. Tools for importing collada models for scenery have been implemented but I’m yet to see any evidence of convincing buildings, though this video certainly reveals the potential. As ever, a real sleeper to watch!

HOW I FEEL ABOUT XPLANE

I managed to test fly Carenado’s new 64 bit Saratoga for Xplane the other week, I enjoyed my revisit!

Certainly the plane was spectacularly good, amazing new reflections and camera controls.

I said to Chip today that the immediate impressions of Xplane’s flight model were very strong after flying P3D and DCS for so long. Really violent wind shifts, skittish handling, no real weight or inertia feel. Now don’t get me wrong, vanilla FSX is pretty ‘on rails’. But combine Active Sky 2012 weather with the excellent inertial camera effects of ezdok, together with the superior weather handling response of P3D, then you get a stable, heavy feel of flying an aircraft in moving air, very satisfying and pretty close to my own experiences of being in a GA.

Scenery continues to be my main whinge, the nuclear winter terrain and buildings being the largest failing. I’ve flown the London City to Liverpool route using UK2000′s sceneries and Orbx’s England, a truly immersive and stunning experience that is soooo satisfying and challenging. And this is before P3D version 2 that appears likely to be out this year.

WHERE IS NORCAL AND THE SAAB FROM X-aviation?

It’s May. It’ll be June soon. Obviously we don’t really care anymore, but it’s fun to remind those poor folk over at Tumbleweeds Manor. Ain’t life cruel? Maybe they’re delaying release for the new Xplane 11 soon to be announced?

IS THIS SITE DEAD?

I’ve had a few questions re this. I bet some hope that we do die!

Nope it’s not, though the good ole days of huge posts regularly will be a thing of the past. Chip will post infrequently, I will post more so but certainly not enough to replace the regular coverage of FT56′s. Think of it more as quality over quantity, and I like to think that all my posts will be of interest to those of the broader simming community, as they’ll generally cover the more significant news snippets. And as ever, any contributions from good writers are welcome.

But expect a bumper edition if NORCAL or the SAAB embryos crawl up the mammalian womb of the pregnant Wombat to suckle at the teat of us simmers’ wallets. IF we get a free review copy that is…

Keep well everyone.

Burp.

Just came back today from a full-on day’s sailing training, very difficult at first, with a more advanced learning curve in heavier weather! Since we spent most of the day ‘close hauled’, with the boat leaning over to leeward (ooh look at me, I even sound like a sailor now!), meaning away from the wind, with all us poor sods leaning back to keep the damn boat from tipping over. It really was like flying over the waves.

So after flying over the seas, I’ve come back and done some sailing in the air, sort of.

I’m exploring DCS and its Beta version of the new Flaming Cliffs 3. Really enjoying its fluid, realistic flying dynamics, exciting and satisfying control where you feel in full-charge and can almost feel the physics working with or against you.

In this video I’m flying the superb Sukhoi 33, a default plane that comes with FC3. Compared to the P-51 and A-10C its physics and systems are far simpler, but as you’ll see, it’s eminently satisfying to fly. I rarely take many planes out for such ‘joy’ flights/aerobatics in FSX especially, and admit that I find X-Plane’s aerobatics physics a little jittery for my liking (although oldies around here will know that I love doing vertical stalls in it!). But DCS, woah, as our loyal reader Jose says, its flight model really is superb. A dream to control in such fluid moves as you see here. And yes, I’ve tried the F-15, it handles like a pregnant sow compared to this beauty. C’mon DCS, give us an F-16, pronto!!

For those who are asking, yes Stephen’s move to Aerosoft does mean that our X-Plane coverage will be much lower in quantity, but as we’ve always done, we welcome one-off or more regular contributions from any of you brave souls. For any sim as well, not just X-Plane.

We will keep the site live while we have the resources (thanks to your donations), as it now houses a formidable amount of reviews, tutorials and general content, and I’ll continue to call it home, as well as Chip when he feels appropriate.

And as everyone has said, thanks to Stephen for all his work in the past, and best of luck working with Aerosoft on covering the payware side of the Xplane component of flight simulation.

Keep to the official (highly priced) tours was the order of the day. Even with this warning a few still got into taxis and went off to seek some exciting nightlife (breaking two golden rules) and where never seen again?

The second memory is that it was hot, stifling boiling jungle hot, The crime may have been cleaned up by now and the City maybe is now a better place to visit, but my guess is that the heat is still as hot as ever.

Scenery Review : Panama Tocumen International (MPTO ) “Hub of the Americas” : Santiago Butnaru

(IATA: PTY, ICAO: MPTO)

Santiago Butnaru’s latest release in Panama City brought the memories flooding back, The Canal and the heat.

Panama City is positioned on the Pacific side of the canal that separates the North and South Americas.

And the airport MPTO is situated to the east of the city.

(North-East)

(South-West)

It is great that developers don’t always choose the obvious choices of scenery to design. In fact airports like MPTO wouldn’t even be on your radar unless it was available as a quality scenery such as this.

But once you are there you suddenly see all the possibilities of how you can use it to fit in with your overall flying.

It is called the “Hub of the Americas” for a reason because it opens up routes in all directions in going to the North (Americas) or South (Americas) but also North into the Caribbean and its multitude of Islands.

I flew in from Miami and had a look at the airport from the air before landing on RWY 3R.

There are two runways that are parallel but offset, the main concrete runway (03R/21L) is 3,050 m × 45 m (10,007 ft × 148 ft) and the other (older asphalt) runway (2,682m / 8,799ft) (03L/21R) is mainly used for cargo and private flights.

In landing you have to be aware of the fixes (waypoints) because they are set very close together and it is all to very easy to be confused and you can easily set yourself up for the wrong runway.

Arriving from the East for 21R is also tricky because the mountains cover a large proportion of your arrival path, you do have a choice to either come in through the valley or complete a short turn to final for 21R

(below looking North-East)

There are a full set of charts with MPTO (19 Pages) but be aware that they are of various ages, and the new (North) pier is not even listed.

Butnaru uses ortophotos, but here they are well-integrated into the surrounding areas and the default scenery – taxiway, signage and line markings are excellent with great gradient colouring on the asphalt. Under the outer buildings the photos they can be slightly blurry if you can’t get your texture setting into the “very high” zone.

Taxiing into the main hub area you will find it is pretty chaotic and busy.

The quality of the scenery is apparent.

There is a lot of animation built into this scenery, marginal’s ground traffic is superb here…

….  but you have to wait for the trucks and baggage carts to pass and not the other way around – so bay timing is everything.

The quality of the gates are outstanding, but they are not marginal’s moving gates.

More animation is walking ramp workers!

The workers are all over the scenery doing their jobs, it looks simply brilliant.

The terminal layout is two concourses with circular star gates is noticeable by its distinctly coloured blue roof and was completely renovated in 2006.

Added new (2012) is the North Pier (Terminal Muelle Norte) which is situated off the north side of the main terminal and it provided an 12 extra gates and one of the gates can handle a A380 or B747 size aircraft.

Santiago’s specialty is glass and here he does not disappoint as the North Pier is very good, but the main terminal is excellent.

You can easily see right inside the building with really good clarity.

The depth or quality shows through in all of these aspects.

Turn the lights down and the feature is better again…

….      and the Internal aspects are now even more distinguishable and very realistic.

All the lighting is very good, there is an option included with MPTO that if you want to not use the HDR feature on framerate grounds (me, me) then you can insert/replace “mugre_general_luz_LIT.png” to give the same effect without the HDR penalty – and that makes the scenery far more adaptable if you are living on the lower power scale.

The lighting in both forms is close to perfect…  and that bring us to!

Flies!

Yes those millions of little buzzy things.

Can you get excited about flies?

Go to the tropics and all around the lights you will find clouds of flies.

Well you can now say that X-Plane has a feature that has flies on your desktop, as they buzz around the lights in a frenzy. (you can expand both images above to get a better look at the critters)

It certainly gives you a real hot tropical feel to the airport – and the idea is so simple and clever.

Signage is very good as well.

And so is the entrance point to the terminals, It is well done but all the areas are void of cars and buses.

The ATC routes have been sorted as well, so I ran three A.I. Aircraft and that filled the airport up nicely with the many placed static aircraft.

Going further North-East there are more buildings and the cargo area…

This was once the main terminal area of Tocumen until the current main terminal was built and opened on the 15th August , 1978.

Everything here is done with all the right buildings and lighting, but….

….  The area feels quite empty as the “Cargo Hub of the Americas”.

In fact once you move away from the main terminal area the buildings are fine, but there is little else.

The GA area is empty as well, and that gave me plenty of space to practise my vertical takeoffs and landings (I sometimes need all the space I can get).

I jumped into the BK-117 to go and have a look at another feature of this scenery…  The Panama Canal locks.

There are the two “Pacific Locks” and they are also known as the “Miraflores locks”.

and they look very good and are very well fitted into the default scenery.

But there is again a little empty feeling that there are no ships (and believe me this is a very busy shipping channel) or mules on the locks (little train engines that pull the ships in and out of the locks).

A real shame because of the great animation you could do here with the mules moving up and down the locks.

Routes:

Air Panama – Bocas del Toro*[5]

Air Transat – (Seasonal): Edmonton, Montréal-Trudeau, Saskatoon, Toronto-Pearson, Vancouver, Winnipeg.

American Airlines – Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami

Avior Airlines – Barcelona

Avianca – Bogotá

CanJet – Toronto-Pearson (Seasonal): Quebec City

Cayman Airways – Grand Cayman.

Condor Flugdienst Frankfurt, Santo Domingo

Copa Airlines – Aruba, Asunción, Barranquilla, Belo Horizonte-Confins, Bogotá, Boston, Brasilia, Buenos Aires-Ezeiza, Cali, Cancún, Caracas, Cartagena de Indias, Chicago-O’Hare, Córdoba, Curaçao, Guadalajara, Guatemala City, Guayaquil, Havana, Iquitos, Kingston, Las Vegas, Liberia (CR), Lima, Los Angeles, Managua, Manaus, Maracaibo, Medellín-Córdova, Mexico City, Miami, Montego Bay, Monterrey, Montevideo, Nassau, New York-JFK, Orlando, Port-au-Prince, Port of Spain, Porto Alegre, Punta Cana, Quito, Recife, Rio de Janeiro-Galeão, San Andrés Island, San José (CR), San Juan, San Pedro Sula, San Salvador, Santa Cruz de la Sierra-Viru Viru, Santiago de Chile, Santiago de los Caballeros, Santo Domingo, São Paulo-Guarulhos, St. Maarten, Tegucigalpa, Toronto-Pearson, Valencia (VE), Washington-Dulles

Copa Airlines – Colombia Barranquilla, Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali, Cartagena de Indias, Cúcuta, Guatemala City, Medellín-Córdova, Pereira, San José (CR), San Pedro Sula

Delta Air Lines – Atlanta

Dutch Antilles Express – Curaçao

Iberia – Madrid

KLM – Amsterdam

Lacsa Medellín-Córdova – San José (CR)

SBA Airlines – Caracas

Spirit Airlines – Fort Lauderdale

Sunwing Airlines – Montréal-Trudeau, Saskatoon, Toronto-Pearson[12]

TACA Airlines – San Salvador

TAME – Guayaquil, Quito

United Airlines – Houston-Intercontinental, Newark

Venezolana – Maracaibo

Looking through the list you have quite a comprehensive set of routes you can use, and the airport is great for a stopover before heading on down further South (or North).

Freight

ABSA Cargo Airline – Fortaleza, Guayaquil, Manaus, Miami, Quito

AeroSucre

Cargolux

Cielos del Perú

DHL Aviation operated by DHL Aero Expreso

FedEx Express

LAN Cargo

Líneas Aéreas Suramericanas

TAB – Transportes Aéreos Bolivianos – Miami, Santa Cruz de la Sierra-Viru Viru

UPS Airlines

Vensecar Internacional

Cargo users are also well served in the wide and varied destinations.

________________________________

Tocumen International is a great choice for a scenery, one you really would not think of as a place you would want on your maps, but once here like I said before the possibilities are endless on what you can serve up with its position and as we get more destinations now opening up in South America it can also be a vital link south.

The features here are outstanding, certainly the animation, I love buzzy airports and this is certainly the best for that with the A.I.s working well (add-in the new World Traffic plug-in and it will get a whole lot better still). The “flies” are great feature as well and the lighting is first-rate…

The central area buildings/terminals are above Santiago’s usual standard and he was always very good in doing those in any one of his sceneries…

…  an extra week however filling in the Eastern areas around the buildings with cars (carparks) and trucks and more general stuff in the freight areas and also in cars and buses front of the terminals would have made it perfect, a few GA aircraft would not go amiss either…   but anyone with an hour or two in the overlay editor could easily fix that…

Price is US$14.95 which is excellent value and…

Tocumen International is available from the .orgStore    Tocumen Intl Airport – Panama

Documents:

Charts (19 Pages)

Read me!! (2 pages)

________________________________

Rating: 3D custom : ATC YES

Location ****+4Stars (plus)

Airport Buildings *****+ 5stars

Layout ***+ 3stars (plus) (loss here is only for the outer buildings and activity)

Night Lighting *****5stars

Quality of underlays (Airport) ****4stars

Signage ****4stars

Features *****+ 5stars (plus)

OSM ***3stars

Overall ****+ 4Stars (plus)

Review by Flightime56

___________________________________________________________________

 This is my final post on the XsimReviews site, from Monday I will be doing reviews on the new Aerosoft – XP site asn-xp.aerosoft.com

But I will be reviewing there under my real name of Stephen Dutton and not as FT56 (policy).

I will of course be always around all the usual traps in looking at your work and even have some time to put some projects of my own up there. I also would like to thank everyone for their support and comments for the time I was in this space, and above all your commitment and support for the X-Plane platform….  FT56

You can give the application a try out in that will run in a demo mode which only allows you to load 15 flight plans.

If you wish to get the full World Traffic application then you can just purchase a key to unlock the full version from the .OrgStore —> World Traffic

And to buy the key it will cost you US$24.95.

Plugin updates will be available as separate downloads so you don’t have to download everything each time, and many new features will also be added… Including random traffic generation, ability to import real-world flight plans, custom SID/STAR approaches, and converters to convert flight plans from other sims for use in World Traffic.

(you control what happens on the ground)

The details as noted by Classic Jet Simulations:

General Features

Sample flight plans and ground routes are provided for KSEA. These illustrate almost all of the functionality of the application and may be used as examples for your own flights.

Several default aircraft are provided with many more to come. Users may create their own aircraft as well.

Flight plans can be grouped into zones to enable/disable flights for a specific region or to enable/disable flights for a specific vintage of aircraft. You can organize the flight plan folders however you wish and enable or disable whatever regions you are interested in.

Directional, multi-track aircraft engine sounds with doppler shift.

Optional control of X-Plane multi-player aircraft so that TCAS is functional for World-Traffic controlled aircraft.

Simple ATC system to allow you to interact with the World Traffic application so that it is aware of your position and can vector you and assign you arrival/departure runways.

Track camera lets you follow any of the World Traffic controlled aircraft, boats, and vehicles.

Flight Plans

User-defined flight plans to specify the flight path of an aircraft or a formation of aircraft.

Flight plans can be for air (including helicopters), ground, or sea traffic.

Selectable departure types for normal takeoffs or vertical departures if the aircraft thrust:weight ratio is sufficient and the first flight plan waypoint is high enough to warrant a vertical departure.

Selectable arrival types for straight-in approaches, overhead breaks, or low approaches.

Settable start times specified in zulu time or instant start meaning the flight will start as soon as X-Plane starts.

Various formation configurations.

Formation joinups after takeoff.• Settable altitudes for each steerpoint in the flight plan where altitude can be in feet above sea level or feet above ground level for terrain following flights.

Flight plans can be defined for specific aircraft tail numbers so that a specific aircraft can be defined to follow a multi-leg route.

Ground Routes

User-defined ground routes to specify specific parking locations for aircraft.

Ground routes can be specific to a general type of aircraft, a type of aircraft, or a specific tail number so you can have planes park in the parking spots you want.

Runway intersections are defined in ground routes to specify hold lines and to determine when planes are on or crossing runways.

Flight Model

Simple flight model using aerodynamics and ballistics equations from the NASA web site to provide flight models accurate enough so that you can follow the World-Traffic controlled aircraft. You can define drag coefficient, cross-sectional area, and thrust to tune aircraft performance.

Aircraft movements are programmed to look natural so you don’t see instant roll rate, pitch rate, or yaw rate changes.

Wind and turbulence affect aircraft so that they will bounce around in turbulence and crab into the wind in flight.

Afterburner thrust is settable so afterburner-equipped aircraft can accelerate quickly when required, perform vertical departures, and fly supersonic.

Larger aircraft have slower roll rates and pitch rates compared to smaller aircraft.

Angle of Attack (AOA) increases as speed decreases and flap deployment will decrease AOA.

Cruise AOA and landing/takeoff AOA can be specified for each aircraft to give reasonable AOA through the aircraft’s speed range.

Aircraft Object Animation

Custom datarefs are provided to provide your aircraft with full animation of control surfaces, landing gear, canopy, nozzle, engine blades/prop, thrust reverser, lights etc.

All types of aircraft lighting is supported and the lights will function correctly depending on the phase of flight and aircraft type. Landing lights will go on and taxi lights will go off when the aircraft taxis onto a runway for takeoff. The strobe lights will turn off when the plane arrives and turns off the runway. Cabin lights will stay and aircraft doors will stay open for a few minutes after an airliner parks until the passengers are all off the plane. Most other lighting turns off when the aircraft engines are shut down.

Application Control of Aircraft

Besides the normal flight model control of aircraft between steerpoints, the application will also

perform the following functions.• Planes are vectored on final approach to maintain sufficient spacing between other incoming

Aircraft.

Simultaneous runway operations are functional.

Collision avoidance for taxiing aircraft.

Non-military aircraft try to maintain a speed of less than 250 knots below 10,000 feet.

Planes will hold for approaching aircraft that are landing, taking off, or taxiing towards other planes.

Planes will overshoot the runway if there is another plane on it.

Planes will overshoot the runway if they can’t slow down enough or descend low enough to land.

Planes will go into holding patterns if all adequate runways are in use or if the cross wind exceeds aircraft limits.

____________________________

(Fly in formation and set your own altitudes)

Following the support program is recommended for World Traffic —-> World Traffic .X-Plane.org Forums

World Traffic is not hard to use or to install but it is something slightly different from the way we do things and following the thread you can learn how it all works.

There has been flight plans included for (default) KSEA region, which are good pointers and can be used to “reverse engineer” (love that term) on how to create your own flightplans from scratch.

There is also a section that has been created on the .org —->  World Traffic Add-Ons …

…   to save and download aircraft, flight plans, and ground routes created by other various sim users.

Menus include your own flight board, that lets you see and detail the on-going flights.

You can also ENABLE/DISABLE selected regions so you are wasting precious resources by aircraft flying in areas that you are not located.

Up and coming aircraft listed are.

General Aviation:

• 737
• 757
• A-300
• A-320
• A-340
• A-380
• Learjet45

Military

• T-38
• F-104
• F-35
• C-5
• C-130J
• B-1B

These aircraft will be bundled into low-cost aircraft packages and there will be ground-route files to be shared as well – many of the items will also be free.

Details on creating aircraft is noted in the free Manual … 

World Traffic will give us a completely new dimension that other simulator users have been using for years, and the great thing is that it has been created by one of our own developers in Greg Hofer of Classic Jet Simulations…

for any support (but try the forum first) or to contact Greg then email —>    Greg@classicjetsims.com

Technical Requirements:

Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32 or 64 bits) or MAC OS 10.3.9 (or higher) – Linux not supported at this time

X-Plane 9.7 or X-Plane 10.11 (or higher – 64 bit compatible)

SSG (Supercritical Simulations Group) have released a major update to their Embraer E-170LR.

noted as version 2 (v2) the aircraft comes in three versions:

170LRXP10v2 (standard)

170LRXP10v2HD (High-Definition)

170LRV2 XP 9.70 (X-Plane9)

This revised version has had a complete overhaul to be now on par or even better than it’s E-190LR brother (Sister?), all the enhancements that were introduced on the E190LR are all in here.

The changes include performance configuration is now the same as the E-190 but with the E-170 values and behaviours.

And it certainly feels far better in the flight performance, It was always a nice flying aircraft (except with the really early version), now however it now feels more rounded and sited in the air and the turns are with more feel and control.

Other details are:

body, stabilizers, winglets, external and internal details

new detailed paints, to note that all the old V1 liveries don’t now work and only new versions do being more HD (Hi-Def), a new set of liveries is provided and they consist of:

Air France

Air Canada

LOT

Shuttle America Star Alliance

United Express

White (paint)

The liveries were very good before but they needed to be adjusted to the new body changes, the rest of the liveries will also be changed over the next few weeks.

There is now an interior and opening doors, it is noted as “simple” but it is still very good and the passenger controls (air,light and attendant) are well done.

simple interior

pass doors opening

new lighting effects for HDR.

wing inspection

All these changes do have an effect on the framerate, and only people with power available like with the FJS Dash HD version can really use the HD version of this aircraft.

The standard version is fine for everyone else but the aircraft is now getting into big-boy territory with the likes of other very detailed and other 3d aspect aircraft and you will need to treat it as much in your render settings.

The cockpit is basically unchanged from the E-190LR version with just the extra button in the hidden monitor screen to open the doors (engines off).

All round this is significant upgrade to a worthy aircraft, SSG are very good in changing and developing their aircraft, buying or if you have already bought one or both of the E-Jets will mean that your money will go further with each update.

The Embraer E-170LR is available from the .ORGstore —-> Embraer E-170 E-Jet

US$24.95 Embraer E-170LR

or get both E-Jets

US$39.95 Embraer E-170LR + Embraer E-190LR

Flightime56

Well, first go-round at testing led me to one conclusion: using the new HD series Carenado Centurion knocked FPS way, way down…and simply changing over to the FJS 727 saw a nice improvement in FPS/performance. Turning HDR OFF and dialing back AA to 8x helped too, but one comment – concerning road density around Paris – led me to experiment with these settings first…and the results were instructive.

Let’s look at Paris with roads at default settings first, and note these are all HUGE images… so just click to enlarge and see details:

Taking off from XPFr’s LFPO/Orly, notice that airport perimeter roads are gone, and that “17th-century” rural feel I noted yesterday is only heightened with these details gone. Next, below, climbing out toward the city center and note absent roads are outlined by Rancho Cucamonga Estates housing, and the urban character of Paris is reduced when objects are set to “tons”.

Below, Paris ahead from same spot, same settings.

Now let’s look at a few “before and after” pairings. First up, roads at default:

Next, roads at “tons”:

And here we come to the first salient observation. Setting roads to “extreme” yields little additional detail, yet knocks FPS down:

So let’s look at this disparity in “settings vs performance” a little more. First, roads at tons:

And the view with roads at extreme:

So, very little difference visually, yet a hefty drop in FPS comes with moving settings up to extreme. Let’s look at one more pair:

Note that with objects set at “tons”, frames are still fluid, while at extreme you pick up some stuttering. Odd when you consider that there appears to be so little difference visually? Below, with settings dialed up FPS drops into the mid-20s…but still, this was a lot better than in the HD Carenado Centurion.

Next, let’s look at a few images around Paris with settings dialed up to extreme settings, and in Jack’s 727/2, BUT with HDR OFF. Frames remained fluid except when turning directly into the city center.

So…the moral of the story here over Paris? ACF choice has a real impact on performance with this file installed, but more importantly, so too does utilizing HDR rendering. Still, note that XPFr’s Paris landscape looks essentially the same with HDR ON or OFF, so while there’s no compelling reason to use HDR over the city, as we all know you’ll lose HDR lighting at v10 airports with it OFF. Of course, this isn’t an issue during daylight OPS but if you use this scenery file at night and at higher objects settings AND with HDR active, you’d better expect a serious performance hit or have a serious computer on hand. Still, I love XPFr’s Paris enough to put up with these limitations, and I’ll enjoy looking at what happens here in future versions of XP.

Well, this time I mean it: the car’s all packed and it’s time to head back to Annapolis. SImon & I will be posting to Awaken’s blog as we get underway at the end of the month, and with all our new systems onboard it ought to be a hilarious undertaking! Anyway, hasta later, and as always…thanks for coming along. -C