Version 8.04

As you can cell from Austin's description, the major focus for 8.04 is more systems modelling. Also, 8.04 brings back the Cessna-172, with a new V8 compatible panel.

Note: Austin got a little carried away with the systems modelling and you need an ignition switch to start turbine engines, as well as all the other stuff. This is fixed in 8.05.

NEW STUFF FOR X-Plane 8.04:

This version of X-Plane is designed to have far more systems-simulations and equipment-failure-simulations, including multiple hydraulic, electric, and vacuum systems, with failures of countless instruments and subsystems available so you can practice getting airplanes on the ground with countless things going wrong with the plane, from failed hydraulic and electrical and vacuum systems to engines that are surging randomly due to fuel-flow fluctuations, or throttles that have failed to the "wide open" position... this is great fun in the sim, and useful for training as well. In Plane-Maker, you specify which electric or vacuum system each instrument is on, so you can have the right instruments shut down in flight when an electrical bus in the airplane goes down! We also have new detail with APU's and bleed-air simulations to get aircraft and engine start much more realistic, right from the first APU start-up!

Here are the specifics:

Multiple Hydraulic and Electric and Vacuum Systems

2 hydraulic systems, with hydraulic pump and hydraulic containment failures, and a new check box in Plane-Maker to determine whether the hydraulic systems are pressurized by the engines or not. Of course this is usually checked TRUE for most airplanes, but craft like the Space Shuttle and X-15 have hydraulic systems that work whether the engines are running or not! This check box is set in the "equipment" screen in Plane-Maker.
As well, you can have hydraulic OVERPRESSURE failures as well!
2 electrical systems now simulated! One fails? You may have another for SOME systems.
2 vacuum systems now simulated! One fails? You may have another for SOME systems.
Look at the panel editor in Plane-Maker...
You can now specify which vacuum system or electrical system each instrument is on. This will determine which instruments are brought down with which systems failures. The right instruments will fail with the right systems.
Look at the panel editor in Plane-Maker...
You can now specify which cockpit side (pilot or copilot) each instrument is on. This will determine which settings apply to which instruments. The barometric pressure, for example, can be different for the pilots and copilots altimeters!

APU and Pressurization Systems Modelling for Engine-Start and Pressurization:

The APU is more fully modelled... now you have "ON", "OFF", and "START" for the APU. Put it to START and let it start up, then let the switch come back to ON. The APU is now supplying bleed air and generator voltage to the rest of the airplane. What do you do with that? Read on!

BLEED AIR (button for the panel is in pressurization folder in the panel-editor) is now more fully modelled... you can select bleed air as: off, left, both, right, or APU. Bleed air is used for both starting jet engines, and pressurizing the airplane if you have pressurization controls. Here's how it works:

If the bleed air is set to OFF, then you will not be able to pressurize the airplane, or start any jet engines.

If the bleed air is set to LEFT, then you will not be able to pressurize the airplane, or start any jet engines unless the LEFT engine is running.

If the bleed air is set to RIGHT, then you will not be able to pressurize the airplane, or start any jet engines unless the RIGHT engine is running.

If the bleed air is set to BOTH, then you will not be able to pressurize the airplane, or start any jet engines unless the first TWO engines are running.

If the bleed air is set to APU, then you will not be able to pressurize the airplane, or start any jet engines unless the APU is running.

So, to do a full start up in X-Plane (and a real jet, by the way):

In Plane-Maker, equip your plane with both an APU (buttons folder) and a full bleed air knob (pressurization folder).
run X-Plane and start the APU ("start", then "on")
set the bleed air to APU so you have bleed air coming from a running APU
hit the engine starts to start the engines set the bleed air to BOTH to get bleed air from the engines for the pressurization and any in-flight starting
turn off the APU

This is how you start up a real plane, and how you do it in X-Plane if you equip the plane with APU and bleed-air switches.

Question: How can I start the engines in flight if they are not running, and the APU is off?
Answer: whatever engine IS running will provide the bleed-air, and the engines windmill even if shut down.. 10% N1 is enough to drive the systems.

New Failure-Modelling:

New engine failure type option: engine fire. If you specify an engine fire, then the engine smokes as it fails... regular engine failure does not leave a trail of smoke though.

New Instrument failures: Specific Instruments. This lets you fail specific instruments on the panel, so if you have 2 attitude indicators, for example, you can fail just one of them. This is already possible, of course, by putting them on different electrical or vacuum systems, but this is a way you can fail any instrument you like without that failure affecting other instruments if you like.

Pitot system failure resulting in airspeed indication error.
Engine SEIZURE, and engine INDICATION failures.
Low battery failure, resulting in inability to get up to starting N1.
Transponder can fail.
Left and right brakes can fail! Awfully fun on landing in planes with free-castoring gear!
The throttle can fail to low, current, or max setting!
APU pressurization failure... so you can't start the engines on a jet.
Cabin depressurization!
ITT runaway, compressor stall, and fuel-flow fluctuation failures... all with varying results in power output.

New Instruments:

New instrument type: ALTERNATE AIR. This lets air into the engine through an alternate path... with a 5% power reduction due to the inefficient path the air must take to get to the engine!
New instrument type: fuel pump annunciator, along with better fuel-pressure simulation: The fuel pressure and fuel flow are properly affected by the fuel pump.
More pressurization instruments to simulate more aircraft.
See the pressurization folder in the Panel-Editor in Plane-Maker.
New autopilot button: Instrument source. This can either use the pilot or copilot-side instruments for autopilot reference.
Remember that in Plane-Maker you can specify if each instrument is pilot-side or copilot-side, primary or secondary system.
New angle of attack indicator: Round with settable maximum angle, above which the stall warning goes off.
New instrument: angle-of-attack anti-ice.
New instrument: Pilot and co-pilot side pitot heat, each for the respective system.
New instruments: transmission oil pressure and temperature.
New button for the panels: Jet Sync. This is an engine sync that can be set to "fan", "off", or "turbine". This simply syncs the fans or turbines on your jets, getting all the engines to follow engine #1 exactly.
Ignition on/off... this could be used for old World-War 1 airplanes that had separate ignition and starter switches, or modern jets that have ignition that is simply turned on or off... though you must still hit the starter to turn the engine over for starting!
New autopilot annunciator panel, with all the terminology and annunciators for typical GA planes with good equipment

New General Features:

NMEA string output: drive any (real) moving map or other piece of hardware or software from X-Plane, where X-Plane acts like a (real) GPS to that device. (currently Windows-version only)
In the "Other Aircraft" screen, you can enter the heading, altitude, and speed ratio for the OTHER AIRCRAFT for the FORMATION FLYING option in the LOCATION menu.
New joystick button for straight ahead view when in 3d cockpit view.
Special Controls in Plane-Maker:
Flaps with pitch and roll can now be customized to apply to either flaps 1 or 2 or both.
As well, they can be set to only phase in above 50% control deflection if you like.
Check out the Special Controls screen in Plane-Maker... just like you can have the slats automatically deploy near the stall, now you can have the FLAPS do the same!
Custom afterburner texture now possible per aircraft... see the example plane... the filename is simply airplane_name_flame.png. Do any afterburner or rocket textures you like for any plane!
Glider winches are 950 meters, as per reality.
Glider winches disconnect if the cable angle ever gets too steep, as in reality.
Glider winches automatically disconnect if the line forces get way too high.
New RMI type: ADF-1 VOR-2. This is a useful addition to many simple panels... you get an ADF and second VOR in one instrument... nice to complement an HSI that shows VOR-1 complete with glideslope. Now, of course, this whole "position-fix/vor radial" thing is a ridiculous old circus-stunt the from medieval days... any plane should just be using GPS with moving maps and ILS in this day and age, but if you want old-school, here it is!
The 8 and 0 looked similar on the FMS in earlier versions... close enough that someone thought that 87.8 miles was 7.8 miles! He reported the bug as an error in the FMS, saying that the FMS gave too low a readout... CLASSIC mis-direction by a computer!!! In fact, it was only the FONT that was confusing him... so the fonts have now been improved.

Flight-Model Refinements:

New fuel-flow modelling... Enter the idle and max SFC in Plane-Maker to get the fuel-flow right at a wider variety of flight conditions.

Turning off (or failing) the FADECs on non-helicopter aircraft will cost you 3% throttle, as will happen with real jet engines when the FADEC fails or is turned off.

General Refinements:

Real-Weather now checks the entire planet, not just USA. It's about time!

HUD goes to 90 degrees... a surprisingly common request... this will be used more for going straight UP than straight DOWN, I hope!

X-Plane will now load any CUSTOM scenery files with precedence over any DEFAULT scenery files... regardless of who is DSF, and who is ENV. If you have custom DSF AND ENV, or default DSF AND ENV, then in that case DSF takes precedence for any given area.

The level-of-detail of rendered objects is handled a bit more precisely

Your airplane is NOT drawn any more in the "straight down" view... if you have a nice 3-D cockpit, you would just see the COCKPIT FLOOR when you looked down in 803! Oops!!!!

On the HSIs and VORs, the glideslope flag is only visible when an ILS frequency is selected.

Cool New Planes:

I have included a new folder called "Austin's Designs" in the "Aircraft" folder with some interesting designs of mine... be sure to read the readme in that folder.

Check out the new CL-415 in the Seaplanes folder... the plane is still in development, but this is a great start! Be sure to hit control-o to enter the virtual cockpit mode and look around the cockpit in flight! http://www.quality-planes.com/KRISS/CL-415/

Bug-Fixes:

Visual wind-vectors (hitting /-key a bunch of times) plot in right direction.

Custom terrain textures don't have little annoying color bands out in the Ocean.

Nosewheel transitions the steering at the proper speeds

Airport flattening flattens airports more.

FMS shows proper distance along your flight plan.

The VIEW location no longer effects the thermals! Oops!

Airports saved properly in World-Maker.

Tech-Notes:

Note: I am computing the fuel-flow a bit differently at idle now, now considering the internal engine friction and pumping losses when computing fuel flow at idle... this is more realistic of course, but this means you will have to tweak your SFC (specific fuel consumption, or fuel flow per unit horsepower) in the engine screen in plane-maker to get the idle fuel flow just right. Remember, the idle SFC is the LEFT of the two SFC numbers in the engine screen, second tab.

Note: If you do custom cockpit design with custom HSI TEXTURES (there are probably only about 3 or 4 people that fit that description, but I am notifying anyway) I have added 2 new slots to the mechanical (but not glass) HSI-layer-2 images... this is for new "NAV" and "HDG" flags for the HSI... be sure to add these to your custom PNG files, if you made any.

I changed a few filenames, which will require any aircraft-designers to change a few filenames for their custom instruments in a few rare cases... If you have a custom "RMI_N12GPS_GA.png" then you should change it to "RMI_N12_GA.png"... ditto that for the BC and HM versions of that instrument.