Version 8.10

• Custom LIT instruments are now possible! See the example plane for an example! You can now have custom LIT panels, and custom LIT instruments.. every one of the 4 layers can have a LIT version! Cool! You can really go wild with NITE-LIT panels now!

• New burner enable button! Turn this OFF and you can punch the throttle to the stops on afterburner-equipped planes WITHOUT the afterburner kicking in... good when you want full military power, but no burners using all your fuel... then flip the burner switch ON when you are ready for maximum kick.

• New Angle of Attack gage: stall reference... this is an easy way to tell if you are about to stall... it is conveniently labelled with arcs for desired approach angle of attack, and stall angle of attack!

• New autopilot: S-Tec 55, common in many planes, including the Cirrus SR-22.

• New GPS: Garmin 430 instrument, common in many planes, including the Cirrus SR-22. (Note: This is a somewhat SIMPLIFIED Garmin right now... if we tried to program every function in the REAL unit then we would not get X-Plane 8.10 for another year! Right now you can use the Garmin to tune radios, enter GPS destinations, get a moving map, look at the destination airport runways and altitude and frequencies, and get speeds as well as descent and time enroute profiles: In short, everything you need to go GPS-direct. All of this is done exactly like the real Garmin 430. What we do NOT do is the million OTHER things the real Garmin does, like SIDs and STARs, save flight plans, and save waypoints. This is stuff almost nobody would use and the interface is just too SMALL for anyone to read it if we went into that much detail! Bottom line: We simulate the amount that you use 99% of the time in the real airplane.

• New autopilot displays: OBS-1 and OBS-2. These are mechanical, Boeing-style displays, just like the heading displays. We already have rheostats to CHANGE the OBS, so the rheostats combined with the displays give total OBS control to you in an autopilot console.

• Cool new instrument for the cockpit: tailwheel lock! Put the handle in the UP position and the tail-wheel will FREE-CASTOR. Put the handle in the DOWN position and the tail-wheel will LOCK IN THE CENTER. A good test of your skills and X-Plane's flight model is to experiment with various tail-wheel options while trying to take off and land!

• Cool new equipment-failure options: Gear and flap ACTUATION SYSTEMS (be it electric or hydraulic) When you trigger those failures, the gear and flaps will stay in their current position, UNTIL YOU PUMP THEM DOWN MANUALLY WITH THE NEW EMERGENCY GEAR AND FLAP PUMP BUTTONS! Hit those (mouse or assignable joystick button) as many times as you specify in Plane-Maker (10? 50? 100?) to get the gear and/or flaps down after an actuation system failure. It's kind of fun watching the gear and flaps slowly jerk down as you pump! (of course, it's easier to hit the mouse or joystick button 100 times than crank a big pump 100 times!)

• The total-energy variometer now runs smoother, and has a mild delay, like the real instrument.

• Radar altimeter now has custom angular limits assignable in Plane-Maker, so if you get really excited over exact replicas of strange radar altimeters, your day has come! (well, some guy DID request it!)

• New N1 smaller engine instrument that shows 1/10s of a percent of N1!

• New N2 smaller engine instrument that shows 1/10s of a percent of N2!

• New APU N1 instrument, and we have APU SOUND now as well... of course you can customize it like any other sound... look in the RESOURCES:SOUNDS folder for the example.

• New instrument panel type: FIGHTER IFR. This is just like the fighter cockpit but with more space allocated to the instrument panel so you can get more instruments in there.

• New Directional Gyro type: LINEAR. This is a really old-style type that looks like a compass.

• New Compass type: ROUND. This is a really old-style type that looks like a directional gyro!

• New instruments: aileron, elevator, and rudder standalone deflection indicators. These are in the "supplement" folder, and are mechanical indicators that show your control deflections. These are used in the (real) Concorde. These shows the final, actual flight control deflections, so they will NOT perfectly track the joystick in aircraft that have fly-by-wire (or stability-augmentation) systems! We have linear AND round control indicators available.

• We have had fuel transfer selectors to go TO a certain tank... now we have fuel selectors to go FROM the selected tank!

• New instrument: Fuel indicators that show the TOTAL FUEL ON BOARD, summing up all the tanks for you.

• New DIGITAL oil presure and temperature instruments in the "engine supplement" folder.
  
  
• Rotor-brake added... grab it in Plane-Maker for your plane.
  
  
• Afterburner button is now per-engine.. you will need as many buttons as engines to turn them all on and off.
  

NEW PHYSICS TUNING:

• Next level of navigation realism: The NAVAIDS now flicker and wander around near the edge of their reception range, as the real ones do! Cool! As well, the localizers and glideslopes will NOT always go out of range at the same time, so you can have a localizer capture on an ILS even though the GLIDESLOPE is not received yet, or is barely received, and thus wandering around. This happens in the real plane, and is a major cause of high blood pressure when shooting an ILS in actual instrument conditions.

• While we are talking about flickering signals, the star colors tuned, with a bit of star TWINKLING as well!

• Better autopilots on ILS, localizer, and VOR intercepting and tracking.

• Better flight-director response as well... more accurate, and more like the real airplane.
  

FLIGHT-MODEL ENHANCEMENTS:

• Incredibly cool technology: Weight-shifting to change the CG in flight! We have had "weight shift" in the special controls for some time, but now we take it to the next level:
  

• We have "weight shift" in the weight and balance screen in Plane-Maker now so we can most quickly see and change it for the aircraft. This allows you to enter the max allowable weight of a pilot in a hang-glider, for example.

• We have a "center of gravity" indicator as an available instrument (in the "Supplement" instruments folder) so we can see the current CG. This allows you to monitor the CG in planes like the Concorde that require fuel to be pumped fore and aft in flight.

• We have a new fuel transfer selector now to transfer between 2 tanks, to quickly and easily pump fuel fore and aft in flight, monitoring the (changing) CG indicator as the fuel is pumped.

• So, we can now shift weight either with joystick control or by pumping fuel, with the ability to enter any shifting weight amount and see the center of gravity indicator change. Cool!

• More accurate thrust, and windmilling, of jet engines... the inlets slow the airflow to keep the engines from overspeeding at supersonic speeds... This is what real inlets do, and is now done in the sim.

• As well, the air DENSITY into the engines across a wide range of Mach numbers has been improved, recovering total pressure when BELOW the max inlet efficient Mach number, and suffering normal shock losses when ABOVE that number.

• OIL COOLERS get ram-air effect, just like the engines, for cooling now.

• Differential left and right deflections for rudders! Why? Because planes like the Long-EZ have 2 rudders (one per wingtip) and each one deflects ONLY ONE WAY. Now you can get the rudders just perfect for those planes.

• Just like we have 2 sets of ailerons and rudders, now we have 2 sets of elevators!

• Then, to REALLY expand your options, look at the JOYSTICK AXIS ASSIGNMENT SCREEN... there are now "pitch 2", "roll 2", and "heading 2" options... why? Well, set any joystick axis you want to the "2" settings, and that joystick axis will control only the SECOND ailerons or the SECOND elevators or the SECOND rudders (remember, you have ailn 2, rudd 2, and elev 2 in Plane-Maker now), so you can have one joystick controlling the primary flight controls, and a second joystick controlling the secondary set! Strange? Yes. But possible! If you do NOT assign any of your joystick axis to the secondary controls, then the secondary control just follow the primary joystick input, just like always.

• Enter the speed and altitude and heading for placement on the PLANET map as well... these numbers are used whenever no airport is found nearby.

• Lift fans work differently now: the fan is geared directly to the engine compressor stage, so the fan does NOT lag behind the engine in speeding up and slowing down, but instead tracks the engine N1 perfectly, as is the case in the real F-35.

• Better ground-effect modelling: Now we model the GROUND EFFECT of the DOWNWASH from one wing onto the other as well! This makes airplane-handling more realistic in the pitch-response in the flare.

• Better aspect-ratio determination, now considering the various variable-sweep/taper combinations across the span of the wing and tail.

• Major improvement in joystick handling for joysticks that have drifting pots: There is no longer a joystick "null zone". Instead, it is a joystick CENTER. Center your joystick when in the second joystick tab and that location will be used as the center of action of the joystick! This give center-point accuracy with immediate response on either side, unlike a nullzone where you lose control accuracy because of a non-centering stick! This way is much better!

• Refinement of speedbrake model.

• Refinement of the water model: waves are a bit more randomized now, as in nature.

• Refinement of the fuel-flow model.

• Refinement of the fuselage sideforce and vertical-force model.
  

SCENERY ENHANCEMENTS:

• The VASI and PAPI approach glidepath lights are now only visible from a 30 degree approach cone either side of the runway, as in reality. Various scenery improvements in rendering technology, to prepare for the big global-scenery upgrade that we are working on now.

• Different cirrus and stratus cloud textures per layer for more variety. Look at the new cloud puff pngs file if you want to customize cloud textures... You have 4 cloud puffs in one image... X-Plane will randomly select different puffs in the PGN file for different parts of the cloud in the sim, with a tendency to use the puffs at the top of the png file towards the top of the clouds!
  

GENERAL FEATURES:

• Track-IR support! Just hit 'ctrl-o' when in the cocokpit and look around when wearing your track-IR headset and you can look around while you fly. (www.naturalpoint.com)
  

• New feature in Plane-Maker... all the WING editing screens now have a "snap to" feature, letting you snap any wing to any other wing, exactly, with a single selection of what wing you wish to snap to!
  

• INCREDIBLE new feature: X-Plane will now work flawlessly with a REAL Garmin 430 radio!
  
  How?

1. Get a REAL Garmin-430 radio (from Garmin or an authorized dealer) and solder a switch inside the unit to drop it into SIMULATION mode. You will NOT want to do this with a unit in a real airplane (you would void the warranty and certification, and how would you use the G430 for regular flight again?), so you will want to get a real Garmin 430 that you can plug into X-Plane... this costs about $10,000 though! So, your first step is to get a real Garmin 430 from Garmin or an authorized dealer and solder the switch into simulation mode.
2. Take a REAL Garmin 430
   Plug the Garmin into the com-port of your computer. This Garmin 430 radio will now take input from X-Plane via com-port in your computer instead of satellites in the sky! Cool!

Finally, you can practice using your REAL Garmin 430 in a flight simulator... this is a first: NO OTHER FLIGHT SIM DOES THIS. The training potential here is huge: Garmins are a bit tricky to use with their HUGE functionality, so practicing for free on the sim is INCREDIBLY VALUABLE. The alternative is to learn to use the radio while you are hauling across the sky in your Cirrus burning 15 or 20 gallons per hour at 200 miles per hour just to learn how to push a few electrons around... THAT IS JUST PLAIN DUMB! Flight schools and anyone else that wants to train pilots with Garmin 430's on the ground rather than in the air burning fuel like crazy and racing across the sky should grab a (real) Garmin 430 (but not out of the airplane they rent.. again: you will have to open it up and soldier a switch into simulation mode) and a copy of X-Plane right away... the training benefits will be huge, and the safety and environmental impacts of learning how to use the complex, quirky radio on the ground rather than in the air with the engine gulping gas are significant! EVERYONE should learn how to use a G430 this way: in an excellent flight sim, on the ground, with zero stress, zero noise, zero distraction, zero fuel burn, and zero risk. Then, once you have mastered the 430 on the GROUND, it is time to go flying!

• F5 and F6 keys control prop pitch for all prop types now... collective, direct-control pitch, whatever.

• Take a look at the landing gear screen (tab-2) in Plane-Maker... check a "start in water" box there for your flying boats if you like!

• Cinema verite for the external shots... the camera is held by a camera-man in those cases. ...and, while working on the cameras, the spot-view starts farther back from the craft, so big ships like the Hindy can do a total fly-by.

• World-Maker can go into 3-D mode... pretty cool!

• Plane-Maker section-editing is handled a tiny bit differently... the nodes will NOT "jump" to the mouse-click area when you are editing them... instead, Plane-Maker "auto-adapts" to your mouse-click location and only moves the node as much as you move the mouse! This applies to section-editing mode only.

• Plane-Maker automatically sets the decimal places for the SFC to a reasonable value for that engine type.

• The 3-D flight-path color (o-key to activate it) changes based on the ambient lighting conditions to always be visible.

• Maps are smarter about when to plot DME frequencies.

• Glideslope indicator lights on the ground (both VASI and PAPI) are now tuned per airport to be accurate for the actual commanded slope of that particular airport.

• You can now enter a MAX frame-rate in the rendering options screen if you like... just enter a number LOWER than your machine can really handle and you will always run at exactly that frame-rate.

• Cockpit designers: look in the NAV DISPLAYS folder at the various VOR instruments... we now have TEXT files for all those VORs to specify the deflection ranges for all the VORs so you can customize the deflections.

• Com-port signals are now faster.. you will get less, or no, pausing when using the outputting to moving maps, Garmin 430 radios in simulation mode, PFC hardware, etc.

• Wind noise: The PITCH is based on the TRUE airspeed, and the VOLUME is based on the indicated airspeed... more realistic, I think.

• New "High-Speed" map tab in the map output screen to get more quickly-responding maps... though without the terrain details.

• New text-file line in the HUD Horizon instrument... pitch reference offset from center, used to draw the pitch-ref bars farther down than up, or vice-versa.
  

• Plane-Maker flashes the currently-editing wing in the editing screens so you can quickly see which wing or body you are trying to edit!

• Visual force-vectors (/ key) are now scaled for the area of each element, giving a lift distribution on the flying surfaces that is more intuitive to look at.

• View to show cockpit and exterior of craft at once is back.. ctrl-\

• New option in the "Special" menu to show the name of each instrument in the cockpit as you hold the mouse over it motionless for a second.

• The mileage scales are back on the maps... those were removed when we went to all-3-d technology, but are back now!

• Now you can enter a minimum CONTROL DEFLECTION TIME in the "Controls" window in Plane-Maker. This is useful for controls that can only move at a certain RATE, as is the case with hydraulic control systems. A fun experiment is to load your favorite airplane up in Plane-Maker, enter a minimum control-deflection time of 4 seconds, and see if you can still fly the plane... can you? This is effectively a "drunk pilot" simulator... you are always running a few seconds behind... but if your skills are sharp enough, you should still be able to fly well... I can! Can YOU???

• A commonly-requested autopilot feature: You now have separate GLIDESLOPE, ALTITUDE, and VNAV autopilot buttons. GLIDESLOPE follows the glideslope once it is intercepted. ALTITUDE follows the altitude you have entered in the altitude-entry box. VNAV follows the FMS altitude, whatever that may be of course, you may toggle between modes at will, and you can arm the GLIDESLOPE while in ALTITUDE or VNAV... the GLIDESLOPE will take over once the GLIDESLOPE needle comes through center position.

• More data output variables!

• Frame-rate improvements in the orbital rendering.

• Better internet-connections between multiple computers running X-Plane now... slower machines can still keep up with faster ones... it used to be a problem if multiplayers had machines running at different speeds, or external visuals were running slower than master machines, as the slower machines simply could not keep up... this is now fixed: the slower machines still process every message, so they never fall behind.
  
  
• The panel vertical scrolling is now held even when you pan or otherwise switch views.
  

• ATC refinement: Use the current baro setting in your acf when below 18,000 feet, and 29.92 when above 18,000 ft.

• Networking: External visuals go into pause mode when they get no data.

• Hit enter to close the airport-selection windows AND GO TO THAT AIRPORT. Just close the window with a mouse click to AVOID airport placement

• World-Maker always shows airports in airport mode

• Startup airport when you start the sim is no longer the last airport you were CLOSE to, but instead the last airport YOU MANUALLY ASKED TO GO TO FROM A MENU.

• Battery voltage now indicates like in a real plane: the CENTER of the indicator is nominal.

• Note for people setting system failures with UDP messages: setting system FAILURES using the UDP "FAIL" message is now done slightly differently... see the udp reference html doc for the new spec.

BUG-FIXES:

• Moon phase SHOULD be correct for the date
  

• Negative flap deflections are OK... and FUN! Take a look at "Austin's Private Flyer"... it has huge, heavily-reflexed flaps... raise the flaps to the upper (reflexed) position if you are too fast on final approach and watch the plane drop out from underneath you! RAISE the nose WAY UP to hold lift, getting drag from the fuselage and leading half of the wing. You are now bleeding off energy at a tremendous rate from the wing and fuselage hitting the air at a high angle. Does this sound familiar? It should! This is very similar to the "Feathering" concept used by SpaceShip One!
  

• Field-of-view tweaked slightly, to be more accurate
  

• The art stab system is now kept within control-deflection limits no matter the craziness of the art stab constants or the flight condition.
  

• The "create object from aircraft" option in Plane-Maker now does a better job, handling strange cases like offset bodies perfectly.
  
  
  

Version 8 Overview

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