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Post by Admin on Jul 14, 2023 19:42:00 GMT
[UPDATE - 13SEP03] There's just been an announcement from X-Aviation, the IXEG publisher stating that the X-Plane 12 version of the aircraft will be available on the 15th September..... Work on my Air Manager panels has been picked up again - I will of course have to test everything with X-Plane 12. Here's a composite image showing current progress. This will be the most complete set of cockpit panels at time of initial release. Note that these screenshots have been made using the aircraft in X-Plane 11, I'm hoping that a new Air Manager feature will allow improvements to EFIS display in the newer sim.  For those of you who hanker after clockwork gauges I am also working on the cockpit as ordered originally by Southwest, Continental and Delta. The basics are working already and the non-EFIS panel can now be used to navigate the "old-fashioned" way, and of course the aircraft will still happily follow the FMC. I need to hook up FMC Leg data to the HSI, that's possible at the moment, though datarefs striaght out of the FMC would be much more helpful. This is the Delta panel layout, Continental's is slightly different as you'll see in the next post (also with updated instrument graphics).  |
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Post by Admin on Sept 13, 2023 7:37:12 GMT
IXEG has a release date, and Murphy's law has kicked in - I have family commitments which will delay me getting my hands on the XP12 version for a few days! To pique interest here's the Continental non-EFIS Captain's panel running the IXEG in LNAV mode. I had to pull a few "tricks" to get around the lack of data output from the IXEG FMC, using the same route plan data which is loaded into the FMC, and doing several calculations within the HSI itself. It works great, though with some limitations if you went "off piste", and adds about 30 seconds to the pre-flight process. Of course if those internal FMC datarefs become available when IXEG release their planned FMC update they can be fed directly into the HSI. So fingers crossed, and more info in about 10 days or so!!  |
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Post by Nomad on Sept 23, 2023 3:55:12 GMT
I am eagerly watching this page for release.
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Post by jrodcer on Oct 2, 2023 18:49:07 GMT
Hello, my name is Juan, great work, waiting for new news, thanks
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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2023 8:15:38 GMT
I have internet again! However I've a lot of catching up to do; this has delayed me quite a bit. I did manage to get some things done which didn't require a connection, and here's how the centre pedestal now looks, which I'm pretty happy with.  |
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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2023 8:35:24 GMT
*** UPDATE ON MY PLANS FOR THE IXEG PANELS *** This IXEG is proving to be very frustrating to try and model with Air Manager. The lack of certain datarefs and the way other datarefs are defined makes life difficult, but I'm finding a few workarounds. Also I'm really not happy with performance at the moment with the Air Manager 4.2 Beta. My thoughts right now are to temporarily admit defeat and not use Air Manager to replicate the EFIS screens, and instead revert to XTextureExtractor. This is the first aircraft that I've tried to cover in one go, and the reality is that it's too much to successfully achieve without retaining an unacceptable number of bugs. This is quite a different beast to modelling "simple" GA aircraft. I'm going to split the project into separate components - Main Instrument Panel, Overhead and Pedestal, and for the time being I will not include the FMC. There are a few other solutions for cockpit builders to provide the FMC, including the very popular WebFMC made by greenarcstudios.com. I see they've increased their price now for the XP12 version, but hey that's capitalism and it's still a great product and very good value for money. I'm not saying that I'll never release the FMC, but if I hold a release until I'm happy enough another year will pass. I need to get my mojo back after the last few weeks and I'm hoping that if I go with the new plan you'll see some more substantial news very soon. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2023 15:17:13 GMT
I've been diverted onto other things, but believe me the Air Manager panels for the IXEG will get to the point where I'll release them! One other area I'm looking at is the MCP, and the older electro mechanical version fitted to early Classics. Top image is the digital version, mirroring what IXEG has modelled, the mechanical version shown at bottom. I still need to code everything and model the A/P Engage paddle levers, hence the yellow silhouette place holders. To my mind the older unit has a lot more character.  *** UPDATE *** My bad. After more investigation it looks like only the 737-200Advs were fitted with the mechanical MCPs, and the original non-EFIS 737-300s had digital displays. So here we go, this is the alternate version.  |
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Post by glidescope on Nov 20, 2023 21:08:08 GMT
*** UPDATE ON MY PLANS FOR THE IXEG PANELS *** This IXEG is proving to be very frustrating to try and model with Air Manager. The lack of certain datarefs and the way other datarefs are defined makes life difficult, but I'm finding a few workarounds. Also I'm really not happy with performance at the moment with the Air Manager 4.2 Beta. My thoughts right now are to temporarily admit defeat and not use Air Manager to replicate the EFIS screens, and instead revert to XTextureExtractor. This is the first aircraft that I've tried to cover in one go, and the reality is that it's too much to successfully achieve without retaining an unacceptable number of bugs. This is quite a different beast to modelling "simple" GA aircraft. I'm going to split the project into separate components - Main Instrument Panel, Overhead and Pedestal, and for the time being I will not include the FMC. There are a few other solutions for cockpit builders to provide the FMC, including the very popular WebFMC made by greenarcstudios.com. I see they've increased their price now for the XP12 version, but hey that's capitalism and it's still a great product and very good value for money. I'm not saying that I'll never release the FMC, but if I hold a release until I'm happy enough another year will pass. Would it be possible to, rather than using XTextureExtractor, have the classic instruments from your 732 panel (which I enjoy very much)? I would rather have a "scenario" in which my airline purchased a 733 without 'fancy Z80/80286 chipset' options, so the cockpit looks like a hybrid of -200 and -300, at least until Air Manager 4.2 is ironed out. I understand this might not be an option for everyone, but since I've managed to avoid XTextureExtractor in my panels so far, and I'd rather stick with older analog gauges than burden my system with another third-party utility. And my general comment on the subject of WebFMC, if you have an old tablet that can run a browser, this is way to go for most of airlines that use FMS in XPlane. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 21, 2023 12:33:02 GMT
I'll put a video up on Youtube, but in the meantime it looks like the latest Beta of Air Manager now works as it should. I have Captain and FO EADI and EHSI running and also the 2 CDU screens, so everything works within Air Manager (no need for XTextureExtractor any more). There seems to be negligible frame rate loss. Not sure if image quality has improved, or if I cleaned my glasses, but it looks better now as well. WEBFMC is still of course an option if you want to use it for the CDUs, and when IXEG finish their rewrite of the FMC I'll probably release my Air Manager coded version. It actually now works great, and lets me do some customs things also, but I will hold off releasing the AM CDU until IXEG has done their update as I believe there will be a lot of internal coding changes. The analogue cockpit has other differences other then the 732Adv-style instruments, and it has been "interesting" coding things to work with the IXEG EFIS cockpit. The centre pedestal is only two-bays wide, there is the AFDS and the MCP is different, for example. But I am building 3 different typres of panel to check everything - a "standard" EFIS panel (which is slightly different to Lufthansa's panel which IXEG modelled, and non-EFIS cockpits based on Continental and Delta layouts. I am now really enjoying flying the IXEG through Air Manager. I'll be packing up the instruments over the next few days, and baring a major issue I will try and release in a timescale of weeks rather than months. I'm going back to releasing a complete cockpit in one go, not components. Night lighting will not be 100% implemented straight away. It's about 75% done and that can be upgraded section by section after release. There are 2 issues to note, which I will be making clear to anyone wanting to purchase - 1. Mouse click and hold does not work with the IXEG (works fine with Felis and FJS). I have fudged a repeat function which holds a switch for a second-or-so, it works but it's not perfect. 2. IXEG does not provide actuators for many of the knobs - eg sector knobs on the MCP. I manipulate them by editing datarefs. With the XP12 version of the aircraft it is clear that mouse-clicking, or turning a Knobster, too fast in AM confuses the IXEG. So you cannot "spin" the knobs, they have to be deliberately turned relatively slowly. If IXEG introduces commands it may hopefully be possible to get around this. Once you get used to it it's fine, but like I say you cannot spin the knobs. *** EDIT *** I uploaded a test/preview instrument which displays the captain's EFIS screens in Air Manager (version 4.2 BETA 30 is required) so anyone can check how the screens will look and run on their system. EFIS-TESTAnyhow that's it for now, more positive, and I'll see how quickly I can get this released, keeping quality high and without there being too many unnecessary bugs present. |
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Post by isivev on Dec 1, 2023 7:51:16 GMT
HellO!
Waiting patiently for this to be released, as it will be a dream come true. Can you advise if your panels will work with IXEG on XP11 ? I`m asking as for some reason I have fps problems with IXEG and Gizmo64 on XP12 and for the moment I`m downgraded to the older sim in order to fly it without issues.
Thank you in advance!
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Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2023 9:56:42 GMT
Hi Isivev, thanks for the question.
I will check against XP11, but NOT until after I've released the initial package, I don't want to add further delay.
I have a few thoughts with how these may or may not work with XP11 but - WHAT I'M SAYING BELOW HAS NOT BEEN TESTED AND MAY NOT BE FACTUALLY CORRECT!
1. You will not of course be able to "Stream", so EFIS screens, the CDU screens, clocks and the OAT-TAT-TAS gauges will definitely not work. XTextureExtractor can be used for the EFIS and CDU screens, or WebFMC is an option for the CDUs. I have older versions of the clock and OAT gauge which provide partial functionality.
2. There are some datarefs which IXEG has introduced with XP12, which will not be present in XP11, so some gauges may not work. At the moment I think this will only affect the Autoflight Warning (AFDS in the non-EFIS cockpit) displays, but there may be more. 95% of the code was built with the XP11 version, so should still work with it.
3. Lighting - Laminar completely changed lighting in XP12. I am working my lighting more like the real world. There's a big bright light outside which is on during the day, goes out at night, and controls ambient lighting - the sun. So I read ambient light and that determines whether my panels go dark or not. To light up an instrument or panel inside a cockpit in real life you have to provide light sources. They are controlled by rheostats, turn up the knob and the lights get brighter. That's what I have done in Air Manager. IXEG in their wisdom have not standardised their rheostat datarefs [in fact they've not standardised across the board, in the unlikely event that anyone from IXEG is reading this, please think about your dataref naming and functionality]. So in some cases (eg pedestal) Air Manager and IXEG are synched, and in other cases they are not. This should all still work with the XP11 IXEG, but as I say I have not tested it.
4. Same applies to annunciators. In XP11, there was a simple dataref which either controlls how bright an annunciator is, or if it is on or off. Now dataref values can vary wildly depending on the ambient light, so the old way of doing things would result in an annunciator lighting correctly during the day, but never illuminating at night. I have fudged things to work in XP12. That should also work in XP11, but nuances like being able to set whether your annunciators are Bright or Dim are no longer available.
That's all I can think of at the moment. I will run everything with XP11 at some stage to see exactly how it all works, but for now I am NOT saying the panels are XP11 compatable, and using them with XP11 is at user's own risk - they should not cause any issues to your system, just may be that some functionality is lost, or some visual elements may look a bit odd.
Hope that helps a little.
Jon
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Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2023 10:19:35 GMT
It's been over a week since my last update post. Some good and bad to report, mostly good. On the slightly bad side, life got in the way of working on the panels. Dentist visits, etc are fairly normal excuses, but maybe I can give an original reason for being late with my homework - sheep. A flock of the BAA****ds got away from our neighbour's elderly sheepdog and mounted an assault on our garden, taking down some fencing in the process. So sorting that and adding a new gate took a good bit of computer time. Several of the culprits can be seen in the background, I'm sure they'll wind up accompanied by mint sauce in the not too distant future.  Right so on to talking Air Manager ..... - Checking and packing the gauges is going well, I'm about 80% done. I have not only been correcting a few errors, but adding more functionality. - Additional features, like manual setting of the airspeed bug on the ASIs are now included - IXEG introduced some new datarefs with the latest upgrade which allow the autoflight warning (and AFDS panels in the non-EFIS version) to function - I have changed a couple of MCP knobs - HDG and IAS - to commands, which work better. The rest of the MCP knobs have been left running through datarefs but I have made them invisible "dual-knob" to allow changes in steps of 1 or 10. That works beautifully with the knobster and makes CRS and ALT changes, amongst others, much easier. So that's a problem I mentioned a few posts ago resolved. - I decided to implement night lighting now. There was so much code already incorporated that leaving it in would have made for a bad user experience, and taking it out would have taken more time than disabling or removing it. |
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