Month: April 2017
New Placards
Things Are Getting Real
Just a quick update on the real-world flight training. With the medical approved the solo work has finally gotten underway. I flew my third supervised solo earlier this week, and now the true solo work begins where I rent the airplane and go fly maneuvers alone (and I have the endorsement to fly down to Wilmington to do pattern work in the Delta airspace as well). I need to get five hours of that in, then it’s night takeoffs and landings, dual cross-countries, solo cross-countries, and check-ride prep. My CFI wants me to take the written test in the next four weeks, so I’ve been hitting the books. It’s great to be in this stage of the process.
Nobody Here Is Really From Togo
The Glideslope Spammer Restraint System has, to date, blocked over 250 spammers from attempting to join the site. But today one got through. If you receive a PM from the On The Glideslope message system promising riches from a pool of money in Togo, it’s fake. Delete it. And the offender has been deleted as well.
How To Have Even Better Night Lighting In X-Plane 11
The night lighting in X-Plane 11 is fantastic. But it can be even better, and a few folks have asked what modification I used to get the even better night lighting in my most recent video. It’s a little file at the .Org called “Better Lights,” and it’s now in V2. It’s simply a text file that replaces your default lights configuration. You may get it here, and be certain to backup your original lights.txt file by renaming it to something origlights.txt before you start. And like most of the stuff in the X-Plane universe, it’s freeware.
Here are some pics from the author.
A viewer asked that I do more night flights, and as I have nighttime pattern work coming up in my real-world instruction, I took it as an opportunity to simulate it here. I did so at about 11:45 PM, and the flight became a lesson in human factors. As always, thanks for watching,
The point-to-point flights continue with a leg from Great Falls to Billings. This was a fun flight, and it illustrates both the solid default X-Plane 11 textures and the incredible ortho4xp photographic scenery as I did not burn ortho tiles for the entire flight. Also: thoughts on the Airfoil Labs C172, Windows Creators Edition, ForeFlight, and fun with and autopilot we don’t fully understand. As always, thanks for watching.
Reader Sim: David From Scotland
Point-To-Point: Utah
The Saratoga is now in Dutch John, UT, as we prepare to do some killer fly fishing on the A stretch of the Green River below the Flaming Gorge Dam (at least, virtually). I designed scenery for this that’s been uploaded to the Gateway but it’s not yet approved. So speaking of that scenery, here are links to it and the others I’ve designed over the past few point-to-point flights. All use default objects, so while the layouts are spot-on don’t expect all the hangars etc. to match the real world:
And here is a shot of Dutch John over the ortho scenery.
Point-To-Point Update
The Saratoga is now (virtually) in – of all places! – Saratoga, Wyoming. Time to head into the heart of the Rockies. I have a few videos of the trip in the queue as well, and I also created scenery for the stops in Thermopolis and Saratoga. In the interest of populating the world for future X-Plane releases, I’ve started designing these strips using stock library objects and have been uploading them to the X-Plane Scenery Gateway. But if you can’t wait for them to be approved at the Gateway Thermopolis is here and Saratoga / Shively is here.
