I have been quite absent from here lately. The holidays were a time to focus elsewhere
, and with the new year my aviation interest was focused entirely upon preparing for my checkride. Since then I have been flying to remain proficient, have started my instrument training, and am busy with work. But today I’m answering questions in the Q&A section
, and if you had posted one there, thank you for your patience.
This is not a post I wanted to write. X-Plane has been a great experience for me, even with the betas. But now it is a mess, and has been since around RC4 or RC5 of the 11.3 beta. The physical cockpit has been virtually unflyable. For a while things worked well until I touched the throttle, at which point I’d get a total hardware crash – to reset, not to desktop. I tried all the standard steps: pref deletion, cache deletion, removal of all plugins, and even a clean and separate install. No joy. I thought I’d isolated the problem as a customized aircraft file, but even with default aircraft, clean install, no add-ins: crashes. Less predictable
, and no longer tied to the throttle, but crashes nonetheless. And there is nothing useful in the logs. (And graphic performance in the physical cockpit, with it’s 3-4 monitor setup, has also not been great in 11.3, with me getting about the same performance in 11.3 with my 1080ti as I used to get in earlier releases with my 980ti – but I’d gladly trade lower settings for a stable system.)
So today, after another crash in the physical cockpit, I thought I’d try VR. I had moved away from my VR setup and back to the physical sim to make practice easier for my real-world instrument rating, but thought I’d run with VR and see how it goes. And it was a different story. Graphic performance was excellent – a solid 45 frames and smooth
, even with high settings. And with AviTab and my Navigraph sub I was using charts in the VR cockpit without difficulty as I simulated an IFR flight from KSNA to Carlsbad. And then
, about half way to the Oceanside VOR from KSAN, crash. At least this one was to desktop. Again nothing informative in the logs.
I will note that I am now running 11.31rc1, hoping that the beta had squashed some of the prior bugs. But as of now, my sim is not reliably flyable. This is very disappointing, especially after several years of excellent reliability from X-Plane. And reading the forums, I’m not the only one. This is a buggy release, in my view, and I can’t wait until they have moved passed it.
But there is good news: in VR I found that if I looked down just at the instruments the experience was very similar to wearing foggles whe simulating instrument conditions in the real-world. So I have that going for me …
I’ve been working for some time on an Albert Whitted / KSPG (my home airport) for the X-Plane Gateway. I have a version complete
, and I’m uploading it here in hopes that some readers might download it and test it out prior to submission. I’ve done truck traffic routes and ATC wind rules for the first time in this scenery, so I’d appreciate particular attention to AI behavior (and yes, I know some of the trucks drive through the occasional corner of a building, but I can’t really avoid it). So if you like, download it here and give it a whirl. There are no scenery libraries required for this airport as it is made entirely with default objects
, but it does require the 11.3 beta. Also note that the pics below (of an earlier version quite similar to the one here) are on top of my orthographic scenery and that this scenery does not include ortho imagery. Many thanks.
I crossed the three hours of night flight, the night cross-country, and the 10 night landings requirements off the list tonight. It was an amazing experience and a beautiful night to fly.
This morning I downloaded and for the first time used the new Ortho4XP 1.3 (download links are in Oscar Pilote’s signature line here). It has several improvements over version 1.2, one of which is smoothing that allows you to have sloped (and not flattened)) airport runways. I watched this YouTube video on how to use it, and the steps there worked perfectly. Also, as he does in the video, I went the extra step in creating mesh and overlays from the HD Mesh 4 package, and downloaded zoom level 19 tiles for several of the airports in the tile.
The results are great, and I’ve attached some screen captures below. Note the nicely sloped runway and airport environment in the last shot. (And you can click any of these images to see larger versions.)
My settings here:
Also
, I’m nearly done with my new Gateway version of Albert Whitted / KSPG. You can see that here, too, in the first several images. Overall, I think the result is fantastic, and I look forward to building a bunch of new tiles.
Albert Whitted and environs …
The new Gateway KTPA I’ve been working on …
KTPF Peter O Knight …
Look at that beautiful runway slope! ->
One of the fantastic things about PilotEdge is the significant amount of educational resources they provide, one of which is the “I-Rating” series of training scenarios. I’ve already passed the I-1 rating on PilotEdge but thought it would be fun to fly it in VR (it’s an IFR flight to and from John Wayne using the ILS 20R approach) in IFR conditions. I bring Navigraph maps (I picked up an annual Navigraph subscription this week) into the virtual cockpit via the AviTab plugin, which works well. X-Plane 11.3beta5 eats 11+ gig of my VRAM for some reason, which does not work out well. But we complete the flight nonetheless.
Three thoughts based on this simulated hop: 1) Gotta figure out the VRAM situation, as that’s not good and it’s never happened to me before in X-Plane. 2) IFR in VR was very realistic, especially with the clouds. The Jeppesen charts in the cockpit via AviTab work great
, but it’s still quite taxing to manage radios and notes under the headset. This may be a good thing, though, as it creates task saturation, and the realism of VR may make it worth it as it really felt like being under “the hood” real-world. 3) I’m going to plow ahead with the I-Ratings (I’ve done them through I-4 but will do them all starting with the I-1) and their supporting videos as a jump-start on my real-world instrument training. I’ll fly some in VR and some in the physical cockpit and decide which feels like better training and report back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LchWprZNmig
Was able to take a nice long flight on Friday and knock out the remaining minutes of my solo cross-country requirement. It was a beautiful day for flying. The 172 I fly was booked so I took the Archer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stBSkBZ4sIY
