WestWind Airlines

Thanks,

 I will add in thoes changes.

 
 

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-KenG

Ken, this comes under the category of turning every knob, etc. When flying at night, the radio and throttle panel icons "light up" but none of the other icons do. It is picky, but I thought you might want to change it. I have no preference.

Also, no issues getting in or out of McMurdo.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Ken G:

Thanks,

 I will add in thoes changes.

W Key worked like a charm.

When incorporating John's changes into the .air and aircraft.cfg that I have been working on the airplane when completely  psyco. She danced on the tarmac like you would not believe. I reinstalled the MOI and she calmed down. This was using realworld weather so the winds may have had something to do with this. On take-off she wanted to weathervane into the wind. I reinstalled the older .air file with all of the additional lines and the airplane straightened up.

Only thing that I can come up with is somewhere Airwrench installed some critical variables into the .air file. Since I am not sure where those variables are it is best to just leave everything alone. Airwrench wrote the latest config to both the .air and the aircraft.cfg so those should be ok.

I'll look into the lighting, my guess is that the panel gauges are not light up correctly, I do not know if this is something that I can fix or not.

I have also been doing to pattern work at Edwards. This airplane is very hard to bring around the pattern. One slip in concentration and she is off doing her own thing. May have to do more with trying to fly a pattern at MTOW but still the airplane should still have a little bit better behavior that this.

I am hoping to release a public beta so that everyone at WWA who wants to can take this airplane out and give her a test run before calling the project complete. I need to figure out how I am going to distribute that. Maybe pull the documentation and put that as a separate .zip file

 

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-KenG

Guys I'm exploring the possibility of getting a Test Pilots beta files upload/download area set up for you here on the WW server to make your lives a little bit easier, I'm just waiting to hear back from Mark on if it can happen and how complex it would be......carry on......

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EHAM-YSSY B772LR

I am using the Lider Design Airplane not the Mike Stone airplane.

 

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-KenG

John,

I have been able to add the files by splitting the zip into three zip 2.0 legacy files. One called G550(-).zip is the base .zip file. However it is missing the sound files. The sound files are in the sound.zip file and you will need to recreate the sound folder once. Finally Documentation.zip include the PDF files describing the systems of this airplane.

http://cid-839fbc8d9e9023fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public?uc=2" target="_blank" title="http://cid-839fbc8d9e9023fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public?uc=2">http://cid-839fbc8d9e9023fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public?uc=2

 

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-KenG

G550 Test Flight Report. 19MAR08 (Flight 1)

Night Flight.

Landing Lights. The landing lights and taxi lights are so bright they wash out the ability to distinguish the rwy during taxi. I don't know if this is fixable or if its just FSX. The B752 has a similar problem, but the taxi lights seem to be dimmer and are much better for both landing and taxxing.

 

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

I have noticed the same thing with the landing lights in the FS9 version,  I am not really a fix it type of person but is there a way to turn down the intensity so I can see the taxi lines.  Also sometimes the taxi lights come on by themselves at night, but recently they have not been coming on.  Is there a way to make that a switchable feature?  Thanks for the help if you can provide any

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Phil Cohen WWA1573
Sr. Command Captain
EVP - Charter Operations
VP - Hub Ops - Europe & Pacific

Ken, John. Are you both developing the same airplane? Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me like there is a lot of duplication going on. I would hate to think that all the work we have put into developing Ken's model is going to be reworked just as we are about to release it.

I am just scratching my head a bit on this one.

Phil, I am with you on this one. FSX night performance is really poor and anything we can do to make it so we can see where we are going would really help.

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WWA1702 Senior Command Captain +3
RWP SEL Instrument Rating (almost)
WW Test Pilot
Monster Driver

Ken,

I received your files and was able to open them this time. I will have a look.

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  The landing lights are built into the model. The only way thus to change the lighting is to change the light texture file in FSX. If you have numerous aircraft with too much light (as I did) then you may wish to consider the Xeon Light Package http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=98656 from AVSIM. This package blues the light a bit making it a little bit easier to see the ground textures when the landing lights washout the runway.

 FSX has the ability to control the landing lights through the aircraft.cfg but the aircraft has to be designed to take advantage of that system. I think originally it was in that FS9 models had their landing and taxi lights disabled in the model, however too many people complained and in SP1 ACES built in a bypass that now allows the aircraft's orginal lights to shine through. This of course means that there is no control over these lights except what the original designer intended.

 John, I apperciate it. The best I can tell it looks like we are going down two different paths as far as how the FDE works. When I try and combine your and my version I end up with an airplane that doesn't behave as either of us intended. As the hired aircraft developer for WWA you have the final call on this project. I personally see no need for two G550s for FSX. Having done support in the past I can confirm that having more than one airplane per type makes for frustrating support latter on. It is your choice in how we proceed, if I need to cease work on my project I have no problems and fully understand.

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-KenG

I guess I'll step in here for a second. 

John I need to know what model you are working on and how far along you are.  Ken is pretty far into his project and it sounds very promising based on this thread.  I would hate to see duplicate efforts, especially if John is very early into something..........Now if both projects are close to the same stage we could have a fly off........sounds kind of fun doesn't it?

IIRC Ken is working on the Lider Designs model (Ken correct me if I'm wrong)............
 

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EHAM-YSSY B772LR

Correct I am working on the Lider Designs. I will also note that John is an expert when it comes to FDE. While I continue to work with a club banging around until it gets close enough, John has the skills to surgically alter an aircraft's FDE and tune it until it purrs. I have been able to find some excellent resources on the G550 including measurements for its various components. I also worked with detailed scale drawings to try and establish some good numbers, which I then had to pull out my club and beat into shape until the airplane started to fly smoothly. Once John has had an opportunity to review my attempts at FDE he may be able to give an expert opinion on what airplane we should continue with based on continuing ability to refine the FDE working toward a better solution. Like an expert C programmer I am sure he is right now scratching he head wondering what the heck I was thinking with some of my numbers that I put into the FDE.
 

Here is the night lighting of the G550 that I am working on here. For the panel I have alway preferred NVG compatible blue/green lighting over red so sorry for those who believe that all panels should be illuminated with red light.

 

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-KenG

Kim, 

As it was I was already working on the same a/c when I happened across Ken's thread. I have Ken's files as of today. His FDE seems pretty tight so far. I will probably play around with a panel and get back to you all.

BTW I am running FSX Accelerater. I see a gap under the wing of the visual model. I can see through to the other side.
 

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The .mdl file is technically a bunch of points in 3D space that MSFS uses to draw the airplane correctly. It also defines other things such as animations and transparency. When MSFS loads the .mdl file it then builds the airplane (in the background) to display on the users machine. Thus an error on the model that manifests on one machine and not another may be an error in the model, an error caused by the 3D rendering engine of the users computer, or an error in the 3D rendering engine of FSX Acceleration as opposed to plain FSX SP2.

The reality of all three errors is that there is nothing that I can do to fix this issue. Any fix would require that I decompile the .mdl (which I do not believe there is a tool to do) or have access to the original model's source code. As I continue to work with this aircraft it has allot of similarities with the Rick Sasala G-IV original posted on Freeflight Design Shop.

If we had someone who knew how to use Gmax well enough WWA could have its own G550 by stretching the  Rick Sasala original http://www.freeflightdesign.com/gmax.html, adding the 7th window, and updating the interior and applying the textures we have already created for the Lider Design's aircraft.
I have once or twice started to dabble with Gmax but never had the time to dedicate to learning how to use it well enough to do what I need.

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-KenG