News

Tommaso Felici
xEnviro new feautures shots are the right way to start your late afternoon. You will be blown away from all this snowy landscape.

Talking about xEnviro is always interesting since this really seems to be the best complete weather injector for X-Plane. We could stay a day or more talking about the price, the quality of the custome clouds and how good the atmosphere looks (with the right settings) but there’s definitely something more coming, maybe, in the 1.08, the next major update.

This brief comment reports what’s the subject of the shots, thanks to Mike Davis who, with direct permission from Andrey Sheyback, posted this pics in the xEnviro official facebook group:

“The screen shots I posted came from direct communication with Andrey. I have no idea if they are intended for inclusion in 1.08 or if they are just being tested as a possibility. When you do things like this that are massively complex and which must interact “intelligently” with existing ground tiles and objects, there is always a frame rate factor that rears its ugly head. I have not (yet?) seen these effects in my test version 1.08t36 so I don’t know if this is in there or even how one would know where ground snow is and where it isn’t or has melted. Lots of “reality” problems to solve. I put these up here without direct permission, but under a sort-of blanket responsibility to share them if I thought it appropriate. I have no idea how he is doing this, but it is xEnviro testing so we can hope he can pull it off. No promises, no dates. That’s all I know.”

It’s not clear, as you read, that this seasonal update will be in 1.08, but if not, all these “teasing” would be useless, don’t you think? While another great project is seeing the release (the Ultimate737), we have to patiently wait for this really critical update.

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Tommaso Felici
One of the most detailed airport created for X-Plane and P3D is slowly coming to life, and the latest shot by SKYLINE shows it

It’s quite a satisfaction to write again about the wonders done at SKYLINE Simulations headquarter. And, as Chris said in this interview, KCVG is slowly coming to life in a stunning way.

 

This pic shows the incredible level of detail of this scenery (thanks to Niilo who corrected as i wrote “aircraft”) that aims to be “one of the most detailed airports ever created for P3D and XP platforms”, as the developers wrote in their official facebook page.

Can this scenery really push the boundaries of X-Plane possibilities in terms of textures? Yes, but it need a super-optimization to run on different PCs, not only on top rigs!

 

Visit Tom’s Cockpit official store to enjoy your visit here dressing a warm sweatshirt, or drinking a hot coffee in our official cup 🙂

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Tommaso Felici
The photoreal tiles by MB Liveries are still waiting to be released, but the work has proceeded in a really outstanding way.

It’s a great pleasure for me to accomplish that one of the best photoreal project is still going on, maybe less smoothly than the past, but still alive.

Indeed MB Liveries has released some news about his work on facebook, that allowed us to discover the actual coverage of his work. Also Malta is included in his project (thanks to Malcolm for remembering me that).

 

As you can see we still miss some of the major italian airports, but the italian peninsula is almost complete. In my opinion this is the right project that invites simmers to my native land. The best with Frank Dainese’s Dolomiti 3D.

The detail will be stunning since all the tiles are ZL18 and the extraordinary knowledge of photoshop will certainly allow Matteo to fix the ugly color transition as he promised (and of course has done) in the launch post on x-plane.org forum that you can read here. I’d advise you to buy a new hard disk because the estimated space needed is almost 800 GB! But, as everything, perfection needs space.

 

Visit Tom’s Cockpit official store to enjoy your visit here dressing a warm sweatshirt, or drinking a hot coffee in our official cup 🙂

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Tommaso Felici
Let’s take a look to the major update of New York Airports packages by Drzewiecki’s designs. Payware update also for v1 owners

We all know how stunning was the view while landing in any New York’s airport with the Drzewiecki’s design amazing scenery. While New York City XP is still available, they updated the New York airports package, sold in two different (and independent) volumes. Let’s see the differences between v1 and v2.

New in version 2 or New York Airports:
  • Much better visuals
  • 100% of objects re-exported
  • new ground polygons with better textures
  • new aerial images
  • better detail objects (ground service vehicles, cars, people)
  • animated objects
  • Performance up to 200% higher than in v1
  • Extensive LODs
  • Custom shadows
  • Lights done from scratch
  • All models re-exported and highly optimized
  • All textures compiled to 4096pix sheets
  • Ground polygons highly optimized
  • New, optional static aircraft
  • Updated layouts (aprons, taxiways, markings etc.)
  • Full compatibility with XP10 and XP11
  • Support for XP11 native features like reflections, ATC, AI traffic, animated vehicles

The update for v1 owners is still payware but with the 35% of discount (total price is 15.6$, not bad).

The two packages contains the following airports: John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, Teterboro in Volume 1 and Newark Intl, Essex County, Linden in Volume 2.

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Tommaso Felici
JAR, unbeaten leader of the Airbus market in X-Plane until now, is preparing to compete with ToLiss and Flight Factor products with the update of the A330 that makes us feel the A340 even closer.

The busses’ market is getting busy in  these days, don’t you think? And JARDesign just wanted to confirm who leaded it in the past years, with that innovative touch byu who wants to lead this growing market also in the future with the A330 v3 in public beta and the A340 underway as the FMGS of the new A330 will be the base for the 340.

I had a chat recently with Mr Eugeny Romanov from JAR’s high floors. He explained me something about the 330 v3 that I am saying to you in this short post.

First of all let’s look at his photo, you see finally the pop-up instruments that I have ever dreamed on my JARDesign A320. As JAR reworked the code of the aircraft, using a C base instead of a SASL one, many features became possible to implement, and one of this is the pop-up displays and MCDU.

As you can see the cockpit graphic are basically the same and fantastic ones of the older versions, but my impression is that they got a refresh to a higher definition, but this is not confirmed by anyone of the team, and I can also think that PC from wich the shot was taken is actually a beast…

In those years, I am a JAR customer since 2015 if I remember well, I heard lot of compliants about the MCDU. Now you have no more excuses, the MCDU was revisited and it seems more realistic to me, even in the operations. The best compliment I could heard about this new version is “It flies like a normal Airbus” and it feels great, I’d add.

Also the plugin which driven the doors and GHD operations has moved from the plugin menu in X-Plane to the MCDU’s menu, accessible by “MCDU MENU” key on the right side of the computer, and this feature alone could have convinced me to buy this aircraft… anyway the full changelog is public, but I’ll write you down here:

+ compatible with GHDeluxe v.040118
+ new MCDU MENU functions (you can operate with Ground Handling, Doors, Loading, Tow)
+ operate settings via MCDU MENU
+ separate Ground Handling operation (MCDU MENU -> Handling, next – select neeeded cars and click Drive Up)
+ MCDU movable widget (click on 3D MCDU or use Command jd/fmgs/CommandShowMcdu)
+ ND non-movable widget (click on ND)
+ Save coRoute flightplan using MCDU DATA -> Click right Arrow -> Pilots ROUTES, enter name and click SAVE
+ takeoff with heading preset
+ ND && MCDU indication and functions reworked
+ follow Speed Constraints
beta 2:
+ enter Cruise Level/TEMP as 410/-62 = CTD fixed
+ no SPD Cnstr on DEScend fixed
+ VLS is too high fixed
+ Heading knob turns with the plane during taxi fixed
+ 111.50 as ILS freq here, it tells me not in the Data base (my enter via radio panel)
+ several CTD fixed

I am going to review the v3 soon, I cannot say when I will due to the fact that I actually do not own this aircraft, but I hope to get it soon ($$ ahahah) and come back to you with more detailed impression and news. But if you want to aware me about some interesting things you can still contact me at [email protected]

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