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Twin Otter X: open issues


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  • Aerosoft
Mathijs,

I love this plane, waited eagerly for it and you did an awesome job, thanks! :D

This is the perfect bird for non precision approaches, so I don't miss the glideslope needle. But I do miss a DME, for those beautiful VOR DME and NDB DME procedures on remote airfields, always challenging and fun to execute well. Without a DME, we need to keep times, but the clock misses a seconds hand.

I could add the default DME to the VC, but (i) it's awfully odd and (ii) the panel is hardcoded so it is not easily editable.

Could you consider adding a chronometer (or a better clock, that beauty from the Beaver should do just fine!) and a decent DME?

Best regards,

Sergio

If you use the advanced panel you will have 3 stopwachtes I believe and it also offer DME options.

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  • Aerosoft
Great thread. I have learned a lot about the DHC-6 and high wings with engines mounted above the CG. The idea of prop drag when in beta mode and up-pitching at reduced settings makes sense. I look forward to seeing the discussion evolve into final resolution. Perhaps as suggested, tweaking of the pitch parameters without compromising the correct relationships.

The one thing I welcome is the desire to keep the model accurate, not politically correct to what non-flyers expect. If it takes a more detailed explanation in the manual so people better understand the effect, that may help those unprepared for the realities of a high wing turbo prop with beta range.

One issue I would like to address is the flight placards over the pilot's head. In my display, they are blurred and unreadable. In real life, they are a handy reference for the pilot of flight parameters he needs to know. I can not find the data in either the kneepad or flight manual. It would be greatly appreciated if the next rev sharpens the details so they are clear and readable.

As mentioned, this is a welcome addition to FSX and I look forward to many enjoyable hours learning to fly her correctly.

Making the placards high res is not hard, but as with anything it increases the size of the MDL, increases memory load and reduces framerates. Perhaps we change it later.

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Fantastic Thread! When you take the discussion here and apply to the aircraft everything makes sense. I've learned more in half an hour than I woud have done in a week of trial and error.

Had a great time last night just playing with the trim and power levers putting into practice the knowledge here.

Can't thank you all enough for all this. :D

Kind Regards,

Cliff

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Hi Mathjiskok,

while testing a press copy v. 1.0 I also found one serious issue:

While flying Yetty Airline I have hit Gear Up button on my Joystick (using reg. FSUIPC) just from my habit. I was really surprised when I was landing: the visible gear sinked under the runway and the plane started to rough its belly :) It seems that somewhere in config or model it s still allowed to use gear up/down function even if the plane is fixed gear.

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I noticed that the "G" button toggles the animation that closes and opens a gap in the skis for wheeled landings (I suppose that is what the gap is for). Nice touch, don't remove that.

Tom

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I'm glad to hear that,

let me write some suggestions I still have:

1. I miss more door and equipment animations. At least both the right side doors. While using TrackIR, it would be very comfortable to have a hot click area on the doors

2. Load assistant/editor... This would be very helpfull...

3. All the gauges in VC always shine during all night time even if you don't want them to shine or if the battery is turned off...

:) Out of records:

Passengers... I neeeeeeed passengers :) I love Just Flight addons because of this feature (which is allowed to be turned off) At least one ore two of them :)

Regards and my congratulations for such great addon!

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Hi Chris,

Apparently we can't PM on this site, so I will post my response here.

I use a two step process........

Hope this helps. Its a great plane when the throttle reverse works correctly.

Thanks Paul, much appreciated. I will try it tomorrow.

Chris

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Would be great if it works , keep me up to date :)

Hi there. I experiemented a little with it today. I converted only the external textures into DXT5 (with no visible loss in quality I must say, there is no blockiness or compression artifacts visible). This brought the texture size for the external textures down from 28MB to 9.3MB - about a third is left only. The fallback textures (46MB) are still 32bit, so the total for the test paint fell from 74MB to a little over 55MB. And already there is a noticeable decrease in texture load time for me and my lower end GPU. And there is a lot left to squeeze out when you work the fallback textures too.

I'll kepp you updated...

@bug report: I noticed two things. In the manual the 100 float version on page 8 is missing a picture. And in the model.para dir of the 300 wheel version is another model subfolder (model.300) that does not belong there.

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I noticed that the interior night textures of the cabin and cockpit, when viewed from Spot view, are all gray. I don't often fly at night and you have to zoom in close to see it so it isn't really an issue for me, but some others may have issue with it. I've said it in other forums, this bird might just make me transition to FSX a bit quicker. I've got a killer FS9 system, but like most others had some problems with X. I'm rockin no less than 20 fps with the Twotter. Thanks for the great product.

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Private-Cowboy;

Did you use Imagetool, DXTbmp or the dds exporter for Photoshop for the above task?

I found on my camouflaged one I got serious blockies where the shadow shading is beneath the wing when saving a psd file as dxt5 with Imagetool.

Best

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The ACES image tool, and I having a hard time to spot a difference between 32bit and DXT5. DXTBMP does a noticeably worse job here strangly. I tested it on some of the very complex paints with curved lines and fine details. That's where issues pop up first, but I have only very little...

51916332bit.jpg

427896DXT5.jpg

That is a 200% closeup, you can spot very minor compression artifacts around the "A" of "Tahia" and maybe the pearls. Seen at normal distance and 100% I cant tell the difference without looking longer at it. With more basic paints hat is even less pronounced. But the decrease in texture size and load time is significant. And in-FSX-tests so far show no significant decrease in quality either. There is a loss in quality, no doubt, but on lower end systems like mine (my subnotebook has only 64MB dedicated graphics ram plus a few hundred called as "turbo cache" of the main ram) it helps A LOT and is well worth it. On high end systems I would no do it.

I appreciate you delivered 32bit textures, they are the best quality and the framerate is very good with them. I (and other low-enders) can squeeze out slightly more with DXT5. But it better this way then the other way round. So please keep doing your fine repaints in 32bit. Conversion to DXT5 is easily done by the user if need be.

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Well, first of all I only did 3 paint jobs...

Hmm on the blockiness I get, it's really strange. Then again I use psd original layers and there might be a "multiply" layer there that gets interpreted the wrong way by imagetool. Sometimes adding a bit of noise helps the dithering but I'm not quite sure. As long as you guys are happy with converting the 32-bit merged textures to DXT5 I won't really bother. Thanks a lot for the views, interesting stuff.

Best regards

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No absolutely not. It's done quickly with the imagetool and I bet people with monster systems out there (like twin 8800GTX) will appreciate the 32bit anyway. And what you said might be the cause. I just converted the 32bit into DXT5. Maybe the imagetool has issues when inputting a psd directly. But anyway, I prefer 32bit textures any day and quickly convert them if need be. 32bit just delivers the best quality.

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I just have to report something i noticed on one of my delightful flights in the caribbean.

The beta range lights seems to extinguish when you build some speed without moving the power levers.

example: I was going to backtrack on a rather long runway. Pushed the power lever a bit forward to get some momentum. Left the levers where they were. When i got up to about 25-30 kias the beta range lights went out. Is that the correct way for them to work?

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Congratulations on the release of Twin Otter X! IMHO this product will become an FSX classic!

I purchased it a couple of days again and haven't been able to post anything until now. Sorry if these "issues" or enhancements have already been reported.

I found these "bugs" :-

* Pilot viewpoint is offset to the left of the seat center and yoke center. The copilot's viewpoint is also offset to the left of center but not as much as the pilot's viewpoint

* Try shutting down an engine in flight then restarting. The engine gauges seem to no longer respond or if they do they lag behind the other engine (that was not shut down and restarted)

* Pilot's windscreen wiper does not extend far enough across windshield. Compare this to the copilot's wiper which does extend much further.

* Copilot's wiper animation looks "broken" at the base of the wiper.

Would it be possible to implement these enhancements?

* Wiper speeds. Can you implement both low and high speed?

* Wiper noise. I watched an DVD of a 727. The wiper motor made a very distinct and loud noise during operation. It would really add to the atmosphere if the Twotter could have wiper motor and wiper blade noise.

* Rain on windshield. Is it possible to animate rain on the windshield?

* Rain noise. Again from the 727 DVD, you could really hear the rain pelting against the windshield.

* Ground roll noise. How about some squeaks and rattles when taking off or landing?

* Someone suggested the default Maule AP would be better replaced with a the default Bendix King version. I agree and on the Twotter GPS model could it fit into the radio stack? There seems to be space.

* I think the propeller animation doesn't look fast enough when propeller RPM is at max RPM. Could it be blurred a little more?

Once again... Congratulations on this release!

BTW: I'm using FSX with Acceleration.

Kind regards

MatthewS

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At first, I want to express my delight with this superb product, a good Twin Otter is just what I allways looked for. It's really a delight to fly, and I love the great frame rates. I really support your preference of frames over useless eyecandy, a very good compromise was found. The Twotter and the Beaver are really the perfect bush flying team, by the way! I think you found the right compromises between realism, frames and fun for those two. :D

Anyway, I just found a really small bug: The Winair paint seems to have the wrong registration entry in the aircraft.cfg, NPJ-WIM instead of PJ-WIM on the texture.

As a user with a slow system, I would love if you could provide a DXT5 compressed texture set, or a least a bat file to do a batch convert with imagetool. I am able to do this myself, but many other users would sure appreciate it. :)

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  • Aerosoft
Congratulations on the release of Twin Otter X! IMHO this product will become an FSX classic!

I purchased it a couple of days again and haven't been able to post anything until now. Sorry if these "issues" or enhancements have already been reported.

I found these "bugs" :-

* Pilot viewpoint is offset to the left of the seat center and yoke center. The copilot's viewpoint is also offset to the left of center but not as much as the pilot's viewpoint

* Try shutting down an engine in flight then restarting. The engine gauges seem to no longer respond or if they do they lag behind the other engine (that was not shut down and restarted)

* Pilot's windscreen wiper does not extend far enough across windshield. Compare this to the copilot's wiper which does extend much further.

* Copilot's wiper animation looks "broken" at the base of the wiper.

Would it be possible to implement these enhancements?

* Wiper speeds. Can you implement both low and high speed?

* Wiper noise. I watched an DVD of a 727. The wiper motor made a very distinct and loud noise during operation. It would really add to the atmosphere if the Twotter could have wiper motor and wiper blade noise.

* Rain on windshield. Is it possible to animate rain on the windshield?

* Rain noise. Again from the 727 DVD, you could really hear the rain pelting against the windshield.

* Ground roll noise. How about some squeaks and rattles when taking off or landing?

* Someone suggested the default Maule AP would be better replaced with a the default Bendix King version. I agree and on the Twotter GPS model could it fit into the radio stack? There seems to be space.

* I think the propeller animation doesn't look fast enough when propeller RPM is at max RPM. Could it be blurred a little more?

Once again... Congratulations on this release!

BTW: I'm using FSX with Acceleration.

Kind regards

MatthewS

Matthew, thanks for your comments, others responded on the rain (FSX limitation), I have added the others to our list. The prop animation is as good as we can get it. But we agree, FSX does a lousy job of these fast rotating animation. FS2004 was a lot better in that aspect.

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Well, convert the textures is no problem at all and speeds up the loading for me by quite a bit and I've not seen the blurry issues since in DTX5 converts. But what do you ask me to do? I cannot upload the paints, they are copyrighted. I can give you a detailed guide how to convert yourself though. With a cup of cofee (or tea?) and some time you can easily do it yourself then. Its not a complicated tast, only the same over and over and over again. But and cannot upload the converted textures anywhere for you.

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Mathijs,

I've been out for a few days and just getting back to get caught up on all the information on these forums so if my question has been asked and answered already I apologize in advance.

Here goes -

There are 2 Com radios but no audio panel to choose which one you are listening to.

Same goes with Nav radios, how do you use the input from the #2 Nav? The #1 Nav displays on the HSI but I don't see any way to get #2 Nav information displayed.

Thanks again for your time and Aerosoft's great support of this product.

Ron

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