Now available from Laminar Research is the lastest version of X-Plane, version 7.50. This major upgrade features improved weather and turbulence modelling, more detailed ground modelling, new visuals, new instruments and improvements to other general features. For the full details, click on Read More.
NEW STUFF FOR X-PLANE 7.50:
3-D Weather and Turbulence Modelling:
Full 3-D Weather Matrix! We now have a 3-d weather pattern for the entire region, with thunderstorms, turbulence, icing conditions, rain, and radar returns all based on this total 3-d picture. This finally opens up the door for future implementations of weather fronts moving through, UNLIMITED cloud layers, and anything else you can think of. It is AWESOME! Set the weather to thunderstorms with BROKEN or SCATTERED clouds and you can fly through the storms that go up to 40,000 feet, with turbulence, rain, and even ICING if the temperature is right. This is miles above the old method of just having 2 cloud layers and some artificial radar returns. The full "holy grail" of a no-restraints 3-D matrix of any conceivable weather is finally here! You still ENTER only 2 cloud layers, but this is simply a user-interface limit... more variations are possible with this engine, and in fact if you enter stormy weather, clouds will tower up to form it with no regard for any pre-determined altitudes!
Now, while we are doing full 3-D matrices of air data for all the weather, we introduce: An incredible new turbulence model! X-Plane now actually tracks the motion of the air all around the aircraft in turbulence, giving vertical, lateral, and longitudinal gusts (continuously-variable on a randomized 3-phase sin curve) to give turbelence-varying airflow ON EVERY ELMENENT OF THE AIRCRAFT, DEPENDING ON THAT PARTICULAR ELEMENT'S LOCATION IN THE TURBULENCE PATTERN. So part of the left wing might be in an UPDRAFTING bit of air, and part of the right wing might be in a DOWNDRAFTING bit pof air, with the center of the plane in the "eye" of the vertex... all resulting in a hard roll of course. As well, the wings might be in the updrafting part while the tail might be in a downdrafting part, resulting in a ptich up... Of course, in tiny fraction of a second, the tail will have moved to where the wings were a fraction of a second ago, reversing the pitch force! This means that a really BIG plane is typically LESS affected by turbulence, since it's wings will occupy some air going up, some air going down, and they will tend to cancel to some degree, giving a smoother ride. A smaller plane will be more impacted though, since if it is in a rotating swirl of air, it is likely the at the entire aircraft will be in the same swirling pattern, resulting in the greatest pitch, roll, and heading offsets.
It gets better! As you fly slowly, you enter new rotating masses of air SLOWLY, resulting in gradual onset of pitch, heading, and roll motions, but as you speed up, the turbulence turns into short, sharp, hard jolts because you entering changing patterns of airflow more quickly. All of this gives the real feel, and performance, of a real plane in turbulence.
The cool part is: NONE OF THIS IS FAKED... we actually take a randomized airflow pattern and then move the plane through it without any assumptions about what will happen next... the resulting accelerations on the airplane will be based on the plane's interaction with that air. And now it gets even coolor... turn on sime wind and turbulence and then hit the '/' key 3 times to bring in some visual flight-model... you will be able to SEE the wind vectors from outside the plane!
Other Flight Model Stuff:
More detailed ground-effect modelling... we now consider wing span AND chord to get lift and drag changes correct. The height above the ground in wing SPANS controls the induced DRAG reduction due to ground effect, and the height above the ground in wing CHORDS controls the LIFT due to ground effect. The final icing on the cake is that since the ground effect on lift is based on the CHORD of the wing as well as it's height, the ground effect on lift is actually different for each section of the wing, as in the real plane!
More realistic for propeller-modelling for planes approaching the speed of sound... The superonsic dynamics will start at the tip and work inwards as you accelerate, giving more realistic propeller performance. In fact, EVERY part of the airplane individually can be either subsonic or supersonic, giving more realistic transonic response.
Reciprocating engine oil pressures, oil temperatures, fuel-flows, and exhaust-gas and cylinder-head temperatures all tuned to match real engines, based on flight-test data from my Cirrus.
In Plane-Maker: Enter the max altitude for jet engines to put out full thrust! Some jets are altitude-rated just like turboprops!
New Visuals:
Moon phase now right for it's location in the sky.
Lightning is cooler... and available in scattered and broken clouds, as long as there are thunderstorms.
Fuselages draw the same fuselage geometry from the INSIDE now, making it easier to have clear windows and custom cockpits.
Bow spray from water contact. kind of cool.
Better liting from the MOON at night, including the moon phase... so you can get bright moon-lit nites or totally dark nites depending on the date.
Weapon parachutes (if any) drawn.
Custom prop discs are available... see the "SAMPLE CUSTOM PLANES" for an example.
New Instruments:
New CHT (cylinder head temperature) modeling and engine intruments.
New instrument: In cockpit camera, with night vision! See it in the EFIS folder when selecting instruments.
You can now set custom oil pressure and temperature limits in Plane-Maker engine screen to teak just right for your plane.
A few new annunciators for you: speedbrakes and GPWS.
General Features:
See the various fuse/misc body screens in PlaneMaker: You can now enter pitch, heading, and roll offsets there for the various parts. As well, go the WEAPONS screen... you can now enter what CONTROL SURFACE each is attached to. Try the Japanese Anime in the Science Fiction folder to try it out in the extreme (comical) case. Open the craft in Plane-Maker and turn ON the "view with moving controls" to see how it works. Moving flap-tracks and and detailed moving landing gear, anyone?
Navaids have longer range now, since in reality you typically get more than the guaranteed minimum range.
Automatic differential braking stops above nosewheel transition speed.
Cockpit objects can have solid polyons... so you can put runways on top of the Hindengerg or whatever else you like!
Autoland!Just set up the approach as always, and the plane will flare and pull power to give a decent landing.
Now we have a time-slider to choose the time in replay mode... kind of convenient.
TRIM TABS! Set them in the controls screen in Plane-Maker to tune the pitch, roll, and yaw of any plane... EXACTLY like bending the trim tabs in a real airplane to tune it's performance as desired... usually by cranking in some right aileron and right rudder to counteract the prop in singles.
Mouse control is not taken away when you switch views any longer unless it is really NEEEDED because the mouse center-point moved.
If you have a joystick, you can still click in the center of the screen with the mouse to steer the VIEWING DIRECTION around. Kind if useful. Lets you pan the viewpoint around.
Attach the weapons to any moving part of the plane, to get flaps tracks and landing gear and stuff just right. BE ADVISED! ALL PARTS, INCLUDING WEAPONS, DO HAVE AERODYNAMIC EFFECTS!
Tech Stuff:
More ram optimizations... we shaved off about 10% through optimizations! But then, the new 3-D weather geometry adds 20%, so there is a net 10% RAM increase.
Refinements:
Smarter autopilot... less or no fine "jittering" in roll.
Lites come on sooner... the runway lites were staying off a bit too long in 741.
Smoother trackig of external visuals when using multiple networked copies of X-Plane, and better presentation of other planes in multipayer (smoother and more accurate).
Better EFIS instrument liting.
Better autobrake control! The autobrakes are now set to get the actual decelerations from real airliners... not just arbitrary values. Cool!
Hobbs meter gives tenths of hours now.
Changes/Obsolete removals: FOR AIRCRAFT DESIGNERS ONLY:
Only 1 inverter... no longer 1 per engine... this was not really realistic. No more TAPE man presure and EGT... instead we have round oil press and round oil temp... We are getting the engine instrument and control set more tuned to what is found in real planes.
WARNING: SLIGHT INSTRUMENT INDICATION RE-ORGANIZATION, WHICH YOU NEED TO APPLY TO ALL CUSTOM PLANES THAT USE THE NEW TECHNOLOGY IF THEY HAVE CUSTOM FLAP ELEMENTS: THE FLAP IMAGES ARE NOW ALL IN 1 FOLDER FOR EASIER ACCESS INSIDE OF RESOURCES/BITMAPS. NEW TEXT FILE FORMAT AS WELL... UPDATE YOUR INSTRUMENT TEXT FILES FROM 740 TO 750 VERSION, USING THE INSTRUMENT TEXT FILES THAT COME WITH 750 AS A SAMPLE.
In the new instrument text files: Enter for radii to avoid default markings.
Bug Fixes:
Morse code ID of NAVAIDS operative
All external sound volumes have proper doppler and fade with distance
No more "jitter" as the panel is scrolled up and down
Right number of days in every month in the set date and time window
Various other bug-fixes
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