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Post by Travis on Feb 4, 2023 14:06:11 GMT -5
Well, I could ditch it... but I came across something earlier this week in testing the Runway Selector / DDF components (which now work well together!) that makes doing so moot. I was at a DDF and testing the transition from normal taxi to "you're now eligible to deice", so I was taxiing forward, applying parking brakes, observing changes, then using Magic Pushback to move away from the deicers. After a dozen or so of these cycles, my (default) parking brakes suddenly did not want to work. The lower-left-corner red text would flicker for a few seconds and I would end up with no parking brakes active.
So to "fix" your condition and any other possible condition that might occur (such as my wacko brakes) I've decided to add an "RTD>" (Ready to Deice) LSK. I hope to have that active before my Monday.
It would work like "RTL>" (Ready to Load), and "RTF>" (Ready to Fly), "RTU>" (Ready to Unload) and even "RTP>" (Ready to Park) currently do. If a condition prevents you from Loading, Flying, Deicing, Unloading, Parking... click the "Ready to..." LSK and we'll ignore the block.
Once I've finished coding this, I'll go into a code freeze and make a week's worth of test flights. If I don't find a problem during that time, I'll prepare 1.8.4 Alpha 1 for release.
So hopefully sometime around Valentine's Day there'll be a public release.
Best,
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Post by Travis on Feb 4, 2023 19:10:12 GMT -5
I'm working on Ready to Deice, and I see lots of deice-prep logic in different places, so it's a whole lot of fun to clean up. -------- There is one other flap condition that is standard usage, and as of now FSCaptain can check and enforce it.... Taxiing with flaps down in icing conditions is a very bad thing to do. You can get ice in the places where extended flaps have exposed. (Picture ice from the back-end of wing wheels being tossed up towards the trailing edge of the wings.) So real world Captains are "encouraged" to taxi with flaps retracted and to only extend flaps when they're on the intended runway for takeoff. Now for aircraft where we can't detect the flaps, and for aircraft where flaps have been declared INOP, this would be immaterial. But for most aircraft, I feel this would be another "best practice" to encourage. Perhaps we could have the FO give a warning after 5-10 seconds of extended flaps during taxiout, and then begin doing something detrimental after 15 or or seconds. Such as decrementing the HOT at an increased rate, or perhaps to "lock" the flaps position at its current deployment? We currently don't try to affect an aircraft's trailing edge flap settings... but I'd be willing to try if enough Captains thought it would be a judicious deterrent. Thoughts, anyone??? Best,
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Post by Travis on Feb 12, 2023 13:54:57 GMT -5
Once I've finished coding this, I'll go into a code freeze and make a week's worth of test flights. If I don't find a problem during that time, I'll prepare 1.8.4 Alpha 1 for release. So hopefully sometime around Valentine's Day there'll be a public release. I've ran into a pre-existing condition that affects Ferry Flights which I'll need to tackle. No new release until next weekend at the earliest.
Best,
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Post by mjl1966 on Feb 13, 2023 20:56:48 GMT -5
You know, I like how you keep us in the loop. It's courteous and informative, of course. But it also lets us know just how much work goes into this thing. And with my little bit of knowledge about SimConnect, I REALLY know. It took me a full week of vacation to (wait for it) get throttle values out of the sim and onto my Arduino board. And it's still "well it works" code, nothing I can really explain. Something about events and structs and stuff.
Yeah,I think a "pinkie swear" LSK for the flaps is good for planes like Majestic that are ... difficult and uncooperative.
For taxi: if flaps are deployed, Decrease the HOT. Kind of like you do for MSD.
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Post by Travis on Feb 20, 2023 19:49:47 GMT -5
MJ, Thank you most kindly for your nice thoughts about my writing! I try to keep Captains informed as to the current state of development. My guesses about future plans are the best I have... and are very often not correct... but are the best I have at the time of my writing. You are correct about the "hidden difficulties" that are part of MS-FS programming. I'm working on 1.8.4's "Runway Realization". The biggest drawback is the fact that BGL runway IDs may not be the same as "current / Navigraph" runway IDs. The differences must be accounted for! ------ The pinky swear LSK that you mentioned is in place. ------ The flaps-in-taxi coding will have to wait until after 1.8.4 Alpha 1. Since this would only apply if there is precipitation on the ground, I need to write a new "flag" for taxi operations. FS9/FSX/P3D (and likely MSFS) "ambient precipitation" can change in a span of a few seconds. For instance, it could be snowing at our airport at 14:00:00 local time and then stop at 14:00:10. So if you were to lower your flaps at 14:00:20... how do we know that it had been snowing earlier?When I start with this, I'll make a true/false flag that will initially check the METAR for prior precipitation, but will register as 'true' if any ambient precipitation is noted after the FCDU starts. There will need to be lots of testing, so that'll have to wait. Plus, I'll need Dutch and Peter to make some recordings that would be in the vein of, "Captain, shouldn't we retract our flaps while taxiing in these conditions?" That alone may take a while. Best,
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