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We will now walk through the re-entry process from the beginning as it is done both in the real Shuttle and in X-Plane. Taking helicopters into these icing and thunderstorm situations is interesting because their very high wing-loading on their rotor and the fact that the rotor is free teetering causes them to have a pretty smooth ride in turbulence.

The weather map is very tactile—you can grab the icons and drag them up and down, and some cloud types allow you to adjust their edges to make them wider or narrower. On the Garmin 430, entry is performed using the control knob on the bottom right of the unit.

User Manuals

The latest version of the manual will always be available. Throughout this text, there will be cross-references to other parts of the manual, as well as hyperlinks to web pages. These will be formatted as blue text. For a PDF version of this manual, use an HTML to PDF converter such as. This means you are free to copy, share, and adapt the works so long as you give Laminar Research creators of X-Plane credit and release your work under a similar license. Throughout the manual, we make use of images from , a database of some 8 million freely usable media files. Instead, they have released the images under Creative Commons licenses, allowing anyone to use the photos so long as they comply with the applicable license. The best way to use this manual depends on what you need from it. We recommend that users consult the found at the end of this manual for reference as needed. Using this software, nearly any aircraft imaginable can be built. Once all the physical specifications of the airplane have been entered e. Airplanes are saved in Plane Maker just as one would save a word processing document. Users can create a. Planes created by others can also be downloaded and used in the simulator. Licensing of Aircraft Created in Plane Maker You are free to do whatever you like with the aircraft you create. You can do whatever you like with the files. One excellent use for Plane Maker is to create the airplane of your dreams, fly it in X-Plane, and then upload it to the Internet for others to fly. This will serve two purposes. First, it will teach more people to fly the airplane, creating potential customers. Then, it will improve the currency of those that already fly it, creating safer customers. Carter Aviation, creators of the CarterCopter, have done this successfully. Of course, Plane Maker can also be used to model an aircraft that you already have and fly every day, helping you to keep up your stick-and-rudder and instrument skills. An Overview of the Plane Maker Workflow There are as many different ways to go about working in Plane Maker as there are aircraft designers. The Plane Maker Interface Remember that definitions for any unfamiliar terms may be found in the. Helpful information has been built into every screen of Plane Maker as well. Hold the mouse pointer over any of the boxes or buttons to bring up an explanation of the setting. Simply double click Plane-Maker. With Aero enabled, boxes and text may appear slightly shifted from where it should be. This problem does not occur on all Windows 7 installations. To correct it if it occurs, right click on the X-Plane. Repeat this for the Plane Maker icon, or the shortcut you use to launch Plane Maker. To change the unit of measure, open the Viewpoint dialog from the Standard menu. Note: Checking this will not alter the unit of measure for thrust or weight. Opening and Saving an Aircraft To open an aircraft in Plane Maker, click on the File menu and click Open, per. There, navigate to the folder containing the. Select a specific paint job for the aircraft known as a livery by clicking one of the buttons in the bottom right section of the Open Aircraft screen, if applicable. Then, double click on the ACF, or click once and click the Open button. To save any changes you have made to the aircraft file, open the File menu and click Save. Any changes you made to the aircraft will be reflected the next time you load the aircraft in X-Plane. Plane Maker will create a new aircraft with nothing but a cylindrical fuselage. Be sure to create the folder first in your file browser Windows Explorer, Finder, etc. When you save your fuselage at this point in the creation process, Plane Maker will display a warning because critical information has not been entered yet. You should begin any new aircraft by filling in as many of the fields here as possible. In Plane Maker 11. Working with the Views 3-D aircraft model Figure 2. For instance, Figure 2. You can move the whole aircraft model left, right, up, or down by using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Note that the axes are inverted; press the left arrow to move the model right, press the down arrow to move it up, and so on. You can use the W, A, S, and D keys to spin and roll the 3-D model around its center. Additionally, in most of the settings dialog boxes, a 3-D model of the aircraft is visible on the right side of the screen when the Plane Maker window itself is wide enough. For example, consider ; since the window is quite wide wider than the standard size , the aircraft model is seen to the right. To swap between these two views, press the spacebar. These are represented as large black dots in the wireframe. Special Views The Background menu has a number of special viewing angles that are useful for many designers. These are the Top, Bottom, Side, Front, and Back views, as seen below. One potential use for these views is to compare the aircraft model to an image of the real thing. Click the Background Bitmap button in the bottom left corner of the window to load an image to compare your model against. For instance, if you had a top-down photo of the aircraft you were modeling and you wanted to see how closely your design matched it, you could click the Background Bitmap button, load that photo, and then select the Top view from the Background menu. Altering a Simple Aircraft To familiarize yourself with the workings of Plane Maker, it may be helpful to begin by tweaking a simple aircraft. You can to follow along in the following examples. Use the File menu to load the basic aircraft of your choice, then open the Standard menu and click Wings, as illustrated in. When the dialog box opens, click through the tabs labeled Wings 1—4 at the top of the dialog box. This will be easier to see if your window is wide enough to display a secondary aircraft model off to the right. Additionally, it will only work if the wings have not been made invisible, in the Invisible Parts dialog box of the Expert menu. The section of wing that appears black is the section that the current tab controls. In the case of the 777, wing sections 1, 2, and 3 comprise the full wing. This selects the wing section farthest from the fuselage of the 777. Now, there are a large number of ways to modify the wing here. Try clicking above and below the digits here to lengthen and shorten the wing segment. Taking a step back, this example is useful because it demonstrates a very common interface in Plane Maker. In the Foil Specs portion of the Wings dialog box, we have a number of properties of any given wing, each of which can be set individually and which combine to give a complete wing. Note also that you can move the mouse over almost every input field in Plane Maker and get a description of what that field controls. Mousing over the numbers in the input field reveals the following description: The sweep is the angle that the wings are swept back from sticking straight out the side of the airplane. Wing sweep is used to allow high-speed travel above Mach 0. If you are ever unsure of what a parameter controls, mousing over it is a good way to get help. These represent the core of almost every aircraft design. Note: You can change the unit of measure in the Default tab of the Viewpoint dialog box, found under the Standard menu. Fundamental Concepts A few ideas will come up over and over again throughout the creation of an aircraft body. The first is the concept of the reference point, and the second is the way in which positions in Plane Maker are set relative to the reference point. Understanding these two things ahead of time will make learning the specifics of creating the fuselage, wings, and other objects much faster. The Reference Point All objects the fuselage, wings, etc. This point is created simply through use. Likewise, your wings might be located ten feet behind the reference point, angled a few degrees back. While the point could be anything, you should choose a point that makes sense to you. Some aircraft designers prefer to make their reference point the center of the fuselage, while others prefer to make it the tip of the nose. How Positions Are Set in Plane Maker As we have said, all locations in Plane Maker are defined relative to a fixed, arbitrary point, often the tip of the fuselage. However, there is more to defining the position of, for instance, a wing than to say that it is five feet behind the tip of the fuselage. How high above the tip of the fuselage is it? How far left or right? Each measurement is in relation to the reference point. Parameter Positive value means… Negative value means… Longitudinal arm Behind reference pt. Forward of reference pt. Latidudinal arm Right of reference pt. Left of reference pt. Vertical arm Above reference pt. Interpreting the position-setting values Note that in cases where an object has lateral symmetry that is, it is duplicated on both sides of the aircraft, as a wing section is , the guidelines in the table above apply to the object on the right starboard side of the aircraft. Likewise, the lateral arm value is reversed for the object on the left port side. Thus, a positive lateral arm value for a certain wing section means the right wing section will move right of the reference point, while the left wing section will move left of the reference point. Shaping the Fuselage To begin work on a fuselage, open the Standard menu and click Fuselage, as seen in. There are three tabs across the top of the Fuselage dialog box, seen in. The Section tab displays a cross-section view of the fuselage, sliced into a number of pieces. If you need to use the shape data from another file, you can use the button in the upper right of the window, labeled Import Aircraft Body. This will set the fuselage shape based on data from another aircraft. These are the Body Data box, the Body Location box, the Body Texture box, and the Cross-Sections box, described in the following sections. The Body Data Box body data Figure 3. It is, effectively, your first stop when designing a new fuselage. For the greatest accuracy when placing the points that make up the body, this should be set to the actual maximum radius of the fuselage. You should, however, err on the side of setting this too high so that all your points are visible. This determines the amount of drag generated by the fuselage. An average fuselage will have a coefficient of drag of 0. See the section above for an explanation of these three controls. Many aircraft designers, though, prefer the reference point to be the front tip of the aircraft. In addition to the standard location controls, the Body Location box also contains directional controls. These are in the form of the heading, pitch, and roll offset parameters. The table below lists the interpretations of these values. For instance, setting a negative value in the heading offset will cause the fuselage to pivot to point left; when seen from above, the fuselage will pivot counterclockwise however many degrees are input here. Parameter Positive value means… Negative value means… Heading offset Pivots to point right starboard Pivots to point left port Pitch offset Pivots to point up Pivots to point down Roll offset Rolls right to starboard Rolls left to port Interpreting the direction-setting values In the vast majority of aircraft designs, it makes sense to think of the fuselage as the center of the aircraft, so these parameters will not be used. The Body Texture Box The Body Texture box is used for fine-tuning the painted texture on the aircraft alternately known as a skin or a livery. For information on working with paint textures on the aircraft, see. For information on the parameters found in this box in particular, see the section of that chapter titled. There is one slice of the fuselage for the number of stations set in the Body Data box, each slice in a gridded, white box, as seen in Figure 3. Since most designs warrant the maximum of nine radii per side, each of your slices will probably be composed of nine points. In reality, they each contain a half-slice. These arrows are highlighted in red boxes in Figure 3. At the top of each station is an input field controlling how far behind the reference point this particular slice will be. For instance, in the example cross-section of , the slice is located 15. Thus, in an aircraft whose reference point is the tip of the nose, this section would be about 15 feet from the nose. Of course, a cross-section could have a negative value here and be moved in front of the reference point. In this way, you could have a fuselage that overhangs itself, or curves inward in some way. The gridded white box, labeled 2 in , is the cross-section box itself. Click any point and drag it to reposition it and thus to reshape this slice of the fuselage. Double click on a point to lock its position, protecting it from being smoothed. Sometimes in the course of editing these cross-section points, it may be useful to zoom in and out or move the cross-sections around. This does not affect the model itself; it only changes the view of the model in editing. The left and right arrows beneath the cross-section box labeled 3 in are used to copy a cross-section as a whole into the station to the left or right, respectively. This might be useful if you added a new station after working on the stations you already had. In this case, you would start with the farthest right of the stations you had previously worked on and press the right arrow. Beneath those copy-left and copy-right buttons are general copy and paste buttons, labeled 4 in. Press the Copy button beneath the cross-section you want to copy from, and press the Paste button beneath the cross-section you want to copy to. This allows for much greater accuracy in placing the individual radius points of a cross-section than can be achieved using a mouse. Click any point in the cross-section labeled 2 in to see its distance both to the side and above or below the reference point. With the point selected, use the box labeled 5 in to change its distance to the side of the reference point. Positive values here indicate a point is on the right of the reference point. Finally, at the bottom of each station is the Ellipse button, labeled 7 in. Clicking this button will round the cross-section above into the closest-fitting, smoothly-curving ellipse. It will do so, however, without modifying any points that you have locked. Recall that these cross-sections may initially be laid out in the Section tab, described in the preceding section of the manual. To shape a station, simply click the radius points that make it up and drag them around. Just like in the Section tab, you can double click a point to lock it, preventing future smoothing operations from moving it on it. Now, how do these three views top, side, and bottom fit together? It all starts with the side view—the left side view, in particular. The middle, roughly horizontal line in the side view corresponds to the top- and bottommost lines in the top and bottom views. The top and bottom views are mirrored in their upper and lower halves; dragging a point in the upper half of the top view will drag its corresponding point in the lower half of that view in addition to dragging the same point in the side view. They are mirrored like this because the left side view itself is mirrored on the right; thus, the top view, for instance, shows the top half of both the left and right sides. Often in the course of editing the points of a fuselage, the points of a given section will get out of alignment purely by accident, due simply to the inaccuracy of using a mouse. For instance, in the example fuselage in , you might want to click the Reset all sections to vertical button, thus lining up the points in each cross-section. However, in some cases, it is desirable to not have all your sections vertically aligned. In this case, if you still wanted to align the out-of-whack section seen in , you would need to first click one of the points in the section you wanted to align. Then, after you have effectively told Plane Maker which section you want to modify, you would click the Reset this section to vertical button. At the bottom of this window are buttons to load an image, clear it or lock during zoom. This can be quite useful for laying out your points properly. For instance, you could take two scale drawings of your aircraft one to be used in both the top and bottom views and one to be used in the side view and drag the radius points to match up with this image. From there, we simply dragged the outermost points or uppermost points, as the case may be to match the edges of the fuselage in the image. Following that, we dragged the inner points to match the known shape of the fuselage. The front view shows the first twelve stations if there are twelve stations to show as though you were looking down the nose of a wireframe fuselage model. The back view, on the other hand, shows the last ten stations again, if there are ten stations to show as though you were standing at the tail looking down the wireframe model. Using the arrow keys, you can move the wire model over to view the whole fuselage, too, instead of just a half. The radius points displayed in both these views operate just like the ones in the other two tabs. Simply click a point and drag it to change the fuselage shape there. Smoothing the Fuselage The most basic smoothing operation that can be performed on the fuselage is the smoothing of individual cross-sections to an elliptical shape. A much farther-reaching version of this smoothing operation can also be performed. Adding Other Bodies to the Fuselage Some aircraft have odd protrusions such as a large fuel tank poking out from under the fuselage or even special physical objects attached to them. In this case, it may be best to model the fuselage itself as not having these things. In this case, you would model the other things using the Miscellaneous Bodies dialog box, found in the Standard menu. You can add up to twenty miscellaneous bodies in this dialog box. Clicking this button will insert a new station between the stations on the left and right sides of the button. From there, you can of course use the Copy and Paste buttons to move your stations around. Note that you can only use the Insert button when you have fewer than 20 stations. Shaping the Wings Wings in Plane Maker are composed of individual wing sections. A very simple wing might be made up of a single wing section, while a very complex wing might be made up of four or more wing sections. Each wing section can have control surfaces added, such as ailerons, elevators, or flaps. Furthermore, each wing section can have its cross-sectional shape its airfoil set independently of other sections. Setting the Basic Features To create and modify wing sections, open the Wings dialog box from the Standard menu. The Wings dialog box houses a number of tabs whose contents all look identical. When you click on any of the tabs, you will see three boxes in the window: the Foil Specs box, the texture fine-tuning box, and the Element Specs box. The Foil Specs box controls all the basic properties of a wing section. In this case, you could specify the location of the outer wing sections manually so that they meet up with the next sections closest to the fuselage. For information on working with paint textures on the aircraft, see Chapter 8,. Adding Ailerons, Flaps, and Other Control Surfaces To add control surfaces like elevators, rudders, ailerons, or flaps to a given wing section, you must tell Plane Maker where you want each control surface on the wing and you must define the control surfaces themselves. The first part is done using the Element Specs box found in the Wings dialog box, while the second part is done in the Control Geometry dialog box, launched from the Standard menu. The order in which you do these does not matter; do them in whatever order makes the most sense to you. For our purposes, we will start off in the Control Geometry dialog box. The only thing to be concerned with in this dialog box, at least until after the first test flight, is the Controls tab. In the Controls tab, a number of possible control surfaces can be created, from ailerons to elevators to rudders to speedbrakes to flaps. Each of these works in a similar way. The left half of the window, in the box labeled Control Sizes, sets up ailerons, elevators, rudders, roll spoilers, drag rudders, and speedbrakes. The right half of the window, labeled Flap Specs, sets up flaps and slats only. There are four input fields here. Thus, if this root width were set at 0. So, if the tip width were set at 0. These two parameters, root and tip width, function identically on all the control surfaces available. To the right of the two size parameters are the fields controlling how far the surface can move, measured in degrees. For instance, in the aileron of these are, from left to right, how far down the aileron can deflect and how far up it can deflect. Specifications for ailerons, elevators, and rudders all follow this same pattern: parameters for the root and tip width, followed by parameters for the maximum deflections. The roll spoilers and drag rudder are exceptions to this pattern. They move one at a time, and they only move upward. For this reason, they have only one parameter for maximum deflection. Additionally, the speedbrake may have two maximum deflections: one for normal, in-flight operation, and one for ground use. Slats change the lift characteristics of a wing. They allow a higher angle of attack for the wing, resulting in a lower stall speed. Two slats can be set up for each aircraft. Using the parameters seen in Figure 3. Note that Krueger flaps are not technically slats. Slats work by allowing the wing to go to a higher angle of attack without stalling—that is, without losing lift. Slats in the real world allow the wing to gain up to eight degrees of angle of attack without stalling. They allow the wing to generate a given amount of lift at a lower speed, resulting in the aircraft stalling at a lower speed. Two flaps can be set up for each aircraft. Using the parameters shown in Figure 3. Each type of flap has unique lift, drag, and moment characteristics, as described in the dark gray box below the flap type setting. Just like when setting up ailerons, rudders, and elevators, you must specify the flap size on both the root side and the tip side. These are set as a decimal part of whatever wing section the flap is placed on. Beneath the flap type and size settings are the parameters that control the aerodynamic coefficients for each flap, as seen in Figure 3. Plane Maker will automatically estimate the coefficients of lift C l , drag C d , and moment C m based on flap size and deflection, but these may be modified manually as well. The flap deflection time is critical for getting proper pitch characteristics when the flaps are lowered. Even for aircraft with infinitely adjustable flaps, though, it is still useful to set the detents below, as they will be used in the maximum allowable flap deployment speeds. This sets the amount of time in seconds that it takes the flaps to go from fully retracted to fully extended. Beneath the flap deflection time is the number of flap detents as seen in. A detent is a stopping place for the flaps, a middle-of-the-road between being totally retracted and totally extended. General aviation aircraft might have only one or two stopping points, while airliners might have many more. Finally, beneath the number of detents are the detent parameters themselves—one set of detent boxes for each flap and slat. Note that there is one more box here than the number of detents you set above. For instance, in in , three flap detents were set. Adding Control Surfaces to the Wings With the control surfaces elevators, ailerons, rudders, flaps, etc. You will need to set the control surfaces individually for each wing section. To do this, open the Wings dialog box from the Standard menu. The wing section will be divided into this many pieces of equal size. These pieces serve a couple of purposes. The simulation works by breaking the wing into pieces, calculating the forces on those pieces, and summing the forces on all the pieces in order to move the aircraft as a whole. These pieces also serve as divisions across which control surfaces are stretched. This brings us to the next feature of the Element Specs box. We have said that the wing section is broken into a number of equal-sized pieces. These pieces are represented here, from left to right, from the root to the tip of the wing section. Thus, when the checkbox on the far left is checked, it means the piece of this wing section that is closest to the fuselage has that control surface. This means that in , the four pieces closest to the fuselage have flap 1. Check each of the boxes for the control surfaces that a wing section has. Body-mounted speedbrakes like these are created in the Speedbrakes tab of the Control Geometry dialog box. Once again, the Control Geometry dialog box is opened from the Standard menu. Up to four body-mounted speedbrakes can be added to an aircraft using this tab; there is one box per speedbrake, as seen in. To begin positioning a speedbrake, you can set the standard location controls, labeled 2 in. These are presented here in longitudinal-lateral-vertical order, from left to right. A zero angle makes the speedbrake point straight up, while an 180 degrees makes it point down. The parameter on the left is the angle of the speedbrake when it is retracted; the one on the right is its angle when extended. Positive values here will cause the speedbrake to hinge upward, while negative values cause it to hinge downward. This sets the upward angling or incidence of each piece, in degrees. This allows you to warp a wing section to point up or down. Pieces are modified just like when adding a control surface to a piece; the boxes on the far left correspond to the portion of the wing section that is closest to the fuselage, while the boxes on the far right correspond to the portions farthest from the fuselage. The Plane Maker-calculated value for the chord length is multiplied by the ratio you set here to get the actual width of this piece. For instance, if Plane Maker saw that the chord length should be 5 feet at the center of a given piece, and you used a chord ratio of 2, the center would end up with a 10-foot chord length. Likewise, if you had chosen a ratio of 0. Positive values will push the wing section behind the reference point, while negative values will push it forward of the reference point. This is specified as a ratio of the Plane Maker-calculated chord length. Thus, with a calculated chord length of 5 feet, and a chord offset of 0. Is it thin along the trailing edge and fat along the leading edge? Maybe it is fat along both edges, or maybe it is fat in the middle and thin at the edges. To tell Plane Maker just what cross-sectional shape the wing has, we need the Airfoil dialog box, which is launched from the Expert menu. Each wing section can have four different airfoils set for it. These four airfoils come in two sets, one for high Reynolds numbers and one for low Reynolds numbers. Each set has one airfoil for the root and one for the tip. These airfoil shapes are then blended together linearly in the portion between the root and tip, and the two sets the low and high Reynolds number sets are blended together between the Reynolds numbers. For information on using Airfoil Maker to create these airfoils with predefined performance, see the. To apply an airfoil shape to a wing after the wing has been created, open the Expert menu and click Airfoils. In the Airfoils dialog box, go to the Wings tab. Here, you can set two versions of both the root and the tip airfoil for each wing section. The foils on the left are for the root side of the section, and the ones on the right are for the tip side, as seen in Figure 3. Plane Maker will interpolate between the root and tip airfoil to create the shape of the middle of the wing section. They can be swept forward or back, they can be angled up or down, and they can even be retracted. Positive values here will allow the wing to angle further behind the reference point, while negative values will allow it to angle forward of the reference point. This variable sweep is illustrated in Figure 3. Note that you set the maximum sweep here; the minimum sweep is set as the default wing sweep, found in the Wings dialog box opened from the Standard menu. Variable wing sweep is useful in aircraft that approach or exceed the speed of sound, but which must also perform well at low speeds. As your speed increases toward Mach 1, a wing that meets the air head-on generates more and more drag. Variable sweep wings are most popular in military aircraft like the B—1 Lancer and the F—14 Tomcat. To use a variable sweep in X-Plane, you can add a sweep control to the instrument panel. This is illustrated in Figure 3. Entering a positive value here corresponds to an angle upward from horizontal like the wings in Figure 3. Likewise, entering a negative value will correspond to a downward angle. This angle, known as the angle of incidence, is illustrated in Figure 3. Enter the maximum incidence here, in degrees. Positive values correspond to an upward angle of the wing when viewing the aircraft from the side, while negative values correspond to a downward angle. Thus, changing the angle of incidence in flight will also change the angle of the fuselage as the aircraft flies. For instance, if the wing section was 10 feet long and you set the max retraction ratio at 0. In this case, you can add more wing sections by launching the Misc Wings dialog box from the Standard menu. Wing sections here are added and modified just like in the regular Wings dialog box, with one exception: wing sections are not mirrored across the body. With this in mind, there are two vertical stabilizer sections and a single horizontal stabilizer wing section available in the Wings dialog box launched from the Standard menu. Shaping the Landing Gear The landing gear is created using the Landing Gear dialog box, which is opened from the Standard menu. Any landing gear needs to have its position on the aircraft specified, and if the gear is retractable, it must have a retracted position that is different from its extended position. The gear also must have a size—both its tire size and its strut length. These properties of the gear are defined using the first tab of the Landing Gear dialog box, labeled Gear Loc that is, gear location. In this tab, you can create up to ten different gears. Each gear has a column dedicated to setting its properties; Figure 3. This will animate the gear as you work on it, so you can see just how far it extends and retracts. Click the drop-down button and select from a wide array of wheel or skid configurations. A lateral wheel configuration arranges the wheels side-by-side, while a truck configuration arranges them in rows. Next, beneath the gear type parameter are the three standard positional controls. These are, in order, the longitudinal arm, the lateral arm, and the vertical arm. In the case of the longitudinal angles, the parameters measure how far the gear is angled to the fore of the reference point. Thus, if the gear needed to angle toward the aft of the reference point, you would use a negative number here. Positive 90 degrees will angle the gear forward and perfectly horizontal, while negative 90 degrees will angle it backward and horizontal. Thus, if the gear needed to angle to the left, you would use a negative number. Positive 90 degrees will angle the gear to the right to be horizontal. For many aircraft, the extended and retracted length will be the same; some, though, may compress the gear when retracting it. Next are the two parameters controlling the tire size. Each of the tires on a given gear must be the same size. The tire radius is the length from the outer edge to the center of the tire, when viewing the aircraft from the side. The tire semi-width is half the width of the tire, when viewing the aircraft head-on. The next controls are for the amount the nosewheel or tailwheel of the aircraft can steer. Enter zero for wheels that do not steer at all. The first parameter sets the amount, in degrees, that the wheel rotates around its own axis when it is retracted. The strut compression parameter sets the amount, in feet, that the strut collapses on itself when the gear is retracted. In some aircraft, like the F—4 Phantom II, the gear compresses on itself like this to save space. Finally, at the bottom of the dialog box are four checkboxes. The box below that toggles whether the gear is retractable or not. The top box on the right side of the group is for castors. Check this box if the wheel castors freely all the time. These structures are used to reduce the drag the gear generates by presenting a streamlined surface for the air to interact with. Finishing Retractable Gears When creating a retractable gear, you will need to specify a few properties in addition to the size, position, and type. With this unchecked, the aircraft will sense that the gear is bearing the weight of the craft when it is on the ground and will thus not allow you to retract the gear. This is useful for preventing damage to the aircraft. Check the box directly below for seaplanes which have no landing gear and must take off and land on the water. However, any time a gear door opens up to let a wheel out, it also opens the gear wells. Gear Warnings If a landing gear is retractable, there will often be a speed above which it is not safe to have the gear extended the maximum landing gear extended speed, V le and a speed above which it is not safe to extend or retract the gear the maximum landing gear operating speed, V lo. Once below the activation speed, the values in the throttle and flap fields will also trigger the warning sound. Customizing Wheels and Steering Using the preceding sections, you can build a landing gear with the right wheel configuration, the right position, and even the right retraction characteristics. These control how far, in degrees, the wheels responsible for steering can deflect while going slowly. Note that nosewheel steering is a general term for steering by moving the wheels—it applies to taildraggers that steer with the tail wheel also. These parameters, found in the bottom of the Gear Data tab, are shown in. The rolling coefficient of friction the box on the left controls how much friction is produced by the weight of the airplane on the wheels when rolling on pavement. A value of 0. The maximum coefficient of friction, the box on the right in , controls the maximum amount of friction that the tires can generate, both by braking and from side loads. Thus, a lateral separation ratio of 2 here puts the tires touching each other side by side. Thus, a ratio of 2 here puts the tires touching along their edges as they rotate. Designing Wheel Fairings and Skids For each of your gears created in the Gear Loc tab of the Landing Gear dialog box, you can choose to add a streamlined fairing. Sometimes known as a wheel pant or spat, a fairing is designed to reduce the drag generated by a landing gear by presenting a streamlined surface for the air to interact with. Before actually designing your fairings, you must tell Plane Maker which gears have them. Each fairing you specified has its own tab here at the top of the dialog box. With one possible fairing per gear, and ten possible gears, that makes for a total of ten fairing tabs at the top of the dialog box. What about everything else? Some extra bodies have their own special dialog boxes for modeling. These include engine pylons, engine nacelles, weapons, and slung loads. For information on engine pylons and engine nacelles, read on to the following sections of the manual. To create the body of the engine like the tip of the propeller or the body of a jet engine , you must add an engine nacelle. Like every surface in X-Plane, these nacelles will have both visual and aerodynamic consequences. The Engine Nacelles dialog box is used to model these bodies. This box cannot be checked for engines the aircraft does not have. This makes sense; the nacelles are attached to a particular engine, not to the aircraft as a whole. Note the large black dot on the left side of the nacelle in the wireframe view. This point serves as the reference point for this nacelle. Modeling a pylon is very similar to modeling a wing—a pylon just ends up being a short, stubby, oddly shaped wing, which might itself be attached to a real wing. In light of this, the controls found in the Engine Pylons dialog box are identical to those in the Wings dialog box, with a couple exceptions. Since engines in Plane Maker are just points from which thrust is generated, this works well. Up to two pylon designs can be created for each aircraft. These engines are numbered as they are in the Engine Specs dialog box; the engine on the far left in the Engines 2 tab of that dialog box corresponds to the checkbox on the far left here, and so on. Viewpoint dialog box Figure 3. In addition, you can set what ground service vehicles, such as food, baggage, or fuel trucks, will service the aircraft in this screen. In addition to influencing the flight model as appropriate, these systems can be set to fail in X-Plane, allowing pilots to practice dealing with contingencies. The Engines 2 tab of the Engine Specs dialog box is the best place to start. There, you can set the number, type, location, and other properties of all types of engines. The parameters available here will vary depending on what type of engine s you choose. To begin, set the number of engines present on the aircraft using the box at the top of the dialog box. A number of columns will appear, one for each engine you specified. Use the drop down menu at the top of each column to set the type of each engine. The engine type will determine what further parameters are available for the engines. It will also affect, among other things, the sounds produced by the engine and the fuel flow it draws. It uses a carburetor to mix air with fuel at low pressure. It uses a fuel injector to mix air with fuel at high pressure. Fuel-injected engines are far more common today than carbureted ones, due partly to their increased reliability. This setting is primarily for backwards compatibility for aircraft saved before version 11. This is the new model, which is more accurate and very carefully matched to real PT6 performance. This uses N2 for Ng, and uses N1 for the turbine that is attached to the prop. The N2 drives the torque, and the N1 is spun by that, just like a high-bypass turbofan engine. This is the recommended turboprop model moving forward. This is roughly modeled after Garret turboprops. This setting is primarily for backwards compatibility for aircraft saved before version 11. The N2 is the power turbine in the hot section, spinning up and down as fuel is applied. Independently from that, the N1 is spun by the torque generated from N2, spinning the bypass fan. This is more accurate, since N2 can surge while N1 takes some time to respond, and N1 can windmill briskly even if N2 is shut down and barely spinning. There are, however, a few features that all engine types have in common. Features Shared by All Engine Types Regardless of the engine type selected in the Engines 2 tab, a few characteristics of the engine must be set. Location All engine types must have a position specified in the Engines 2 tab. Positive values for the vertical cant will cause the engine to point upward. Positive values for the side cant will cause the engine to angle right clockwise when viewing the aircraft from above. All engine types also have the option to be vectored, using the checkbox beneath the side cant parameter. Throttle Settings In addition to their location, all engines must have a few characteristics of their throttle set. These are found the Engines 1 tab of the Engine Specs dialog box, in the General Engine Specs box there. It is not uncommon to use a maximum throttle of, say, 0. Allowing over 100% power also makes sense when leaving some reserve power for emergency operations. Max throttle with one engine failed sets the maximum throttle available when an engine failure has occurred. Note that all engine specifications in Plane Maker are set with respect to full throttle. Thus, if you move the maximum throttle away from 1. Next are the low and high idle adjustment boxes. Plane Maker will automatically estimate where the engine idles, both in a low-idle situation and a high-idle one. Use this box to change the idle speed, as a ratio of the default Plane Maker estimate. Beneath these is the afterburner setting. Leave this at zero to allow the panel-switch to control the burner level. For instance, if you wanted to go to Beta when the joystick was at 25% of its throttle range, you would set this box to 0. Both Beta and reverse modes are virtually ubiquitous in both turboprops and jet engines. Likewise, they are uncommon in reciprocating engines. Enter a number higher than 100% to leave some reserve for emergencies. Some aircraft automatically set the prop RPM based on throttle position. To manually set the RPM with the power lever at idle, partway, and maximum, check this box and then adjust the values in the three additional fields that appear. Critical Altitude and FADEC Characteristics Without modification, most engines put out less power the higher they go. The thinner air at high altitudes simply provides less oxygen to burn. Because of this, most aircraft have a critical altitude-a height above sea level above which they can no longer produce full power. At altitudes below this, full power is still available. One advantage to having a FADEC is that it can keep the engine from exceeding the maximum allowable thrust, as the checkbox in notes. This can also be done by the automatic wastegate in a turbocharger-in this case, the same box should be checked. Boost Characteristics All combustion engines both jet and reciprocating can have a boost applied to them. This can come in two forms: an anti-detonant, or a nitrous oxide N 2O boost. It also serves to cool the engine, allowing it to run at a higher RPM than it otherwise would be able to. Nitrous oxide, on the other hand, decomposes quickly when it is injected into an engine. When it does, it increases the amount of oxygen available during combustion. Like an anti-detonant, the vaporization of N 2O also cools the engine. Instead, it just needs to know how much of a boost your method gives. To use the boost in X-Plane, simply push the throttle to its maximum; the boost will automatically kick in. This number is determined by the amount of inertia the engine has, and is applicable only to turbine engines, such as turboprops and jets. It is a measure of how long it takes the low-pressure compressor N 1 to speed up to its maximum when the throttle is brought instantly from idle to full. In X-Plane, the actual spool-up time will be affected by atmospheric conditions, the weight of the propeller if applicable , and the time it takes the pilot to advance the throttle. Spool Up time Figure 4. This should be set for two altitudes, one low and one high, and each altitude should have a half-power and full power SFC. TSFC is calculated as fuel flow divided by thrust. Both these controls are found in the left half of the Reciprocating or Turboprop SFC box. For instance, if a given engine burned 100 pounds of fuel per hour, and it had a 200 horsepower engine, it would burn 0. If that was the fuel consumption at your low altitude at half power, you would enter 0. If your aircraft used 0. Engines Capable of Zero-G Flight Some engines need to be capable of zero-G flight, or sustained flight at a pitch of 90 degrees. This is most often seen in rockets and space ships. To model this in X-Plane, you must tell Plane Maker that the craft has an inverted fuel and oil system. In this case, you must specify the number of propellers and their features using the Props 1 tab of the Engine Specs dialog box. Near the top of the dialog box, right beneath the engine number and type settings, are the settings for the number and type of propellers. In nearly all cases, there will be one propeller per engine. It varies its power in order to maintain constant RPM, but it can also change the direction of its thrust in order to facilitate vertical takeoff and landing. The Mach number is chosen in Engine 1 tab if a prop of this type is selected. A blade is most efficient at a given angle of attack, so this increases or decreases pitch to set the right average angle of attack across the prop blade. The angle of attack AOA is chosen in Engine 1 tab if a prop of this type is selected on the airplane. Each propeller you specified will have its own column of settings, just like each engine does; the propeller settings will be integrated to the engine settings columns. This number can be set independently for each propeller. Immediately to the right of the number of blades is the direction of spin, also in. This is set either to clockwise CW or counterclockwise CCW , as seen when looking at the aircraft from behind. Below the blade direction setting are checkboxes, seen in. Ducted fans are also found in Fenestron tail rotors and lift fans. A very straightforward ducted fan is found in the Martin Jetpack, as in Figure 4. The fine and coarse pitch set the range, in degrees, over which the blade can change its angle of attack pitch. Constant-RPM and manual pitch propellers, among other propeller types, vary their blade pitch to achieve a desired thrust at a constant rotational speed. Set the minimum pitch using the box on the left and the maximum using the one on the left. This is the speed of the air, in knots, that the propeller is optimized to have passing through it. For airplanes, this is approximately equal to the forward speed of the plane that you want to optimize for plus half the propwash. This sets the speed, in revolutions per minute, that the propeller is optimized for. Setting this to about 2 degrees is recommended. A value of 2. The pitch might mathematically be able to go to 90º, but the prop may be limited to 45º for manufacturing or structural reasons. Based on the radius, design RPM, and design speed of the propeller, Plane Maker will automatically calculate an angle of attack for the length of the propeller. The final setting for propellers is the engine-to-gear ratio, found at the bottom of the Engines 2 tab. This is the number of times the engine rotates for each rotation of the propeller. This is most commonly set to 1. This is the maximum horsepower output at sea level with standard atmosphere. In the right column are the RPM values at which the engine redlines and idles. The redline RPM sets the maximum allowable rotations per minute for the engine, and the idle RPM sets the speed at which the engine turns when the throttle is set to zero. Reciprocating engines typically redline between 2,000 and 3,000 RPM. The column has three additional boxes corresponding to three different engine RPM limits. This should probably be close to the engine redline RPM set above. This sets the minimum engine RPM that can be set using the prop control in X-Plane. This does not take into account reverse, Beta, or feathered modes. Two features of FADECs are specific to propeller-driving engines and can be selected in the left column of the Prop Engine Specs box. The option just above the FADEC check boxes deals with helicopters only. Customizing the Propeller The propeller is initially created in the Engines 2 tab of the Engine Specs dialog box. In many aircraft, though, there is much more to the propeller than that. To further customize the propeller, see the additional options in the Prop Engine Specs box of the Engines 1 tab. In the bottom left corner are four check boxes that deal with general behavior of all propellers on an aircraft. The first two boxes determine if the propeller goes to its feathered pitch when the prop control is pulled back to minimum, or when the mixture control is at minimum, respectively. Check the third box to have all the propellers automatically feather to reduce drag after an engine failure. The final option in the column affects the engines, but is based on the propeller control; check this to shut off fuel when the control is pulled to minimum. The first specific characteristic of a propeller that can be set is the feathered pitch of the prop, as seen at the top of. This sets the pitch of the propeller, in degrees, when it is feathered. A featherable propeller is one whose blades can be rotated to be parallel to the air flowing over them. In the case of engine failure, feathering a propeller reduces the drag it generates by a huge amount. This sets the pitch of the propeller, in degrees, when it is in its Beta range. Next in are the settings for the coarse and fine pitch when the governor is in alpha mode. These define the pitch of the propeller, in degrees, when it is in beta or reverse-thrust mode respectively. This is set as a ratio to the density of solid aluminum. Here you pick which side the prop governor fails to—fine, coarse, or feather pitch, or start lock. The final two parameters in the bottom corner of the General Engine Specs box are for constant-Mach propellers. At this point, most of the characteristics of the propeller have been set, from its pitch settings to its weight. What we have not yet discussed is fine-tuning the shape of the propeller. What about the width of all the points in between? Each of these shape settings is controlled by the Props 2 tab of the Engine Specs dialog box, as shown in Figure 4. Each piece has four parameters that can be set. These parameters are the rib leading edge L. So, if the leading edge was offset by 0. The last option available in the Propeller tab is the angle of incidence for each piece. This is how much that piece of the propeller is aimed up to increase its lift. By default, Plane Maker will calculate an appropriate angle of incidence based on the radius, design RPM, and design speed of the propeller. To define this, open the Airfoils dialog from the Expert menu. Shown in Figure 4. At noon, the sun puts out about 1400 watts of power per square meter in space, which is reduced to about 1000 watts per square meter at sea level. A good guess for middling altitudes is 1100 watts from the sun. The equation to find the power in watts available from the solar cells is: Wings surface area x Solar cell coverage x Solar cell efficiency x Power coming from the sun Divide this number by 760 to convert the power in watts to horsepower. Working with Jet Engines Jet engines are much simpler to set up in Plane Maker than propeller-driving engines. For a jet engine, this center of thrust is usually the exhaust. Note that many engine manufacturers rate their engines at their takeoff thrust, which is often not 100% N 1. Thus, the thrust specifications from a manufacturer may be under-rated. At the top of the middle column in the Jet Engine Specs box is the compressor area, given in square feet. Specifically, this is the frontal area of the engine compressor, calculated as π times the radius of the compressor for engines with the whole of their round compressors open to drag effects. To the left of the compressor area is the fan RPM at 100% N 1, measured in rotations per minute. If fuel is introduced into the engine prior to this speed, a hot start a start that exceeds the maximum temperature the engine is designed to handle may ensue. It is, more accurately, the time it takes N 1 to bring in torque when the throttle is moved to full. The final parameter in the Jet Times box is the thrust-reverser deployment time, the time in seconds that it takes the thrust reverser to deploy and retract. The Jets 1, 2 and 3 tabs of the Engine Specs dialog display power curves for N1 as function of N2, thrust with N1, and thrust with mach and altitude. In these screens you can set different values in the boxes on the left side and see how it affects the power curves. Change the boxes on the right sides to get the exact measurement at a specific data point. These curves are very carefully modeled after real engines. Working with Rocket Engines Rocket engines, like jets, are quite simple to set up in Plane Maker. For a rocket engine, this center of thrust is usually the center of the exhaust nozzle. In X-Plane, the engine can put out full thrust in all three conditions, though real rockets are not always able to do so. This is used only to calculate how large an exhaust flame to display in X-Plane. Specific fuel consumption in rocket engines is much simpler than in combustion engines; this parameter applies at all altitudes, at all power settings. Engines of the same type propeller-driving, jet, or rocket are assumed to have the same characteristics—that is, all propeller-driving engines on an aircraft will have the same maximum allowable horsepower, the same redline RPM, and so on. This, of course, applies only to engines that turn propellers. Most aircraft designs will have one transmission per engine. Thus, a single-engine aircraft will have a single transmission, a twin-engine aircraft will have two transmissions, and so on. Exceptions are designs which use a common transmission to connect multiple engines to multiple propellers, as seen in the V—22 Osprey, as well as helicopter designs, where all rotors are geared together. The amount of power the engine loses to the transmission s is set in the far left of the Transmission tab, and the number of transmissions is defined next to it, as seen in Figure 4. All aircraft lose some power in the transference of energy from the engine to the actual turning of the propeller; this is power lost to the transmission. Thus, a value of 1. Airplanes typically have losses between 0. With multiple engines created in the Engines 2 tab, there will be one row of settings for each engine. Note that the topmost engine here corresponds to the leftmost engine in the Engines 1 tab, and the topmost propeller here corresponds to the leftmost propeller in the Props 1 tab. Thus, in a twin-engine plane, the port-side engine might feed transmission 1, and the port-side propeller would be fed by transmission 1. The starboard-side engine, then, would feed transmission 2, and the starboard-side propeller would be fed by transmission 2. Setting Up Electrical, Hydraulic, and Pressurization Systems The electrical and hydraulic sub-systems of an aircraft are used to drive instruments, lighting, and flight controls. The pressurization system keeps the air pressure in the cabin at a comfortable level. These systems are modeled in Plane Maker using the Systems dialog box, found in the Standard menu. Configuring the Electrical System The electrical system is configured using the Systems dialog box. The Electrical 1 tab sets the sources of electrical power, as well as the number of buses and inverters, so it is a good place to start when setting up the system. Note that the aircraft will have one battery for every battery button present on the 2-D instrument panel, and one generator for every generator button on the panel. The battery will only be considered if more amperage is required by your electronics than is available from the generator, as might occur in a generator failure or when taxiing in some aircraft. A good estimate for light aircraft is a 1,000 watt-hour battery. If the aircraft has an APU, check the options it provides, such as bleed air or generator. If the aircraft also has an air-driven backup generator to power the electrical system, check the box on the right side of the Sources portion of the dialog box. An aircraft will often have several different electrical distribution networks, called buses. These buses are often separated and powered by separate generators and batteries so that the failure of one bus will not cause electrical failure across the rest of the aircraft. Inverters are most commonly used for backup power, turning DC power from the battery into AC power for most electronics. For instance, in Figure 4. The base load for each bus is set in the upper left of the Bus 1 tab. Note that generator loads will be affected by the bus that each system is attached to, and the amperage drawn from it. If the bus powering a system fails in X-Plane—that is, if the battery and generator for the bus are off, the bus cross-tie is off, and there is no APU running for the bus—that system will fail. X-Plane can model up to four hydraulic pumps: one powered by the electrical system, one powered by a ram air turbine, and two powered by the engine. Check the boxes in the Hydraulic Sources portion of the General tab corresponding to the pumps your aircraft uses. The units on the maximum pressure are not specified; the hydraulics modeling is not detailed enough for the units to matter, so they can be anything. The only thing that matters here is the ratio between the different pumps, and it only matters then in the case of failure. To the right of the hydraulic sources are the systems that depend on the hydraulics. If the hydraulic pumps fail, the systems represented by each checked box will also fail. Most of the systems here are self-explanatory. This is set as a ratio of their normal full operation. The group of settings in the middle specifies how the landing gear fails in the event of a hydraulic failure. Select the radio button appropriate for your aircraft here. These located at the bottom of the Hydraulic Systems box. Standard atmosphere on Earth is 14. Finally, you can enter an amount for bottled oxygen available to be used by crew in cases of pressurization failure. Later, when designing the instrument panel, you will add the specific instruments your aircraft uses. This includes performance ranges, which are set in terms of red-line, yellow, and green ranges. These tabs are used to set the operational and limiting temperatures, pressures, voltages, etc. Note that this information is not used in the flight model; it controls only what the instruments display. To configure the colors used in the instrument displays, open the Systems dialog box from the Standard menu and select the Arc Colors tab. Here, you can set the decimal RGB values for each of the three standard ranges. In the case of round instruments, check the box next to a measurement such as VVI, ITT, N 1, etc. In setting the angles, 0 degrees is the top of the instrument. Angles can be positive or negative, and can even be greater than 360 if you would like the dial to wrap around. In the case of digital instruments, checking the box for a measurement allows you to set the offset, scale, and the number of digits used in displaying that measurement. Setting V-Speeds and G Limits In addition to red, green, and yellow ranges, the instruments need standard operating markings. With the exception of the g limits, these will not be factored into the flight model; they may, however, be used in the airspeed indicator. To set these, open the Viewpoint dialog box from the Standard menu. If you cannot find official g limit values, 4. At g loads more than 50% above these values, if the appropriate settings are enabled in X-Plane, structural damage will occur-probably in the form of a wing being torn off! Note that, depending on your engine configuration, some of the values listed above may not be visible. Any of these markings can be left off the instruments by simply setting their values to zero. Configuring the Autopilot For general settings that control autopilot behavior, select the Systems dialog from under the Standard menu. On the General 1 tab, start by choosing a preconfigured or custom autopilot. This hides other configuration options and configures the autopilot internally to behave like the Garmin GFC—700, which is a high-end position-based digital autopilot. Most notably, this autopilot does not have buttons with toggle logic, so you cannot press the button of an active mode to go back to a default mode. You always have to select a new mode to cancel an old mode. This autopilot supports GPSS, by pressing the NAV button twice. Used in the default analogue C172. This acts on the roll axis only, does not have an elevator or trim servo, and defaults to zero turn rate wings level for roll mode. This autopilot supports GPSS through the heading mode. Adds vertical speed hold and altitude hold to the functions of the KAP—140. Can be either rate-based or position-based. Has the usual dual-axis modes, but does not have any logic for automatic mode reversions. Will not change modes on its own, does not have advanced logic like dual-mode intercepts or altitude capture. For additional information on using the 11. For this option, you should next select the attitude source: AHRS, electric gyro, vacuum gyro, or turn rate + static. This is the most important setting. It determines under which circumstances the autopilot will stay functional in abnormal situations. Next select the heading source. This determines what provides heading information to the autopilot and the kind of performance to expect from that. Then select the Nav course source. This is how the autopilot obtains the information on how to intercept and track a navigational source. The first column boxes control how the autopilot interacts with the servos. The boxes of the second column are options for how the pre-selector is automatically loaded. To further configure a custom autopilot in Plane-Maker, or fine-tune an existing one, first go to the Expert menu and click on Artificial Stability. A number of controls will appear that specify the autopilot constants for your airplane. The first box adjusts how quickly the autopilot changes the throttle setting. The last option controls the sensitivity of the autopilot in reacting to an error in speed. Higher numbers decrease the sensitivity, and the autopilot will wait longer before applying full throttle to correct a deviation. Tuning Autopilot Roll Roll Controls The roll prediction control is found in the middle box of the Autopilot tab, at the top of the left column, highlighted in blue in the following image. If the plane tends to wander slowly left and right, always behind its mark, or it overshoots and then wanders slowly off in the wrong direction, then it clearly is not anticipating enough. In that case, an increase is required in the roll prediction to make the autopilot anticipate more. If, however, the airplane starts flopping back and forth hysterically every frame, the autopilot is clearly anticipating too much; a smaller roll prediction is needed. This control lets the autopilot know how long it will take to see the results of the adjustments. When flying a real plane, a pilot decides on a roll angle to make a turn. He or she then decides to deflect the ailerons a certain amount of degrees to achieve the desired bank angle. This control specifies to the autopilot how many degrees off the aircraft must be from the desired roll angle before it puts in full aileron. If this is set to a very small number, the autopilot will put in full aileron for even the tiniest of roll errors. This will cause the plane to over-control and flutter madly left and right like an over-caffeinated pilot! On the other hand, if this control is set to a very large number, then the autopilot will hardly put in any aileron input at all. In that case, the plane will always wander off course a bit, because it will never move quickly enough to get back on course. What this control really determines is how aggressively the ailerons are applied. A good starting point for this control is 30 degrees. This means that if the roll angle is off by 10 degrees, the plane will apply one- third aileron to correct when at low speed—not a bad idea. Beneath this control is the roll rate, measured in degrees per second. This tells the autopilot how fast to roll the plane. This should be based on what the aircraft is realistically capable of. The autopilot will overshoot turns if this is set too high, or fail to complete a turn in time if it is too low. In the real plane, a pilot will trim out any loads with trim if it is available. The roll tune time determines how long the autopilot takes to run the trim. If the autopilot waits too long to trim out the loads, it may be slow and late in getting to the correct angle. A good starting point for this control is 5 seconds. This sets the number of degrees of heading change that the autopilot will pull for each degree of error on the localizer which is the same as saying for each dot of CDI deflection. If the aircraft is off course by about one degree, and the autopilot corrects only one degree, the craft would be flying right towards the airport, never intercepting the localizer until it got to the transmitter on the ground. Thus, a good starting point for this control is 10 degrees, forcing the plane to nail that HSI now. Next we will discuss correcting pitch; the discussion will be almost exactly the same as roll, really. If the plane is always wandering up and down when trying to hold a given vertical speed, always a few steps behind where it needs to be, then more anticipation is clearly called for—the pitch prediction control needs to be set to a larger number. Conversely, if the plane is always resisting motion towards the desired pitch, then it is probably anticipating too much, and a smaller number is called for. Once again, these numbers need to be tuned in pitch and roll modes, or maybe heading and vertical speed modes, to get them set perfectly, with nice, snappy, precise autopilot response, before the autopilot is tested on an ILS. A good starting point for this control is one second. It determines how much error between desired and actual pitch is required for full elevator deflection. If the plane takes too long getting the nose up to track a new vertical speed, then a smaller pitch error for full elevator value is needed. This will cause the plane to be more aggressive with the elevator. Of course, if the plane starts flapping about madly, a larger value is needed, telling the plane to stop deflecting the elevator so much. It sets the time required to trim, similar to the roll tune time control described above. If this is set to too small a number, the plane will constantly be wandering up and down as it plays with the trim, as it will always be too quick to modify the trim. This control should probably be set between 5 and 10 seconds. It determines how many degrees the autopilot will pitch the craft up or down in order to correct for a one-knot difference between the actual speed and the one set in flight level change mode. A good starting point is 0. A good pilot will anticipate where the glideslope will be in the near future as he or she controls the pitch. If the pitch is not anticipated enough, the aircraft will be correcting up and down all the way down the glideslope. If the pitch is anticipated too much, the craft will never get to the glideslope, as it will always be shying away from it as soon as the needle starts to close in. A good starting point for this control is 8 seconds. It tells the autopilot how much it should change the pitch for each degree of glideslope error. For example, if it is set to 5 degrees a reasonable value , the autopilot will pitch up 5 degrees for each degree it is below the glideslope. The greater the number entered here, the more the command bars will move to meet the glideslope. Summary of Custom Autopilot Controls To summarize, the autopilot settings are complicated and they interact. Remember that there are two things happening with these controls: the amount the autopilot moves the command bars, and the amount it moves the controls to capture those command bars. Therefore, if the command bars are not behaving as they should, one of the command bar variables needs to be set. Configuring GPS and FMS You can specify whether the GPS auto-adjusts to desired track in the Instruments box found in the General 1 tab of the Systems dialog. Configuring the Starter starter box Figure 4. Plane Maker will re-calculate how long it takes the starter to reach the % N2 each time this number is changed. Choose whether your starter is electric or air-driven. You can also select up to four additional behaviors for the different engine types that will activate when the starter button is pressed in X-Plane. Next, move to the Tanks tab. In this tab, there are nine fuel tanks able to be added. For instance, if an aircraft had two fuel tanks, one in each wing, each tank might hold 0. This will determine which tanks are emptied first if more than one is selected. For instance, If tank 1 should empty a little bit before tank 2 and long before tank 3 when all 3 tanks are selected, you might set their fuel pump pressures as in the table below. Note also that the fuel tank selectors in the instrument panel will select left and right tanks based on the physical locations you specify here. Creating an Instrument Panel Creating a basic 2-D instrument panel in Plane Maker is as easy as choosing a panel background image and dragging the instruments you want where you want them. The user can scroll the panel up, down, left and right if it is larger than the screen, and can tilt the camera down to help with landings. It is also used to form the panel texture in most cases. See below for more information. It does not change during flight. Instruments can have up to four overlay layers. Introduction to Panel Creation With the aircraft whose panel you want to design open, open the Standard menu and click Panel: 2-D. The panel design dialog box will appear. This window is made up of a number of different sections. The buttons in the toolbar at the top of the screen labeled 1 in perform a variety of functions; mouse over each button to get a description as well as the keyboard shortcut that does the same thing, where available. For instance, mousing over the far left button, whose icon is a floppy disk, tells us that this button saves the file, and that you can also save by pressing Ctrl + s. Two groups of information panes lie on the left and right of the screen, respectively. On the left is the Instrument List, which is combined with the Preview, Description, and Properties panes, and on the right is the Hierarchy, combined with the Key Frames pane. These left and right groups can be displayed or hidden by clicking the large Instrument List and Hierarchy buttons at the top of the screen, respectively. Creation of an instrument panel then proceeds this way. For instance, in Figure 5. With an instrument selected, you can see what it will look like in the Preview tab labeled 3 in. Beneath this is the Description tab labeled 4 in , which details what the selected instrument does. Doing so will cause the instrument to also be listed in the hierarchy pane, labeled 6 in. With an instrument in the panel, click on it to select it; selecting an instrument in either the layout or the hierarchy pane will cause it to be selected in both. When an instrument has been added to the panel layout, it will appear in the Hierarchy pane. You can select an instrument from the layout pane by clicking its name here. Additionally, you can set its status to visible or invisible by clicking the eye icon to the left of it, and you can set it to locked or unlocked that is, unmovable or movable by clicking the padlock icon. When an instrument is selected in the layout and hierarchy panes, the Properties tab labeled 7 in will display its settings. The comment property is simply for use in designing and will have no effect in X-Plane. To select multiple instruments in either the hierarchy pane or the layout pane, hold down the Shift key and click the desired instrument. To group instruments together in the hierarchy pane, select them and press the G key. With a group created, you can also click and drag other instruments into the group in the hierarchy pane. With an instrument selected, you can drag it around to reposition it, or use the arrow keys to move it by very small amounts. Click and drag anywhere in the layout pane to form a box that selects multiple instruments. To delete an instrument, select it and hit the Backspace key. If two instruments are placed on top of one another in the layout pane, the instrument closest to the bottom of the list in the hierarchy pane will be displayed on top of the instruments higher up the list. Finally, in the very bottom of the window is the status bar labeled 8 in. Setting a Panel Background Before beginning the layout, you may want to create the background image that your panel will use. Plane Maker will supply a default panel image based on your cockpit type setting specified at the top of the Viewpoint dialog box e. Note that 4k panels may heavily impact performance; if so, go back to the earlier 2k size maximums 2048 x 2048 pixels. Panel backgrounds in Plane Maker can follow one of two naming conventions. As of version 9, Plane Maker will still work with a panel named this way. With the panel loaded, you can begin dragging and dropping instruments from the list into your cockpit. Generic Custom Instruments Generic instruments are designed to give you more flexibility in creating 2-d panels. They are instruments on the 2-d panel that are configured based on custom parameters, artwork and datarefs. The purpose of generic instruments is customization, not easy creation; if you do not want to make your own artwork or animations, you should use the hundreds of pre-made instruments. All of the properties available in pre-made instruments are customizable in generic ones, as well as many others. Remember, hovering the mouse over any field will show a description of what it does. PNG file All generic instruments reference a PNG image file. While there are default image files that will be used if the PNG file is blank, you should not use the default images. If you are going to use generic instruments, always provide your own artwork! The generic instruments are provided only to be place-holders so that you can see the new instrument in the editor in Plane-Maker before you pick your own instruments. These defaults may change in the future, breaking your panel. Use your own images, which will not change. You can build sub-folders within the generic folder. The layering conventions —1, —2, etc. Changing the PNG file will change the real-time preview. There is one exception: the trigger generic instrument uses a command rather than a dataref. In all cases, the instrument has some mechanism to scale the value of the dataref for display. This is how, for example, you pick which engine an N1 instrument listens to. The N1 dataref is an array, with one item in the array for each element. Lighting Mode and Knob Number Generic instruments can have one of seven lighting modes, which affect how instrument overlays are drawn. The background is simply burned in. The instrument is always drawn albeit very dark if it is night and there is no power. The instrument disappears if there is no power. You can use a knob of —1 to have a lit instrument that is always on, for example. A power failure will cut off instrument lighting, but will not necessarily fail the instrument itself. For example, a vacuum-driven dataref should not be affected by an electrical failure. For each bus defined in the airplane, a check-box lets you attach power to the instrument; the instrument will power if any selected bus is powered. The distortion applied to the instrument will be perspective-correct, and is meant to align moving parts on overhead panels. Skewing does not affect burned-in backgrounds or hot-spots. Skewing is not recommended for instruments that can be dragged. You specify a dataref and a value - if any of the rules is utilized in the editor but the rule is not true e. Specific Generic Instruments A general note on proportions: in many cases, the scaling of the instruments work by proportions, e. In a few cases, where a straight numeric result must be computed, an offset and multiplier are provided for the dataref. The ratio is multiplied by the dataref before the offset is added. Basically if the conditions are met, the upper image in the png file is used, otherwise the lower ones are used. Key frames map from the input dataref to vertical pixel offsets from the center of the instrument. Click radius defines how wide the hot spot for clicking is. This lets you make a handle that tends to stay in certain positions, like a flap handle on airliners. The key frame table converts from the dataref to the numbers displayed. Digits and Decimals controls the formatting of numeric input. You can also specify the number of rows in the texture. The default of 0 will use the old six-row layout. The key frame table maps from the input value to degrees. This can be used to place a heading bug at the rim of the instrument or to position the needle on only one side of the instrument without using transparency. Use this for mechanical heading bugs. The hot spot is centered around the needle, with the offset taken into account. The key frame table maps from dataref inputs to degrees. The lowest key frame defines the start point of the pie. Note that the properties for turning yellow and red are defined in dataref units, not degrees. So for example, for N1 you might do this: Low red: 0 Low yellow: 0 High Yellow: 0. The key frame table maps from the dataref to an offset in pixels from the center of the instrument. If the orientation is vertical, the pointer moves up-down with the dataref, otherwise it moves left-right. The offset parameter is a fixed offset in the direction that is perpendicular to the way the pointer moves. The radio type defines the type of frequency that will be controlled and the editing mode. The rheostat will set the correct values in hz for the type of radio E. Click radius defines the hot-spot size. The hot spot can be offset horizontally or vertically. When you pick Com Radio or Nav Radio, the rheostat automatically has an inner and outer ring. When you pick ADF 3-Ring the rheostat automatically has 3 rings. The key frame table maps from the dataref to degrees to rotate the overlay. This is in the output units, not dataref units. This is in the output units, not dataref units. A note on units: if you do not use an overlay, you can set the key frame table to map linearly e. In this case the click step and hold step would be in dataref units. The one-way rheostat cannot have an overlay. This is in the output units, not dataref units. This is in the output units, not dataref units. The digits parameter determines how many digits the rolling tape is split into. The key frame table maps from the dataref to the animation phase you want to show. Phases larger than the number of digits wrap around to the beginning; phases smaller than zero cause the rotary knob to disappear. All clicks work in one output unit of the key frame table. Positions defines the number of drawing phases in the rotary. Note that for rotaries that do not wrap, the clamped values are based on the key frame table, not the digits. Rotary Type defines the way the mouse interacts with the rotary switch. Each click change the value by one with clamping. Use this type of rotary as a display. When this is selected, you must pick click and hold increment values. This is useful for creating a series of rotaries where a click to each one sets a dataref to a certain absolute value. The rotary is the only generic instrument that reads and writes its dataref and can handle a key frame table with gaps. The tape starts at the position specified by the lowest key frame. The key frame table is ignored. This only works for byte-array type datarefs! Use the LED instrument for numeric datarefs. The X and Y offsets are pixel offsets to position text drawing relative to the instrument. Instead of a dataref, a sim command is specified. The key frame table is ignored. The generic trigger has a two-state bitmap, toggling between the two images as it is pressed. Put the two position images of the switch in one. Call the file something like switch—1. The dataref for a slider can be used to animate an object or a generic instrument or anything else, for that matter. Sliders are an advanced feature of aircraft design and were designed with programmers in mind. Thus, the landing gear switch in the instrument panel is either all the way up or all the way down. This is where sliders come in. Essentially, the sliders act as a time-delay mechanism, running a sequence of ratios over a set amount of time when a source switch is set. This lets you create animation sequences where a user sees the entire sequence. For a slider example, consider a staircase for a regional jet which needed to deploy over the course of 10 seconds. It would animate from 0 to 1. If you have more than one slider in your instrument panel, you can figure out which number each one is assigned by opening the panel design dialog and pressing the Alt key Option in Mac OS X. Small green numbers will appear on each duplicated instrument, as seen in Figure 5. For instance, in Figure 5. For instance, you might want to animate the landing light housing unfolding from the wing when the lights are turned on. Then, when the landing lights are turned on, the slider will be triggered and the landing lights will work as they should. Click the box next below the dataref checkbox and a dialog box will appear that allows you to choose which dataref you will link to. Below that is the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO code for the aircraft. Note that the ICAO designator for a particular model aircraft may be found using the search. Authors should fill this in with the official international ICAO code of an airline to match the airline paint of an aircraft in its base livery. The ICAO code and call sign have no direct effect on the simulator. They may be useful, however, when using plug-ins such as XSquawkbox for flying online. Note that the aircraft type is specified in the Viewpoint dialog box. However, you might have recordings of your specific aircraft which you would like to use. In this case, you have two options: FMOD or the legacy sound system based on OpenAL. On the you can download the required FMOD starter project and learn more about tying FMOD sounds to your aircraft. First, then, one must understand the structure of the default sounds directory. Note that this is the only set of sounds which apply globally and may not be customized by a particular aircraft. Each subfolder contains a number of WAV uncompressed audio files corresponding to the different sounds that would be heard in X-Plane. Note that the sample rate of the WAV files you wish to use should be 22. You can likely set your recording device to this sample rate before you begin capturing your sounds. Alternatively, an audio editor such as the excellent, free, cross-platform can be used to change the sample rate. In order to do so, you must set the knots indicated airspeed at which the wind sound was recorded. Selecting and Configuring System Warning Sounds Depending on the complexity of the aircraft, its systems may have warning systems and sounds equipped. Some of the most basic warning sounds can be turned off or on in the Special Equipment dialog box selected from under the Expert menu. Stall warnings can be configured in the General 1 tab of the Systems screen. Here you can assign custom sounds to certain warning conditions. Check the boxes on the left side of a line to set when the sound will activate. Make sure you have set up your sound file and folder paths as described in the section above. To set this point for your aircraft, open the Viewpoint dialog box from the Standard menu. It will open to the General tab. The Exterior Lights tab, found in the Viewpoint dialog box, is used to turn on and off the different types of external lights, and it also controls the location and intensity of those lights. The Interior Lights tab, on the other hand, is used to set the color and intensity of the panel and cockpit lighting. Each line has controls to specify position, type of light, offsets, and more, as shown in Figure 6. Use the first drop down menu to specify lights that are attached to a specific body part of the aircraft, such as a wing or landing gear. Using a negative value here will point the light left, and using a positive value will point it right. To the right of that is the parameter determining its pitch its vertical angle, in degrees. A negative value here will point the landing light down, whereas a positive value will point it up. A pitch of —5 degrees is a good default. Choose the type of light from the next drop down menu. Additional customization options will appear on the far right depending on the type that is selected. Landing lights and strobes have an option that affects which index controls the light, for example. Specify the light length, width, and even color for landing, taxi, spot and generic white lights. The length box determines how far in meters the light shines. Tint the light spill by entering a triplet in the RGB boxes. This tab is divided into two parts. The left part of the window sets the color of the various cabin lights in the 2-D cockpit view, while the right controls a number of features in the 3-D cockpit view. Thus, a value of 0, 0, 0 red, green, blue is full black, and a value of 1, 1, 1 is full white. The PNG must have its —1 shadow layer changed from RGB+alpha to gray-scale, no alpha. In this form, white indicates more shadow, while black indicates no shadow. Thus, if you wanted the flood light to brightly and evenly light the entire panel, you would use an all-black image. Similarly to the floodlight, the panel spotlights are created using a spotlight overlay image. A 3-D cockpit has 3 lights, each of which have a color, width, size, pitch, heading, and an associated dataref. The RGB controls for each of the three cockpit lights are located in the top left of the 3-D Cockpit Lighting box. Here, as in the 2-D panel, a value of 0, 0, 0 red, green, blue corresponds to full black, and a value of 1, 1, 1 is full white. Note that any light set to full black will be turned off again. Beneath the color and location controls are the width, size, pitch, and heading controls. Setting a width of zero degrees makes a light omnidirectional; any other setting makes the light directional. The size of the light is set as a ratio to the default. Past a given distance, the light shines at half brightness; increasing the size will increase the distance at which this occurs. A pitch of zero degrees indicates the light is pointing directly forward, while a pitch of —90 degrees indicates it is pointing directly down. Finally, the brightness of each cockpit light in the 3-D panel is linked to a dataref. The drop-down menu allows you to select from the most commonly used datarefs, such as the spotlights and floodlight, or you can select a custom dataref by typing it in the text box. Note that the Misc Objects dialog box found in the Standard menu is used to turn this internal 3-D lighting on or off a given 3-D object. There, you can set the center of gravity, the empty and maximum weights, as well as the positions of slung loads and fuel tanks. In X-Plane, the user may move the center of gravity forward or aft. In light of this, three longitudinal positions are defined for the center of gravity. The first, seen on the far left in Figure 6. The vertical position of the center of gravity stays constant no matter how the CG is moved. The empty weight, fuel load, and maximum weight fields should be filled in for any aircraft. The empty weight is the weight of the aircraft when empty of fuel or payload, but with oil and other fixed weight on board. The fuel load is the total weight of fuel that the aircraft can carry. The maximum weight value defines the weight above which the aircraft cannot take off the maximum takeoff weight, or MTOW. The jet-assisted takeoff JATO weight is the weight added by the thrust-adding rockets. The jettisonable load is the maximum weight that can be jettisoned from the aircraft. This may include bombs, water for forest fires, slung loads, cargo pushed out the back of a plane, and so on. When using a jettisonable load, check the appropriate boxes to the right to indicate the nature of the jettisonable load. Next, the weight-shift weight is the amount of weight that can shift around based on control input, as in a hang glider. When using a nonzero weight shift, you will be able to set the distance, in feet, that the weight can move both laterally and longitudinally using the Weight Shift box to the right. The displaced weight value should be zero for airplanes, but it may be nonzero for blimps, zeppelins, or dirigibles. For instance, if the buoyancy control can scale from 80% to 120% of the displaced weight value, this would be 0. These features include weapons, slung loads, rockets for a jet-assisted takeoff, and artificial stability systems. Creating and Adding Weapons Built into Plane Maker is a robust weapon creation tool, which can be used to create guns, missiles, bombs, drop-tanks, and lasers. The shape and appearance of weapons can be customized as exhaustingly as an aircraft. These weapons are stored as. The geometry of a WPN object is set in a way similar to the fuselage and miscellaneous bodies, and the WPN may be textured similarly to these other bodies. Once a weapon has been created, it can be attached to the aircraft similarly to other bodies. Building Weapons To begin creating a weapon, open the Expert menu and launch the Build Weapons dialog box. It will open to the General tab. There, using the buttons in the upper left, you can choose to either modify an existing weapon by clicking Load Weapon or create a new one by clicking New Weapon. The weapon file must be saved using the Save Weapon button here; saving the aircraft file will not save changes to the weapon file. Here you can manipulate the number of body sections, the shape of each cross-section, and all vertices. The texture must be draped over the weapon using the Body Texture box, also found in the Geometry tab. These weapons will be present on the aircraft each time you open it in X-Plane. To specify a weight in an already existing OBJ file, open the file in a text editor Notepad, Emacs, TextEdit, etc. Thus, for an object weighing 500 pounds, the. Then, set the slung load cable length, the length of the line between the aircraft and the slung load, and the load will be ready to use in X-Plane. There, in the Aircraft menu, open the Weight and Fuel menu. When you close out of the dialog box, the slung load will be attached to your aircraft and you will be ready to fly! This is especially common in fighter jets and helicopters—fighters are most maneuverable if unstable, and helicopters simply have nothing to naturally make them stable. Control systems are designed to make these craft seem stable. A common example of this kind of stability system in the civilian world is the yaw damper. To create a system to add stability in Plane-Maker, first load the aircraft to be modified. Open the Expert menu and select the Artificial Stability menu option as shown in the image below. Here you will find two boxes, one for a low-speed system for aircraft such as helicopters, and one below that for high-speed systems in airplanes and the like. The stability system will transition from low to high speeds based on this box. Note that the dark gray text box at the bottom describes what your changes are doing as you make them. Designing a Yaw Damper By way of example, consider a yaw damper again. This is seen in high- end Mooneys and most jets. Obviously, if the plane is only wagging its tail a little bit, only a little rudder is needed to stop it. However, if the plane swings around quickly, then the damper system needs to put in a lot of rudder to stop the rotation quickly. In X-Plane, designers enter a fraction of the rudder input per degree per second of rotation rate. In a real airplane, 90 degrees per second of tail-wagging will feel like a lot. Kicking the rudders a bit in a Cessna 172, for example, will shake its tail at about 35 degrees per second. That means that if the plane is rotating at 90 degrees per second, the yaw damper will put in full rudder to oppose that motion, and at 45 degrees per second it will put in half rudder to oppose that motion. This does not sound like an unreasonable constant. A value of 0 would be entered here, meaning the plane always tries to stabilize at 0 sideslip. This number comes from dividing 1. A value of 0. Try entering this for the 172, saving the plane in Plane-Maker, and loading it again in X- Plane. Pop the rudders left and right and notice how the plane damps out faster, as would a real plane if such a yaw damper were installed. There are two reasons for using these aggressive constants. First, the plane needs to have lower rates in pitch than in yaw. This is because if the plane is moved left and right a bit, not that much will change in terms of flight control—-the vertical stabilizer, which is being broadcast to the air, is small. But, if the plane is tilted up or down a bit, then the entirety of both the wing and horizontal stabilizer is exposed to the air. The effect will be much greater than in yaw, where only the vertical stabilizer is offset, simply because the wing is so much bigger. A plane sees a much greater effect for each degree of change in the angle of attack than in sideslip, so it needs lower rates of pitch than yaw to keep within comfortable safe G-loads. For this reason, we enter higher constants in pitch than in yaw to really work hard to counter those pitch rates. The simulator will automatically reduce these settings as the plane speeds up, because it knows that at high speeds it is better to enter smaller control deflections to keep from breaking things! This means that the constants entered here are only fully applied near stall speeds where control authority is mushy. The artificial stability controls relax and phase out as the indicated airspeed air pressure on the controls builds up. Modifying the Appearance of an Aircraft An aircraft in Plane Maker may have a paint job applied to it by telling Plane Maker how to drape an image file over its model, or you can use 3-D objects as might be created in Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, etc. Creating a Basic Paint Job The effects achievable by draping 2-D image files over a 3-D, Plane Maker-created aircraft model are perfectly acceptable, albeit not as impressive looking as what can be done with 3-D modeling tools. Creating a basic paint job in this way requires only Plane Maker and the image editor of your choice. Before beginning, be sure that your ACF model is in its final or near-final form; changing the shape of the fuselage, the wings, etc. To create this starting-point texture, open the Special menu and click Output Texture Map Starting Points. This will create two PNG files. If you want to customize the starting point texture layout before exporting the starting-point texture, we will be working primarily in the Visual Texture Regions dialog box, which is launched from the Expert menu. This dialog uses boxes to specify which portions of your PNG texture images will be draped over each body of your aircraft. We are, in essence, creating a blueprint for where our texture images are going to go, so none of the boxes should overlap. You can use the tabs along the top of this window combined with the radio buttons on the left to select which specific part you will edit. You can click and drag the regions covered by a part using the large box in the center of the window. For instance, the image could have a resolution of 512 x 2048, 1024 x 1024, 2048 x 1024, and so on, with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 2048. The files that Plane Maker outputs will abide by these rules. Use the starting-point images from Plane Maker to create painted or photo-realistic textures in a photo editing program such as Photoshop. After modifying the image files, open the Special menu and click Reload Textures or press the T key to refresh the textures from your files. Fine-Tuning a Paint Job As discussed in the section above, the Visual Texture Regions dialog box can be used to modify the portion of your texture image used for each part of the aircraft. Modifying these regions using the mouse, however, will always be limited in precision. To gain fine control over the texture regions used for a part of the aircraft, use the Body Texture controls found throughout Plane Maker for instance, in the windows for creating the fuselage, miscellaneous bodies, wings, wheels and tires, engine nacelles, and weapons. The four boxes on the left specify the portion of the texture file to use with the left side of this part of the aircraft, while the four boxes on the right control the right side of the part. Each side has a top, left, right, and bottom coordinate, which is specified as a decimal portion of the width or height of the texture. Creating 3-D Objects for an Aircraft In X-Plane, high-quality 3-D objects may be used as overlays for parts of the aircraft, for 3-D cockpits, or for elements of the scenery. In the case of aircraft objects, only the Plane Maker-created. Because of this, the ACF format is highly specialized and could never be used as a sort of all-purpose modeling format. While Plane Maker is perfectly adequate for entering the design of the plane-it is reliable and easy to use-Plane Maker is not a 3-D modeling program. Instead, it is used to simply lay out the basic aerodynamic shapes and properties of an aircraft. This results in a model that looks okay, but not great. Plane Maker cannot make the complex model required for a 3-D cockpit, and it cannot create a highly detailed model of the craft as a whole to overlay the basic Plane-Maker model from which flight physics are calculated. Instead, you can use a 3-D modeling program such as 3ds Max, Blender, Google SketchUp, or AC3D to create these objects. Many of the more popular modelers have plug-ins available to enable this. Regardless of which modeler you use, note that in order to use the OBJ with X-Plane, the file must use one texture per object. You can find plug-ins for exporting from AC3D. The easiest way to get started modeling an aircraft is to let Plane Maker create a starting point OBJ for you. To do this, first create the ACF version of the craft in Plane Maker. This OBJ can then be imported into your modeling program for further editing. Note that, in the export, Plane Maker will ignore any parts of the aircraft set to invisible. The 3-D Cockpit In your 3-d modeling program you can create up to two objects for the cockpit: one to be seen in the interior, and one to be seen in exterior views. In your cockpit you should always include one cockpit region that is the same size as the 3-D panel. The panel region is also created in the 3-D modeling program of your choice. The third and last boxes should always be checked to display the 3-D object in 3-D cockpit view and external view, respectively. The final check box should always be on or you will not be able to see the aircraft from the outside. Add the cockpit object in the Misc Objects screen as described in the section. The 3-D Panel 3-D Panels are an advanced feature of X-Plane; if you are not making a 3-D cockpit object you do not need to use this feature at all. Making both a 2-D and 3-D panel is labor intensive, so if you choose to only develop a highly detailed, highly functional 3-d cockpit, you can use it even when the user selects a 2-D view. This will cause the sim to show a straight-forwards 3-d view in place of the 2-d panel, which will in turn never be shown. To construct moving cockpit instruments, place instruments on the 3-D panel in Plane Maker as as you would for a 2-D panel. Attaching 3-D Objects Having created. If you have created more than one 3-D cockpit object as described in above, check the appropriate radio button to specify in which view it is seen. A single cockpit object should have both checked. The hierarchy determines draw order. Some aircraft designers, however, prefer to have the relative positioning of each piece of the aircraft set in their 3-D modeler, thus bypassing the positioning in Plane Maker. This is useful, for instance, when an object needs to move up and down with an aileron. The drop down menus and check boxes on the right side of the object line are ways to control how demanding the object is on the simulator. The object can have one of three different lighting options selected from the drop down lighting menu near the right side of the screen. Note that only objects tagged as glass will be drawn as properly translucent. This means that cockpit objects that might otherwise include windows should be split apart in a 3-D modeler so that the glass windows are a separate object from the rest of the cockpit. Check this box to make the object appear dimmer in bright sunlight—it simulates the sun outshining artificial light. Leave this box unchecked for lights that are implemented via a lit texture and should not be dimmer in daylight, such as landing gear indicators. The shadow mode drop down menu, located underneath the lighting drop down, controls how the object casts shadows. Choosing an appropriate view setting limits how the objects shadows are drawn, which can improve framerate. The final drop down menu is for object prefill.

Although nearly abandoned in the United States, NDBs are still used in many countries around the world. To the left and right of the center target the little white circle the instrument displays five dots or short lines on each side. x-plane 11 manual Before actually designing your fairings, you must tell Plane Maker which gears have them. If x-plane 11 manual are going to use generic instruments, always provide your own artwork. This cursor will function basically the same as a non-VR mouse. Thus, moving the mouse directly below the cross will command some up elevator causing the plane to climb and will not impose any roll commands which should keep the aircraft from changing its bank. These LOC transmitters do not necessarily have to be paired with a glide slope but doing so makes them an ILS. Opening and Saving an Aircraft To open an aircraft in Plane Maker, click on the File menu and click Open, per. Viewpoint dialog box Figure 3.