Slave to the Game

SO WHAT'S NEW FOR 8.40? TONS! READ ON:

This new version of X-Plane has a TON of new stuff, and a LOT of refinements... this is by the far the most carefully-tuned, carefully-refined X-Plane release we have ever done... but the really big one for me is: SUPPORT FOR THE NEW INTEL-MACINTOSHES. These new Intel Macs REALLY SCREAM (several times faster than the G5's in many cases!) but you have to have the latest X-Plane (8.40) to get the maximum SPEED! So, Mac-Users: Get an Intel Imac and X-Plane 8.40 and you will see more speed in X-Plane than any other Macintosh made. Ever. I see 58 frames per second with plenty of rendering options turned on with the new Imacs.

There are TONS of other things as well...

Flight-Model Improvements:

New wing option: RETRACTABLE WINGS! Select the "retract" handle in the "handles" folder, and check the wings as being "retractable" in the "airfoils" window, and you can retract the wings... the best way to do it is to make a wing of 2 separate wings (as most people do now) and let the outer panels retract into the inner ones. This lets you extend wings for landing, and retract them for cruise, for best blend of lo and hi-speed performance.

New battery/solar-power options! See the "engine" screen in plane-maker, SFC tab... enter your panel and battery specs there! You enter the portion of the wings covered by solar panels, the solar cell efficiency, the battery storage in kilowatt-hours, and of course the electric motor horsepower in the "engines" screen as always. X-Plane will look at the ambient brightness for the time of day and weather conditions, and the atmospheric thickness (the atmosphere soaks up some light, so solar cells get more light as they get higher, which X-Plane DOES consider) to see how much power you are getting into your battery, and the engine to see how much power is coming out... can you design a solar plane that can take with battery-assist, but maintain flight without drawing any more battery voltage? There is a data output for the solar cell situation (#115) so you can see what the power inputs and outputs are.

User-controllable spring and damping constants for the landing gear!
Check out the gear screen in Plane-Maker... it's fun to experiment with different constants.

More accurate aerodynamic flight-control response... the earlier betas just had too much control authority!
The new control system is based on cross-inspection three different engineering texts and also
flight-test in my Cirrus, so should finally have arrived at a pretty decent simulation
of aileron, elevator, and rudder control effectiveness.

Jet engine windmilling drag is more accurate.

Rev-limiter! See it as a new option in the "Engines" screen in Plane-Maker... It cuts out power if the engine rpm goes above redline.

Autopilot is restricted to 25% control-travel... real autopilots do not really go full-scale when flying.

Differential collective phases with thrust vector dynamically to work on VTOLS as well as helos.

Hydraulic system can be pressurized by either the engines or the props in the "equipment" screen in Plane-Maker...good for helos which are pressurized by the rotors or planes which may be pressurized by the engines.

New instruments:

New EFIS element: radio altimeter.

A new EFIS element: Austin's re-entry helper:
Throw this instrument on the EFIS to get the orbital speed, deceleration to come to a stop just as you arrive at your target,
vertical speed to descend at to arrive at your target, and other such niceties for re-entry.

Little white triangle on the adaptive round airspeed indicators to indicate landing gear-extension speed.

Look at the text file for the HSI description in "resources/bitmaps/cockpit/standard-six". You can now specify the DME and OBS text readout locations.

Text files for EFIS HITS, weapon camera, and EFIS camera to decide the size of their displays.

Different mouse-clickable buttons now avail for each layer of EFIS map options: tcas, airport, vor, etc... in the EFIS folder.

Major Features:

CHECK OUT THE DEFAULT MENU IN PLANE-MAKER, MISC OBJECTS SCREEN, WITH THE EXAMPLE 3-D PLANE IN THE INSTRUCTIONS FOLDER!!!! THIS SHOWS HOW TO ADD ALL THE OBJECT FILES YOU LIKE TO AIRPLANES, ATTACHING THEM TO LANDING GEAR AND CONTROL SURFACES AS DESIRED! Now you can finally add objects to aircraft to detail them as you like.

You can now attach the misc objects and weapons to the WHEELS, so they deflect properly when the plane touches down and various parts of the landing gear compress, etc.

Edit all the navaids in X-Plane now, if desired, in the MAP screen. Quick and easy!

Historically, X-Plane has ADDED artificial stability values to the raw values to get the final control deflections on the plane.
Now, you can tune OUT the raw joystick input so you are flying ONLY on the artificial stab equations if you like.
This is set in the artificial stability screen in Plane-Maker.

Hot and hung starts in the engine failure screen!

You can easily grab and launch the latest installer from the "About:Current and Latest Version" menu selection.