557: Access Aircraft Reference Quickly

Airspeed limitations are some of the most visited references to flightsimmers or even real pilots.   I normally seek for them in the aircraft’s manual or via Internet.  For sure, the process doesn’t take a lot of work but it can be hardly called handy, especially when you need these information during a flight session.

Last week, I found out that there’s actually a quick way of locating these information in FSX and P3D quickly.   I don’t know if you know it or not, but I was not aware of it in my 15+ years of flightsimming.  How hilariously.

All we need is

551: Finding Aircraft Local Variables

There are times that we may want to find out what Local Variables (LVars) are used on a specific aircraft for many reasons.  If the developer doesn’t provide it, here’s a quick and simple way to generate a Local Variable list of the airplane, whether it’s a third-party or default aircraft.

During a flight session,

531: XPlane Startup Time with FIPs

While working FIP Gauges for X-Plane these days, I find the time reaching the main menu at sim launch takes much longer while FIPs are powered on as well.

Not a big deal, probably.  But if one can shorten the load up time of X-Plane significantly by simply turning on the FIPs ONLY AFTER the main menu is shown, why not ?   Additionally, I find the act eliminates the occasional crash of FIP Gauges in X-Plane as well.

528: FS Button Command Trick in X-Plane

In last post, I mentioned that some of the commands I used to assign to buttons and knobs on the FIP are not functioning or matching when using the valuetranscribing feature to run FSX/P3D gauges in X-Plane.

A friend, Rodrigo in Brazil, says the trick is

494: Abnormal FIP Knob Adjustment Fix

Not sure how many of you have occasionally encountered a bizarre situation in which all functions, such as OBS and heading bug, that are controlled by the knobs on the Logitech/Saitek FIPs (Flight Instrument Panels) suddenly move faster in 10-degree (step) per turn than the default 1-degree (step) per turn.

The cause of the issue is unknown but generally it can be cured by warm-booting (or in some cases, cold-booting) the computer.

In the last six months, I encountered the issue once or twice.  Instead of rebooting the computer,

493: Heading Bug Synchronizing Fix

A friend, Sergey Dronyaev in Moscow, who reported an issue that he found the Autopilot Heading Bug on the A2A Cessna Shared HDG FIP gauge didn’t synchronize with the one in the virtual cockpit.  I had my head scratched since it was the first time I heard about the issue regarding the gauge.

Sergey later submitted a solution he found from the A2A forum:  Pressing the AP button once (Autopilot on/off) – both gauges will synchronize accordingly.

Just in case someone encounters the same issue, above tip should help.

 

487: Gauge File Updating for SPAD.neXt

When my FIP gauges are having major updates, say from version R3 to R4, they will be installed onto a new folder ending with the new version in their names, e.g. A36_Bonanza_R4.   This is to prevent mixing the new files with the old files, and to avoid the possibility of overwriting user-customized files, just in case.

For those who are running the Saitek/Logitech Drivers, the gauge installer will create corresponding links for the update automatically.

But for those who are using SPAD.neXt, they will have to reinstall the gauges to the SPAD.neXt system again as the folder location has changed.   This is quite troublesome especially when one has configured the buttons and knobs on the FIP extensively.

Following is what I do and it is relatively simple and efficient.

473: Running Logitech X-Plane Gauges alongside SPAD.neXt

It is commonly known that SPAD.neXt and Saitek/Logitech drivers cannot be run simultaneoulsy; otherwise conflicts will occur.
Here’s how to avoid the conflict when running the new X-Plane FIP Gauges (using Saitek/Logitech drivers) together with SPAD.neXt; since the development of my earlier X-Plane gauges designed for SPAD.neXt has come to a stop for the moment.

Edit:    Just found that there are still conflicts between the Logitech plugins and SPAD.neXt.   Under this combination, all basic functions work ok but not the many extra features provided by SPAD.neXt.
Will explore further if there are solutions.

Step 1
Install the Saitek/Logitech FIP drivers (if they have been removed from the computer) — it is necessary for the Windows OS to recognize the hardware.

You could download the Flight Instrument Panel Drivers from Logitech’s support web page here.   Or if you have the older version 7 on hand, it works fine as well.

Step 2
Follow the instructions in Post 471 to install the X-Plane Plug-in.

Step 3
After restarting the computer, right-click on the Windows Menu bar at the bottom to call up “Task Manager”

471: Adding FIP Plugin to X-Plane

Adding FIP Plugin to X-Plane is very simple:

Step 1
Download the “X Plane Plug-in” from Logitech’s support page — No worry even if you are still using the previous Saitek drivers and not the recently renamed Logitech drivers.

Step 2
Run the downloaded file to install the Plug-in — A new folder called “XSaitekProFlight” will be added to the “\X-Plane 11\Resources\plugins” folder automatically.

That’s all you need and you are good to fly with the default gauges in X-Plane.

Fine-Tuning