Purchased today, 12/29/2018, to understand it for the possibility to turn it into a hardware simulator for an A-4.

It is commercially licenseable for $750 which can make it FAA certifiable, but that is not our current intent.

Since I recently paid for one month of a Navigraph subscription, I downloaded the Nav Data for X-Plane 11 as well and placed it in Xplane→Custom Data as earth-awy.dat, eath_fix.dat, earth_nav.dat, and CIFP directory of SID/STAR info per airport. Also downloaded a file from the FAA - *FAACIFP18* and placed it in the same directory.

• https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/digital_products/cifp/download/

Right now, thinking of doing hardware work with a A-4 simulator, turning it into a very fancy Joystick, using Raspberry Pi with a possible servo controller board. X-Plane can communicate via UDP with it.

- 12/29/2018

Tried this procedure to fix a frame rate which is about 17 - 19.

https://www.x-plane.com/kb/frame-rate-issues-windows-10/

Purchased new GTX1060, now rates are closer to 30 even with features turned on, second monitor.

1/1/2019

Downloaded improved B737 from here: https://forum.thresholdx.net/topic/201-download-links-license/

Sim reported CORRUPTED NAVDATA. Found solution here: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/167034-latest-navigraph-airac-causes-error-in-zibo-mod/ (modified file at X-Plane 11/Aircraft/Extra Aircraft/B737-800X/plugins/xlua/scripts/B738.fms/B738.fms.lua, adding additional rows to the NavData date ranges, and changing to cycle_n = 31

To make a 3D Cockpit, you use blender to make a cube, with normals pointing in. Transparent places become windows. Then the cube needs to be exported using the Xplane2Blender plugin to make an OBJ file which X-Plane 11 can read.

It is possible that the layers in Blender cause different detail:

 The purpose of layers 1-3 is LOD (Level of Detail). If you tap into LOD functionality,
  layer 1 will have full detail, layer two will contain medium detail (for medium 
  distances from object), and layer 3 will have low detail. [Per YouTube video comment]

• PlaneMaker-19-Blender-05 - Creating a simple 3D cockpit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEOLdTewxUg&t=328s

• Better written tutorial, mostly working: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/137897-tutorials-for-blender-279-for-x-plane-scenery-and-aircraft/

Finally got 3D “hello world” working by doing these steps (slightly different to these instructions:

• Create cube with normals pointing in.
• Exported as OBJ file with XPlane2Blender to the folder like this: <airplane>/cockpit_3d/-PANELS-/Cockpit.obj
• Also included in the same folder a file Panel_Military.png which is the same size as the texture png.
• Texture png (only one allowed) is in the same directory. It is referenced to inside of the Cockpit.obj file.

Xplane2Blender Notes

Was successful in creating a set up so that a servo followed the VVI (Vertical Velocity Indicator, a.k.a. Vertical Speed Indicator) value from X-Plane.

In X-Plane, set up like this:

This sends UDP to Connor (a Raspberry Pi), with code like this:

#!/usr/bin/python3
 
# Example how to receive UDP Data from X-Plane 10 in Python3.
 
# License:
# 1) GPLv3
# 2) Consider it as programmer documentation, so you are free to copy some lines ignoring the License.
 
# Configure Data-Output types 3, 17 and 20
# and the IP where the python script is running (port 49000) in X-Plane.
 
UDP_PORT = 49002
 
import socket
import struct
import binascii
from adafruit_servokit import ServoKit
kit = ServoKit(channels=16)
 
def DecodeDataMessage(message):
  # Message consists of 4 byte type and 8 times a 4byte float value.
  # Write the results in a python dict.
  values = {}
  typelen = 4
  type = int.from_bytes(message[0:typelen], byteorder='little')
  data = message[typelen:]
  dataFLOATS = struct.unpack("<ffffffff",data)
  if type == 3:
    values["speed"]=dataFLOATS[0]
    print("hexlify: ", binascii.hexlify(data))
    print("length 3: ", len(data))
  elif type == 4:
    values["mach"]=dataFLOATS[0]
    values["vvi"]=dataFLOATS[2]
    # print("hexlify: ", binascii.hexlify(data))
    # print("b2a_uu: ", binascii.b2a_uu(data))
    # print("length 4: ", len(data))
    toPlot = 0
    vvi = float(values["vvi"])
    if vvi > 1000:
         vvi = 1000
    elif vvi < -1000:
         vvi = -1000
    toPlot = 90 - vvi * 80 / 1000
    kit.servo[0].angle = toPlot
 
  elif type == 17:
    values["pitch"]=dataFLOATS[0]
    values["roll"]=dataFLOATS[1]
    values["heading"]=dataFLOATS[2]
    values["heading2"]=dataFLOATS[3]
  elif type == 20:
    values["latitude"]=dataFLOATS[0]
    values["longitude"]=dataFLOATS[1]
    values["altitude MSL"]=dataFLOATS[2]
    values["altitude AGL"]=dataFLOATS[3]
    values["altitude 2"]=dataFLOATS[4]
    values["altitude 3"]=dataFLOATS[5]
  else:
    print("  Type ", type, " not implemented: ",dataFLOATS)
  return values
 
def DecodePacket(data):
  # Packet consists of 5 byte header and multiple messages.
  valuesout = {}
  headerlen = 5
  header = data[0:headerlen]
  messages = data[headerlen:]
  if(header==b'DATA*'):
    # Divide into 36 byte messages
    messagelen = 36
    for i in range(0,int((len(messages))/messagelen)):
      message = messages[(i*messagelen) : ((i+1)*messagelen)]
      values = DecodeDataMessage(message)
      valuesout.update( values )
  else:
    print("Packet type not implemented. ")
    print("  Header: ", header)
    print("  Data: ", messages)
  return valuesout
 
def main():
 
  # Open a Socket on UDP Port 49000
  UDP_IP = ""
  sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, # Internet
                       socket.SOCK_DGRAM) # UDP
  sock.bind((UDP_IP, UDP_PORT))
 
  while True:
    # Receive a packet
    data, addr = sock.recvfrom(1024) # buffer size is 1024 bytes
 
    # Decode the packet. Result is a python dict (like a map in C) with values from X-Plane.
    # Example:
    # {'latitude': 47.72798156738281, 'longitude': 12.434000015258789,
    #   'altitude MSL': 1822.67, 'altitude AGL': 0.17, 'speed': 4.11,
    #   'roll': 1.05, 'pitch': -4.38, 'heading': 275.43, 'heading2': 271.84}
    values = DecodePacket(data)
    print(values)
    print()
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

Use XPlane Updator (X-Plane 11 Installer.exe)

1/21/2019