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

Comment that is true:

 I have spent some time already doing these things, just started doing it now and then, but I have some practical knowledge.
 
It is possible to make instruments in 3D. 
 
For instrument objects that only have an animation(based on dataref) then they do not even have to be part of the object set as the _cockpit or _cockpit_INN. 
 
Manipulators definitions must be in the cockpit object.(if you want it to work)
 
For example, an altimeter could have a 3d animated needle over a textured on numbers for  hundreds.  The baro and digit readout could be made from animated from cylinders with numbers 3d "embossed" .  This could be in any object added to the plane.  However, the baro adjustment knob can be made only click/drag - able by the mouse if in  the cockpit object.
 
So for objects and texturing a single x-plane object is not required for cockpit items and there are ways to get around manipulators like click/drag  transparent rectangle in the cockpit object over another appended "not cockpit" object.
 
But with 4096x4096 textures, more gray could be squeezed in the texture uv space :P. for a single cockpit object.

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()

Troubleshooting

Had some problems because the VVI came on index [2], not [1]. I kept seeing -999 show up. Was able to see the situation by using the code up above without responding to type=4, and it dumps all of the values out, and I saw where the VVI value was located.

Still not knowing the relationships between the type numbers and the DataRef numbers within Xplane 11.

1/23/2019

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

1/21/2019