Stephen Posted May 4, 2021 Report Share Posted May 4, 2021 News! - FlyJSim gives more Q4XP Details We noted at the start of 2021, that one of the coming significant releases for the X-Plane Simulator in 2021 will be the FlyJSim Q4XP. Development has been now ongoing now for about three years, but for a while now the news coming out of FlyJSim has been quite sparse. FlyJSim did a final update of their original Dash 8 Q400 Legacy, even now as far back as August 2019, in readiness for the far more higher quality and detailed version of the De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q Series called Q4XP. The biggest expected feature is a fully custom Universal FMS and not the usual fall back Laminar FMS. Let us see the notes put forward by the main FlyJSim developers Jack Skieczius and Joe Vermeulen. "Hi There, has been a long endeavor crafting this aircraft ranging all the way back to 2018. We’re not quite there yet today, but we can see the finish line. Q4XP Visuals We’re pleased to report that modelling is complete, and texturing is about 99.9% complete. The largest chunk of this work that we haven’t really shown publicly to date is the cabin work. Needless to say, Jack and Valdudes poured their heart and soul into this one. The Q4XP will be our most interactive and complete cabin we have ever made, expanding on the standards we set in the 737-200. Seats are highly detailed to look like those classic, wafer thin sheets of plastic of this compact economy class cabin. We're using a -78 seat configuration with our Q4XP. This includes the front luggage compartment and active emergency exit. We even have a toilet, but you aren’t quite ready to see that yet. It smells odd in there anyway… One of the coolest components is the cabin crew “Master Display Panel” (MDP), which allows flight attendants to control the environment within the cabin. So you can have full control over lighting on the overhead, sidewalls, doors and entrance areas. The MDP is also tied into our pneumatic system. Pilots have the option to allow FAs to take control of the cabin temperature, which is reflected in the Q4XP. And as always, you can expect exceptional night lighting in the cockpit and the cabin! This includes working sidewall lights (which flicker with a characteristic filament bulb), overhead lights, entry/galley, toilet and stair lights. One of the few systems we can talk about today is power management, and some of the changes we’ve made from the Q400 legacy based upon feedback and a desire to simulate the appropriate conditions. This also ties into a UI that we have developed to assist pilots. To help, we've provided a small diagram down below. The Q400 does not have an autothrottle however, for those of you worried about that, don't. We have properly simulated the FADEC flight ratings so all you need is set your throttle into the rating detent, and your good to go. Sounds simple, but let's go into more detail. The FADEC is responsible for the management of engine parameters and talking to other components that govern the engine. How you “talk” to the FADEC is split into two sub-controls, the “Power” and “Prop” levers. The "Prop Levers" controls you would normally use, set a condition that the FADEC uses to determine the power while the Power Levers are in the Rating Detent. You have four settings, start/feather, 850, 900, and 1020. This is how you set the FADEC to give you Normal Takeoff Power(NTOP), Max Climb(MCL), or Max Cruise(MCR). You can also override these via the engine control power to get derated takeoff power or max takeoff power. The "Power Levers" are set-up as a 1:1 ratio with gates to limit your ability to move the power levers into the wrong zones. There are only two gates, one to go into Reverse from DISC and one to go into flight mode from DISC. Going past the gates means using one of a number of commands you may already have setup and only requires you to hold it for a short time. These are any of the power up or down commands, which are defaulted to F1, F2 on your keyboard, or you can use the beta toggle, thrust reverse toggle, or thrust reverse hold. The Power lever angles diagram above shows how this 1:1 ratio works with respect to the Q400s FADEC and what power you may get overall. Because this is such a critical component of operation, we had a few problems to solve. How do we teach users about power rating? How do we provide positive feedback to users about where their throttle is all the time? How do we avoid the issue of the Q400 legacy, where the power lever was mapped 1:1, and consequently users had a difficult time distinguishing the beta range from normal power mode? How do we avoid users selecting the wrong setting at all times? That last one in particular is something we would like to avoid... So to solve this, we’ve implemented a few things Created an on-screen overlay that will actively display when an axial input is detected. The UI will tell you where your aircraft axis is, where your hardware axis is for synchronization, and what mode is active, Separated out beta range/fuel cut-off portions of each axis with a gate. Requiring users to bind a button to pass into each region. This prevents pilots from accidentally cutting off fuel or going below the idle range (which is forbidden in flight). Implemented a subtle notch/notation for the prop lever Designed a system that is seamlessly accessible to multiple types of inputs. You can interact with these controls via mouse input, keyboard command, or bindables...and switch between these at will. Our intent is for something unobtrusive and functional, and we hope pilots appreciate this handy feature whilst they focus on the flying." The following images were taken directly from X-Plane with courtesy of FlyJSim and ShadeX If you want to peruse through FlyJSim's Boeing 732 TwinJet v3 Professional by FlyJSim, then it puts these images into some perspective on the sort of quality and detail that will be coming on the Q4XP aircraft. FlyJSim also previewed a few of the coming liveries with the Q4XP aircraft including; NextGen (Factory), Sata, Air Canada Express, SpiceJet, De Havilland House, Horizon (New), Horizon (old) and Aero. Hopefully our local QantasLink livery is on the list as well? Price and release date... Price (not yet locked in) will probably be around that US$69.95 point as per the FlyJSim Boeing 737 TwinJet. Release, in putting my Nostradamus hat on, it will be late Q3 or significantly early Q4, but FlyJSim do have a record of releasing aircraft in August. Certainly this De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q Series from FlyJSim is a must have to any X-Plane collection... we still are waiting, but the signs are getting better on how soon we may be to getting our hands on the controls of one of the most exciting regional turbo-props flying today. Images and comment are courtesy of FlyJSim. DEVELOPER UPDATE 6 : Take your seats! notes are here ____________________________ News by Stephen Dutton 4th (May the force go with you) 2021 Copyright©2021: X-Plane Reviews (Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Rights Reserved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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