777 Preview Film

We’ve had a few requests for a preview film highlighting the work on the exterior model.
As a sendoff to the new year which promises to be a good one for XP Jets, we’ve decided to put together a little film featuring the new 777.
I’ll let the film do the talking.

We hope that you enjoy the film and a happy 2010 from XP Jets!

777 Galleries

Just thought that it’d be a good idea to let everyone know that we’re adding images to our galleries again now that we’re more or less active once again.
Check back every now and then for the latest in development progress

Cheers

I Brought Home Those New Tires You Wanted

Well, its been a while in coming, but I think that we may have finally cracked it. Okay, truth be told, it isn’t nearly as epic as I’m making it out to be, but we have in recent weeks been crafting new nosegear for the 777. I do believe that you will find it an improvement over the first set of wheels (more or less rehashed and animated parts from the acf version).

I think that I may owe explanation on a few new features. The brake status indicator lights just below the landing lamp housings are functional. Green means that the brakes are off. Red indicates that the brakes are active above 1300 or so psi. Yellow indicates that the parking brake is set. All of the lights are functional as you’d expect them to be. The complete P40 panel is also something new. I’ll be working with Sven later to hopefully achieve some functionality through the panel including the annunciators, the ability to set off the APU extinguisher in case of APU fire, and if we’re lucky, an audible APU fire horn. Obviously, APU fire doesn’t exist as a failure yet in the sim so there will be some work to do first.

As for the rest, I’ll let the screenshots do the talking. Next up on the external agenda is the RAT, but first, I’ve got an overhead to start work on.

Cheers

There’s No Place Like Home…and Dorothy’s right!

You miss us?

Yeah, we miss us too. We know thats its been quiet around here. A little development from Sven, and my announcement of the Pratts several months ago is about all that any of you have to go on. Needless to say, its too quiet for us as well. Back in May, Dhruv and I entered into a preliminary agreement with an organization for some high end X-Plane 3rd party development work. The project has been hush hush which is why we haven’t been able to post any messages regarding it. A long story short, business relations wore down to the point of making progress impossible. At the moment, the project has a solid 4 month period of time buried in it. It remains largely unfinished on our hard drives. After much careful consideration over many circumstances, we’ve decided to end the relationship and are back in full force (good news for you). To maintain privacy of the organization’s identity, we’ll be keeping any information regarding the unfinished project under wraps until such a time when its kosher to do so, so please don’t ask

We know that we’ve been out of touch for a while. One thing that we’re going to try to do is to reconnect positively to the X-Plane user base. There is a lonely forum with our name on it at x-pilot.com that we’ll be using extensively. We’ll also try to be posting weekly in our blog. If there is one thing that we’ve learned during our business experience is that communication is crucial to success. Lets face it, because of our absence, many of you are thinking that XP Jets is incapable of finishing anything. We’re the vaporware experts (and we have a track record to prove it….) Believe us, we’re not trying to be. The introduction of Sven, our resident programmer, to the team many months ago is adding a whole new dimension of possibility to the 777 and is going to open exciting avenues for the future. He’s told me that after the 777 is finished, he would love to get in and start coding systems for the 757. This should be exciting news for everyone. We will be extensively revisiting the old bird when the 777 is finished. We’re also interested in adding some older metal to our inventory later on. Possibilities discussed include the DC-9 series among others. No official word on where we’re going to be after the 757, but you’ll know shortly after we do.

I think that this should suffice for now. We’ve got some goodies waiting in the wings. Some of you may have noticed shots of freshly textured nose gear on x-plane.org. I’ll be putting up a post about the new 777 nose gear here later today. There are some pretty fun features and toys that we’ve been messing with. Sven is making steady progress with the plugin work and he might say a few words later this week. I’m not putting words in Dhruv’s mouth here, but watch out for fuselage texture news before too long. Keep your eyes and ears open and those RSS feeds current. We do feel that we owe it to the community to stick around…believe me when we say that we’re not going to abandon you again. We’ve had our visions of grandeur and have had our fun. Its time to get back to what matters.

Without further ado, it brings me the greatest pleasure to say, “There’s no place like home!”

We’re back! (and we’re never running away again…)