About a month ago Alex was looking at the 777 operators list on wikipedia. Back when we really got into the project, the 772ER was the most popular variant of the bird flying. The 777-200LR (77L) and the 777-300ER (77W) were in their infancy. Turns out that over the course of just a few years, the balance has shifted. By far the most popular version with carriers of the 777 is also our favorite, the 77W (now this is in terms of orders…there is a lot of backlog). We’ve wanted to get a move on with some of the other variants for along time now and these new figures gave us just the excuse that we needed to get started on the 77W conversion. The modifications also open the door to the 200LR and 200LRF to complete the entire 777 line.

Our release schedule is still going to focus on putting the 200ER out the door first, but we thought it worthwhile to share some of the new stuff with you. The stretch has also given way to further refinement of the details including wing components and landing gear components. More importantly though, we’ve got brand new GE90-110B and 115Bs, modeled from the ground up and detailed to the hilt. There is a little bit more work to do with the engines obviously, but they are at a point now where they’re pretty enough to show them off.

Keep in mind that this is just a future development announcement at this time. Our full time priority is still the 200ER. We’re going to put up comprehensive 200ER progress report sometime next month (which consequently will all feedback into the 77W anyway…gotta love parallel development). You want it, and we want it. With that goal in mind, its a no brainer ‘win win’ for all of us.

Some images. All white areas are areas are where new geometry has been applied or old geometry updated. We’ll get to texturing the new stuff in due time.

From all of us at XPJets, enjoy!

Normal / specular maps!
Thats it…nothing more to say…except that my fun with the exterior is about done for now. Back inside.

And the requisite pics of course.
Just a note, we’ll be posting updated pics of liveries as we get ‘em done in the exterior gallery. Look for DL, KLM, and ANA shots soon. I’ve got to get my sim reliable again…weird directory issues.

Cheers

Here is a nice list of the things that we’ve just crossed off of the list.
• New high resolution fuselage and vertical stabilizer textures are complete
• UV maps are now all compatible with normal maps without producing artifacts
• Ram Air Turbine is complete and awaiting plugin controlled animation commands from Sven
• Initial exterior lighting framework is in place. This gives us control over the logo lights on the tail, control over pax window brightness etc. We’ve got alot built into it already and I must say, the results are quite lovely.
• Exterior geometry and textures have been finalized. We’ve included a couple of extra goodies in the fuselage and remodeled a couple of the areas that we still felt were giving us problems.

Needless to say, we’re very happy with where we are at. At this point, we’re all ready to buckle down, leave the exterior save a few last minor details, and punch out the last of the cockpit and begin serious implementation of the plugin.

And some pictures because well, we all like pictures (and yeah, I got overzealous. These expand to a higher res than our normal pics.)
Cheers!

We here at XP Jets, along with a select group of accomplished x-plane developers, are proud to announce a new partnership with www.x-pilot.com, a new X-Plane community site. Through our dedicated forum at the site, we plan to preview and showcase our projects, provide technical support for our planes, and assist in answering any technical questions new developers may have regarding aircraft and/or scenery development. We are committed to growing x-plane add-ons and believe this forum venue will be a good place to do that.

We consider it a privilege to be included amongst x-pilot.com’s featured developer partners, and believe that it is an incredible gathering of some of the most accomplished minds in the X-Plane atmosphere. As such, we hope that you, our readership, will join us in embracing this new community and look forward to seeing some of our “regulars” there!

For those of our readers who prefer our in-house presence, rest assured that we will continue to concurrently post project news and development updates on this blog. We do hope, however, that in the interest of first-rate customer service, you choose to join us at x-pilot, as it stands to become our primary channel of providing support for our products.

After finishing up on the wing and getting animations sorted on about everything else, I more or less shook my head and said something to the effect of, “Dhruv, we need new engines.” Lets face it, the current obj engines were built two years ago. Since then, I’ve acquired a veritable wealth of experience in Blender. It’s been a big job remodeling all three from the ground up, but I think that you’ll agree, the improvement is tremendous, even in their untextured state. Say hello to your new GE90, Trent 800, and Pratt 4000.  They just need some paint, scuffs, dirt and fun animations to boot. We’re getting closer!

Here’s a little taste for you (Click images for larger view).

Well, it’s been a busy two months since we dropped the A320 bomb on everyone, in many ways. Alex and I have been hard at completing our respective university semesters, which wrapped up last month. Since then, we’ve both kept ourselves mind-numbingly occupied, both with XPJ-related work and with other pursuits. We have also taken some time to ourselves. Indeed, I’m writing this from seat 17A of a Northwest Airlines A330-323 winging its way across the North Atlantic on my way back from a 10-day soirée in Europe (in-seat AC power is a godsend…now if only Boeing hadn’t completely axed Connexion…). But I digress…

My European adventures carried me, among other places, to Paris, which for the non-aviation addicts amongst our readership (all three of you) houses La Musée de l’Air et l’Espàce at  Le Bourget Airport. I was fortunate enough to coordinate my travels to meet with XPFW’s Peter Meininger and take in the museum together. Together, we adventured our way around a full-size retired Boeing 747-128, and the piéce de resistance of the museum, Concordes 001 (the prototype) and F-BTSD (a production model which was in service with Air France until the type’s retirement in 2003). Having collaborated with Peter on various projects over the years, it was a welcome experience to finally shake hands with him. And yes, I’ll be honest – the backdrop didn’t hurt either. Photo of us from the museum are displayed below. I’ll leave it to you all to decide who’s who.

Amongst other things, Pete and I also talked shop about the 320. Things are still progressing well on the bird. The exterior model is inching its way closer to completion. I’ve spent the better part of this 8 hour excursion across the Pond playing around in Photoshop perfecting our base textures a bit more. I’ll admit – it’s a bit of a wrench giving up state secrets, but the key to our ability to mass-produce liveries in the manner that we do is that once the base textures are to a good level of completion, liveries are all-but academic. Now unfortunately, it’s the base textures themselves that take an age and a half to perfect! Anyway, I think I’m fairly good on the fuselage masters now, and the fruits of Alex’s and my labor is on display below [Click to zoom in on the nose section to get a better detail overview].

One can clearly see the details that he’s painstakingly fabricated for the kit, and at this point, I’m simply bandying around with the overall “feel” of the textures. Of course, the brilliant part about it all is I click two boxes in Photoshop, et voila! We go from blank white plane to liveried plane faster than one can say “V One”. Case in point presented below:

What this means for you, the users, is that once we get the paint kit fully hammered down, Alex, Josh, and myself will be able to tackle a rather large number of liveries in short order (and indeed have already started doing so). I will also attempt to simplify the paint kit to the point where I can make a public version available for users to create their own repaints without too much hardship.

Now, I have to digress for a moment, because I’m getting ahead of myself. At this point, we’re multitasking a bit as well, and I’d like to officially clear up the rumors a bit. We’ve been rather coy about this in the past few months, but let the record finally state that the rumors are true:

We are indeed upgrading the 777 to be fully ready for X-Plane 9 with a completely new object-based exterior and a heavy feature set upgrade.

Couple of quick bullet points on that bombshell (for those who didn’t see it coming):

• First and foremost, the plane will remain freeware. It started its life as such and will continue to be so.
• Minimally, it will require X-Plane 9.20. There are a veritable ton of aircraft and instrumentation-specific features forthcoming of which the 777 will take full advantage.
• As far as model variants go, just to keep ourselves sane, we’ll be continuing ahead with the -200ER to begin with, and then completing out the line. Thankfully, this will be far less of a chore now than it would have been had we attempted it with last summer’s release. X-Plane has come a long way in terms of keeping projects organized, and we’ve also streamlined our own development workflow a great deal in the past year (it’s the fact that we never really get the chance to single-mindedly attack a plane that keeps us from releasing stuff faster!). So yes, those of you waiting [im]patiently for ultra-long-range -200LR and -300ER models of the 777 will be granted your wishes eventually. Believe me, we want them as badly as you do!

I think I’ve sufficiently bored everyone enough with my rambling now, so I’m going to refrain from writing anything further at this point. We will spill more details on the 777 shortly as we’re heavily into fine-tuning the exterior model at the moment, and would much rather wait until we’re ready to declare the objects final before we show it off. I will, however, leave you with a small teaser: a full render of the new model from Blender:

Thanks to all of you for your persistent commenting on the blog to date and for bearing with the silence for so long. It gives me the chance to do these long-winded addresses more often!

In the meanwhile, however, we’ve been hard at work. When we first vacated our positions at the X-Plane Freeware Project, many users felt that our actions were meant to incite some sort of competition. Well, quite frankly, we’ve tried to do our best to be civil about it, and today we hope to finally squelch the warmongering. For the past couple of months, we’ve been hard at work in cooperation with our colleagues at XPFW to bring you one of the most successful narrowbody jets in service today.

So, without further ado, It brings us great pleasure to introduce our latest project: the XP Jets and XPFW Airbus A320 series for X-Plane 9.

The A320 is one of the greatest success stories of modern airliner development. In the 1980s, Airbus began developing a new model aimed at replacing the world’s most popular aircraft at the time, the Boeing 727. The digital technology in the A320 would herald a two-generation technological leap over the all-analog Boeing 727 and be a generation ahead of the Boeing 737-300/-400/-500 series. To that end, Airbus incorporated advanced features including fly-by-wire flight control, composite primary structures, center-of-gravity control using fuel, glass cockpit (EFIS) and a two-person flight deck. First delivered in 1988, the A320 pioneered the use of digital fly-by-wire flight control systems in a commercial aircraft. Powerplants for the A320 family are provided by CFM International (CFM56-5 series) and International Aero Engines (V2500 series).

After entering the market in March 1988 with Air France, Airbus expanded the A320 family rapidly, launching the 185-seat A321 in 1989 (first delivered in 1994), the 124-seat A319 in 1993 (first delivered in 1996), and the 107-seat A318 in 1999 (first delivered in 2003). With more than 3,000 aircraft of the A320 family built, it is the second best-selling jet airliner family of all time after the family’s primary competition, the Boeing 737

Currently, we plan to develop the A320 and A319 series of models, including all derivatives of those two airframes. While we’re currently not ruling out the possibility of future development of either the A318 or A321, they are not on the slate for the time being. For those of you who are curious, here is how we’ve decided to break down our talents on this joint project. We all believe that this combination highlights our specialties as aircraft developers to bring you the best aircraft that we possibly can:

External Model & Master Textures: XPJ
Flight Model: XPJ/XPFW combined
2D Panel: XPJ/XPFW combined
3D Panel/Cockpit: XPFW
Liveries: XPJ/XPFW combined

Although the external model is admittedly quite close to completion, don’t let its current appearance fool you. There is still a mountain of work to do in regards to the panel, flight model, and various other 3D work, so we can’t set any release date or project exactly when it will be ready. We will attempt to provide timely milestone updates as we complete key stages of development (something we were rather horrible at during 777 development!). We will also coordinate with XPFW to cross-post important news on the XPFW forums as development permits.

In the meanwhile, we wish you all blue skies, and enjoy the previews!

Click Images for Larger View:
 

I’m very excited about being part of XP Jets, it’s the biggest acknowledment a designer could get. The co-operation started a few months ago, and has evolved into a great fellowship that I can’t imagine being without!

I plan on giving 110% to XPJ and making sure I will deliver the high quality results that XPJ expects . So I’d like to thank everybody here and over at the .org for making these last months a fun ride!

Some trivia about me:
I’m a Chilean dude working as a soundtech and music producer in Sweden at the moment. I stumbled across X-Plane back in 2001 and been addicted ever since. I’ve released a beta version of SCEL, Arturo Benitez airport in Santiago, Chile. I also released a beta of Sweden Scenery 1.6 but I’ve stopped developing airports due to lack of proper tools, so lately I’ve been doing aircraft development. Most known is the A340-600 that you probably heard of, as it gets about 1000-6000 views a week (!). That aircraft made XPJ curious about me and the rest is history.

I’m off and to all, please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I’m more than happy to assist.

Take care,

Rodrigo Sauvalle, XP Jets.

So with that sentiment in hand, XP Jets is more than happy to announce that we’ve just added another node pusher .

Please join us in welcoming Rodrigo Sauvalle! His fine work on the A340-600 caught all of our attention several months ago when he began experimenting with a full .obj -format fuselage. Since then, Rodrigo and Alex have been working steadily on various modeling projects. Things worked out brilliantly between the two of them from the beginning, so it seemed only logical that we bring Rodrigo on as a team member. We are confident that he will be an invaluable asset to XPJ. We could talk until we’re deoxygenated and blue in the face, but that would be a waste of brain cells on our account. We’ll simply let his work speak for itself!

Rodrigo will be undoubtedly saying a few words to introduce himself shortly, so please give him a warm welcome!

The XP Jets team