A Few Words
I’d like to say a few words what’s going on at XP Jets, at least for the plugin. First of all: we (the whole XPJ team) working hard in our spare time on the project. Second: we’re aware about the fact that there are some people out there which think the project is dead.
NO, IT ISN’T!
As long as you don’t read an official announcement that XPJ has passed we simply didn’t. Being quiet doesn’t mean that we’ve stopped working. But we’re enthusiasts, with regular jobs and family. So we need to be careful to spent our time to that things that are important.
There is also nothing new to show you. If we have something important or interesting enough to show we’ll do so.
Thanks to all the people who believe in us and wait until we’re done.
Cheers!
Pictures!
Just some pictures for now. Admittedly a bit slow on the uptake, we’ve dropped the bird in to 10 to see what kind of damage control we’ll need to do for the future. Seems mostly okay which is good 
My poor 3.5 year old iMac is another story (and part of why its been quiet in here…I think I hear an echo…echo…echo). Long story short, nothing was lost (except time), and the machine and myself are back up and running.
I’ll have Sven post with some plugin updates soon after he gets settled in after his latest move. That is where the real magic is happening.
Alex
77X
For those of you who follow our thread at x-pilot, you know that an announcement is coming. If not, let us be the first to say, “without further ado.”
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!
Blender tricks
I love finding new things in Blender. Actually, last night opened up a world that was briefly open to me years ago and shut down again due to the lack of flexibility in the X-Plane object format.
I’ve been working on some new developments that we’ll announce shortly, but long story short, I’m building and having to animate more complex systems. And in order to do it to the fidelity that I like, it requires keyframes, and lots of them. I do believe that the 777 gear all is roughly 30 keyframes per strut just in the retract and extend cycles. All of the scissor drag links are a royal pain as I’m sure many of you out there in dev land know. To get to the point, I have rediscovered inverse kinematics. By adding IK constraints to my armature rigs, I am able to forego manually setting up animation strings, rotating each bone a few degrees and praying that things all will still line up keyframe after keyframe. Now all I have to do is define how the bones in my armatures should behave in relation to each other and other geometry. The biggest advantage to this is simply the time saved in order to pull entire complex systems together. To quote Mr. Spock, “Admiral, if we go ‘by the book,’ like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days.” Now I’m not going to elaborate on the technique specifics in this post. I’ve just been playing with stuff in my test files and I’d rather have something 777 related to show it off with. Stay tuned for Blender tricks part 2, and developers, I promise, if you’re not doing this already, you’ll like it It turned my animation world upside down when I found out how to overcome the last few obstacles. Happy building!
Cheers!
Alex
Welcome Home Atlantis
Even since I was a kid, I’ve read books about space, watched the space shuttle, and absorbed absolutely everything that I could about the program. I wouldn’t have dreamed as a kid that I’d ever see the end. Dhruv and I both just watched Atlantis reenter and touch down not ten minutes ago. It was an absolutely sublime landing. This is just our heartfelt congrats to the STS135 crew, congrats to the folks at mission control for their final shuttle mission, and congrats to the ship that for so many years has sent mankind into space. We’ll all miss you. Goodnight, and to the future.