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control for smaller, partial deflections, since the flight controls will
move LESS for the small-to-moderate stick deflections in your hand.
This will give you nice fine pitch control, and nice slow, detailed, rolled
control. So, set those sliders and see how it feels. Is it OK now? No?
OK, then read on:
OK, the next level is Stability Augmentation. If you still think the
plane is too squirrely or over-sensitive, then drag those sliders all the
way to the right. What will happen? Now, X-Plane will automatically
counter-act any stick input you give to some degree, resisting rapid or
large deflections in pitch, heading, and roll. Basically, it is like always
having an autopilot on that smooths things out for you. It's fake and
stupid, so I don't like it, but in the absence of a perfect flight-control
system and g-load and peripheral-vision feedback, this can help
smooth the airplane out for you. So, try flying with those sliders at
various different places, but full-LEFT should be most realistic: No
artificial stability added.
So, does it fly just right now? Still pulling to one side or the
other? OK, we have done everything we can in the sim, now it's time
to tweak the airplane. If the REAL plane is pulling to one side or the
other, you bend the little trim tab on the aileron one way or another.
This bending of the aileron trim tab counter-acts any imperfections in
the shape of the airplane or dynamics of the propwash or massdistribution inside the plane. Well, you can do exactly the same thing
in X-Plane: Bend a trim tab a bit one way or the other to make the
plane fly true. How do you do it? Still pretty easy. Exit X-Plane. Open
Plane-Maker. Go to the 'File' menu and open the plane that is pulling
left or right. Go to the 'Standard' menu and then to the 'Control
Geometry' screen. Go to the 'Trim and Speed' tab. Go to the very
at the Rendering Options you have set, then you are GOING TO RUN
SUPER-SLOW, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CPU YOU HAVE.
Conversely, if you have all the RAM in the world, but if your
computer CPU is slow or your video card speed is low, then you will of
course get low performance.
So, given whatever machine YOU have, how can you get the
most from X-Plane?
That is the question to ask, and here are the answers:
First the basics: YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO TELL HOW FAST
X-PLANE IS RUNNING. Run X-Plane and go to the SETTINGS menu,
then DATA INPUT & OUTPUT window, and check the right-hand box
in front of "FRAME-RATE", thus sending the frame-rate to the screen
in flight. Now you can see how fast you are running, in the "freq /sec"
output on the far left. This is called "frames per second" or "fps".
15 fps is poor.
100 fps is insanely high.
30 fps looks fine.
Studies show that at 60 fps or above, your SUB-CONCIOUS
MIND forgets that you are looking at a simulator, and thinks you are
flying.
What frame-rate are you seeing on YOUR computer?
Not high enough?
OK, lets see how to make it faster!
First the easy one, hat is sort of cheating: Let's set the
WEATHER to an easy condition to render. Go to the ENVIRONMENT
menu, SET WEATHER screen. Set the cloud types to CLEAR LAYER
for max speed, or HIGH CIRRUS or LOW STRATUS for good speed.
SCATTERED OR BROKEN OR OVERCAST take a TON of CPU time
to run.
Set the visibility to about 5 miles or so. Higher visibility takes
MORE CPU to run, because you see more stuff!
Nothing else in the weather screen will affect frame-rate, but clouds
and visibility affect it a LOT.
So, setting NO clouds and NO precipitation and LOW visibility
will make the sim run faster, but of course this is totally cheating
because you might want the sim to run faster WITH clouds and good
visibility, because that is when flying is most fun!
So now let's get to the GOOD stuff:
Go to the SETTINGS menu, RENDERING OPTIONS screen. We
will work this windows from top to bottom.
Look at your TEXTURE RESOLUTION. This setting determines
how detailed all the thousands of textures in X-Plane are, and
therefore much VIDEO RAM you will use. As long as you have plenty
of VIDEO RAM, you can set this as high as you want with NO LOSS
IN FRAME-RATE, but as soon as you set the texture resolution to
require more VRAM than you have, YOUR FRAME-RATE WILL DIE!
How do you tell how much VRAM X-Plane uses? Easy. Look at the
BOTTOM of the rendering options screen and X-Plane tells you how
much VRAM is required at it's current settings. If this number is
greater than the RAM on your video card, then you are asking to get
slow performance. How much RAM is on your video card? You need
to go to your operating system to find out, and of course this will be a
bit different for all the various Mac, Windows, and Linux OS's out
there. Use Google as needed if you don't already know how to find the
VRAM available on your particular computer. Once you know the
VRAM on your computer, lower the texture resolution in X-Plane until
X-Plane uses about what you have, not too much more
NOTE! X-Plane can use MORE VRAM for the buildings and
roads and forests! So you should really set the texture resolution so
that the VRAM report at the bottom of the screen is a bit LOWER than
your actual VRAM!
NOTE! You can, in some cases, use MORE VRAM than your
video card has, and X-Plane will still run fast, because a lot of the
RAM can be "cached away" in the system with no speed penalty if it is
not often accessed by the computer! For example, it is OK to have the
texture of desert sand cached away off the video card, for example, if
no desert sand is visible to you because you are not flying over the
desert! But, if you have only 128 meg of VRAM on your vide card, but
the texture res is set such that you need 256 meg of VRAM, then the
computer will constantly be moving RAM on and off the video card
(between the video card RAM and the system RAM) to draw each
frame of scenery. THIS IS VERY VERY SLOW. Thus, you must set the
texture res LOW ENOUGH TO AVOID THIS.
NOTE: After you change the texture resolution, you should restart X-Plane for all the changes to take effect!
NOTE: Just put the texture resolution on it's lowest setting, exit
the sim, re-start it, and note the frame-rate. Then raise the texture
detail up one level and repeat. Keep doing this until the frame-rate
decreases. This is the point where you are using up all your VRAM!
Back the texture resolution off to one level lower than that and restart
to fly.
Now look at the screen resolution in the rendering options
screen. It uses up some VRAM, but not much. It uses up some video
card processing power as well, but not too much. Set the resolution as
you see fit. Probably 1024x768 or whatever it takes to fill your monitor.
Now look at the anti-alias level: This can make things VERY slow
since it draws the scenery many times to average the result. You
should turn this down to NONE, if you are not happy with your framerate.
Now look at the all-important "forest density", "number of
objects", and "number of roads" settings. These have a HUGE impact
on frame-rate. Set these to NONE for speed. Dialing any of these
things up will take BIG hits on performance, because they draw
thousands of objects, and gobble RAM and CPU in the process.
Forests and objects just draw SOOOOOOOO many objects at their
maximum level, that you really will want a TOP-end machine to handle
these settings at their maximum.
Dial down the 'world detail distance' if you want. This is sort of a
last-ditch effort to save CPU. Though it will cause objects to 'pop' into
place in front of you, which is not very nice to look at! So I never move
that setting away from it's default.
UN-CHECK the cars/birds/hi-res-planet textures/hi-detail-runwayenvironment for speed. Most of these do NOT make too much of a
difference in speed, but they make a little difference, so you can turn
them off.
Now for some big ones: USE PIXEL SHADERS. This one can
really hurt your frame-rate, because your video card might not be new
enough to really handle this well. If you turn this on, check your
framerate after closing the RENDERING OPTIONS window. It might
be hurt! A new video card is called for in that case, since your video
card just does not have the power to handle the new graphics
technologies very well.
Now, below that, you have the 'volumetric fog' and 'reflective
water'. These options can have HUGE impact on frame-rate, because
the fog is computed every pixel, and the water-reflections require the
whole world to be rendered TWICE! So use these option with care.
The higher you set your reflective-water level, the more detailed the
reflections, and the slower the sim will run!
"Number of cloud puffs" has a HUGE impact on frame-rate when
you have scattered, broken, or overcast clouds, but you already know
to avoid those if you are not getting good frame-rate!
The other settings in this window don't really effect speed too
much, as long as you leave the EXPERT RENDERING OPTIONS
stuff in the external visuals and stuff, saving you a little time, as the
master machine gets the various other computers on the network into
line. Once you have done that, THEN configure the external visuals,
cockpits, and IOS... just check each of the 3 tabs in the 'Net
Connections' window to check all the available settings.
NOTE: ONCE THE NET CONNECTIONS ARE CONFIGURED, MAKE
THE RENDERING OPTIONS CHOICES FROM THE IOS IF YOU
HAVE ONE, MASTER MACHINE IF NOT. All the rendering options will
go from the IOS to the MASTER to the EXTERNAL VISUALS AND
COCKPITS automatically, which is kind of convenient since it keeps all
the machines in sync... just think of it this way: Just like the IOS
controls the weather and time of day, it also controls the rendering
options to control how the world looks. This stuff is all set in the
RENDERING OPTIONS window in the SETTINGS menu.
plane.
Open the "coolplane_copilot.acf" in Plane-Maker, and tweak the
instrument panel all out to be perfect for the co-pilots side.
Now you have 2 copies of the same plane, each with its own
instrument panel, and the names "coolplane.acf" and
"coolplane_copilot.acf".
The .acf files are in the same folder, right beside each other.
Now simply copy that whole aircraft folder from one of your
computers over to the other, putting the aircraft folder in the same
place in the second (copilots) copy of X-Plane.
Now simply fire up X-Plane on each computer, go to the
SETTINGS menu, and then to the DATA INPUT OUTPUT window on
each computer, and select INET 2 tab.
Check the IP ADDRESS OF EXTRA VISUAL/COCKPIT #1
(THIS IS MASTER) button on that computer, and enter the IP address
of the copilot's machine.
On the COPILOT'S machine, check the IP ADDRESS OF
MASTER MACHINE (THIS IS EXTRA COCKPIT), and enter the IP
address of the pilot's machine.
Now, on the lower left, click on the 'aircraft name reading suffix'
and enter (can you guess it? if you are smart, you should) "_copilot".
That means that NO MATTER WHAT PLANE YOU OPEN ON THE
PILOTS MACHINE, this computer will add "_copilot" to the name of the
Just push the left or right rudder pedal on your CH-Products Prop
Pedals that you hopefully bought to get more or less thrust from the
tail rotor. If you don't have rudder pedals, then twist your joystick for
anti-torque control. If your stick does not twist for yaw-control, then XPlane will do a decent job of adjusting the tail-rotor lift to counter the
main-rotor torque in flight. Incidentally, the tail rotor is geared to the
main rotor SO THEY ALWAYS TURN IN UNISON. If the main rotor
loses 10% rpm, then tail rotor loses 10% rpm. They are geared
together. So how does the tail rotor adjust its thrust if it cannot change
its speed? Same as the main rotor: by adjusting its pitch, and it is that
tail-rotor pitch that you are controlling with your rudder pedals or twisty
joystick.
OK, so you are in the air and adjusting the COLLECTIVE PITCH
of the main rotor (with your joystick throttle) to hold 10 feet in the air
and adjusting the tail-rotor pitch with anti-torque pedals (with your
rudder pedals or twisty stick) to keep the nose pointed right down the
runway. Now what? Well, you now need to wiggle the joystick left,
right, fore, and aft to steer the heilo around. How does this work? Well,
if you move the stick to the RIGHT, then the rotor blade will
INCREASE its pitch when it is in the FRONT of the heilo, and
DECREASE its pitch when it is BEHIND the heilo. In other words, the
rotor blade will change it's pitch trough a full cycle every time it runs
around the heilo once. In other words, it changes it's pitch from one
extreme to the other 400 times per minute (7 times per second) if the
rotor is turning at 400 rpm. No, I don't know how it does this without
flying to pieces either. Now, while it SEEMS that the right name for this
might be the "helicopter-destroyer", the fact that moving the stick
sends the blade pitch through one CYCLE every rotation of the rotor
blades means we call the control stick the CYCLIC stick. So you have
your collective, cyclic, and anti-torque controls. Now, let's talk about
the cyclic a bit more. When you move the stick to the right, the rotor
increases pitch when it is in the part of its travel that is in FRONT of
the heilo. Why? Well, because that will increase the lift on the FRONT
of the rotor disc. This will cause the rotor disc to TILT to the RIGHT.
(remember: gyroscopic forces are applied 90 degrees along the
direction of rotation of the gyroscope). Now that the rotor is tilted to the
RIGHT, it will of course drag the heilo off to the right as long as it is
producing lift. So here is the fascinating thing: the rotor on many heilos
is totally free-teetering. It has a completely "loose and floppy"
connection to the heilo. It can conduct ZERO TORQUE (left, right,
fore, and aft) to the body of the heilo. Maneuvering is only achieved by
the rotor tilting left, right, fore, and aft, dragging the top of the heilo
underneath it in that direction. So the heilo body is dragged along
under the rotor like livestock by a nose-ring, blindly following wherever
the rotor leads.
So, now that you are using this information to hover perfectly,
push the nose down to tilt the rotor forwards. The lift from the rotor
acting above the center of gravity of the heilo will lower the nose of the
heilo, and the forwards component of lift from the rotor will drag the
heilo forwards as you fly along.
So that's how you fly heilos. Pray that nothing breaks, if you want
to live.
Flying in Space
OK we have covered how to go low and slow. Now let's go high
and fast. If you hop in the 'Japanese Anime' in the 'Science Fiction'
folder, you can hit the gas, pull up, and find yourself in space quickly,
and if you are good, you will be able to level off at 500,000 feet at
15,186 knots orbit! The speed is labeled as 'V', in green, below the
attitude indicator. Now, you may notice that you ARE able to control
the plane in pitch, heading, and roll. Now, given that there is no air
over the flight control surfaces, how is that possible? The answer is:
Maneuvering rockets. Often called RCS (or Reaction Control System)
rockets, these are small rockets placed at the extremities of the
spacecraft that fire in opposition to each other to rotate the craft about
all axis. With these rockets, you can maneuver in space, and without
them, you simply tumble. Obviously, the Japanese Anime has such
rockets, and many other planes do not. So, how do you ADD such
rockets to some spacecraft of your OWN design? Pretty easy! Go into
Plane-Maker and open the craft you want to put in space. Now go to
the 'VTOL or Helo Controls' window in the 'Expert' menu. Look in the
lower-left corner of the window for the 'Extra Inputs for Jets' section.
Notice that you see spaces for PUFFERS. What are Puffers? Well, the
AV-8B Harrier has little hair-dryers at it's extremities that puff air in one
direction or another to maneuver the plane while in hover. This is really
exactly the same thing as the RCS on space-ships, so it is what we
use in X-Plane to maneuver craft in space as well. (Of course, in the
Harrier, these puffers are driven by air pulled off the compressor of the
jet engine, and in spacecraft, the RCS is driven by the combination of
volatile fluids or gases. So the METHOD by which puffers work is
radically different between a Harrier and spacecraft, but the end result
is the same (little jets of gas that spurt one way or another to rotate the
craft about each axis). So, enter the maximum pitch-moment that your
RCS system can generate in pitch, roll, and yaw to get the RCS
system for your spacecraft simulated. The moment is equal to the
force times the distance from the center of gravity. So, if the rocket
puts out 200 pounds of force, and is located 10 feet from the center of
the spaceship, then that rocket provides a MOMENT of 200 x 10 =
2,000 foot-pounds. If you have TWO such rockets to maneuver the
craft in pitch, then enter 4,000 foot-pounds, of course. If you do not
know how much to enter, try entering an amount equal to the WEIGHT
of your vehicle. This is the same as saying that the rockets are
EQUIVALENT to putting the entire weight of the ship on a 1-foot lever
arm, or 1/20 th the weight of the ship on a 20-foot lever arm an
amount that should be just fine for maneuvering!
As well, you can input longitudinal, lateral, and vertical rockets,
which are used to push the craft fore and aft, left and right, and up and
down.
Now, once you have entered all these stats on the rockets to get
the craft to pitch, roll, yaw, and translate up/down, left/right, and
fore/aft, close the window and save the craft and exit Plane-maker and
try it out in X-Plane. Can you maneuver in space now?
One problem you may still have is that it is simply pretty hard to
maneuver the craft in space because there is no damping of any sort.
The plane may tend to tumble out of control. In that case, you need a
fly-by-wire system! Full instructions for designing fly-by-wire systems
are included elsewhere in this manual.
Flying the Space Shuttle
Read this chapter before attempting Space Shuttle landings in XPlane if you want to live!
bit of fuel that is left after the mission, the orbiter fires its smaller deorbit engines to slow it down to a bit over 15,000 miles per hour (I love
saying that!! SLOWING DOWN TO A BIT OVER 15,000 MILES PER
HOUR) and begins its descent into the atmosphere.
Now we have to remember the cardinal rule of gliding: ALWAYS
AIM LONG (PAST your landing point, not short), BECAUSE IF YOU
EVER AIM SHORT YOU ARE DEAD SINCE YOU CAN NEVER
MAKE UP LOST SPEED OR ALTITUDE WITH NO ENGINES. Aim
LONG since you can always dissipate the extra speed and altitude
with turns or speedbrakes if you wind up being too HIGH, but you are
SCREWED if you come up SHORT. Following this rule, the orbiter
intentionally flies its glide from orbit EXTRA HIGH TO BE ON THE
SAFE SIDE.
But there is one problem: If the orbiter flies its entire approach
too high, won't it glide right past Edwards? No. And here is why: For
most of the re-entry, the shuttle flies with the nose WWWAAYYY up for
EXTRA drag, and making steep turns to intentionally dissipate the
extra energy. The nose-up attitude and steep turns are very inefficient,
causing the shuttle to slow down and come down to earth in a steeper
glide-angle, and if it ever looks like the orbiter might not quite be able
to make it to the landing zone, they simply lower the nose to be more
efficient and level it out in roll to quit flying the steep turns. The orbiter
then glides better, and they can stretch the glide to Edwards for sure.
The extra speed and altitude is the ace up their sleeve, but the
drawback is they have to constantly bleed the energy off through steep
turns (up to 70 degrees bank angle!) and drag the nose up (up to 40
degrees!) to keep from overshooting the field!!! OK, I will now walk you
through the re-entry process from the beginning, as it is done in the
real shuttle, and all of this carries over perfectly to the shuttle landing
in X-Plane, which you will fly after reading this chapter.
After de-orbit burn, the shuttle heads for the atmosphere at
400,000 feet, 17,000 miles per hour, and 5,300 miles away from
Edwards. (Yes, you are landing in the Mojave Desert and you are
starting your landing approach West of Hawaii). Not a bad pattern
entry, huh? In reality, the autopilot flies the entire 30-minute re-entry,
and the astronauts do not take over the controls of the shuttle until the
final 2 minutes of the glide. The astronauts COULD fly the entire reentry by hand, but it is officially discouraged by NASA. The reason is
obvious. These speeds and altitudes are way outside of normal
human conception, so our ability to "hand-fly" these approaches is
next to nil.
In the history of Shuttle missions (the 100th mission has just come to
a close as I write this), the real space shuttle has been hand-flown for
the entire re-entry only ONCE, by an ex-marine pilot, as I understand
it, who was ready for the ultimate risk and challenge.
Oh yes, did I mention you will be hand-flying the entire mission in
X-Plane, a well?
I have not gotten around to writing an autopilot for the Space Shuttle in
X-Plane yet. I will have to do that some day, maybe after I sort my
sock drawer.
Anyway, you start in X-Plane around 400,000+ feet, in space,
coming down to eat air like a bag of bricks at Mach-20. Your control
will be limited in space (you are operating off of small reaction jets on
the Orbiter, set up as "Puffers" in Plane-Maker), but once the shuttle
hits atmosphere, there will be some air for the flight controls to get a
grip on and you will actually start to be able to fly the thing. You will
first hit air at about 400,000 feet, but it will be so thin it will have almost
no effect at all. Your airspeed indicator will read around ZERO. Kind of
odd since you are actually doing over 17,000, huh? Not really. The
airspeed indicator works just like the wings of the orbiter: based on
HOW MUCH AIR IS HITTING IT! And in space, that is not much! It will
build gradually as you descend. The odd thing is that even though you
are actually SLOWING DOWN, the airspeed indicator will RISE as you
descend into thicker air that puts more pressure on the airspeed
indicator! You LIKE this oddity of the airspeed indicator, though, since
the air is also putting more pressure on the WINGS, so the airspeed
indicator is really measuring how much force the WINGS can put out
for you, which is really what you are interested in!
Bottom line: THE AIRSPEED INDICATOR INDICATES YOUR
TRUE AIRSPEED TIMES THE SQUARE ROOT OF THE AIR
DENSITY, SO IT INDICATES LOWER IN THIN AIR, BUT THE WINGS
PUT OUT LESS LIFT IN THIN AIR AS WELL, SO THE AIRSPEED
INDICATOR WORKS VERY WELL TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH LIFT
YOU CAN GET OUT OF THE WINGS.
A word to the wise: If the airspeed indicator is
putting out MORE than about 250 knots, your wings
can have plenty of lift to carry you. If the airspeed
indicator is indicating LESS than about 250 knots, then
the wings do not have enough air hitting them to lift
you, and you are still more or less coasting in the thin
upper atmosphere where the air is too thin to do much
for you.
So as the airspeed indicator on the HUD gradually starts to indicate a
value (as you descend into thicker air), you know it means you are
starting to ease down into the atmosphere at 15,000 mph like a
sunburned baby trying to ease into a boiling-hot Jacuzzi: VERY
CAREFULLY AND SLOWLY. Remember, if you were going 15,000
mph in the thick air of sea level, you would break up into a million tiny
pieces in a microsecond. The only reason you can survive 15,000
mph up here is the air is so thin it has almost no impact on the ship.
(And again, the airspeed indicator tells you how much the air is really
impacting the Orbiter. 250 is a "comfortable" amount). The trick is for
you to be going a lot slower than 15,000 mph by the time you get
down to the thick air of sea level. And be at Edwards Air Force Base.
And that is what the re-entry is for, dissipating speed as you descend
so that you are never going too fast for the thickness of the air that you
are in, you only descend into the thicker air once you have lost some
speed in the thinner air up higher. The whole thing is a smooth
process where you never ram the ship into thick heavy air at too high a
speed.
Now as you begin to feel the out tinges of the earth's
atmosphere, you will notice a slight ability to fly the ship as you get
some air over the wings and speed on the HUD. Now look at the
picture of the orbiter on the right-hand EFIS display. The Atlantis
already has this display retrofitted over it's old steam gauges (the
EFISs from the Atlantis are modeled very accurately in X-Plane.
Astronauts could use it for familiarization for sure). You see yourself
and the path down to Edwards. Your goal is to stay on the center path.
If you get above it, you are too fast or too high, you might overshoot! If
you get below it, you are too slow or too low: You might not make it!
(Remember ,the line is drawn with a large margin for error, so if you
stay on the line, you have plenty of extra energy, getting BELOW the
line a LITTLE will only tap into your speed/altitude reserve, getting
BELOW the line a LOT will keep you from making it to Edwards) You
must stay right near the center green line. The green line represents
the desired SPEED for the early part of the re-entry, the desired
TOTAL ENERGY for the middle part of the re-entry, and the ALTITUDE
for the final phase of the re-entry. Don't blame me, that's the way
NASA set it up. If you are too FAST OR HIGH (above the center line)
then it is time to dissipate some energy: put the thing in a steep bank,
pull that nose up and hang on!
The REAL orbiter will be about 40 degrees nose up, in a 70
degree bank to try to lose energy, going 14,000 mph, glowing red hot,
hurtling through the upper atmosphere on autopilot leaving a 10-mile
long trail of ionized gas behind it while the astronauts just watch. So
how was YOUR day?
Anyway, you will do steep turns to dissipate energy as needed to
keep the orbiter from going above the center green line. Look at the
little blue pointer on the far left-hand side of that right-hand display.
That indicates how high the nose is supposed to be. The green pointer
is where the nose is now. Get that nose up. The pointers just to the
right indicate the desired and current deceleration. You will not fly
those, though. Look at the little pointer up top on the horizontal scale.
That is the computer's estimation of how much bank angle you
probably need to stay on the center green line. Follow the computer's
recommendation or your own intuition for how much bank to fly, but
keep that nose up for sure to keep you in the upper atmosphere and
fly STEEP BANKS to dissipate the extra speed and altitude. You might
be tempted to just push the nose down if you are high. Don't. You will
drop down into the thick air and come to an abrupt stop from the
tremendous drag, and then you will never make it to Edwards. You will
wind up swimming in the Pacific somewhere around Hawaii.
Now, as you make your steep turns, you will be pulled gradually
off course. Switch your turn direction from time to time to stay on
course: turn left a while, then right, then back to the left again. That is
what they do in the real Orbiter. You are slalom-skiing through the
upper atmosphere at Mach-20. Not too shabby. Watch Edwards on
your center EFIS display. You want to go there. Hit the "@" key to see
yourself on a flyby. Fast enough for you? Hit the "w" key to get back in
the cockpit. Caps lock off! Caps lock off! As you approach Edwards,
right on your center green line on the right-hand display, you will notice
there is sort of a circle or something out past Edwards. This is your
Heading Alignment Cylinder, or H.A.C. You will fly PAST Edwards at
about 80,000 feet or so, fly AROUND THE OUTSIDE OF THE H.A.C.
like you are running around a dining-room table or something, and
then after you come around you will be pointed right at Edwards. And
if you are on the green line still, your altitude will be just right for
landing as well. This is usually where they turn off the autopilot and
hand-fly the real Shuttle.
Now you are doing about 250 or 300 knots, coming down at
about 15,000 feet per minute or so... about 125 miles per hour of
descent rate. Do I really need to tell you what will happen if you hit the
ground with that 125 miles per hour descent rate? Do not aim for the
runway or you will wind up smeared along it in a thin buttery paste.
Aim for the flashing glide slope lights 2 miles SHORT of the runway
that I (and NASA) have thoughtfully provided for you. If they are all
red, you are too low. (oops) If they are all white, you are too high (hit
your speed brakes, key "6" or use the mouse). If the lights are half red
and half white, you are right on your glide slope. (about 20 degrees...
airliners fly their approach at 125 knots, 3 degrees descent angle. We
use 250 knots, 20 degrees descent angle... not too unusual when you
consider pattern-entry started West of Hawaii, actually).
OK so you are at 250 knots, on the green line, lined up with the
runway, looking at half red, half white glide slope lights with the
flashing strobes by them. Hold that approach configuration until you
are pretty close to the ground (3-degree glide slope to the runway),
then level the descent and get your gear down. ("g"-key or mouse) Get
the nose up for a flare as you approach, and touch down smoothly.
Now lower the nose. Now hit the parachute and even the brakes if you
want and let it roll out. Now do it 100 times in a row without a single
hitch and you are as good as NASA.
PS: Special thanks to Sandy Padilla for most Shuttle re-entry
information!
Flying on Mars
NASA has very exact data on the atmospheric pressure, density, and
temperature on Mars. NASA has very exact data on the gravity of
Mars. NASA has rough topographic maps for the entire planet of Mars,
and very detailed data for some areas. The laws of physics, which are
programmed into X-Plane, are exactly the same on Earth as on Mars.
X-Plane needs atmospheric pressure, density, temperature, gravity,
and topographic maps to deliver an engineering-accurate flight
simulation. Enter a new level of flight simulation. X-Plane can simulate
Mars.
The following is an email sent by Austin Meyer, author of X-Plane, to