lxn-dg808s

Replacement mod for the Touching Cloud DG808s Nav computer

Fixes and Features:

Native winch support

The mod contains a flight_model.cfg file with changes to the reference "cruise_speed" to make MSFS native winch launch possible. No other flight model parameters are changed.

Check for slew and engine use

Using the engine or slew mode during a task will now be registered and invalidate the task. Using either before start or after finish line will have no consequences.

Overspeed Warning:

The speedtape gauge shows a dynamic estimation of Vne translated to indicated airspeed as "red zone". Additionally the background of the speed tape will gradually turn orange as your speed get's closer to Vne.

Installation:

Simply drop the included folder "touchingcloud-aircraft-dg808s-lxn" into your community folder. No need to change anything in your existing installation. To uninstall delete the folder and you're "back to normal".

Basic Features:

All Information is organized in „pages“ (horizontally) and „sub-pages“ (vertically). Pages can be changed by „click and drag“ with the mouse or - more comfortably - through keybinding „INCREASE/DECREASE COM1 (WHOLE)“ for horizontal and „INCREASE/DECREASE COM1 (FRACT)“ for vertical scrolling.

Currently there are five main pages: „APT“ for navigation to the selected Airport, „WPT“ for navigating a task/flightplan, „TASK“ for the current state of the task, "Kinetic Assitant" for launching through KA and „CONFIG“ for Unit switching, ballast management and some system settings.

„APT“ Page automatically selects the nearest Airport as target. On the first subpage there's a bit of info about that airport including runway orientation and dimensions. The second subpage features a list of close airports where you can click any airport to select it for navigation. Click the selected airport again to return to "closest airport navigation". On the map a yellow line will be drawn from your glider to the selected airport to show the direction to fly.

"WPT" is similar, except the navigation target is the current waypoint of the loaded flightplan. Using the buttons in the headerbar waypoints can be selected. The map will also show a yellow course-line from your glider to the waypoint to indicate the direction to fly. As a subpage to "WPT" you find a "thermalling help" page, displaying wind, climb and average climb for the current/last therma (a "thermal" is detected, when circling for more than 25 seconds). The lower section displays a bar chart of all thermals in the löast 40 minutes on the left and a graph of climb/sink values in the right half.

„APT“ and „WPT“ feature a maximum of 16 data fields each, that can be configured in game. The „tools“ button in the upper right hand corner of the map toggles „configuration mode“. Data fields are then marked with a light blue outline. Click any data field to bring up a popup, where you can set background color, text color and Information to be displayed. A second background color can be selected to be displayed when the displayed value <= 0 (e.g. switch background to red when arrival height is negative)

Data field Configurations are persistent between simulator sessions. Click „reset all“ in the configuration popup to reset all data fields to default. Configurations are also persitent with different versions of this mod, so if you used an oder version or install an update, your settings will be save. There is however a slight chance, that a variable name gets mixed up, so if you experience any erratic behaviour with the datafields, try "reset all" and see if that helps.

Data fields can be forced to use either metric or imperial units of measurement. Use with caution. If activated, the datafield will ignore the global unit selection. This feaature gives you the option to e.g. display altitude in feet side by side with altitude in meters. If a datafield has been configured this way an "*" is shown next to the unit as a reminder.

In standard mode the data fields are rather small and can be hard to read especially in VR. As a solution an "improved readability" mode can be activated in the "interface options". That mode shows only six data fields per page but with much larger text. Also a few other interface elements are enlarged in this mode.

The task management system is Ian „B21“ Lewis’ Soaring Engine from the AS33. "TASK" Page shows the status of the loaded task on top ("not started", "running", "finished") and a list of all available waypoints. When you pass a waypoint it's marked "ok" and jumps to the bottom of the list, so that the current waypoint is always on top of the list. After all waypoints are passed correctly the page shows task time, distance and average speed in the header. If you used the engine, slew mode or exceeded maximum speed (Vne = 154 kts True Airspeed) for more than 5 seconds, the header will turn red an include a notification.

The wind indicator in the center of the map is loosely based on the real world LX-„Hawk“ system displaying current (blue) and average (grey) wind-arrows and a green/red column indicator for the vertical wind component.

The Config-Page gives you access to various settings:

• Ballast: A light version of ballast loading system that can even be used in flight - which would be shameless cheating of course!
• Units: allows you to select the units of measurement to use for various categories or generally "metric" or "imperial" system. Only "metric" or "imperial" settings have an effect on other instruments in the cockpit. Detailled settings only work inside the nav computer.
• Interface Options: Settings for the Nav Interface:
  • "Readability Mode" can be activated here to get some bigger readouts (and less data fields)
  • toggle liftdot-trail on the map
  • Visual stall warning. If activated, the screen will flash red when the aircraft is close to a stall.
  • Toggle cockpit warnings for gear, ballast and overspeed
  • Toggle aviation specific info on the map (can be slow to load and clutter the map)
  • Enable or disable automatic logging. If enabled logged time, distance, average speed and altitude climbed can be displayed in data fields. Log starts autoamtically at 100m AGL and stops on touchdown

All config settings apart from ballast are persistent between sessions. Just make sure to click "close" after making any changes.

Some more Details

The map view features a lot of information to help you optimize your flight:

• There are three thin lines pointing away from your glider:

  • the blue line is simply your plane's heading
  • the pink/magenta line is your gps ground track, the direction, your plane is travelling over the terrain. The stronger a crosswind, the more this will deviate from your heading.
  • the yellow line points to your current nav target. Depending on which page you are, this is the selected airport or the current waypoint. So as a rule of thumb: "put the pink on the yellow" and you're going where you are supposed to go ;-)

• Your loaded flightplan is diplayed as the current "task" in broader pink/magenta lines, circles and semi circles.

  • the active "leg" of the task is displayed in black/yellow stripes leading from the last waypoiont to the current one.
  • Semi circles indicate the start and finish lines of the task, where the task timer will start and stop automatically.
  • Small pink circles mark the turnpoints of the task. Entering the circle around the current waypoint will trigger the "waypoint ok" message and automatically switch to the next wp. But take a good look on the task page, if there are "Min/Max" values for the waypoint for altitude restrictions (usually for start and/or finish waypoints)

To make all this soaring task magic work, the flightplan needs to provide more information than usually present in MSFS generated flightplans. Easiest way to achieve that is to use B21's task planner to plan your flights: https://xp-soaring.github.io/tasks/b21_task_planner/index.html

Calculation of estimated arrival height and time enroute is based on the suggested speed to fly (indicated as STF under the speed tape instrument), which is in turn influenced by MacCready setting (MacCready setting can be changed by clicking the green "MC" button beneath the speed tape.) and carried ballast. In short: the more ballast and the higher MacCready, the higher the calculated speed to fly. The more your actual speed deviates from the calculated speed to fly, the less accurate your arrival height estimations will be. You can also turn that around: on final glide you can turn the MacCready value up and see the estimated arrival height go down (due to more sink at higher speeds) until you get a safe altitude estimation. Now your computer tells you the maximum speed to fly, that still gets you to finish safely.

Videos with more info

Thankfully there are a whole lot of talented people out there with iompressive skills in making informative videos:

IWILZ has a great walkthrough on the mod in italian (activate english subtitles, if your italian is as bad as mine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xiy44W7Pc-c (Mille grazie!)

Another great video to watch is Dave Aldrich's "Glider Setup" which also contains a detailed view on this mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftn-_smpZ0c&t=1537s

To learn more about task planning and flying, check out Ian Lewis' great tutorial (and all his other videos ;-)) on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7zJSu4jlPU

Keybinds

Several functions can be operated by keybinds from joystick or throttle:

• Page left/right: INCREASE/DECREASE AUTOPILOT REFERENCE ALTITUDE
• Page up/down: INCREASE/DECREASE AUTOPILOT REFERENCE VS
• Waypoint next/prev: INCREASE/DECREASE TRANSPONDER (1000)
• Map Zoom: INCREASE/DECREASE TRANSPONDER (10)
• Map Orientation: INCREASE/DECREASE TRANSPONDER (1)

Known Limitations:

Changing pages and subpages with "click and drag" in flight requires a lot of mouse handling skills :-) I recommend keybinding. Way up on the roadmap is using the rotary buttons aroud the screen for navigation as is in the real world device.

The map can not be panned. To avoid collision with „click and drag“ page changing another „mode switch“ would be needed. Considering the current quality of the ingame map, I don’t think it’s worth the added complexity.

Conflicts with other mods

Multiple mods changing the same aircraft are prone to conflict somehow. If you run into problems the first and easiest option is to decide, which modification is more important to you and remove the conflicting one. If you absolutely want to keep both, you can try to find out which files conflict. In the case of most livery modifications the conflicting file is the file panel.cfg, that is used to modify aircraft registration. This mod also changes panel.cfg. You can try to solve the conflict by either copying panel.cfg from this mod over to you livery completely, or only copy the section [VCockpit02] from this mod's panel.cfg and paste it to the same file in you livery mod. Sounds way more complicated than it is, but try it at your own risk, of course.

Developer Info:

If you have a basic understanding of what HTML, Javascript and CSS are, jump into the code and try your hand on it. There is no black magic involved :-)

The front end is intended to be easily extensible with new features. New pages and sub-pages can be added by simply copy/pasting the respective HTML-Structures.

All variables that are displayed in the frontend are stored in the „this.vars“-object. This object contains the value itself as well as unit- and label-information and make the variable user-selectable in the in game configuration popup. To add a new readout to your panel all you have to do is add a line to the „this.vars“-object with your own variable name and label/unit information. When you start the next flight, you can simply assign your variable value to a data field of your choice and if the variable value is manipulated somewhere in the javascript, the cockpit readout will be updated automatically.

If you need a variable displayed somewhere outside of the data fields, you can do so directly in the html using the attributes class=“livedata“ data-value=„VARIABLE“. See the total ballast readout in the "Ballast" configuration as an example.

Units: All variables are kept in a „base unit“, which is (currently) „imperial“ units. When displayed in a data field or as „livedata“ in the html the value is converted to the user preferred unit. So if you like to display a distance you should store nautical miles in the variable and conversion will be automatic.