deHavilland

Hi Fabio. You probably noticed already that the Ghost Ornithopter 'flies' with folded wings?

Hi Fabio, any update when there will be news wrt the topic GHOST?

WRT my 'bug report' that the guns of the Ghost of GotGravel's F4F are always firing and never stopping, I got additional info which may help you: «The fire effect is bound to a light for multiplayer, the wingman [Ghost] is probably automatically running all lights on.» According to the F4F's manual, the trigger for gun fire effect is MSFS's keybind for 'Toggle Pedestal Lights'. But changing that doesn't help. I tried every configuration before and after loading the Ghost.

Thanks so much Fabio, your 'classified' promises give me the strength to hold thru! 😉 Actually, while I found a workaround for the F6F's folded wings, the brand new F4F by Got-Friends still gives me a headache: the Ghost fires constantly, in fact endlessly. Every WWII pilot would have wished to have so much ammunition! But I look forward to your new updates/releases.🙏

Thanks for that new version, Fabio! Unfortunately none of my requests for the GHOST feature (like beeing able to change position in flight) or reported bugs (F6F flying with folded wings) has been addressed (yet?). If you have an idea why the F6F might have folded wings (the F4U has them correct!), then I could contact FlyingIron or maybe change a config file by myself. I have the feeling that the Ghost feature is a 'wall flower' attached to your app. That's why I had the idea of making (and sell!) a standalone app of it.

One more feedback wrt GHOST. The Aeroplane Heaven P-51 is nicely shown with WWII pilot, heatblur and gear animation ─ with just one oddity: the flaps are full down. Strangely, when my own flaps are anything from 10° to 40° down, the GHOST's flaps retract to full up. But with my flaps up they are (full) out.

Reminds me of an old joke: Is there anything more boring than fishing? The answer: Yes, watching somebody fishing. 🙃 You wouldn't have any basic video editing software to record the single takes and edit them together? If you actually cut out a sequence from a timeline, it may be nice not to hard cut the takes, but to either crossfade them or have them fade out / fade in. Things like that are also a bonus when using some 'post production' software.

WRT the incoming update, do you think one day it will be possible to (easily/directly) spawn ANY aircraft in the hangar as Ghost? Actually it is already possible, but very complicated, especially when flying VR. ESC (not active pause, because then the Ghost disappears), leave VR mode for desktop mode, change MY aircraft with aircraft selector, change again into VR mode, ESC again ─ and when I'm lucky the original Ghost flies still beside me while I am in another aircraft. Of course, this is doing it 'the other way round', a catch 27. But it works (proof of concept!😇), and not alone for two different liveries, but also for two different aircraft.

Fabio, have you ever found out why the Flying Iron F6F spawns with folded wings? Is there anything Flying Iron should/could do about it? Funny is the fact, that the base aircraft always spawns with wings spread, no matter whether in air or on ground. And the other plane with fold wings, Milviz's Corsair, spawns oaky!

A couple of things I noticed wrt the GHOST. Nothing important, but might give you clues... When I spawn an F6F the Ghost's wings are always folded. Workaround: By folding and unfolding my own wings the Ghost gets its wings also spread. However, wingfolding works only on ground, so when I spawn an F6-F in air she flies with folded wings.😗 The only other aircraft I know of with wing fold feature, the Corsair, spawns fine! Second: when I start with a twin engine aircraft (I tried it with P-38 and DC-3) and then switch my aircraft to a single engine type (like Cessna 152) one engine of the Ghost aircraft will stop. Still having A LOT of pleasure with the GHOST! 👍 P.S. Being able to change the offset ANGLE of the GHOST in flight would be the ultimate Xmas gift! That, mmhh, gives you exactly 11 months of time...😉 And wrt heatblur: while some Ghosts ─ like Aeroplane Heaven's Spitfire I ─ show off all their heatblur (from exhausts and under the wing) very nicely (with lowest distance you may literally fly wingtip to wingtip!), others ─ like the new Jenny ─ show no heatblur at all.

When you look into the animation/LOD?) problems, my discovery of today might be connected: Of the four double-seater vintage aircraft I tested, only two (the Curtiss Jenny and the Buecker 131) showed the passenger/co-pilot. On the Tiger Moth' and the Stearman' GHOST no co-pilot showed up ─ though my own aircraft had loaded one and showed the co-pilot character in outside view.

So glad to hear that you have big plans for the LIVE GHOST feature! I think it's a GREAT feature with even more potential. Flying with an AI buddy/wingman is for me like a gamechanger. Yesterday I flew alongside a PT-17 Stearman and the morning sun sparkled in its wheel covers. I felt like being part of «The English Patient» movie...

Wrt the LODs of the Ghost: I noticed big differences between the aircraft. Luckily, most of the tested warbirds look quite well in 0.02 nm distance, the P-38 and the FI Spitfire as the only ones even showing off rolling wheels! However and though I haven't tested many of the vintage aircraft, notably the Buecker 131 and the Tiger Moth show a low qual LOD.

I must correct or rather be more precise about using ESC. Sometimes ESC and RESUME work just fine, but sometimes the Ghost continues to fly on and away (like with active pause). I haven't any clues when it's the one or the other. My workaround for this is to disconnect, reconnect and then load the ghost again. Of course, the Ghost then is a clone of the aircraft I currently fly and might not be the same type it was before. One more thing I definitely noticed (at least with the Tiger Moth or the Buecker 131 as Ghosts, probably not with the PT-17 Stearman): the Ghost plane loads a lower qual LOD, at least one that is not appropriate for the default distance of 0.01 nm. However, I noticed that the LOD loaded may not be the same in VR and flatscreen. But I have noticed missing parts, cornered wheels and missing textures in both modes. E.g. wheel caps and some textures are missing in Ghost plane.

I like the new Live Ghost feature very much. For me it adds a whole scale to the pleasure of flying, especially when flying vintage and WWII pistons. I assume there are technical reasons for the restrictions? These are a) no animations on the Ghost (apart from motor and propeller), b) when pausing (either active pause or esc) the Ghost runs away and never returns and c) the Ghost has the exact same aircraft type and livery as my plane. However, wrt c) I just made a very interesting discovery. In dev mode when I open the 'Aircraft Selector' menu I may not alone choose a different livery for my aircraft, I'm even able to choose a different aircraft type. See my screenshot of a Stearman PT-17 (the type I started with) and the Tiger Moth I switched to with 'Aircraft Selector'. That means it's not a technical limitation! Maybe you find a solution you can integrate in FCR instead of my rather clumsy workaround? Finally my last observation. Like you describe it, I see that the Ghost is not fixed or 'glued' to my aircraft, there is this 'cinematic movement'. However, I often think that a very good, aerobatic trained, pilot must sit in it. Respectively when I fly after my Ghost I can't believe how my formation flying skills have improved over night. Especially when we fly in a couple of light vintage aircraft. May I make a suggestion? You could expand the 3 input fields in the 'Ghost' tab with another 3 value fields defining a kind of 'fluke zone'. As an example: we entered Offset Degrees of 270 with a fluke zone range/envelope value of +/-5. That would NOT mean that the actual offset changes from 265° to 275° continuously in a sine wave, but that the actual offset rather floats arbitrarily around 270° with min/max values of 265 resp. 275. Same for Altitude and Distance offsets. Just a sidenote, I don't understand why Distance has to be in nm and cannot be in feet? Anyway, Live Ghost will become my standard mode of flying thru the FS world. Thanks a lot!