Hi Mark, thanks for the info on your mod for the ice guage. Yes, I was using that ice guage. I'm not sure what to think iof your mods. I just found the file on FS.com and downloaded it. Haven't installed yet until I ask more about it. I stopped using the ice guage because it was TOO HARD most of the time and caused me to crash or have to keep resetting the flight. You mention that now using the AP is not an option to get through and that is exactly what I was using many times to get past the misery of the Ice guage when it was unbearable.
So have you made it even harder to use by doing this?
My problem with it is that I would ice up in clouds, but even when I got down lower in clear, thicker air it would remain in the red and yeller so long that eventually I had to dsable the AP and DOWN I WOULD GO in uncontrolled flight.
One thing is that many FSX planes have no deice systems. They may have a switch, but they are just dummy switches. I know this because I have set keyboard commands in fsx for prop and structural deice. In some planes, hitting these keyboard commands DO NOT flick the deice switches in the planes, showing that they are not really connected to the fsx deice systems. I'm not sure using the keyboard commands effects the planes if they do not have cfg file entries, but really, the ice guage was overpowering even the planes that do have proper fsx deicing.
I am flying my airhauler company in Alaska and it is now winter. Basically, that ice guage was bringing down over half my flights.
I was dealing with kind of the same thing with my Opus weather. Sometimes I would go in to strips and find ZERO visibilty, same at all alternate strips too. Eventually I figured out that Opus allows me to set visibility at airports up to any height regardles of surrounding weather and this allowed me to make my flights. And here is my thinking for this. I don't want my sim being so real that it makes me not even able to play, know what I mean? In real life pilots simply cannot or will not fly that day because of weather. Well I only get an hour to an hour and a half a night to fly the sim. I
ll be darned if I want my sim simming unflyable days for me, that's not much fun. So in my Air Hauler I ASSUME I don't fly on unflyable days and when I sit bdown at my sim I am assuming I checked the weather and found that low and behold, I CAN FLY THAT DAY, lol.
So now I have my Opus weaher set for 1200 feet of visibility above the strips I am going to and I just pretend that I checked the weather before flight and found I can get in to the strip.
It's the same with the ice guage. I'll be darned if i want icing bad enough to crash because I would hope in real life I simply would not have flown that day or would have made sure I had clear areas to stick to or clear elevations to stay within so that I can get through.
I loved that ice guage in the summer and fall. It would work and I seemed to be ale to get down in to thick air where it is clear down low and it rarely ever got in to the red and only lasted a few minutes in the orange. And I could always use the AP to fly until it got rid of the ice. Now I see you are saying that option is gone. I see you also say though that the icing melts faster, so will that be enough to get me through? Hell, I don't want to enable this thing and end up crashing 80 percent of the time I fly because the weather is bad in Alaska right now.
I am hoping someone will do more modding of that guage and allow users to choose 50 percent ice effects, 25 percent, and allow simmers to lessen the effects when flying in brutal areas like Alaska as I am. I would like to hear more of your thoughts on this guage, have you made it even more demanding and tougher or is it overall a little easier to deal with? Any chance you could do a little more modding and give us a 50% switch, maybe a 25% switch? Heck, just a 50% switch would be such an awesome option. If I could cut the effects down in half it would make it so much more doable in Alaska weather.
Are you talking about the icev10 gauge? You may be interested to know I made some mods to that gauge so it works better. I don't know if I posted it here but I uploaded it at flightsim.com. Here's an extract from the readme:
Better Icing in FSX - supplement to Charles Owen's icev10 gauge
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This is a replacement XML file for Charles Owen's icev10 gauge. Unfortunately the original has a bunch of problems, which I have fixed by rewriting the XML file. This archive does not contain all the files in the original, so you will need that too.
What is it?
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Charles's gauge displays a visual indicator of ice buildup in the cockpit, but more interestingly it also simulates additional icing effects, notably the accumulation of freezing rain and interference with the flight controls (simulating wing and tailplane stalls) when the ice load gets too high. Even aircraft such as the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended that implement freezing rain icing will typically treat that ice just the same as regular ice and hence shed it when you select de-icing measures. The icev10 simulation doesn't shed freezing rain ice unless you fly out of the freezing conditions, which makes things much more of a challenge.
What have you changed?
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(1) Ice now accumulates at a rate that is in proportion to the aircraft size (actually the Empty Weight) instead of at a constant rate for all aircraft.
(2) Freezing rain now accumulates ice even if the regular ice load is not increasing.
(3) Freezing rain ice now only melts if we are out of the icing conditions.
(4) Freezing rain ice no longer rises without limit.
(5) Freezing rain ice melts faster than it accumulated.
(6) Interference with the controls in AMBER and RED zones now also disconnects the autopilot.
(7) Interference with controls in the RED zone is a bit more variable. (Same as AMBER zone plus a guaranteed tailplane stall at cruising speed.
(8) Interference with controls leaves the aircraft somewhat controllable.
The behaviour is essentially the same as the original gauge but with a few rough edges smoothed off. The regular ice load is tracked using FSX's internal percentage rather than pounds as in the original gauge. This has the advantage that ice accumulation rate is in proportion to the aircraft size. We accumulate freezing rain ice using the same percentages and apply the same thresholds as in the original (1% and 2% of Empty Weight)to determine severity of icing. Although it looks like we can now accumulate 200% of the maximum ice load defined by FSX (i.e. 100% FSX ice plus 100% additional freezing rain ice), FSX will not know about the additional 100%. In other words, its only significance is in how we choose to interpret that extra load in this script.
The simulation of stalls at high ice loads is not very sophisticated but given that we should never get there it is convincing enough. For example, we will be able to stay flying but we will not be able to land or do much of anything until we have cleared the ice. (We can no longer use the autopilot to fly the aircraft perfectly in spite of a critical ice load!
