Here’s a quick update from our art director and A330 designer, Alex!
“One of the least talked about, but incredibly important features of X-Plane is the generic instrument system.
Working on the A330 instruments, I have had to come up with creative solutions and use some of the more buried features to achieve Airbus instruments to a high degree of fidelity. One of those features that is so important is ‘group animation’. Every folder or group of instruments, can be animated in exactly the same ways as an individual generic instrument can be. The groups have clipping masks that can be defined. They can be rotated or translated, and most importantly, they can be nested. That nesting features allows things such as extra complexities in the artificial horizon to the realized such as the heading tick marks that pan across the horizon counting off every 10° of heading, or the ground horizon mask that climbs up and covers the negative pitch tick marks on the horizon as you settle into your landing flare. While you may not notice all of the detail that goes into creating high fidelity avionics, we all heavily research and use the tech as best we can to make sure that you all have as realistic of an experience as possible.
There is still plenty to add to the PFD but here’s a quick screen grab from the WIP avionics in Plane Maker and one from the sim, too!”
