Normal Flight	Failure Mgmt	Engines Running	Sim Paused	Situation Loaded	Replay Mode
Autopilot
ControlSystems
ElectricalSystem
FireProtection
Fuel System
HVAC
Instruments
RRAvon524
Sextant

Fig. 1: Progress Chart — Comet 4C tested with X-Plane 9.70

The table shows the progress of plug-in development for the Comet 4C. It represents the second step of the design and development and test process, which is:

• Design — complete
• Functional testing (and rework) — in progress
• Platform adaptation
• Flight testing

Functional testing is the literal testing of each part of the plug-in program.
Flight testing is from the user’s point of view, assessing how all the plugins perform together, as a simulation of the real thing, by following real aircraft check lists, performing circuits and bumps, and point-to-point navigation.

This is a large and complex simulation of the Comet Series 4 systems. The plug-ins include 443 custom datarefs and 451 custom commands in nine function groups. The table is a summary of a larger spreadsheet tracking the status of each of those datarefs and commands. Colours on the summary represent the lowest scores for any particular function group in that spreadsheet. In other words if one dataref is ranked red while the rest are green, the whole function group is ranked red.

RED — Not working correctly.
AMBER — Not tested (includes rework).
GREEN — Tested and working correctly.

Normal Flight
The main function of the plug-in.

Failure Management
Items must fail if the simulated power supply fails, or by an X-Plane failure triggered in the sim.

Engines Running
Controls such as individual fuel tank cocks must be switched correctly to allow the engines to continue to run if the user uses the option to load the aircraft with engines running. The assumption is that if the engines are running, the pilot will have completed all check lists up to “engine start”. The plug-in must arrange this.

Sim Paused
Calculations, such as fuel consumption, must stop when the sim. is paused, or run faster at higher speed (x2, x4).

Situation Loaded
The plug-in must detect whether the user has just loaded a situation. If so, then it must read the status of all systems immediately after load and set controls in the plug-in accordingly, see: Situations and Replay. This worked well, on the whole, in X-Plane 9.70. It is not working in X-Plane 10.30. I am considering alternatives.

Replay Mode
The plug-in must detect when the simulator is in replay mode. If so, then it must set custom controls based on events as they are replayed, instead of inputs from the user, see: Situations and Replay.

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GMM-P
(31-07-2014)

Tags: Programming, Plugin