Gone are the days of that nasty, deafening, screeching sound!

Hello, Pilots!,

Today I am pleased to announce some rather big news. The short? Gizmo and SASL conflicts are no more! Read on…

Over the past couple of years two widely used plug-ins “took off” and helped to advance X-Plane in big ways. Of course, I’m speaking about Gizmo and SASL.

Gizmo is a plug-in that has been utilized in many products released at X-Aviation today, as well as some very big products to be released in the future by various parties. The same can be said for SASL, which is widely used in aircraft from the likes of Carenado, the Boeing 777 by Roman and Philipp, and a few others. With the popularity of the products these plug-ins are utilized by, problems between the two became very apparent. A very horrible, deafening, screeching noise often occurred and the sim would be brought to its knees when Gizmo and SASL ran together. This caused customers to be inconvenienced by having to move Gizmo out of the plug-ins directory of X-Plane, or by keeping two separate installs of X-Plane to just not have to deal with the hassles of conflict.

For a little over a year now we have been producing the next iteration of Gizmo (Gizmo 12). It is a big re-write of a lot of code, as well as additional core features added to allow developers to take X-Plane’s aircraft system simulation to a whole new level. A number of developers have been working with this new version with very positive results in our private beta period. One very important fix here is a complete re-write in the way OpenAL sound is handled. Because of this and other adjustments to the code, we are very excited to announce that the conflicts between Gizmo and SASL are solved and you’ll be able to get your hands on this soon! Don’t stop reading here though…

While this effort to get Gizmo 12 in working order has been a huge coordination effort between multiple people at X-Aviation and Laminar Research, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ben Russell for his extremely hard work over the last year to work on these items and get them checked off. It’s been a long road, but we’re very pleased with the results!

Another big bit of news…

While Gizmo 12 resolves the issues with SASL we realize that a lot of people would probably like a fix sooner rather than later. Right now we currently ship our products with Gizmo 11. We have worked extensively with Laminar Research over the last year in coming up with solid solutions to assist and better serve our customers. With that said, I am pleased to announce that starting with X-Plane 10.2 Beta 3, Gizmo 11 and SASL will no longer have the sound clash issues that affect so many people! We expect this version of X-Plane to be released within the next 24-48 hours so long as no issues crop up unexpectedly for the folks at Laminar Research. I have had the opportunity to test a private build of X-Plane 10.2 Beta 3 and can verify great results! All customers will not need to download any updates from Gizmo or SASL related products. Instead, the patch resides within the X-Plane application and you can leave Gizmo installed even while running aircraft that utilize SASL. A very big thanks goes out to Ben Supnik at Laminar for working closely with me over the last year on items related to this and getting things working for all of us users. It’s been a longtime coming with constant badgering from our end, and Ben Supnik has always been helpful, receptive, and wonderful to work with!

So, folks, starting in just a matter of hours Gizmo and SASL will be able to live in harmony. I know this has been something we have ALL been looking forward to for a long time coming. The ability to switch between aircraft without anymore effort than necessary will be a welcome addition to many X-Plane users and our customers, and we look forward to enjoying X-Plane the way it’s meant to be enjoyed…without conflict!

I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and wish you happy flights ahead!

Blue Skies!,

-Cameron

Earlier this week I came across a topic where a relatively new user to X-Plane experienced some issues with X-Plane. Due to some input from other users this customer started a thread at an X-Plane community forum asking about Gizmo and its use in a product of ours. This thread eventually erupted into something it shouldn’t have and was subsequently locked. Just prior to being locked, developer Dan Klaue of the famed Verticopter had some rather daring things to say which I feel must be addressed. No one on our side at X-Aviation were able to respond to these bold and unfounded statements since the topic closed, so I believe we deserve our chance to do so. Allowing someone to lie in this fashion and put us in a negative light is just not something I can tolerate!

Dan posted three things that I would like to specifically address, so here goes…

Quoting Dan Klaue:

“I deal with Gizmo conflicts about 5-10 times a day.  Then we get an email from “the CEO of X-Aviation” asking for free copies of our payware SASL-based planes, so that you guys over there can look into fixing your havoc-wreaking plugin…

…The fact that you guys have KNOWN that there’s been a conflict for so long, and don’t do anything about it, and pretend that your excuse is, ‘Well, we don’t have any SASL-based products!’ and end up begging for freebies…I mean really, how do you guys figure?” – Dan Klaue, November 2012

This could not be farther from the truth. For starters, I have never once seen ANYONE associated to the Gizmo plug-in or with X-Aviation state “Well, we don’t have any SASL-based products!” That’s rather absurd, especially considering there are a number of add-ons freely available. I sent a very polite e-mail to Carenado, and I exemplified my effort to wish to resolve any conflicts and test against their aircraft. After having tested some free SASL products and making sure they worked, the next logical step was to ask one of the most widely distributed SASL aircraft developers if they would be able to provide me with some material to work with and make sure their products were not left stranded by us. Not only does this benefit us, it benefits Carenado and most importantly, our combined customers!

For those of you curious, here was the e-mail I sent off to Carenado:

“Hello, 

My name is Cameron, and I run X-Aviation.com. We have talked in the past, however, it’s been a while so I’m re-introducing myself. I am e-mailing you to request a developer copy of the C208 or any product you have which utilizes SASL at this time. We are currently working on Gizmo and helping to make it more compatible with products such as your own, which I know you get many customer questions about. If you would be so kind as to provide a SASL driven product(s) for me to test builds of Gizmo against I would be happy to work on possible solutions.

Best Regards,

Cameron” 

As you can see, Dan’s assertions are out of this world. Unlike Dan says, the two following things stick out to me and do not exist:

- “Well, we don’t have any SASL-based products!”

- I see no beggary in the one and only e-mail sent to Carenado.

The most important part…

Dan Klaue seems to feel we have some form of ulterior motive at X-Aviation. One that harms him, Carenado, and even customers on purpose. In this same post, Mr. Klaue said the following:

“It’s become obvious to everyone that you haven’t been interested in addressing this issue, and it’s not hard to conclude why.” – Dan Klaue, November 2012

Well, Dan, you’re wrong, and this is how I know.

Blue Skies!,

-Cameron

Well, in the instance you haven’t heard, X-Plane 64-bit was released in the wild as a beta.

It seems so far all of our customers have been good about understanding what the implications are in the short term, and that version 10.2 is more of a development build for add-on developers! That said, if you’re daring enough to give it a go (or just curious) there’s nothing wrong with that either so long as you have patience!

On our end we have begun working on the necessary steps and have road mapped how to get 64-bit rolling for all of our products. Once we have an update available for any given product(s) you guys will be the first to know.

Our suggestion is to stick with 10.11 for the time being if you wish to really enjoy your add-ons for everything they are. We will also update progress on our recommendations for you when it comes to various builds as we continue to iron out any plug-in issues going forward.

That’s all for know!

Blue Skies!,

-Cameron