Well, in regards to the engine… the thing here is that the tweaked engine parameters are to represent the Wasp Junior, which is a 9-cylinder radial. The engine in the stock PT-17 is the Continental R-670 which is a 7-cylinder powerplant.
So if the tweaked engine parameters go with the tweaked visual model where the visual model of the engine is also changed (or just invisible under the added cowling so you can’t tell), then that’s “realistic”… but putting the Wasp Junior’s performance with the 7-cylinder Continental model technically isn’t. Can’t speak for how DC Designs chooses to handle it, of course, just sort of thinking out loud.
I know that. And guess what ?
I don’t care.
Reality is a good thing until it doesn’t affect my pleasure to fly.
It’s why I use sims. To FLY. To spent more time in the seat than in the hangar.
Not to count nuts and bolts to determine how realistic is a plane.
And when I’m in the plane I anyway can’t see how many cylinders the engine have.
If I have the choice of the livery before flight (even if it’s more than a livery) I’d rather prefer to have the wrong engine visible than the good one under a hood.
And how does that bother if the choice is given?
This is my opinion and I share it with myself and me 
Edit: I think I’m not alone, look at the Savage Cub variants. Nobody have made a realistic Piper J-3, but the unrealistics GotGravel’s Savage Carbon and the Grravel were downloaded by hundreds. Because people love to fly them.
And last but not least, if the need is there it’s sure one of the genius moder will design a visible 9 cylinders…
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I know that. And guess what ?
I don’t care.
Reality is a good thing until it doesn’t affect my pleasure to fly.
It’s why I use sims. To FLY. To spent more time in the seat than in the hangar.
Not to count nuts and bolts to determine how realistic is a plane.
And when I’m in the plane I anyway can’t see how many cylinders the engine have.
If I have the choice of the livery before flight (even if it’s more than a livery) I’d rather prefer to have the wrong engine visible than the good one under a hood.
And how does that bother if the choice is given?
This is my opinion and I share it with myself and me
All well and good to an extent, but if you take this to its logical conclusion why not ask for a modified flight model so the thing hits Mach 2?
DC Designs can handle it however they want, it doesn’t matter to me either way, just pointing out a possible objection.
And last but not least, if the need is there it’s sure one of the genius moder will design a visible 9 cylinders…
The modder would almost certainly need to have access to DC Design’s original 3D model files to do so.
Because last time I tried, above Mach 0.85 a torpedo biplane become uncomfortable. 
To resume, what we absolutely need are smoke and wheels particles, and I think it’s not a big problem to have two versions of wheels, with and without fairings. Some addons planes already offers this possibility.
For the engine there are two options:
-
A 9 cylinders is already designed and there is no more problem to have one without hood and power increase.
-
The 9 cylinders is only designed with it’s hood and can’t be used without. In this case, the simpliest thing is to keep the 7 cylinders engine for the unhooded version, even without power increase if necessary. The ones who wants more power for this version will have to tweak engine by themselves like actually.
The goal is to also have a n_k_d version with particles effects and I’m pretty sure DC Designs will find the solution.
Voilà, voilà…
From the bit of research/comparisons I did on the changing templates thing they just tried to get all naming/coding conventions uniform.
They had a lot of different naming/coding schemes for templates/nodes/animations probably written by different programmers/departments (or a different period in their development cycle) it was one big mess.
But instead of communicating this code cleanup they just dropped them in the update and broke a lot of things in the process.
I even guessed a few fixes for files I don’t have access to just going by their other name/code changes 
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But, but… they made it… “better”
I hate it when software developers prove the mantra not to allow software developers to make decisions.
Does Xbox not support the different arrows in the tool tips, or, rather is it not standard Xbox terminology?
Maybe they changed the names of the templates to force developers to recognize the change in UI to a less capable Xbox interface from the old FSX style UI?
The question then becomes, why was this change implemented without a full documentation set listing all modified templates and the changes? Does that documentation exist at Asobo for their own developers, but they didn’t share it?
I think that in xbox of course you can use the old tooltip system to see the status of an on / off switch or a button pressed or not pressed. They have simply removed that option by replacing the < TOOLTIPID > or “animtip” system with <TT_DESCRIPTION_ID> and <TOOLTIP_TITLE>. In my opinion, the old system was better than the new one and you can see it in the following example, if we take and compare the older autopilot.xml templates the with the new one:
Left one is older template for a nav push button, and right one the new.
I will explain why the old one was better.
If you look this expression:
%((A:AUTOPILOT NAV1 LOCK, bool))%{if}TT:COCKPIT.TOOLTIPS.AUTOPILOT_PANEL_NAV_ON%{else}TT:COCKPIT.TOOLTIPS.AUTOPILOT_PANEL_NAV_OFF%{end}
what you see is a dynamic tooltip that varies depending on whether LNAV is activated or not through a Boolean, if it is true, the tooltip expresses NAV ON and otherwise NAV OFF.
The new version has simply eliminated this possibility, relegating it to title and description, as you can see here:
<TT_DESCRIPTION_ID>@TT_Package.AUTOPILOT_PUSH_L_NAVIGATION_ACTION_SET</TT_DESCRIPTION_ID>
<TOOLTIP_TITLE>@TT_Package.AUTOPILOT_PUSH_L_NAVIGATION_TITLE</TOOLTIP_TITLE>
If you look for any plane that has a NAV button, you will see that you can no longer see its ON / OFF status.
I understand that they wanted to make the UI cooler, but it is not better at all.
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Folks, this is a budget aircraft - I’ve already added another model to it, tyre smoke effects and smoke trail, further aerodynamic improvements with CodenameJack etc. Building another detailed radial engine is a lot of work, in case those asking for it hadn’t realised - it’s not like they can be whipped up overnight.
As it happens, I have a P&W Wasp double-radial from my Prepar3D P-61C Black Widow, which will be converted into a Wasp junior when the time comes and installed in the Stearman, but it will happen when it happens and is not a priority at this time. I should add that custom engine sounds cost thousands of dollars each time, so there won’t be custom sounds added for the P&W engine for this rendition of the Stearman.
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Have you asked over on the SDK forum why they removed the functionality, and if they intend to reintroduce it at a later date?
It seems like perhaps they are implementing a “new” way of code writing, simpler to understand, but perhaps haven’t added all the functionality the change removed back in yet?
I suppose it’s not worth it to write your own templates? Or possible? (It does seem like a waste of time, especially if they plan to add the functionality back at a later date)
We have custom templates for non-complex things, for example for buttons that we want to act as two or three-state switches and others so it is not a problem (I mean templates for 2 or three states), but there are more complex code templates that call subtemplates that in turn call other subtemplates, which follows that traceability takes too long and is not profitable in time or would delay us too much, as it would be in the case of a knob, for example, that you want to add pull and push functions or enumerated states to it. They could be made custom but at the end of the day, to be recognized, somehow they end up calling Asobo’s base templates or subtemplates. Its not that easy.
the truth is that I have not contacted them, and from what I am seeing the level of communication between Asobo and third-party developers is zero. and then you see posts in which they claim to have fixed something and 1000 responses against stating otherwise. So I prefer to inform you, that in the end you are the users.
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It is good news - and thank you for continuing to make these improvements to your models. It is very much appreciated Dean
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you rock dean, this is my favorite plane in the sim. I’m sure others will agree that any update, even if it takes three years, is still appreciated!
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So… There is a chance to get a P-61…? Right?
Yes but sssshhh, keep it to yourself
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Holy moly - can’t guarantee to keep my mouth shut!
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I’m firmly in the study level aircraft camp and quite critical. I have little interest in GA or airliners and have only bought a couple aircraft, one of which was pretty expensive and has less than 5 flights on it.
At such a low price point I was hesitant but went ahead and bought it. The Stearman is a great aircraft and the engine sounds really make it. My only complaint, if you can call it that, is how much it floats with power off. Thank you for the great aircraft at such a low price point and thank you for the continued hard work.
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I inform you without the intention of being arrogant that you are going to be pleasantly surprised with regard to that excess of lift that you mention in the next update. We are still fine-tuning it because we don’t want you to complain about a lack of it.
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