Gizmo64 Version 23+

Update:

The plugins described in the post below turned out to be a dead end and were not adopted by X-Aviation.

I have back-ported various bug fixes and performance improvements to an "LTS" plugin, you can find it here:

https://benrussell.gumroad.com/l/gizmo64-lts


Change Summary:

As a global plugin Gizmo has been the subject of frustration for some users wanting their simulator to run as lean as possible. 


To address this Gizmo has been split into two products. 


  • X-Aviation.plugin - the new, lean, global plugin.

    You will need this for any X-Aviation licensed products that require DRM activation.

 

  • Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin - a new aircraft systems plugin that retains all the required API products to keep some of your favourite products working into the future. 

    You will need this for Gizmo-powered aircraft products. You can find a list at the bottom of this page.


X-Aviation.plugin Summary:

The main focus of this new plugin is to provide licence management for your collection of X-Aviation products with as little CPU overhead as possible.


Because the X-Aviation.plugin no longer needs to provide the functionality to create rich products like the Saab 340A or Ixeg 737 I have been able to remove large parts of the functionality away making this a much leaner global plugin. 


  • CPU overhead:

    • Old plugin: ~165 - 200 microseconds

    • New plugin: “unmeasurable” using the X-Plane plugin admin performance overhead tooling when using the Laminar C172. There will be some minor overhead when using X-Aviation products that require DRM checks.

  • No call to sleep(0) 

It was found that Gizmo was making a call to the OS effectively saying "please sleep the X-Plane process for 0 milliseconds". 

Under high system loads this can result in Windows deciding to sleep for up to 16ms. This results in a dropped frame.

Both the X-Aviation global plugin and the Gizmo-Avionics plugin have been fixed. 


  • OpenAL Audio Removed.

    • Legacy products from all vendors have been built using OpenAL to power their audio.

    • X-Plane 12 has removed built-in support for OpenAL audio. 

    • No possibility of audio-glitching plugin clashes because OpenAL has been removed. 


Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin Summary:

  • FPS improvement

    • 0.8ms improvement in perf
      about 5fps at 45fps…


  • Adds support for ARM / Apple Silicon


  • Product stability over time.
    Each aircraft product will ship with its own copy of the Gizmo script engine that it needs to make the systems code run.
    This means that your old sim-installed versions are likely to remain functional for even longer as the transitions between major OS and X-Plane versions will no longer leave them orphaned. 

It also means Gizmo-Avionics can better evolve to be faster and leaner into the future as it will no longer be trying to provide 100% backwards compatibility with products that are 5-10 years old. 


  • New functionality now and planned.

    • Being an aircraft plugin will allow Gizmo to add more features more often.
      Gizmo and the products it powers have been on the market for over 10 years now and in that time Gizmo has remained 100% backward compatible with those products.
      By removing the risk of breaking old products Gizmo can grow to become a better product.


Why Now?

  • X-Plane rendering pipeline changes.

Xp12 has changed in ways that make a global plugin less useful.

The ability to draw into the 3D world has been changed significantly to allow XP to move to a faster overall graphics pipeline.

This has made Gizmo's old global functionality less relevant. 

 

  • Historical Functionality / Challenges in splitting the plugin. 

Gizmo was first created for X-Plane v8 before we had sim support for Aircraft plugins. 

It was created to allow authors to quickly extend almost any part of the sim very easily.

Changing those functionality hooks and code paths while ensuring that 5-10 year old products still work as expected with no product updates required has taken significant work and time in dev and testing. 

The new plugins have been in private developer-only testing for a few weeks now and it looks like they're ready to start doing a public beta with.


Install Instructions:

These plugins are early in their public-beta phase. 

There will be bugs and problems. 

If you are not an advanced user willing to participate with patience please wait for official X-Aviation product installers to make this process seamless. 


  1. Delete X-Plane/resources/plugins/Gizmo64.plugin

  • This upgrade is a one way path. Some aircraft data files may be changed by the new plugin. 

  • Keeping the old plugin is not recommended as you will need to reinstall aircraft products to go backwards anyway. 


  1. Download the X-Aviation.plugin zip file. 

    1. Extract the zip file, you should have a new folder called X-Aviation.plugin

    2. Move the X-Aviation.plugin into the X-Plane/resources/plugins/ folder. 


  1. Download the Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin.zip file. 

    1. Extract the zip file, you should have a new folder called Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin

    2. Create a new folder:
      X-Plane/ Aircraft/ X-Aviation/ <aircraft folder>/ plugins

    3. Copy Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin into X-Plane/ Aircraft/ X-Aviation/ <aircraft folder>/ plugins/


  • You will need to copy the Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin package into the following aircraft to make them work correctly:

    • LES Saab 340A

    • LES Beechcraft Sundowner C23 v2

    • UJS Fairchild PT-19

    • TOGA Mitsubishi MU-2 version 1 and 2

    • LES Douglas DC-3

    • IXEG Boeing 737

    • ITXD Piaggio Avanti

    • …



The X-Aviation.plugin will detect aircraft that need the Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin installed and display the following message if the Gizmo64-Avionics.plugin is not installed correctly:


[ blogger killed this image :-( ]

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