A couple of us recently tried a little formation flying in X-Plane.
Sounds simple: spawn at the same airport, taxi out, and take off together.
In reality, even though our planes were spawned within 100
feet of each other, one would sit higher or lower on the ground. It made lining up at the gate or runway a little frustrating - and a bit comical.
Example:
In frustration, I turned to ChatGPT for some answers. It explained that this is a common X-Plane multiplayer issue caused by tiny differences in scenery and terrain mesh between machines. Even the same airport can have slightly different elevations on each computer. Weather and altimeter settings, as well as differing sim or plugin versions, can add to the mismatch.
I found out that even MSFS 2020 and FS2024, has this problem. However, usually it's smaller because terrain and airports stream from a common server - but custom add-ons or mismatched weather can still create floating planes.
Once in the air the issue is moot!
There is however a practical way to minimize but not necessarily eliminate the problem: match scenery packs, confirm sim versions, align weather, and verify plugins.
In the end, we didn’t completely fix the ground-level differences, but we finally understood why it was happening.
Formation flying may still be tricky, but at least now we know why our planes weren’t lining up on the tarmac.
Your thoughts?
I figured it out . XPlane on my M4 Mac mini was loaded from discs, whereas the same version of XP was downloaded from the internet onto my M1 Mac mini. The plane on the M4 was always elevated several feet above the plane on the M1. The same was true for Ken’s plane. He had also downloaded XP. When we put Ken’s plane next to my M1 plane, they were both at the same elevation.
ReplyDeleteKen and I took off from Fond du Lac, flew west to the railroad track to Ripon, and then got on the Fisk Approach to OSH. Staying a mile behind the other plane, and maintaining both 1,800 feet and 90 knots, while not losing sight of the other plane, was a challenge. Let’s get 5 - 6 planes to meet over one of the lakes farther west on the Fisk Approach, and see how we do.
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