Expansion of failure configuration page
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Hi Nick!
Obligatory long time user, Black Square fanboy!
Back in the early days of the Steam Gauge Overhaul series I raised a feature request ticket about a something that I always wanted to see in all the BS products. Unfortunately to this day it has never been fully realized, at least not in a way that I would have liked, even though all the framework has been set up.
I'm talking about management of failure scenarios and how the system that is currently in place can be expanded with custom triggers to provide a much more realistic training (and playing) environment.
When I saw your video about Commander 114 aerodynamics and saw how you had to manually fail an engine at 400 ft to return back to the airfield, that got me thinking about it again, and in the last couple of days I played around with Claude Code and managed to build something that I like into the Commander 114.
It is a new page in the tablet that allows definition of failure scenarios based on triggers as well as saving and loading of those scenarios for reuse. Triggers can be variables such as Altitude, IAS, OAT, Engine RPM, Manifold pressure and it can also be a previous failure, which allows cascading failures to be defined.
In the scenario in the image above:
- if the Turbo-charger bearing is previously failed (it might be a manual failure, it might also be MTBF triggered failure or it might be a previous failure originating from this very system),
- if the oil is still cool,
- engine RPM exceeds 2500 RPM,
- manifold pressure exceeds 27 inHG,
- all above present together for more than 50s, then the turbochanger will fail.
Green text is representing a condition that is already fulfilled, and orange is a condition that is yet to be satisfied. Any number of conditions can be added or removed. Above might not be the most realistic example, but it shows what is possible.
I had a lot of fun creating this, and then I had a lot more fun playing around with it, but more importantly, I learned much more about the aircraft and it's systems that I would have without it.
Anyway, I'd be thrilled if you played with it and came to the same conclusion that I have - that something like this adds value and that a professionally developed alternative implemented by you will add value to all the Black Square products!
If you care about it, here are the only three files that were modified (according to Claude).
BlackSquareTablet.css
BlackSquareTablet.js
BlackSquareTablet.html -
Hey, there!
What a wonderful project! I might recall your suggestion a while back. I'm sure there were a few with that idea, because it's a good one. It's really interesting to see what can be done with AI now too, and always amusing to see that someone has been earning my code, just as I've learned from others my whole life too.
Excellent work! I hope you don't misinterpret my delay in responding to mean anything other than that I've been busy. In reality, I've been trying to think of how to respond most appropriately.
It's quite difficult as a developer when something this good comes up, because it seems like a poor choice not to add it for everyone who would enjoy it; however, it also might be a little daunting for less than the top ~1% most experienced users. Of course, then there is also the technical challenges of adapting it to all my aircraft, documenting, and maintaining it.
Ideally, I would love to offer something like this as a free download for those who are interested, because it would allow me to maintain it separately from the aircraft (every aircraft updated is several days of work for me and the Just Flight team, adding up to about two weeks of work to update my entire fleet), and also because I think it would allow others to treat it as an "experimental" feature, whereas anything included with the aircraft is expected to approach perfection, at least in my eyes.
Would you have any interest in creating this as a mod that could be added to the aircraft? Clearly, it would be best if it was modular, since updating the entire tablet every time the aircraft is updated is a recipe for support tickets. Ideally, it would be a new set of files that are dropped in the same place in the virtual file system, and then probably a modification to the main HTML to add the JS, which is okay, because the HTML shouldn't really change after an aircraft is released.
I know that would be a lot of work, but it would be a lot less work than it would be for me to maintain with official support, which is why I recommend it. If I don't have the bandwidth to support this feature, it might never happen, but it would be sad to never see it happen because of it!
I hope you understand and that this doesn't sound like a dismissal! I'm very impressed, and would love to see what we could do together, on this, or any other part of my aircraft you take an interest in! I'm just doing my very best to manage expectations.
