Dear CPACS community,

we are pleased to inform you that with the publication of the Release Candidate (RC), the release process of CPACS 3.3 now enters the final phase:

• GitHub release link
• Documentation (download .chm-file)
• CPACS 3.3 project board
• Forum for discussions, questions and general feedback

After the last two stakeholder meetings, various groups in the community worked on final adjustments by contributing with their practical experiences from the beta version. Thus, many pitfalls could be identified before the final release and we can therefore look forward to a quite robust v3.3 version.

The feature list gives a good impression of how much work has been invested in CPACS 3.3. For this we would like to sincerely thank all those who contributed to this release!

As with every RC, please look carefully through the list of enhancements and adjustments and give us your feedback within 4 weeks (until 18 May) via mail, the issue board or the discussion forum if there is anything that needs further adjustment!

Feature list

(see project board for status and further details)

• Revision of the mission definition including parameter lapses within segments (compatibility break) (#634, #635)
• Revision of the point performance definition (compatibility break) (#696)
• Revision of performance requirements (compatibility break) (#697, #698, #705, #706)
• Revision of landing gears (compatibility break) (#632, #657, #691, #693)
• Revision of control surface tracks definition (compatibility break) (#605)
• Load analysis: Revision of flightLoadCasesType (compatibility break) (#637, #689, #701)
• Load analysis: Revision of aeroCasesType (compatibility break) (#685, #692)
• Load analysis: loadEnvelopesType relocated and envelope simplified to a single uID-Sequence (compatibility break) (#659)
• Load analysis: Replaced dynamicAircraftModel elements by loadApplicationPointSets (compatibility break) (#663)
• Flight dynamics: Group flightPerformance, flyingQualities and trim under flightDynamics parent node (compatibility break) (#638, #694, #707)
• Introduced a configuration node to describe aircraft and payload configurations (#636, #700)
• Fuselage profiles: Introduced rectangle and super ellipse as standard profiles (#624)
• Fuselage profiles: Added vector to specify curve parameters for profiles with kinks (#630)
• Internal structure: Added standard profiles to profile based structural elements (#627)
• Internal structure: Added ribPosts element to wingRibCrossSectionType (#628)
• Internal structure: Upper and lowerCap now optional in sparCellType (#684)
• Internal structure: Stringers and frames can reference sections (#680)
• MassBreakdown: Set mass inertia Jxy, Jxz and Jyz optional (#621)
• MassBreakdown: Added mMiscellaneous element (#646)
• MassBreakdown: Added fuselage walls (#633)
• Added flight envelope to aircraft global element (#640)
• Added new base types: doubleVectorBaseType, posIntVectorBaseType, doubleArrayBaseType (#641)
• Added 'none' and 'inherit' to list of symmetry flags (#643)
• Set mapType attribute of vector and array elements to optional (requires TiXI>=3.1) (#642)
• AeroMaps: Defined angleOfSideslip as input and added distinction between minimum and maximum angleOfAttack in aeroLimitMaps (compatibility break) (#676, #687)
• AeroMaps: Added missing singular incrementMap element to incrementMaps in aeroLimitsMap (compatibility break) (#662)
• AeroMaps: Adopted the camelCase style for damping derivatives (compatibility break) (#686)
• Introduced common nomenclature for speeds and altitudes (compatibility break) (#695)
• Control distributors are set to optional (#709)
• Added instructions for superposition of control surface deflections (#710)
• Further elaboration of development standards (#694, #704, #711)
• General improvements of the documentation