Ace-Xi's Blog

Unofficial Guide to X-Plane, Flight simulators and MORE!!! No Vulgarities, Keep it nice :)

The day our skies fe||, the heavens split to create new skies...-PROJECT ACES

Updates



X-Plane Beta


The current shipping version of X-Plane is 10.20, available as a free patch for X-Plane 10 users.

About Patches


How Do I Get a Version 10 Patch

If X-Plane 10 does not prompt you to update automatically, pick "About X-Plane" from the About Menu. If your copy is out of date, X-Plane will prompt you to update.



How do I Update?




Update X-Plane! Seen from the about menu in X-Plane when there is a new release



See the DLC Pages to download the installer/updater, and then follow the onscreen instructions

Questions? Email info@x-plane.com for more info on troubleshooting

Do I Have To Re-Download The 2 GB Demo To Get The Patch?



No!!!!!!! You can update X-Plane in a number of ways.
  • From the about box, you can automatically update to any new final patch (or newer beta if you have a beta).
  • If you have the full sim, the latest installer has an "update" option for full installs.
  • If you have the demo, the latest demo installer has an "update" option for demos.
These updates are always incremental demos and are often < 30 MB total; only the files you need are downloaded, and they are downloaded in compressed format to save bandwidth.

How Long Will The Update Take?

The download time depends on the size of the patch, how long it's been since you've updated, and how fast your net connection is. Generally, it should be a lot faster to update than to download the demo; the updates are usualy less than 150 MB.

About Betas

From time to time, the newest X-Plane patch is made available early to anyone who wants it as a public beta. First, a few warnings:
  • Public betas are not finished builds. They have bugs! They may not work right. They may crash. Working on your airplane with a public beta may destroy your airplane.
  • Do not opt into the beta program if you want to enjoy X-Plane. Do not use the public beta and then complain that the sim crashes, is unstable, is slow, or looks ugly. Do not use the public beta unless you need to test the beta.
  • If you don't know what a beta is or don't know how the beta program works, your best bet is to wait, ignore the beta, and keep using your current version. Everyone gets the new patch once it is finalized and out of beta.

How to Get a Public Beta

When a public beta is availabe, run the X-Plane installer/updater and pick "update"; then check the "Get new Betas" check box.
If you already have the beta, X-Plane will prompt you when new betas become available. If you have a released non-beta build, you will not be notified until the new patch is finalized and out of testing.
If you decide you do not want to use the beta, simply:
  • Run the installer/updater.
  • Pick "update"
  • Uncheck "get betas"
  • When prompted to keep or overwrite modified files, pick "overwrite". (WARNING: if you have your own modifications, do not pick overwrite for your own mods. This is only an issue if you have add-ons that modify x-Plane system files.)

Where To Report Bugs

Please do not report bugs by email. Please use our bug report form to report bugs here: http://dev.x-plane.com/support/bugreport.html We do not read the various X-Plane community forums; if you write up a bug on a forum and do not file a bug, we will not know about it and it will not be fixed. Please use the bug report form!

Release Notes

X-Plane 10.25 Beta 3

This fixes a missing file at KSEA in 10.25b2.

X-Plane 10.25 Beta 2 (DOA)

X-Plane 10.25 has a defect and will be replaced shortly with beta 3!
This build adds art file updates.
  • Global natural terrain improvements.
  • New urban textures added for dry climates.
  • Bogus library entries removed from KSEA demo area.
  • Global airport taxi sign typos fixed.
  • 3WO renamed to KEZS.
Bug fixes:

  • This build uses more modern code to launch the installer. The old code only crashed inside the installer itself, but we are trying to use the latest code everywhere. IF the app crashes trying to launch the installer (to check for updates) please let us know.


X-Plane 10.25 Beta 1

X-Plane 10.25 Beta 1 updates a number of the art assets in X-Plane, and also ships a few bug fixes.
New Stuff:
  • This update contains 3-d buildings for over 250 airports, contributed by the X-Plane community. This is our first update to ship community-built airports using the X-Plane 10 airport building library. We will continue to ship updates to these airports as more contributions come in.
  • A large number of natural terrains are updated. There are 103 new textures (+30%), which now represent tropical, partly subtropical and many other landclasses entirely new. This comes along with a great number of improved, enlarged or changed former textures. V10 has now a consistent look around the globe.
  • New urban base terrain for wet climates. We are working on dry climates and may have them for a future beta, but for the wet climates this should make a nice improvement in views of cities from the air.
  • Airport library and art decals have texture updates.
  • The default libraries have paths marked as deprecated or private where appropriate; when using WED 1.2.1 beta 1, old and private library paths are hidden, simplifying the library.
Bug fixes:
  • Fixed network data output to ForeFlight.
  • Fixed scroll wheel operation on Windows.
  • Fixed ACF panel import in Plane-Maker.
Datarefs:
  • New datarefs to control the aircraft carrier and frigate with an override.
  • Cinema verite can be set by dataref.
  • Read-only access to whether HDR is on.
Airports:

08R 0B7 0B8 1B9 28M 2B2 3WO 40N 4B6 4B8 4V8 6B0 6B9 6D6 6S8 7B9 8D4 9WN1
BGBW BGGH BGKK BGMA BIAR BIBA BIBD BIBF BIBK BIBL BIBR BIBV BIDV BIEG BIFF BIFL
BIFM BIFZ BIGH BIGJ BIGR BIHK BIHL BIHN BIHU BIIS BIKL BIKP BIKR BIMK BIMS BIOF
BIPA BIRF BIRG BIRK BIRL BISF BISI BISL BISR BISS BIST BITE BITH BITN BIVI BIVM
BIVO CYJN CYQT CYRO CYXY D25 E70 EDHM EDHS EGYP EHTE KABE KACK KALS KAPA KAQO
KAST KATL KATW KAVX KBAZ KBDL KBGM KBID KBOS KBST KBTV KCDA KCEF KCEZ KCLI KDDH
KEEN KEFK KEGV KETB KEVW KEWB KFLD KFLL KFMH KFMN KFSO KGCN KGFL KGON KGPI KGRB
KGSP KHFD KHVN KHWY KHZL KIJD KIZG KJMS KLDM KLEW KLUF KLVK KMAL KMDS KMKE KMKG
KMMK kmpv KMRY KMVL KMVY KOQU KOWD KOXC KPAE KPBG KPKF KPNE KPSO KPTN KPVC KPVD
KPYM KRHI KRKD KRME KRUT KSAW KSBA KSFF KSFZ KSKX KSLC KSLH KTAN KTCY KTOA KTTD
KUUU KVSF KWRI KWST KXLL L52 LFHN LFHS LFLY LGKR LNMC LSXB LXGB MKJP N82 NY54
NZAR OR10 S83 SA07 SA7Q SA9E SAVD SAZY SBAR SBBP SBCO SBFN SBIH SBNT SBPA SBPC
SBPK SBPR SBRP SBST SC1A SCAK SCAP SCAS SCBB SCBI SCCC SCCM SCCR SCCU SCCY SCDQ
SCFM SCFT SCGA SCGB SCGY SCHR SCIH SCII SCKO SCKT SCLB SCLD SCLY SCMF SCML SCNM
SCOH SCOL SCON SCOO SCPC SCPF SCPH SCPI SCPK SCPL SCPQ SCPU SCPV SCPY SCQC SCQI
SCQK SCQY SCSH SCTA SCTN SCTO SCTR SCVI SCVL SCVO SCXR SDCR SDIM SDOB SDTB SDVH
SJRG SMTO SNDV SNEJ SNFL SNGX SNJK SNJM SNKF SNKI SNMF SNOF SNQV SSCC SSMW T82
UGSB VT46 W23 Y55 YARM YAYE YBAS YHOT YMAV YTDN YTNK YTWB ZSPD

X-Plane 10.22 Release Candidate 2

  • Fixes indexes on the SETI network packet.

X-Plane 10.22 Release Candidate 1

Note: SASL 1.0 for 64-bit Windows does not correctly implement the rules for 64-bit Lua plugins and therefore is not compatible with X-Plane 10.22. Authors who shipped a 64-bit SASL 1.0 build for Windows will need to upgrade to the newer, correct, SASL 2.0 for 64-bit Windows as soon as possible.
  • Fixes compatibility with ForeFlight.

X-Plane 10.22 Beta 2

  • Fixes a crash on startup that some users experienced with beta 1.

X-Plane 10.22 Release Beta 1

  • Landing gear saving fixed in Plane-Maker.
  • X-Plane provides Lua allocation for 64-bit Windows/Linux plugins.
  • Running out of Lua memory on Mac is no longer a crash.
  • Copy protection bug fix: users can fly using their DVD _even_ if the copy protection code cannot save DVD information to their local machine.
  • X-Plane supports the latest version of Xavion.

X-Plane 10.21 Release Candidate 2

  • Reverted change to light sizes when monitor resolution changes. This means airplanes look the way they did X-Plane 10.5, 10.11 and 10.20.
  • Fixed pitot heat switch on new C172 in 3-d cockpit.

X-Plane 10.21 Release Candidate 1

  • Updated Cessna with new, improved art files and flight model tuning.
  • Fixed dim airport lights when using 4x SSAA - HDR SSAA no longer affects light brightness.
  • Fixed crash on start-up on Japanese Macs.
  • Fixed edge cases where facades could draw junk or incorrect paths.
  • Fixed OBJ accuracy for scenery where 0 AGL is very close to Y=0 in the local coordinate system. This fixes bad object placement at KROC.
  • Joystick tracking cross matches mouse location when flying with the mouse, even when joystick curves are applied.

X-Plane 10.21 Beta 2

  • Fixed crash on Mac when running the CRJ plugin or resizing the window. Other plugins may have crashed too due to this bug.
  • Fixed curved non-closed facades to not loop back on themselves.
  • Fixed brightness of custom light billboards when HDR is on - they now match non-HDR.
  • Included 2013.04b data cycle, which puts back DMEs.
  • Fixed landing gear rendering in Plane-Maker.
  • Fixed visibility in hard-ball IFR to be a little bit higher.

X-Plane 10.21 Beta 1

10.21 introduces a default KATL layout using the new library airport elements; this is the beginning of the process of rolling out buildings as part of the global user-created airport data.
This release contains a number of bug fixes:
  • Latest (April 2013) airport and navaid data included. This data fixes a number of navaid bugs inclusing the KSFO glideslopes.
  • Kingair windshield wiper animation fixed.
  • Cockpit-object attached spill lights now light up only the inside or outside depending on the cockpit object lighting mode; this matches the behavior of all other plane-maker-attached objects.
  • Default heavy-metal compass backgroudn art realigned.
  • Frigate ILS and VOR are displayed on the local map screen.
  • Autopilot disconnects completely if the airplane has no flight director switch.
  • Knots/mach mode is reset to knots on loading a new airplane - just in case the airplane has no mach/knots switch.
  • MTBF frequency fixed - it was previously misinterpreted to fail at 10x the rate displayed in the UI.
  • Magnetic heading for glide-slope fixed in the navaid editing window.
  • Fuel consumption correctly decreases when flying with an external instructor's station.
  • Fixed wind interpolation from NNE to N to circle through NNW.
  • Changed default number of flight models per frame to 2 to improve aircraft flight dynamics.
  • Improved wording on rendering settings screen.
  • Autogen in rural towns remapped to houses and not warehouses.
  • Fixed error in scenery shift that caused the airplane to move 4 feet and crash when landing at KGDM runway 36.
  • Added aliases to the audio monitor commands - this will allow v9 plugins to continue to control the audio monitoring system.
  • Moved libfreetype for OSX back to 2.2.1 - fixes font spacing on Mac, which was too wide in 10.20.
  • Fixed default gear light instrument to not light up when bus power is off.
  • Fixed AI aircraft to not reset AI planes when a plugin overrides the AI autopilot.
  • DSF allows facades and bezier control handles to hang outside the DSF box a little bit.
  • Fixed memory scribble when apt.dat contains an ICAO code longer than 4 characters.

X-Plane 10.20 Release Candidate 3

This patch fixes the hole in the fuselage of the Kingair, and adjusts the taxi light on the Baron. No changes to the code.

This has also been the official release of XP10.20 (Last Updated 30/3/2013)

X-Plane 10.20 Release Candidate 2

The Kingair and Baron have both been updated again.
Bug fixes:
  • Airports with invalid runway configurations no longer crash ATC - instead the error is logged so authors can fi the airport data.
  • Lua memory management interface changed for Windows and Linux - if you develop a Lua-based plugin be sure to read this:http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/LuaJIT.
  • Fixed crash on GP60 RC plane - airplanes with very, very, very small wings were crashing.
  • Automatic crash reporting improved; in a few cases where X-Plane would have said "please report this to Laminar" it now bring up the automatic crash reporter so we can more easily collect the data. This only happens for cases where something has gone horribly wrong in the sim (typically due to an X-Plane bug, driver bug, running out of memory, or an invalid third party add-on).

X-Plane 10.20 Release Candidate 1

The Kingair and Baron have both been updated.
Bug fixes:
  • Waste-gate has been fixed for turbo-charged recip airplanes with a waste-gate. For example, the Carenado Mooney will now develop 190 HP on the runway, not 40 HP.
  • X-Plane won't recommend safe-mode just because Plane-Maker is open.
  • French translation updated.
  • Fix for crash in custom scenery when using library objects on sloped terrain.
  • Fixed crash when using ppjoy virtual devices with analog hat switches. (We do not support analog hat switches, so do not set one up. But now they won't crash the sim.)
  • The installer will re-launch the sim in the same mode (64-bit or 32-bit) as you had before when auto-updating. Note that this will only work on the first update _from_ rc1 to a new update.
  • Worked around black sky on Intel HD GPUs in HDR mode. Note that these GPUs aren't very powerful, so we recommend running with HDR off.
  • Worked around shader compile fail on Intel HD 4000 GPUs.
  • Fixed nav-aid saving to not write out bogus NDB.
  • Fixed crash on Mac with PS3 controller over blue-tooth.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 11

Kingair Fixed
  • autopilot buttons for Flight Director, Autopilot on, yaw damper and pitch control added.
  • Rudder pedals animated
  • Several texture refinements / enhancements
  • Added stall warning annunciator
New plugin system build for Linux/OS X avoids junk in the log.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed missing gravel at 70S airport.
  • Turbulence turned down for some METARs.
  • MP pressure fixed on helicopters
  • Reduced network bandwidth for multiplayer.
  • Map placement bug fixed where the plane was not set up at the right speeds when clicked in the upper right corner of the iOS window
  • Holding down AP knobs while sim paused still selects AP at high speed
  • Mach-IAS button picks right mach number.
  • Missing wings fixed for RC planes
  • Safe mode starts with global shadows off.
  • Fixed loading of BK117 plugin on Linux.
  • Fixed crash on Linux with VirtualGL.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 10

This build features a new plugin system DLL:
  • 64-bit Plugins that incorrectly link against common static libraries will generate log warnings.
  • Plugin-induced crashes are listed against a specific plugin; crashes in X-Plane's threads are no longer attributed to plugins.
  • Calling XPLMRemoveMenuItem on the plugin menu works reliably.
  • XPLMGetNthAircraftName works during airplane unload message and airplane plugin unloading.
This build includes a few more global terrain textures.
Bug fixes:
  • Fix for missing base loads in electrical system.
  • Some keys fixed on German keyboard layouts.
  • Fixed incorrect layout of some autogen blocks.
  • Fixed broken 32-bit QuickTime record.
  • Foreflight output rate changed.
  • Cloud puff bases adjusted again.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 9

  • Fixes missing library paths in the autogen (again).
  • runway lights tweaked slightly

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 8

  • New tropical terrain textures
  • Beta 8 works with the newest update to Xavion iPad apps.
Bug fixes:
  • King-air 3d cockpit fixed
  • Windows XP machines should get their IP address without failing.
  • Fixed METAR parsing with time-stamped winds.
  • Fixed reversed scroll wheel for plugins.
  • Fixed by missing line segments at EHAM custom scenery and others.
  • Fixed keys not working with Romanji keyboard layout.
  • Fixed height of type 1 facades.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 7

Bug fixes:
  • Fixed crash on scenery load when runways were set to 'flattened'.
  • Mac & Linux: Re-exported libpng to the 32-bit builds of X-Plane
  • Missing library paths: this wasn't actually fixed in beta 6 due to a source control mistake; should be fixed now.
  • Kingair switches fixed.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 6

Usability:
  • Livery is saved as a preference - when you reopen a plane if there is no option to pick a livery, the last one you used is opened.
  • New button in Open Aircraft dialog box to just change the livery.
Plugins:
  • Fix for LuaJIT compatibility on 64-bit Mac integrated - see here. Plugin authors working on 64-bit Mac plugins should be able to continue with development without any special test builds.
  • libpng, libcurl, and libfreetype2 symbols have been stripped out of the Mac and Linux versions. Please test your 32-bit Mac/Linux plugin; if it will not load, please report this ASAP! (The problem might be with your makefile.)
  • Fixed system_window dataref. This should fix the 32-bit TrackIR plugins.
Airplanes:
  • Prop heat and inlet heat expanded to up to 8 engines, with new datarefs. This should not affect existing airplanes, but please recheck your icing switches.
  • Custom prop disc cross-fades fixed. If you use the prop disc override please confirm that your add-on works!
  • Eagle claw landing gear dataref added.
  • Fixed RGB light field in Plane-Maker exterior lights screen.
  • Fixed IAS indicator showing airspeed when a plane is flying backward or stationary in a tailwind.
Scenery:
  • Fixed incorrect library paths in autogen - this should fix a bunch of custom scenery packs not loading.
  • More new terrain textures from Albert.
  • Fixed texturing of type 1 repeating fence faces. If your facades still have texturing problems but used to work, please file a bug ASAP!
  • Helipads like NK39 don't float in the air when sloped runways are turned off.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix for some Intel HD GPUs causing the sim to quit with an error.
  • Fixed crash on Mac with Chinese input methods.
  • Fixed hang when filing certain ATC flight plans.
  • Bottom of cloud puffs should be closer to assigned bases.
  • New commands for directional gyros.
  • AI planes keep igniters on to avoid flame-outs.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 5

Beta 5 brings in new art assets to beta 3 - no code changes.
  • New autogen from Alex. This is not the complete autogen work he has done; it is an interim step.
  • New terrain textures from Albert.
  • Bug fixes to the Kingair and KSEA from Tom.
  • New 3-d exterior on the Harrier from Javier.
If you are a 32-bit Mac user, you may need to turn down rendering settings - we will further fine tune rendering settings later in the beta; for now you are getting the raw new art assets.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 4

Beta 4 was dead-on-arrival due to an installation problem and was thus recalled after about 2 minutes of life. Beta 5 is now out, providing the stuff that SHOULD have been in beta 4.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 3

We still have a number of open bugs; please do _not_ re-report bugs that you have already filed against beta 2 unless you see them marked as fixed in this list! We will be getting to all of the filed bugs shortly, but this build gets out a few changes that we needed to test separately.
  • OpenAL sound is now initialized before any plugins are loaded. This changes which OpenAL implementation will be loaded for globally installed plugins. Please see the OpenAL technote for details. This fix should conflicts between Gizmo-enhanced and SASL-enhanced airplanes.
  • OS X 64-bit: the app's zero page and base address have been modified. This allows LuaJIT to function on 64-bit OS X. Please note that LuaJIT will still fail frequently with out-of-memory errors once the sim is running. If you are working on a plugin that uses LuaJIT and have not contacted Ben, please do so.
  • Vsync now functions on OS X. The vsync setting now takes effect immediately, without restarting. Please note that on ATI Windows hardware with the Aero theme enabled, Vsync locks to half-refresh rate; we think this is a driver bug.
  • A bunch of features relating to airport ICAO IDs now work on 64-bit. This fixes real weather and the FMS/GPS ICAO entry on 64-bit.
  • Multiple identical devices now supported properly on Mac.
  • Native TrackIR fixed on Windows. Plugins that use TrackIR are not yet fixed, due to a plugin SDK bug.
  • Log correctly identifies 64-bit versions of Windows.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 2

  • Fixed unresponsive keyboard and mouse on OS X when X-Plane is started in full screen.
  • Fixed fatal shader error on older Nvidia cards on Windows and Linux.
  • Fixed spinning ball cursor on Windows.
  • Fixed OpenAL 64-bit library on Windows.
  • Fixed a number of log warnings.
  • 32 vs. 64-bit build is shown in the about box and startup screen.

X-Plane 10.20 Beta 1

X-Plane 10.20 is the first 64-bit version of X-Plane 10. It comes with two sets of executable applications for X-Plane:
  • Macintosh: X-Plane.app (64-bit) and X-Plane-32bit.app (32-bit)
  • Windows: X-Plane.exe (64-bit) and X-Plane-32bit.exe (32-bit)
  • Linux: X-Plane-x86_64 (64-bit) and X-Plane-i386 (32-bit)
Linux users: note that the canonical app names have changed to match the standard ABI suffices for Linux; if you launch x-plane with a script, you can either mod the script or sim-link from the old app name (X-Plane-i686) to the app you wish to run.
X-Plane 10.20 does not contain 64-bit versions of Airfoil Maker or Plane-Maker; we do not have any plan to 64-bit-ize them at this time.
Be sure to read the X-Plane 64-bit FAQ!

X-Plane 10.20. Known Issues

  • The 747 plugin is not 64-bit safe yet, so some 747 nav systems will not operate in 64-bit mode.
  • The current installer is not updated for the new file naming convention and will always launch the 64-bit app (Windows/Mac), or fail to relaunch the app (Linux). You can simply restart X-Plane from your desktop after updates.
  • TrackIR not reliably tracking head with built-in TrackIR support.
  • FMS/GPS won't lock onto airports in the 64-bit build.
  • Prop disc multi-image blending is broken.
  • QuickTime capture is not available in 64-bits, and will not be. At some later point we will move to a video capture technology that works everywhere (32 and 64 bits, Mac, Win and Lin) but for now QT will be 32-bit only.
There are a number of open bugs that we are looking at that will be addressed in later betas


X-Plane 10.10 RC 3

  • Updated car generation pattern - traffic should be more even and levels should be higher on high settings. Remember: traffic really hits CPU, and it takes a few minutes for X-Plane to generate the full traffic you have requested with your rendering settings, so turn the setting down if fps get bad.
  • New German translation.
Bugs:
  • Fixed missing runway through 747 windows.
  • Fixed corrupt landing light after livery change on C400 Corvalis.
  • Fixed corrupt cloud geomtry with HDR and ATI Linux drivers (by disabling pinned memory optimization). We'll work with ATI to see if we can get pinned memory working on Linux.
  • Fixed shadows out the window for the C172 with shadows on "3-d on aircraft".
  • Fixed squashed preview icons in airplane chooser dialog box.
  • Fixed possible corrupt geometry in low level weather code.
  • Turned down maximum brightness with HDR mode slightly.
  • Fixed ejection seat camera sequence.
  • Fixed export airplane to .OBJ in Plane-Maker on Windows.
  • Fixed broken materials with shadows on Falcon 7x.
  • Fixed inability to refile a flightplan after cancelling IFR
  • Decreased nag timer on ATC handoff checkins

X-Plane 10.10 RC 2

  • Updated road art assets. The updated art assets contain more details and more templates for better road grids.
  • "Open" dialogs now faster for users who had a "Custom Scenery (disabled)" folder. Read more here.
  • Joystick axis now appear red in the dialog if they're uncalibrated or unassigned. Red means the axis is not going to work properly so fix it!
  • Slightly improved Joystick calibration wizard.
  • Runway and taxiway lights improved to be visible at various angles in a more realistic manner. NOTE: Taxiway lights SHOULD be difficult to see in many airborne situations. This is NOT a bug. This is how the real lights work.
Aircraft:
  • Electrical system fixed on F-22, F-4, Baron, Kingair, and Piaggio.
  • Fuselage shadow fixed on C172.
ATI Windows Drivers:
  • This build works around sRGB problems in HDR mode and turns off sRGB for non-HDR mode.
  • I am a member of the ATI driver beta program, and have tried newer drivers that fixes the sRGB problem for non-HDR mode. 10.10r2 is programmed to recognize these newer drivers and turn sRGB back on.
What this means to you:
  • HDR mode will look good for ATI Windows drivers. Forward rendering will look okay but the night scene will be overly bright and a bit 'wet' looking in the far-ground.
  • When the next revision of ATI drivers comes out, things should just start working.
I haven't been able to reproduce the bug where clouds appear as crazy triangles; if you have this, please get latest drivers, re-test against rc2, and re-file a bug report so we can get more information.

Bug Fixes
  • Fixed complete anarchy in the electrical system file-io code. Believe it or not, this fixes the roll in the 747 and other airplanes! Authors using 10.10, check the electrical system pages in Plane-Maker carefully in 10.10r2! See more here!
  • Fixed import of v9 airplanes made on a PPC mac into v10.
  • Fixed unclickable P-180 cockpit panel.
  • Runway lights are visible when off-axis, e.g. on base.
  • Fixed shadows disappearing in flight when set to "3-d on cockpit" for the P-180 and other planes.
  • Fixed disappearing spill lights (when made by an OBJ and attached to an airplane).
  • Fixed black boxes around LIGHT_CUSTOM lights in HDR mode.
  • Electrical systems such as the Hydraulic, Vacuum and Gyro systems no longer "overspeed" when the bus voltage is over nominal (ie. a charging bus).
  • Changing Axis assignments in the Joystick dialog, no longer throw away calibration data.
  • EGT fixed to be scaled properly based on the appropriate N1 or N2 speeds.
  • Command-line framerate test fixed
  • We have disabled the wing import function in Plane-Maker - it can crash Plane-Maker (causing you to lose your work). We may put it back in a future update if enough users want it. As a work-around, you can copy wings with a text editor in X-Plane 10.
  • Fixed ATTR_diffuse_rgb when used with global shadows.
  • Fixed pre-fill optimization on NV Mac drivers.
  • Fixed pre-fill for non-shadow objects.
  • Fixed spill lighting on runway lights.
  • Fixed anti-ice system failure labels in Plane-Maker.

X-Plane 10.10 RC 1

Tiny Tweaks:
  • New icon in the file-selector for non-custom acf files, with higher-speed swiping.
  • Rudder response from mouse tuned down to 20% of max, to make flying with the mouse much less... dramatic.
ATI WINDOWS USERS: X-Plane 10.10 is affected by a driver bug (still present in catalyst 12-8 drivers) that can affect runway lights and HDR mode. To work around the problem, run from the DOS prompt like this:
X-Plane.exe --no_srgb
We are working with ATI and will come up with something more permanent before we finalize 10.10.
Aircraft Changes
  • Default Aircraft startup times drastically improved! Sometimes on piston engines, you may even need to crack the throttle to get the aircraft to start...just like real aircraft!
Starter:
  • The starter has been changed quite a bit; airplanes from v9 and 10.05 should now start as expected. See this post for details.
Bug Fixes
  • METARs with variable winds no longer create wind-shear/turbulence for low wind speed conditions
  • Slung Loads are no longer defaulted ON...this was preventing the B-52 from flying properly!
  • Mouse wheel scrolling now works in the Aircraft Livery panel
  • Weapons drawn correctly in Plane-Maker
  • Plane-Maker can import .inst instrument files.
  • Light billboard color-space fixed; the runway lights should be quite a bit more visible now.
  • Fixed misaligned roads.
  • Fixed road bridges crashing into each other.
  • Improved ramps going into road junctions slightly.
  • Fixed P-180 panel going black when P-180 is used as an AI plane or HDR is turned on and off.
  • Fixed missing landing light in 2-d cockpits and forward views.
  • Jets will hot-start if __N2__ is below indicated value in Plane-Maker. Plane-Maker used to use N1 for jets, which was difficult to work with.
  • No more crashes or other odd behaviour when you run the battery down to nothing

x-Plane 10.10 Beta 11

It's just like beta 10, but with the 'extra aircraft' folder properly included (this is where some of the old v9 aircraft and experimentals now live) and with code signing hopefully fixed.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 10

This build closes our known bugs with aircraft and HDR mode - if you have created a custom aircraft for v9, you may have to update a few things to work with HDR mode and 10.10. Docs on what needs updating (the list is short) soon.
  • Safe mode warning dialog box disabled for pro key customers.
  • Mac apps are now signed to play nicely with Gatekeeper on 10.8 Mountain Lion
  • There is now a command to toggle full-screen mode - bind it to a key or call it from a plugin.
P180 Updates
  • The P-180's panel now works with global shadows, and the visors don't block the clouds in HDR mode.
  • The P-180's electrical system now puts a load on generators.
F22 Updates
  • New HUD elements added for attitude
  • Revised Airfoils
  • Heavily tweaked flight model
  • Turn and bank with more control and stability, even with full stick deflection
  • Nice manners on landing
Baron Updates
  • Fixed panel back shadow mode
  • Fixed prop lever in 3D cockpit so it doesn't drop prop RPM down below governing range
  • Fixed clipping of global lights in cockpit.
Airplane SDK:
  • Cockpit spill lights in Plane-Maker show up in HDR mode too. Their lighting equation is changed - they always look the way they used to look in HDR mode.
  • Fixed some cases of airplane lights showing through the walls of the 3-d cockpit.
  • Fixed ATTR_diffuse_rgb and ATTR_emission_rgb in HDR mode.
  • Fixed glass objs on ACF when airplane is upside down and atmospheric scattering is on.
  • Airplane casts shadows even on glass objects in HDR mode.
Plugins:
  • Flight loop callback is not called when the QuickFlight dialog box is up before the first flight.
  • Post-FM callbacks are called when dialog boxes are up - this is consistent with pre-FM callbacks.
Bug Fixes:
  • Airplanes with separate in and out cockpit objs work with GLOBAL_cockpit_lit
  • Slightly improved ramps that would stick up in the middle of street-level road junctions.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 9

  • SUPPORT FOR FOREFLIGHT! Go to the SETTINGS menu in X-Plane, INTERNET OPTIONS window, IPHONE/IPOD tab, and turn on the ForeFlight option. Then, get ForeFlight from the App Store if you are the last one to have not already done so and run it! This is a map system that myself, and most other people, use in the cockpit, which is about ten million times better than using paper charts! Go to the (MORE...) menu at the bottom of ForeFlight and the to DEVICES item on the left. Touch it, and see the X-Plane window that appears... touch that, too, and a window will come up that lets you ENABLE it. Now, simply fly X-Plane with ForeFlight running on the same wireless network and you can use ForeFlight just like you would in the cockpit! Cool!
  • Supersonic engine thrust model improved to go from total pressure recovery to normal-shock recovery as you move towards the max inlet efficiency, and pass air subsonically to the compressor behind the inlet. This is still not a perfect inlet model since different inlets work in totally different ways, but this is the best superonic inlet model we have ever had, and the supersonic drag is now the best we have ever had as well. The supersonic drag model looks at each polygon of the acf model, finds its' normal vector and area, and treats it as a plate with a compression or expansion fan, and should now do a perfect job of tracking every single poly in the airplane.The new supersonic model, like ALL of the dynamics in X-Plane, considers all of the various bodies that you have created for the airplane. That is: ALL of the fuselage, misc bodies, nacelles, etc, are considered to be exposed to the airflow. This means that if you have multiple bodies one inside the other, the aero effects will be DOUBLED compared to reality! Also, if you have one body hiding right behind another, or behind the fuselage, then the drag effects will be DOUBLED compared to reality! This is why with the latest beta, some planes are not going supersonic that should: We are now computing the drag more accurately on each body, and having multiple bodies one behind the other simply add up the drag based on the frontal area of EACH BODY! A very simple case of this is an F-104 Starfighter model that uses a fuselage for the FRONT of the plane, and a misc body for the BACK! In this case, the front of the misc body is acting like a big flat-plate exposed to the air.. surely enough to keep the plane subsonic! So, to design a plane properly, do NOT use misc bodies and fuselage and nacelles stacked inside each other, or behind each other in a row. This will simply erroneously add up drag! When designing a plan e for X-Plane, the rule is really very very simple: Each fuselage, misc body, and nacelle has the local air aciting on it. That's it! So it is actually really simple. Now, there is ONE exception: Engine nacelles for jets. Engine nacelles for jets are assumed to NOT produce any drag. This is because the thrust for the engine that you enter in Plane-Maker is considered to already be based on installed thrust losses. So, if you want your ACF model to be accurate, then do not have hidden-away misc bodies with frontal area inside another body, and certainly do not have 2 bodies one behind the other to make a long body... the frontal area of the aft body will still be exposed to the air in X-Plane! If you want really detailed geometry (read: more than you can get out of a body in X-Plane, so you want to hook multiple bodies together) then it is time to build an OBJ for your airplane!
  • New commands: Spot lite on, off, and toggle... kind of sorely missing before!
  • Helo rotor rpm trim runs 0 to 1, so it is an interpolation between the lo and hi rotor rpm trim. This way, motion of the trim always DOES something, even if only a high OR lo rotor rpm trim is entered in Plane-Maker!
  • Automatic crash reporter no longer catches crashes that occur because of plugins. This is important so that plugin authors can get crash data from their users without us stealing it from them.
  • UI Buttons in all products have been improved to be...well...like every other button you've ever used outside of X-Plane. Actions happen on the up-click, not the down-click giving you a chance to change your mind while also giving you visual feedback of the press itself.
Aircraft
  • Fixed Vacuum pressure and Oil Pressure gauges in the default C-172
  • Fixed SR-71 flight model
Shadows
  • This build should fix the bug where the shadows would jitter and shake wildly with HDR enabled; the shadows should now be about the same with HDR on or off. (Global melt your GPU looks better with HDR on.) Some airplanes that previously did not shadow properly are now fixed. I am still working on shadow tuning.
Bug Fixes
  • Joystick Dialog now consolidates axis display so more device axis are visible. Important for people with many devices.
  • Joystick calibration ranges from 10.05R1 are now blown away to prevent corrupt axis on an update. NOTE: This will require EVERYONE to recalibrate their devices on updating.
  • Fixed broken "alt" button on Windows
  • Fixed buttons on some home-cockpit devices such as the MJoy16-C1
  • You can now save a situation and then load it again without exiting X-Plane to re-scan the file list.
  • Landing lights and all other lights should go across to the external visuals now.
  • Much less turbulence in light to moderate precip... but same trubulence in major (red) precip
  • QuickFlight startup does put you on the ramp now, if set up as such in Operations and Warnings window.
  • Weather goes to ALL the external visuals now, not just a random ONE of them! ;-P
  • Right Click/Zoom no longer control the sim from IOS station.
  • Fixed bug in planemaker causing resource copying to create invalid files on Windows.
  • Fixed dlerror __stack_chk_fail_local on Linux machines. Ideally, plugin authors should be compiling with -fno-stack-protector but in the meantime, this will let them run again.
  • Roads shouldn't cut into buildings at low view angles.
  • Fixed crash when starting up with IOS enabled and quick flight showing on startup.
  • Fixed cursor being hidden in joystick calibration wizard.
  • Fixed cut-off object names in Plane-Maker main screen.
  • Fixed prioritization up/down buttons in plane-maker misc objects screen.
  • Added error checking for airplanes whose use of panel texture is inconsistent. You can't mix and match ATTR_cockpit and ATTR_cockpit_region!!!!
  • Plugins are now exempt from breakpad; if a plugin crashes, the normal OS crashes happen so that the user can send a report to the plugin author, rather than the crash going into our database.
  • Fixed camera instrument to not turn green during the day with panel regions.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 8

This is a recut of beta 7 that fixes Plane-Make crashing on startup on Windows.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 7

Ben says: I screwed up - Plane-Maker crashes on startup on Windows 100% of the time. Beta 8 will be out shortly to fix this. Enjoy beta 7 if you are on Mac or just need to fly...Windows plane authors should hold off...
  • Quick-Look now supports our new 2D panel scrolling
  • Quick-Flight is now under the file menu
  • Major revisions to the Baron and Kingair
  • Global scenery terrain regions tuned.
  • Added "TEXTURE_CONTROL_NOWRAP" to correspond to TEXTURE_CONTROL. This is needed to make orthophoto pol files with decals.
Aircraft:
  • 10.10 beta 6 attempted to mark older cockpit objects as 'glass'. This seemed like a clever way to make HDR work but actually breaks more aircraft than it helps. This change has been removed for beta 7. As a result, the CRJ and other aircraft that use the panel texture as a window will not show clouds correctly in HDR mode. These aircraft will need an update to work with HDR enabled, but will work correctly with HDR disabled. X-Plane cannot guess-and-auto-update these aircraft for HDR.
  • The cockpit now contains most of the same options in Plane-Maker as the attached objects.
  • Invalid use of ATTR_cockpit is now detected and logged.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed crash on Windows with facades with empty meshes. This fixes the crash using the "Classic 3" airport facade.
  • Added support for some out-of-spec PFC Yokes
  • Fixes to solve some strange button behavior on various joysticks (ie. Cyborg Evo)
  • Fixed bus_load_amps dataref to read proper value
  • Landing lights accurately reflect their load on electrical busses now.
  • G430,G1000 and Avidyne instruments now work with panel regions.
  • Fixed some cases where water fog looks funny - there are still some bugs with water and fog.
  • Fixed black line when shadows on "Melt your GPU" with NV cards.
  • Fixed missing cockpit objects in Chinook and other older-style planes.
  • Fixed missing transponder on P32R and other panels that mix translucency and panels.
  • Fixed intermittent drawing of airports in sectional map.
  • Fixed plugin glue code: XPLMNavAid can find stand-alone DMEs.
  • Fixed incorrect culling of trees when forest exclusion zones go outside a DSF boundary.
  • Moved power tower wires to a later drawing group to avoid artifacts.
  • Fixed world being very dark for the first few frames in HDR mode.
Other tweaks:
  • if you ask to start on the ramp under operations and warnings, then the quick-flight screen honors that
  • real-weather should grab dew-point to display in ATIS reports, which is kind of nice.
  • supersonic model for bodies over-hauled a bit... should be more realistic now (the supersonic model for the wings should remain un-changed)

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 6

  • Red/White Flashlight added!
  • "Mouse-Look" Re-implemented in a new way...Double right-click and the mouse will lock-in as camera control in any view. Change views or right click again to disable it.
  • Quick-Look view prefs have been renamed from *_prefs.txt to *_view_prefs.txt. If you already had quicklook commands set, they will not be used until you rename them in your aircraft's directory.
  • Additional improvements to terrain textures. Albert hopes to have these finished by the end of the beta run.
  • WE ONLY CALIBRATE JOYSTICKS WHEN THE JOYSTICK WINDOW IS UP NOW! So, to calibrate your joysticks, you have to go to the joystick window... you cannot just wiggle your joystick around to let X-Plane automatically find the joystick extrema... you have to be in the joystick window!
  • Flight model refined a hair: There will be no measurable difference for any reasonably conventional flight, but now we handle sideslip angles of even 90 degrees, or backwards flight, on wings with crazy dihedral and sweep and incidence angles,with more geometric perfection... even though this does not represent a flight regime where you ever operate in a conventional airplane, we still nailed the theoretical geometry down just get mathematical perfection there.
  • Also, the supersonic dynamics improved a hair in computing drag over the fuselage.
  • My Evo is now in the EXPERIMENTAL folder. There s no external model, and the panel is a joke, but it FLIES right. Of course, we will improve this over time to be a good model of the aircraft!
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed quick-look views so they no longer reset back to "center" when changing views in cockpit
  • Fixed a bug causing ATC to crash if "AI Flies Plane" is selected
  • Fixed a bug causing ATC to crash if an airport without a proper flow was selected.
  • Scroll wheel now works in all sections of the quick-flight and open aircraft dialogs.
  • Fixed powerlines that fly up at DSF boundary near EHRD.
  • 747 airspeed indicator fixed.
  • Sectional map shading and water fixed.
  • Water fixed in HITS instrument.
  • Camera instrument fixed.
  • Datarefs for object drawing location are now in OGL coordinates. This fix makes v10 work the way v9 did.
  • Control-click acts like right click for Mac users with old one-button mice.
  • Fixed jitter and shake of cloud shadows when HDR is enabled.
  • Fixed ATTR_lit_level to properly scale lights during the day.
Aircraft Authoring:
  • Plane-Maker now has a popup UI to show/hide objects and the visualizations of interior and exterior lights. Since the exterior lights are now drawn as cones (with small discs at their source point) the 3-d view can get messy. Simply turn off the visualizations you don't want to see, or hide your objects to get a better view of what is going on.
  • ATTR_cockpit can be used in any attached object. This has always been true (despite warnings in the docs) but the implementation only worked some of the time.
  • The cockpit object can now be marked as glass, as well as interior or exterior. Mark it as glass if you need to use panel texture in your windows. X-Plane will attempt to guess whether the cockpit object should be glass on older airplanes to maintain compatibility.
  • Spill lights only affect the interior if they are attached to an interior object; they only affect the exterior and world if they are attached to an exterior object. Use this to fix problems like landing lights flooding the cabin or cabin lights illuminating the runway below the airplane.
Beech Baron 58 Fixes/Improvements:
  • Wing landing lights added with independent control switches for left/right
  • Revised Autopilot and annunciator panel so all modes work, including APPR
  • ADF 1 added
  • HSI now uses Nav 1, Nav2 and GPS
  • Nav 2 VOR added
  • Flight model improved
  • Wing Ice light works
  • Clock added to yoke
  • Instrument night lighting fixed to work. No more lit instruments when power is off.
  • Avionics fun doesn't come on when power is off.
  • Dash annunciators improved and work properly
  • Taxi light added to nose gear, aligned and working properly.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 5

  • We now support devices with an insane number of buttons and axis like the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog (That thing is an insane beast).
  • Improved consistency in views. Right click and scroll are now used everywhere for camera movement and zoom respectively.
  • Implemented Quick-Look view commands to allow users to save predefined views on a per-aircraft basis. See discussion here.
  • OBJ File Format Extensions - docs coming soon!
    • ATTR_no_shadow disables shadows for just one part of an OBJ; polygon-offset (ATTR_poly_os) geometry now works this way too.
    • A new pixel-based manipulator lets you define drags that work horizontally or vertically, with scaling. This manipulator is intended to make draggable knobs.
    • GLOBAL_cockpit_lit object attribute declares that ATTR_cockpit will use real 3-d lighting. This provides a better migration path for old airplanes that depend on translucency.
    • New option in plane-maker: whether or not your aircraft has a TCAS system.
it is in the viewpoint screen, and should be turned off for older planes and the like
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed broken hot-spots on Altimeters
  • Fixed broken adjustment on attitude indicator
  • Fixed 3/4 deflection on Joystick Axis page on some devices (Saitek Flight Stick, Epic USB, etc.)
  • Fixed "sticking" hat-switches that would sometimes not turn off once pressed.
  • Fixed Joysticks with missing buttons/axis on Windows such as the Logitech G940 or G25
  • Bump maps now work in .ter files again.
  • The HDR pipeline has been severely thrashed in an attempt to improve the look of translucent scenery. While there are still translucency artifacts in HDR mode (and all airplanes should use the "glass" option in plane-Maker for windshields and canopies) translucency should be better than it was before.
  • Fixed ugly blue glowing water at night.
  • Added back 3-d cockpit toggle command to match v9.
  • Airplane is converted to metric before plugins are run.
  • For seaplane starting locations, X-Plane should pick the closest seaport it can to the airport you have selected in quick-flite, if you do not select a real seaport

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 4

This beta updates and renames the Aerosoft airports that ship with X-Plane 10 global, fixing naming inconsistencies between different DVD editions. You should only notice the update if you have installed European global scenery.
This beta also includes initial rough translations for Japanese and Portuguese; we'll be refining this over the beta period. The French translation has also been updated.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed crash at night (take 2, the fix in beta 3 was in itself broken).
  • Fixed cockpits going dark and camera angle moving at night.
  • Fixed support for Epic USB and other devices that send unsigned axis data but have LogicalMax with the signed bit set. 0xFF vs 0x00FF.
  • Improved update screen dialog so users can reject updates without a crash.
  • Liveries can be selected.
  • Barometric pressure knob fixed on C172 and other panels.
  • Plane-Maker won't prompt for safe-mode after an X-Plane crash.
  • Fixed crash if previous flown airplane is missing when X-Plane is next run.
  • Fixed sun glare on landing markings at KSEA when bump/normal mapping is disabled.
  • Interior geometry shown for older planes. Note that showing the inside of the fuselage and misc bodies is not recommended, not possible in airplanes saved for v10, and will be dropped completely in the future.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 3

Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed washed out cockpits on older airplanes like the CL415. Blog post coming soon explaining what this was, why authors might want to update their planes, and what's coming in the future for cockpits.
  • Fixed erratic joystick behavior on windows that prevented proper calibration
  • Fixed linux joystick problem preventing the detection of rudder pedals/trim wheels etc (NOTE: If it still doesn't find your device, you'll need to UDEV your /dev/input/event* device to give X-Plane permission).
  • Fixed roads shooting into the sky at LSZA. (There are a lot of the roads on this planet and we can't check them all by hand, so if you find yet more roads shooting into the sky, please file a bug!!)
  • Sim won't go into 'safe mode' after an auto-update.
  • Aircraft carrier wake doesn't show through carrier.
  • Fixed crash at night with C130 and other planes with no 3-d cockpit.
  • Fixed heat blur to not show up in first class cabin of 747 and other interiors.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 2

Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed crash on startup on Windows caused by some Joysticks
  • Joysticks no longer have a negative impact on frame rate.
  • Roads no longer shoot up into the sky at DSF tile ends.
  • Fixed crash with v9 DSFs with powerlines.
  • Hedges and bushes in autogen no longer stick into the street.
  • 4x SSAA HDR mode fixed to not draw into 1/4 of the screen.
  • Fixed blue and red artifacts in HDR mode on Windows machines.
  • Fixed white box around bomb craters in HDR mode.
  • Fixed blue flicker when QuickFlight carousel spins.
  • Fixed night water reflections in non-HDR mode.
  • Fixed brightness of lights reflected in water.
  • Improved UI tile scrolling in quick-flight dialog.

X-Plane 10.10 Beta 1

USABILITY
X-Plane now features a "Quick Flight" screen, which can open on load if desired. Besides being a nice way to quickly set up a simple flight and see all of your airplanes, the Quick Flight screen will save you time, because it appears before scenery is loaded. No need to wait for scenery to load, then change airports, then wait again. Start your flight where you want with the plane you want.
Q E R F < > arrow keys to move around: SHIFT to go FAST CONTROL to go SLOW this gives more control for movie-makers, as requested by various movie-makers.
20 new commands: 10 MEMORIZE view in 3-d cockpit 10 RECALL view in 3-d cockpit The 10 views, called "Quick-Look" views, are commands in the VIEW group in the keyboard assignment screen, but if you delete your preferences in the output/preferences folder, then they will default to the 10 numeric keypad numbers, and hit CONTROL plus that number to memorize a new view.
Joysticks can now be hot-plugged; X-Plane detects your joystick changes as they happen; no need to restart!
X-Plane now features automatic crash reporting. When X-Plane crashes (due to its own code or a plugin) it will gather up a crash report, which goes into its Output/Crash Reports folder. It will then present you the _option_ to send the report to Laminar Research automatically.
Whether or not you choose to send the report, the report is retained in Output/Crash Reports so you can see what data was collected and would have been sent. Reports you choose to send go into a database so that we can analyze them and search by common problems (e.g. do all of the crashes at this point in the code happen on this graphics card).
X-plane will attempt to detect low memory conditions before an actual crash happens and warn you. If possible, it will stop loading scenery but not terminate the app so you can save any preferences if desired. This is not a replacement for 64-bit but is designed to help differentiate low memory vs. an actual crash bug.
If X-Plane crashes, it will offer to optionally start up in 'safe mode' on the next run, with rendering settings set back to factory defaults. If you change a rendering setting that takes effect on restart and thus cannot restart the sim, this gives you an easy way to restore things.
COOL NEW STUFF
  • New oil rig... see it in the oil rig approach... really amazing detail.
  • New plane: Columbia-400!
  • Piaggo Avanti updated to be really nice, and is our default airplane for now.
  • Updated scenery textures. New textures for dry regions and Volcanos, as well as enhancements and refinements, including color adjustment.
  • New lights - the light texture and table of colors has been tuned up for better night lighting.
  • More "stuff" in the airport library.
(Autogen improvements are still in progress and will be available in a later beta.)
RENDERING ENGINE
The entire HDR pipeline has been rewritten to fix bugs and boost performance. It may be a bit before the bugs are all thrashed out.
  • Tone mapping in HDR mode now features dynamic exposure as you move the camera. The dynamic exposure is set to very small changes for now; we'll tune it during the beta.
  • Night lighting performance has been tuned considerably.
  • The "ATI Windows" issue is fixed: the ATI Windows driver is a bit slow to map memory compared to other drivers/platforms, so we use an alternate code path. This should provide lower CPU use for clouds on ATI Windows systems. If you still have slow clouds, then X-Plane is slow or your machine is slow or your settings are too high.
SCENERY SYSTEM
X-Plane creates a .ini file in Custom scenery to manage your scenery packs. You can reprioritize scenery without renaming folders by editing the file. This feature is meant as a base; someday we'll get a UI in front of it. Disable a pack you don't like by replacing SCENERY_PACK with SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED. New packs will be added to the .ini file automatically as they are found, so you never _have_ to edit this .ini file.
Scenery packs in custom scenery can be symbolic links, short cuts or aliases to other hard drives. Link the pack - that is, put the pack anywhere, and put the alias in custom scenery. draped objects work without specific LOd
The road rendering code has been overhauled to not put roads up in the sky and to avoid putting powerline towers on roads when possible. If you see a case where a road goes straight up into the air, please, re-report the bug against 10.10b1. But note that we are still tuning and fixing bugs in the roads.
Other scenery system bug fixes:
  • Line-style forest rendering fixed - the lines could be garbled.
  • Facade roof textures flipped horizontally - they were wrong before.
  • Placement of tiles in autogen strings improved.
  • Objects with draped geometry work even if there is non non-draped geometry and no LOD instructions. In 10.05r1 the default LOD was miscalculated. To ship scenery that works with 10.05r1, just use the explicit ATTR_LOD_draped command.
IMPROVED FLIGHT MODEL
controllable ram-air recovery for propeller engines assign the ram air recovery percentage for your recip or turboprop engine installation, and see what kind of power boost you can get at speed with a properly-designed inlet! this used to be hard-wired at 10% (pursuant to flight-test in my Cirrus) but is now controllable by you per-aircraft.
electric motors are limited on torque and power, so if you exceed redline rpm, the torque will be gin to fall off to hold constant power! electric motors can have efficiency as well, indicating what percentage of the watt-hours coming out of the battery make it to the prop! electric motors can re-gen power as well, if you enter a re-gen efficiency in the engines screen of Plane-Maker (Spool-Up tab.. where the engine efficiency mentioned above is also set) the re-gen model causes the prop to go into re-gen mode if the throttle is at idle, running the braking torque (and thus battery charge) up linearly with rpm until braking torque equals max allowable drive torque at redline prop rpm. These things are designed to make electric motor simulation really run well in X-Plane... even well enough to plan how a real electric airplane will perform!
manifold pressure tweaked still more! I am sorry to keep twiddling this one parameter, but i sure do want to get it right! we now DO use the max manifold pressure that you enter into Plane-Maker, so you should be able to control the results well.
when you fail the left or right flaps, they simply stay in the position they were in the moment the failure occurred. this makes it possible to fail the flaps when extended, so only one side RETRACTS! rather interesting for go-arounds with failed flaps on one side when you start to clean up the plane!
The weight and balance predictor in Plane-Maker (designed by me to test out real airplane designs!) now has a different weight and balance entry for each fuel tank, so you can see CG ranges at all possible fuel tank load-outs.
Metal coefficient on concrete increased a bit... this will reduce skidding on helos a bit, and make dynamic roll-over more likely!
More refinement of the transition from subsonic to supersonic flight model, with input from an F-18 pilot that spends time flying in both speed regimes. In reality, the air accelerates to (and beyond) the speed of sound as it moves around the body of the aircraft... even BEFORE the airplane makes it up to the speed of sound. We now start to emulate that effect a bit, starting to move to the supersonic flight modeling as the aircraft speed approaches Mach 1, with drag rising as shock waves form.
You now enter the starter HORSEPOWER in the engines screen, and it's behavior should be more realistic in flight. As well, starter current draw should be a lot more realistic now, and the starter torque should fall off as the rpm comes up due to power limits of the starter and it's associated circuitry.
New variable in Plane-Maker: Prop pitch time to enter beta. Enter a value here (in the Engines screen, Spoolup tab) to set how quickly the propeller can move. While you only enter the time to move from idle to beta, this prop speed is then used for ALL propeller operations.
AIRPLANES
  • Translucency is fixed in HDR mode - translucent glass should look the same in forward and HDR renders. If you have a model whose translucency changes, please re-report a bug!!!
  • V9-style lights don't "leak" - landing light affect exterior objects and global interior spill affects interior.
  • Prop disc overrides fixed.
NEW STUFF FOR AUTHORS
  • Textures can now be up to 4096 x 4096 pixels. Use good judgment as this can eat a lot of VRAM!!!
  • A new OBJ attribute GLOBAL_no_shadow excludes an object from shadow calculations. This is both good for performance and gets rid of ugly shadows on objects like grass that should not have shadows.
  • Autogen and roads can have attached objects that appear more often in higher rendering settings. Our artists will be using this to tune rendering performance.
  • Draped geometry in an object now has all of the same shader options as a road or autogen tile. Docs on this coming soon!
PLUGINS
  • Changing weather datarefs will not regenerate cloud puffs unless cloud-related datarefs change.
  • The sim no longer tests for a "crashed" airplane when the sim is paused. This test was causing the sim to believe that the user had crashed the aircraft when a plugin changed the airplane's position in the world. So now writing the airplane's position should work correctly even for far-away locations.
PLANE-MAKER
  • The screenshot command still works in Plane-Maker.
SMALL VISUAL REFINEMENTS
  • landing lights light up the rain and snow now... kind of a nice detail
  • heat blurr moved according to the exhaust location even with tilting engines for VTOL ops...nice if you want to try something like a JET V-22 type aircraft.
  • less water spray effect form hovering helos over wet terrain, as per reality.
  • no more brakes hanging on free-casting nosewheel craft. (oops!)
  • the LOCATION of the jettisonable load on the aircraft is now considered on all aspects of the flight model
in the weight and balance screen, add a nice big jettisonable water load and put it out on the wingtip! let the fun commence!
GENERAL OPERATING REFINEMENTS
situations can be saved even if you just loaded a situation to start up with! kind of convenient. situations within situations.
mouse controls rudder again, as desired, when no joy controls found
new file-open is nice... try it! should be much quicker to use. as well, new livery selection is nice... it is integrated with the aircraft-open
  • more failures that do not apply to your airplane are culled from the failure UI list
  • new command: "sim/flight_controls/brakes_toggle_auto" to toggle auto-brakes, as requested.
  • the cloud layers can now be as close together as you like
  • SLIGHT change in the icing model: you now only need ONE switch for bleed air or pneumatic on the panel now. it will active any bleed air and pneumatics on BOTH wings.
  • New command: "sim/autopilot/knots_mach_toggle" This is a new command (assignable to a joystick button or keyboard, and one shat should be used by custom-aircraft makers) that properly toggle between speed and mach number on the airspeed hold.
  • New command: "sim/flight_controls/tail_wheel_lock" Toggles the tailwheel lock.
  • New commands: ADF 1 and 2 cards, pilot and copilot, rotate up and down.
  • Much less turbulence from RAIN... you have to select STORMS or the turbulence slider to get noticeable turbulence,
or fly into CUMULUS clouds.
BUG-FIXES
  • shooting down other airplanes works.
  • lift fans possible, as intended.
  • these are insanely fun.
  • equip your plane with 1 (or more!) jet engine but set up 2 (or more) props.
  • be sure that the jet engine is set so it can be VECTORING! set the vector range in the helos and VTOL screen to at least 90 degrees, and check it as vectoring in the engines screen
  • for the props, set them to type LIFT FAN and give them plenty of RPM and make them ducted and at a vertical cant of 90 degrees
  • if you balance out the fan speed and radius number of blade and chord to absorb the right amount of power from the jet, then you should be able to get the thing balanced out to fly nicely like an F-35!
  • carrier catshot mission won't launch prematurely off the deck just cause you have toe-brakes, and should have better physics in place holding you before the shot

X-Plane 10.05 Release Candidate 1

10.05 is a minor patch from 10.04 to fix a few key bugs.
  • Carrier landings now work correctly.
  • The camera no longer goes through walls in 3-d cockpit mode on the Cirrus Jet and others. (ATTR_solid_wall now works again.)
  • The warning message for 32-bit versions of Windows has been moved to the first time you pick rendering settings, and the language has been edited for clarity.

X-Plane 10.04r3

  • V10 airplane electrical System and Bus Specs are now read correctly from airplanes. This was broken in later 10.04 betas.
  • V9 airplanes electrical systems are read in correctly.
This build is the final build of 10.04.

X-Plane 10.04 Release Candidate 2

  • Manifold pressure works the way it did in 10.03. We'll revisit better manifold pressure indications in a future beta when there's more time to get it right.
  • Trim setting labels in Plane-Maker's control tab fixed.

X-Plane 10.04 Release Candidate 1

  • Bug fix for ATC issuing altimeter on descent.
  • Fixed pilot-heading dataref to put sim in command-look mode.
  • Fixed parsing of OBJs with hard surfaces.

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 7

Beta 7 is out now. Note that to get it you need the new 3.1 installer. If you try to run the old installer, it will give you an error; if you simply update from the "about box", the new installer will be downloaded for you.
With this new installer, the installer and updater are one program. See here for more info than you ever wanted to know.
Lots of new art!!!
  • The C-130 is included!
  • Lit textures on cities and more city facades.
  • Tuning of spill lights in the airport library to improve fps.
  • Tuning and revision to natural terrain textures and forests.
  • For users with the X-Plane 10 Global DVD, you will get Aerosoft's European airports if you install scenery for those areas, or if you update and have those areas already installed.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed crash when loading airplanes or quitting, introduced in beta 6.
  • Fixed crash at EDDM on Linux (due to ATC taxi layout autogen running off the rails.)
  • Fixed missing sky and clouds with P180, x737 and other wide panels when 4x SSAA and HDR are in use.
  • Fixed the nasty bumps that airplanes were seeing when taxiing on runways at high altitude airports.
  • Fixed multithreaded scenery load on Windows. This may help some users with flashing triangles.
Rendering Engine & Scenery
  • Object exclusion zones now also exclude autogen, so scenery packs that get rid of default buildings now get rid of the v10 default autogen. There is not going to be an "Exclude autogen" - just use the objects exclusion zone!
  • Objects placed at high altitudes should now be at the correct location.
  • Latest apt.dat data from Robin included.
Plugin bug fixes, included in this beta:
  • XPLM returns a version with an extra digit, to match v9.
  • XPLM load/save data file APIs fixed.
  • De-icing failure datarefs fixed.
  • Datarefs.txt now matches the sim.
Refinements:
  • Manifold pressure model and Real-Weather reading are all improved... Now the manifold pressure model is based on real physics just like the rest of X-Plane (instead of just following the values entered in Plane-Maker) and the Real-Weather reading is refined to work with more accuracy and read reports in more countries, where formats can vary somewhat.

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 6

It's just like X-Plane 10.04 beta 5, but with the texture files back! See below for the fixes!

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 5

Note: Beta 5 was pulled due to missing texture files.
Clouds:
  • Cloud performance has been tuned. The cloud slider is not calibrated the way it was in 10.04b4; please don't worry about the number you see. Tune the slider to get the trade-off of quality and performance you want on your computer. The "100%" mark represents what we think a high-end system might show; you can go past this if you really liked the older high settings from previous betas, but realistically there's no need to do this.
  • The far view clouds should look less strange from orbital altitudes.
ATC:
  • Controllers now issue altimeter settings to aircraft on handoffs, on descents OUT of a flight level and every 50nm when appropriate.
  • Controllers now expect aircraft to fly with the correct altimeter setting and also properly monitors aircraft at flightlevels expecting them to be flying at a PRESSURE altitude (with their altimeters set to 29.92). At this moment, the transition level for the WORLD is set to 18,000 feet as it is in the USA. In the future, this will vary based on region.
  • AI aircraft are spawned at more appropriate speeds. In the past, they were spawned too slowly which caused them to stall and lose altitude which caused ATC to constantly nag them to regain their altitude. This was the primary cause for radio congestion!
  • Improved taxi routings across the world so they're a bit smarter.
Rendering:
  • The 3-d cockpit draws correctly for multi-monitor configurations with offset views on the side.
  • Our low-level OpenGL setup on Windows is now done a little bit differently; this change was recommended by people at NVidia who are very smart. But if you are running on Windows and you _can_ run 10.03 but you cannot start up the new beta at all, please file a bug!!
  • ATTR_draped now works with objects that do not have any LOD statements! There was a previous bug in X-Plane so that if you used ATTR_draped and did not have ATTR_LOD anywhere, the sim would not draw the draped geometry. This is now fixed, so ATTR_draped really does work as a drop-in replacement to ATTR_poly_os. Docs coming soon!!
Scenery:
  • Fixed facades in the airport library that were generating errors on load.
  • The roof edge of urban downtown facades should look correct.
DRM:
  • We are reworking our installer and DVD detection. If the sim won't go out of demo mode, but 10.03 works correctly, please be sure to file a bug!
MORE COOL NEW STUFF:
  • Compressor stall failures are refined, and can be solved by pulling fuel to the engine to shut it down.
  • Aircraft icing is now a bit more aggressive and realistic, and flexible with the ability to add 2 switches for AOA heat,
pitot heat, static port heat, engine inlet heat, prop heat, and wing heat! This lets you control these systems more precisely... and expect the correct results from their operation in flight!

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 4

ATC:
  • ATC checks aircraft altitude less frequently being a little more patient with pilots.
  • New aircraft spawn "silently" which should drastically improve radio congestion.
  • ATC should properly inform pilots of their expected approach and runway upon giving the pilot their FIRST vector for the approach.
Scenery:
  • Latest version of KSEA demo area has variable density of objects with the rendering settings. If you have a lower performance computer and run at medium object settings, the demo airport should have better framerate.
Weather:
  • Fixed black sky and broken transition from near to far terrain when flying over overcast cloud layers.
  • Fog coloring tweaked in the clouds a bit... The color should be more realistic INSIDE of the clouds!
  • More improvements in the read in of Real-Weather files... now handling more cloud types and report-types, including ones found in Europe!
Joystick:
  • Left and right brake BUTTONS should always work, as long as you do not have joystick AXIS assigned to left and right brakes!
  • Joystick can now over-ride autopilot, as in reality. BUT, beware! The autopilot will be fighting you with the servos, and the trim as well, and in some airplanes, the trim is stronger than the flight controls themselves!
Misc:
  • Fixed white triangles in sky when looking straight up.
  • Temporarily disabled alerts for illegally used ramp starts.
  • Transition to supersonic engine dynamics a hair more realistic... applies to engine DRAG as well as thrust!
  • Spherical and cylindrical projection corrected... See if you like it more! (If you have a pro-use key!)
  • (real) Garmin430 and Garmin430 WAAS driven more perfectly now, with the ability to set the OBS on the Garmin unit or the X-Plane panel.

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 3

Beta 3 contains a few fixes to bugs introduced earlier in the beta, as well as some experimental stuff.
DRM: X-Plane 10.04 beta 3 will remember that it has seen a DVD for 24 hours, alleviating the need to keep the DVD in the drive all of the time. Chris will blog about this in more detail later.
Rendering artifacts: X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 introduced a bug where the internal visibility could become a negative number. This introduced a ton of weird artifacts, including missing pieces of runway and broken lighting. Beta 3 fixes this. Please read the following carefully.
  • If you reported a rendering artifact bug for X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 _and_ if that bug was _new_ to X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 _and_ if the bug is not fixed in beta 3, please re-report the bug.
  • Please do _not_ re-report rendering artifact bugs that were also in beta 1. We already have those bugs in our database; we only want to see how many of the new beta 2 artifacts were fixed by this single change.
Other Fixes:
  • Beta 2 was overly sensitive about misplaced airport beacons and windsocks. At this point you should be able to load any custom scenery that loaded in previous versions of X-Plane 10. If your apt.dat contains misplaced beacons and airports you will get a log warning.
  • Facades that consist of one floor plus an angled roof should now work like v9.
  • The internal version for .sit and .rep has been incremented because the formats are changed slightly.

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 2

  • All buttons on the FMS's should work properly even if there are two different FMS's in the airplane.
  • Wind-shear and turbulence model refined a little more to be more complex in it's randomness, and not always quite so strong in what are requested to be moderate conditions, and to change in a reasonable way with altitude. This should help improve wind and turbulence modeling, especially with Real-Weather turned on.
  • X-15 drop and Space-Shuttle-carry missions should work properly now.
  • Right-mouse drag to look around in 3-D cockpit command-look view, and mouse scroll wheel zooms. This is a pretty convenient way to look around the 3-D cockpits. (This works in "command" look mode, not mouse look mode! So when you are not right-mouse dragging, the view stays still and you can manipulate the 3-d panel.)
  • Track-IR functions in ALL 3-d cockpit views now... It has WORKED for years, but is now easier to find since it engages in ALL 3-d cockpit views, not just one.
  • Cool new feature for QuickTime movies: Movie quality! Set it high or low depending on how good you want it to look... and how much disk space you want to burn!
  • External visuals should sync-up faster in the multi-machine setups, which should save some time in real flight-training scenarios.
  • Landing lights, spotlights, and spotlight aiming-angles all go from master machine to external visuals now.
  • Plane-Maker system screen: Option to auto-load with current values, or not, airspeed, vertical speed, and altitude when a new autopilot mode is engaged.
  • Visibility tuned to change with altitude in a more accurate way to follow the reported weather more closely.
  • AI planes should be better about holding desired altitude now, resulting in less annoyed air traffic controllers.
  • Fixed: incorrect warnings about missing scenery
  • Fixed (partly): the ocean shading should have fewer sharp lines on it. Far view shading of the ocean is still a work in progress...more color tuning in a future beta.
  • Fixed: wing flex now works - X-Plane was incorrectly zeroing out wing-flex on some v10 planes.
  • Fixed: sharp turns in taxiway lines now render correctly at KSEA and other airports.
  • Fixed: right button on Linux is now the "right" button, not the scroll wheel itself.
  • Fixed: plugins won't crash if they try to read the weather from XPluginStart
Facades:
  • Roof behaviors now match v9 for legacy facades
  • A bunch of new features to control the exact appearance of facade-attached objects - docs coming soon!
  • New facade features: attached objects on facades appear and disappear with "objects" rendering setting for better performance.

X-Plane 10.04 Beta 1

ATC:
  • AI Aircraft now climb/hold altitude better dramatically reducing the frequency of hearing ATC yell at them.
  • Protect against aircraft doing something WAY out of bounds like departing instead of taxiing or holding short.
  • Stability improvements
  • Step descents dramatically improved
  • ATC should now tell the user what approach they're setting them up for
  • ATC "Radio" box text color tweak
  • Fixed AI aircraft names
Lots of tuning and tweaking to make everything just right here in this release:
  • Plane should be able to hold still quite a bit better during runup, and not slowly drift with the brakes on!
  • Manifold pressure model is now improved to be more like real planes.
  • French and Spanish translation improvements to make the menus a hair more accurate in those languages.
  • Better vertical resolution of the NMEA strings for newer (real) moving maps that plot vertical paths as well.
  • More resolution in the FDR replays, so even little RC drones with small movements can have their paths recorded perfectly.
  • Cylindrical projection should be able to handle changing the screen-res on the fly with no problem now.
  • Better metar parsing: X-Plane should not be confused over various comments in the metars about the wind.
  • As well ATIS should report the visiblity accuratley in all cases. Earlier versions did not report the very low-vis cases correctly.
  • And, an option to re-scan real-weather to go along with re-download.
  • The heat-blurr rendering effect is now offset by the exhaust offset specified in Plane-Maker, which is useful.
  • As well, the heat blurr now draws for ALL planes, not just the one you are flying.
  • As well, you can specify the exhsust offset PER ENGINE!
  • Proper cloud textures used even if you have both cumulus and cirrus layers at the same time.
  • The yaw-string is visible for the gliders and helos.
  • A-I airplanes should be a bit more robust, really adding power if needed to get out of ditches or up hills, and not having systems break, rendering the plane stopped or otherwise motionless.
  • TCAS system should only call out guys with their transponder on...and the AI should only turn on their transponder for flight, not taxi! This is getting down to a pretty crazy level of realism, here.
  • New failure: brown-out! In the upper right of the first page of failures.
A pretty nice failure for helos, added for use in real military training now!
Aircraft and Attached Objects:
  • Aircraft can now have any number of attached objects; the interface is revamped to show this.
  • Attached objects now have per object control over LOD, shadowing, and pre-fill. These options let you tune your plane for maximum performance. Click the "More Info" button in the Plane-Maker screen to view a description of what the settings do and how they should be used.
  • The 747 and CirrusJet now have some of the pre-fill and shadow options set to improve 3-d cockpit framerates; we'll work through the other planes during beta.
  • Wing flex for v9 planes now defaults to off; this prevents graphic errors when the attached parts aren't authored to flex with the wings.
  • Plane-Maker taxi lights don't shine into the interior of the P-180.
  • Fixed culling and drawing of OBJ-based weapons in the sim and Plane-Maker
Other random stuff:
  • The fps test is fixed to not sit in the joystick calibration screen.
  • New smoke puff artwork
Baron: Fixed the altimeter needle. King air: Multiple flight model / engine enhancements. (Per Jan Grundke / Twinpropflyer ) input.

X-Plane 10.03 Release Candidate 2

ATC:
  • Bug fix for crash when flying approaches into untowered fields.
  • Fixed other crash in ATC
Rendering:
  • Fixed corrupt geometry at KBTR and other locations. (These were facade roofs being stretched off into space!)
  • Sim will refuse to run with a clear error message for old non-supported hardware.

X-Plane 10.03 Release Candidate 1

Performance:
  • Framerate improved for 2-d panel views and forward-no-HUD, particularly with HDR enabled.
Rendering:
  • Clouds look better.. best yet!
ATC:
  • Fixed some minor crashes
  • Improved approach altitudes slightly
  • Fixed step descents and made the descents a bit shallower.
Linux:
  • Fix crash when XRANDR is not installed.
  • Replay mode slider restored.

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 10

  • Fix for hang while flying with AI planes or on startup
  • Fix for missing DSF tile on really heavily loaded machine (this is a really rare bug)

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 9

Beta 9 is a quick fix to beta 8. Beta 8 was removed from distribution due to a fatal crash; all of beta 8's bug fixes are of course included in beta 9, as well as:
  • Fixed a Windows crash bug in beta 8.
  • Fixed missing runway and city lights at some monitor settings.
  • Restored framerate with clouds visible.
  • Fixed crash in ATC system on startup.
  • Fixed missing sunlight in planet-wide view.

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 8

NOTE: Beta 8 has been removed due to crashes on Windows. Beta 7 is available. A new beta will be out shortly with the features listed below and a fix to the new crash.
Coolness:
  • City lights are better tuned to look nice at a wide variety of resolutions and fields of view.
  • Cloud lighting is more accurate, which is really nice, especially for overcast and stratus clouds.
  • Aircraft lighting is a hair nicer in cloud shadow.
  • Rendering options are streamlined and organized a hair better... with "one-push to set to max frame-rate" button.
Flight-Control:
  • Joystick should now be more responsive! You should see a more instant and accurate response.
  • You now get help with joystick calibration on your first start-up.
ATC:
  • Fixed stability issues in ATC system
  • Fixed step descents
  • Fixed problems with controllers that had multiple frequencies
Plugins:
  • Fixed weather datarefs when real weather is in use
  • Fixed airplane loading by plugins on Windows
Weather:
  • Fixed disappearing objects when Real Weather is in use
Rendering:
  • Fixed diseappearing horizon artifacts
  • Tuned shadow options - hopefully they should be a bit less blurry and a little bit faster
  • Improved GPU fill rate a little bit in 3-d cockpit view with HDR on
Bug-Fix:
  • Now you can take screenshots even if already recording a quicktime movie or sending imagery to EFIS-App.

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 7

ATC:
  • Fixed bug sometimes causing the wrong controller to be assigned during a taxi reroute (gnd vs twr)
  • Fixed bug preventing Delivery from giving clearances to people who were given gate holds for weather.
  • Runway Flow changes less unstable
  • AI Flies Plane now picks less silly destinations
  • ATC works properly with --no_sound options now
  • File Flight Plan menu item now properly disabled when necessary
Weather:
  • No more seeing the inside of the clouds
  • No more seeing stars from inside the clouds
General:
  • When you create a navaid in the editing screen in the map page, you CAN see that navaid, making it easier to edit
  • Replay mode shows properly in IOS
  • A little more room for airport data in the low enroute map when you click on an airport... leaves room for frequencies with longer descriptions
  • Slight speed improvement when world level of detail is turned down and autogen is turned up
Aircraft:
  • Weapons now move with wing flex
  • Wing flex a hair faster and tighter
  • More runways displayed in the map, if there is room based on your texture resolution
  • 172 starter dialed down a hair
  • Tire puffs from other planes should always be at right elevation
  • Custom prop discs aren't used for AI planes
For this build, if you are running a 32-bit version of Windows and have not set up your computer to allow 3 GB of virtual memory per process, X-Plane will detect the virtual memory limit and suggest this page: Running Out of Memory

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 6

ATC:
  • Fixed bug preventing lowercase routings from working
  • Fixed numerous crashes in the ATC system.
  • Fixed bug causing AI planes to suddenly taxi through a hold short line wildly.
  • Fixed bug causing the view to change while using the arrows to navigate ATC menus.
  • Adjusted timers to let users communicate with ATC more easily.
  • Adjusted "off course" tolerances to make it less annoying.
  • Improved automatic layout generation at KTCM (and hopefully other airports that are long and thin)
Aircraft:
  • CRJ and other aicraft cockpits should work at night in HDR mode on OS X Lion.
  • Sim is more tolerant of missing textures - the rules now match v9 for OBJs.
  • Slight improvement to braking model to aid in erroneous aircraft drifting.
  • Baron 58: Added cockpit night lighting. Use the four lighting knobs under the copilot yoke to adjust.
  • F4 Phantom: Adjusted the flight model for better in-flight handling and more reasonable manners on approach and landing.
  • Fixed seg fault in weight/weapons window.
Rendering:
  • Fixed cut-off global lights on ATI hardware.

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 5

Rendering:
  • Fixed cut-outs in rain when HDR mode is enabled.
  • Fixed square white runwy lights in heavy Cat-III IFR when HDR is disabled.
  • Fixed corrupt drawing on UFMC when HDR mode is enabled.
ATC:
  • Fixed a bug causing bad taxi routings which may have caused ATC to constantly issue new taxi clearances.
  • Joystick General Command Up/Down and Contact ATC key assignments now work with the ATC menus.
Instruments:
  • FMS should now operate normally.

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 4

Scenery:
  • Custom scenery packs with legacy file organization now work
  • Fixed crash for RealScenery Oahu (and any DSF with car-only road networks)
  • Restored some v9 library paths for overlay scenery
  • This update should install the bug fixes to Paris, Denver, and a few other tiles if you have them installed from DVD.
Aircraft:
  • Fixed erroneous FMS clear
  • Fixed Auto-throttle auto-engage
  • Prop disc plugin override is not reset when the flight is restarted
  • Fixed out-of-order key-frame tables for generic rotaries
  • Fixed black area in 3-d cockpit of P180 and other planes with HDR on
  • Temporarily removed generic map instrument - we'll put it back once it's fully finished
ATC:
  • Fixed a common ATC related crash due to weather changes
  • Fixed common ATC related crash due to an audio issue
  • Corrected Heading/Altitude Rounding
  • Improved efficiency and quality of ATC taxi routes
Misc:
  • Removed 16-bit color option from monitor-res popup. 16-bit color is not supported!
  • Fixed ghosting on NVidia cards

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 3

This beta adds Plane-Maker and Airfoil-Maker back to the beta - sorry about that!
ATC:
  • Fixed crash when taxi routings were short/zero (like being next to the runway)
  • Fix to improve reroutes

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 2

Aircraft:
  • Vectored thrust and rocket powered aircraft should have their thrust-vectoring and rockets engines working properly.
  • Situation replays should work, even if they are based on a different type of aircraft that you are flying at the moment you load.
  • Baron - Enhancements to the textures and new normal maps for exterior included.
  • Baron - Flight model tweaks and some cockpit functions calibrated to operate properly.
ATC:
  • Improvements to how "AI Flies Plane" works
  • Disable ATC voice when "All Sound" is off.
  • Fix for crash caused by moving the user's plane from one region to another while communicating with ATC

X-Plane 10.03 Beta 1

Aircraft
  • Forward-no-panel views now never show random parts of the airplane. This may help some users with performance in that view.
  • Fixed a number of rendering bugs with HDR mode and weapons, including weapons with missing or pixelated fuselages.
  • Steerable landing light goes in the right direction.
  • Fix for v9 aircraft crashing when saved in v10 format.
  • Fixed needle deflection generic instrument to actually deflect.
Updater
  • When this beta is updated to the next, restarting X-Plane on Mac/Lin won't fail with a UDP socket error.
  • Web update URL fixed - this may help with some ISPs.
General Data
  • Updated Nav and Airport database to 2011.13 to correct problems with incorrect/impossible controller comm frequencies e.g.(109.60)
Scenery/Rendering
  • V9 DSF roads with duplicate points will load correctly.
  • Fixed black spots in KSEA demo area.
  • Stars dimmed slightly.
ATC
  • Fixed issue where going to some remote untowered airports would cause the AI aircraft to spawn and be destroyed repeatedly.
  • ATC now continues to function even in special situations e.g.(Tow/Shuttle/Carrier etc.)
  • Fixed several smaller stability issues related to active zones.
  • Fixed broken runway phrase during takeoff/landing clearances.
  • ATC now properly stops running when the sim is paused, in replay mode or in a modal dialog.

X-Plane 10.02 Beta 2

Artifacts:
  • Fixed triangle artifacts in the sky on some cards
  • Fixed "missing engines" on some jet aircraft
Stability:
  • Fixed numerous ATC related crashes

X-Plane 10.02 Beta 1

Hardware Support:
  • Fixes crash with Intel GPUs on Windows.
  • Fixes fatal error message with ATI Radeon X1000-series GPUs on all operating systems.
Performance:
  • Rendering settings will default based on category of hardware - in some cases this should give better fps on default settings.
  • X-Plane now detects cards that advertise instancing but don't have native hardware support; avoiding software-emulating instancing may help fps with heavy objects and moderate world level of detail. This affects the GeForce 8800, 9400, 9600, and 330M on OS X.
  • Smoke puff code is optimized - this can help fps with AI traffic enabled.
Stability:
  • Fixed numerous ATC related crashes
  • Fixed background ATC audio problem
Artifacts:
  • A number of artifacts in HDR mode are fixed.
Plugins:
  • Non-fat Linux plugins will now load.
  • Some plugins that had drawing problems in HDR mode may now work.

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