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I have a bunch of stuff to post about in detail, so let me first clear out the “what’s going on” category.

  1. I’m not actually going to law school, and we’re not canceling X-Plane to become a non-practicing entity.  That was an April Fools Day joke.
  2. We’re working on the finishing touches to X-Plane 10.21, which will go into beta soon and have a short beta period.  10.21 is almost entirely bug fixes; I’ll write up more detailed notes on this later.
  3. I have a new semi-official beta of MeshTool 2.x that fixes bugs; if you use MeshTool and would like to test it, poke me.  I have not had time to get a MeshTool 3.x (that creates v10 DSFs) working yet.
  4. I’m working on a new beta of WED, one that includes the “submit-to-Robin” work-flow for submitting airports built entirely out of library parts.
  5. Alpilotx and I are working on DSF recuts.  I’ll post more details on this process in another post – there’s a lot to say about it.

That’s a rough picture of what’s going on – details to follow.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

32 comments on “Announcements/Stuff Coming Up”

  1. how many people are you?, can I/we help you?, I’m sorry, but I feel that you are moving very slow, whats about chris? what about ATC development?

  2. Ben, can you clarify on the “submit to Robin” capability for the new WED build? Will it submit only library references or will it not work at all if we use any non-library resources?

    Thanks!

    Brian

    1. You can only submit data to Robin that uses library elements from the default sim. No custom art assets, no open-scenery-x, etc.

      1. I get that part. The reason I was asking is that I’m assuming I will have to develop new workflows to accommodate this capability. If the system will submit only the library parts (even if I have non-library parts) that is one workflow. If it will not submit at all if it detects a single non-library asset that is another. If it is the latter , then I need to build all of the library aspects first, submit to Robin, then continue adding the custom stuff for org or other release. Is that a better explanation of the question? 🙂

        Thanks!

        1. Hi Brian,

          I do not know what the exact behavior will be if you try to submit a layout that fails validation (E.g. has library parts in it) – my thinking now is that it won’t export at all.

          The motivation for this: you can’t actually _view_ the stuff you submit to Robin – it’s packed for him. What you can do is control-B to build your scenery pack, view it, go “that’s nice”, then pick “export for global airport data” and email the zip file to Robin.

          If the export-for-Robin function silently ignores invalid data, then you’re submitting data to Robin that you have never seen (because it won’t match the control-B build-scenery-pack output) and thus you could be sending something to Robin that looks silly due to WED’s dropping your data silently.

          So I think the right solution is: pass validation first, export second.

          If you are trying to do two versions of your scenery pack, that’s your work-flow problem to solve…there’s no one right way to do that.

          1. Thanks, that is pretty much what I was thinking. It would be a real PITA to do the whole project then try to go back and sort out what was what.

      2. Hey Ben,

        What about updates to an existing airport, somebody building the same airport that is already in the database, and/or two people somehow working on the same airport and submitting their work in between cuts from Robin? Is there going to be a way to “grade” each of the submitted airports for accuracy and detail to determine if the submitted airport should be included by Robin? Also along those lines, how would anybody know what airports have been submitted/included with each cut from Robin and whether any improvements could/should be made, especially if more stock airport assets become available to expand upon the number and types of the assets currently available? Would there be a “Master Submitted Airport List” somewhere?

        Cheers

        1. I’m going to meet Robin for dinner in about half an hour – I’ll bring it up with him. But naively I’d say: don’t panic – we already receive user submitted data and we’re not seeing a ton of collisions. We’ll find a way to communicate. 🙂

  3. Yes, what about ATC development? It’s been very quiet, but on the other hand the 10.20 has been about 64 bit. But we are dying for news about what is coming, and personally I care about ATC 🙂

  4. Very good news for the DSF recut!

    Thanks for caring about VFR pilots missing ground features such as lakes…

  5. The news about global DSF recuts are extremely welcome, Ben! Please tell us all about it in an appropriate post and don’t let off any details.

    I can not possibly stress how much I have seen forward to updated DSF data. I’ve spent easily about 150+h just this year on improving detail in OSM. I am so looking forward to seeing it come to life in X-plane!

    Also, please announce just a rough estimate of when you’re actually going to do the final OSM import, so I know how many days left I have to cram in just that last detail of our town!

    As always, X-plane team – GREAT work! Two thumbs up! Hope all is well with Austin too.

  6. Quick question, are you going to extract data from openstreetmap soon?, I ask because I am working on mapping my city like Andras told me some months ago, and I would love to see that data on XP10.

    Regards,

    Aitor

  7. Ditto on ATC improvements (like VFR ground/tower coms). Maybe a #6 on your list? Submits to Robin (#4) will run really cool with ATC.

  8. Hi Ben,

    Is there anything on the horizon for improving X-Plane’s use with multiple displays? Video cards have advanced a lot in recent years (Multi GPU) and some us would like to be able to take advantage of this, rather than having to network multiple computers together (or running multiple instances of XP on one machine) etc. Anything to report?

  9. All great news!! 🙂

    About point 4, you said “(…) built entirely out of library parts”.

    A good idea would be make a library guide of XP10 objects (and POLs, lines, etc.), maybe in PDF or something similar; a very simple guide only with a structure/hierarchy of objects and little photos of elements. It could be a big help for scenery “legobrick” developers… I think.

    Cheers

  10. Regarding scenery development, I am an extensive user of Autodesk software and one of their more recent software releases is 123D Catch which allows you to take multiple photos from different view positions (the more the better) and it is transformed into a 3D model of detail depending on the photo quality inputs… REALLY COOL

    As this is a really great software tool, I was wondering whether that tool can be used to create ‘real-world’ 3D scenery of anything you want of perfect resolution and clarity and then convert that to scenery for X-Plane… Google StreetView will also be an invalueble tool for this when modelling cities where you don’t live… Should then be able to create a truly REAL SIMULATOR that way, if someone had the time and patience of course to do whole cities… I know it does not tie in well with the ‘plausible world’ envisaged with XP10 but I think many people would like to fly around their ‘real’ city from their homes!

    I don’t know anything about scenery creation for X-Plane as yet so forgive me if this is already ‘answered’ somewhere… Seems like a great business plan for any 3rd party developers too!

    Regards

    1. I’m an autocad guy myself, and the way I’ve been getting my objects in to the sim is exporting them as a .3DS and bringing them in to AC3D and then exporting them as a .obj after tweeking them.

  11. Any chance you could have the line tool work like the Taxiline tool in which what you add to the scenery is instantly visible without having to go into X-Plane to see the changes? I have some interesting ideas of how to use this tool more effectively. Thank you for the consideration.

  12. Hi Ben,
    Watching your uploads at Github (Blender scripts) is a bit confusing me. Some are under the branch “scenery v10” but contain work for dealing with airplanes, some are under the “Master” branch, signalizing an upload “2 days ago” but going through the code, no “BSupnik” is found (old files by J.Harris but still valid?)
    Last not least, is there a way to report a bug in the scripts? I might have found one.
    Greetings Ron

    1. Hi Ron,

      The branch I posted covers all aspects of v10 OBJ stuff, so scenery is a slightly misleading term. Jonathan is still around, but sometimes in stealth mode. 🙂 He and I have not sorted out release plans and/or bug reporting, etc.

      Cheers
      Ben

  13. How does MeshTools work exactly?
    1. Does it able one to fix rouged runway/taxiways?
    2.Does it imports SRTM data
    3.Does it use shapefiles?

    1. PS..

      How exactly good is X-Plane 10 DEM data these days, is it arc 3 or better?

      1. It’s still 90m DEMs, a blend of SRTM and other sources, built into an irregular triangulation (TIN) that reduces the quality opportunistically. The sampling frequency of the DEM is not a particularly good metric of the ‘quality’ of the DEM.

    2. 1. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘rouged’ runways/taxiways…rogue? Rough? It may be moot; MeshTool edits base meshes, not airport layouts.
      2. Yes – it can use SRTM data.
      3. Yes, for water coastlines.

      1. Sorry!
        When Runway Follow Terrain is on, then some airports have bumby or un-even runways – Seems like there is not everywhere (mesh dependant) the airport are up to quality.

        Anyway, I have now gotten DEM data 10m, 20m and 50m for Norway and would love to see if I can use them, but as you say initially there is no way to make V10 dsf files yet? Will this be hopefully available in MeshTools 3?

  15. Hi Ben,

    Will the new scenery cuts improve water/river class?

    For example; flying from Darrington to Concrete one can normally follow the river between these two airstrips, but in X-Plane’s current state there is no river.

    Cheers

    Dom

    1. It depends on the rivers. Rivers that were lost due to water bugs will be fixed; rivers that are beyond the scope of what the global scenery does in its current form aren’t on the table right now.

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