X-Plane 10.25 beta 3 is now available. If you already have 10.25b1 you will be prompted to auto-update. This build adds some new dry-climate urban textures; here is a comparison.
If we don’t find any more show-stopping bugs, there will be one release candidate, with some updated level-of-detail distance internal settings.
In the future, I will try to write up the scope of changes for the beta-run when the first beta comes out, so you don’t have to ask “will you fix X in this beta?” For small betas, we try to have all intended fixes available in beta 1, but sometimes (such as with dry urban textures) the fixes go into later betas because they are not ready).
Hi Ben,
Great to see the textures improving!!
Could I ask if you could elaborate a bit on what global natural terrain improvements mean?
Many thanks for the update.
Dom
I actually don’t know. Albert posted a few updates to the global terrain between beta 1 and beta 2/3, so I updated what we ship. He or Andras would have to comment.
Hi Ben, great visual improvement over that textures!. By updated LOD distance do you mean that blurry look on far scenery?
Jerry C.
No – the blurry look is caused by:
(1) the high-res DSF scenery not going far enough into the distance before we go to the low res planet and
(2) the planet itself not being high enough res/detail.
We’re looking at that for 10.30.
The LOD distances are where the autogen stops drawing because it is too far away and we use a lower detail representation (like just the footprint textures or just terrain). Alex is tweaking that now.
OK, that’s why it looks “slightly better” when you turn on the “hi-res from orbit” option. It’s great that the blurry look is on the “near to-do list”. Anyway, keep up the gook work!
Jerry C.
Well, your tex res matters too – those textures are very sensitive to resolution so if you can’t run at “extreme res” you lose res. 🙁
That will be a nice improvement, thanks for working on that
Hi Ben,
looking at those images I see that the new beta have ‘lost’ one or two FPS towards the 10.22, it’s due to a different configuration or we could expect some FPS loss with the 10.25?
Thanks in advance (and sorry for my English).
Angelo
I wouldn’t take those numbers too seriously – that’s probably a dev build with heavy error checking on and all sorts of other random factors.
Generally I think you will lose fps in the following conditions:
– If you were at the edge of running out of VRAM, in theory this build could push you over since there are more textures.
– If there was no buildings at your local airport and now there are, you’ll have less fps since you are seeing more stuff.
Falls under “your mileage may vary”. My system (Gentoo Linux) saw a 5FPS increase in performance from 10.22 with all settings the same.
Thank you for your answers, I’ll do more tests comparing 10.22 and 10.25b3 on the same system.
Angelo
I notice that no airports are listed in the release notes. Does that mean:
a. There are new airports in the release, but you haven’t listed them in the release notes.
b. There are indeed no new airports in this beta.
c. No-one submitted any airport to Robin this time.
In the case of b, how often will we see new airports being included in a new release?
There is no list of airports for betas 2 or 3. That is because: (b) – we did not add any additional airports to betas 2/3.
We will not be adding additional airports during the rest of 10.25 – we’re trying to get it done and ship it.
I can’t comment on C – no idea what Robin has gotten.
I expect we’ll take more airports in the next beta cycle. I don’t know when that will be. We have talked about doing a small update ONLY for airports if it’s a long time between betas AND we get a bunch of submissions.
Right now we’re trying to get the submission moderation process ironed out a bit, which is higher priority than the next update.
Will any DSF recuts be shipped with the final 10.25? I’m looking forward South America ones, especially the part related to the SBRJ airport.
No – they’ll have to ship in a later update.
Nice textures by the looks of the comparison. I’ve been waiting for these eagerly since I fly around Tucson a lot. Just in time for some important vids I need to cut too. THANKS!!!!
Good work guys! These are the details that give more fun when flying, I personally think that is a great progress for the X-Plane, congratulations!
Is it possible to add exclusion zones by deafult for the new airports? Otherwise there will be many “double airports”.
The authors would have to add them. But the new airports should be LOWER priority than custom scenery. I’m working on another post about this.
I’ve noticed a huge framerate drop compared to 10.22 (eg. 30-80 fps in 10.22 down to the teens in 10.25b run). I’ve not been able to find a convincing possible explanation here or on the forum. Is this normative? (iMac, late 2012, 10.9, 3.1 GHz, 16 GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512MB)
similar result here, but only down 10-15 fps (25%)
loading is crazy: CPU usage goes up to 400%-600%
then 1-2 fps for a bit
Once things stabilize, it seems fine, just slower
iMac
Mid 2010, 16GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB