WED 1.5.1 is now out – this is a quick bug fix patch to 1.5. Besides fixing a bug where the downloadable preview packs from the gateway were missing static aircraft info, there’s a nice usability enhancement:
When a polygon fails validation due to a zero length side (two adjacent nodes on top of each other) the validation command selects the second vertex in each pair. Just hit the delete key once and your polygon is fixed! (Thanks to Michael for submitting the patch to this.)
We already have some working WED code to support X-Plane 11’s dynamic ground vehicles; Ted is working on it and we’ll get it moved to the public servers at some point. I am aiming to have WED in public beta condition by the time X-Plane 11 ships.
It appears a lot of scenery files have this issue. Is there anyway you can automate this process in WED?
Automation is possible – but there is also danger that there are situations where such an automated edit may cause havoc. Validation is to deal with unforseen errors, not with things that come out of tightly controlled situations.
And its quite fast – alternate V and until all broken poly’s are done. It also selects all problematic nodes on a given poly in one swoop now.
What takes me much longer is fixing taxiway hotzone tags – usually it takes 8 clicks to put the 4 tags on for each segment. And often I have to take incorrect tags off as well. So that takes me much longer.
Why WED 1.5.x is not compatible with Snow Leopard as I have understood X-Plane 11 will ?
X-Plane 11 _will not_ be compatible with OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I’ll post more on system requirements, but Apple is now on OS X 10.12, so we are not going to support -seven- distinct versions of OS X, all with different drivers.
WED 1.5.x is not compatible with snow leopard because the new 64-bit UI code requires newer APIs.
Snow Leopard was superceded by Lion 5 years ago; it was released 7 years ago. Modern browsers with modern security updates won’t run on it. Apple has a policy of moving the OS version forward quickly and not providing a ton of backward compatibility. If you want to use new software on OS X, you’ll have to live with the consequences of this.
You mean we have to update to 10.12 ?
No. You have to update to 10.7 or later.
Thanks for that reassurance, Ben. I’ve been building on 10.6 – looks like it’s time to up to 10.7, the most recent version of OSX my poor old Mac pro build machine can take.
Wait – let me be clear:
– To use WED you must update to at least 10.7, because WED’s minimum requirements right now are 10.7.
– To use X-Plane 11, you will need an even newer version of OS X. We have not yet announced (or finalized) the minimum version of OS X for X-Plane 11, but it will be -at least- OS X 10.9, if not higher…10.10 is also a possibility. We are definitely dropping support for Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion with XP11.
Wait a minute, Ben – why? Is there some cost factor here? Seems a bit out of a synch – to support WED with 10.7, but not the core sim. I strongly urge LR to reconsider. This will cost me – and perhaps other developers – the ability to offer cross-platform solutions for plugins unless I invest in hardware I can’t afford. Add-ons aren’t huge money trees as it is.
Yes, there’s definitely a cost! Each Mac OS is a dead-end for drivers – you can’t back-port them, so each Mac OS is a unique OpenGL driver implementation that we would have to (1) retest any time we touch our OpenGL code and (2) work around any bugs that will never be fixed.
There are only two versions of the NVidia windows driver that cover -all- supported hardware we might possibly support – and only one that supports non-ancient hardware. There are only three AMD drivers that support any hardware we might possibly support – and only two for modern hardware. That’s 4-6 GL stacks to cover 66% of our users.
In that context, adding support for, say, Lion, and Mountain Lion – each with < 10% of our 33% mac Users (so...3.3% of users each), each bringing three full drivers (NVidia, AMD, Intel) - that's a ton of driver variation for a fraction of users. What hardware do you have that you expect to run X-Plane 11 on that can't run 10.9 or 10.10?
I have a 2006 Mac Pro that I use only to build plugins on. I have a hunch (more like a wild guess) that these plugins might work just fine no matter the OS, unless there’s a key library that gets updated that XCode uses, and is not backwards compatible.
The thing of it is, building isn’t enough – I would at least need to make sure that the plugin functions as it should, so I need to be able to run on that system too, even if at the very most minimal rendering settings. It sure won’t be my daily driver.
That confession made, perhaps I should modestly future proof my development capabilities and at least move up to OSX El Capitan (10.11). Does this sound like a safe bet right now: would this OS definitely run X-Plane 11.xx, once the dust settles on the requirements decision?
I want to be able to update my plugins just as soon as X-Plane 11.0 is released, so there’s lead time mixed in here to get the hardware on site and projects migrated. With a potential November release, the clock is ticking for you guys and anyone else that supports X-Plane code.
Hi Steve,
That machine’s long in the tooth. I have the 2008 Mac Pro, and I’m not going to be using it for XP11. You can, theoretically, put a bunch of GPU into the machine by getting an after-market 7900, but that machine has a front side bus and not an on-chip memory controller, which makes a HUGE difference in terms of performance.
I think El Capitan is guaranteed for 11.x – we aren’t going to require Sierra.
Thanks, Ben. Sorry for the OT in the direction of system specs, but it’s good to be talking about it somewhere in public where we can get good answers directly from the gents that make the decisions.
This is big help in the right direction. I’m going to plan for a used Mac, maybe a Mini, that will meet the minimum spec for X-Plane 10, since that’s all we have to go on right now: 2.5ghz processor, 4gb of RAM and at least 1gb of VRAM or the equivalent. Hope that will be enough to at least function at the most basic level for plugin development purposes. If anything were to increase, it would be the RAM, I’m thinking. Hard to get more VRAM without robbing a bank!
Disregard my “why.” I also queried Austin, and have a sense of the need now. I would imagine, therefore that the determination of OS support will be made hopefully sooner, rather than later, so that developers can assess their hardware needs and act swiftly to be ready to migrate and be prepared to support X-Plane 11.xx.
Hi Guys
Thank you for this. However have 2 questions:
Will the objects be updated?
Will the new X-Plane interface be able to have the pilot select the startup ramp?
Cheers
Yes, you can pick your startup ramp – you can pick it by name or visually from an airport diagram.
Will the objects be updated – too vague to answer.
Thx Ben, the real question would have been on the startup screen, at this stage we can select the airport but not the stand in 10.50
Or am I missing something??
In X-Plane 11:
1. The flight configuration window can configure everything. The outer window is like “Quick Flight” but the “Customize” buttons take you directly to ALL of the details.
2. Flight configuration shows up when you start the product – there’s a button from the main menu, which pops up early.
So – it should be about 10 seconds from starting the app to setting up your flight – you pick everything including detailed parking spots, weather, AI planes, you name it. It’s then one load to get flying (and that load is slow like v10).
Will we still be able to skip all the flight selection stuff and turn on X-Plane and immediately be right back in the same cockpit we left? That’s pretty key for cockpit builders.
I think so – pro customers need this.
Thank you Ben, looking forward to X11
Hey Ben, question will the ATC Taxi guide be done any time soon? The Taxi back section wasn’t completed and since I’m working on several single runway airports with turn around this section is vital to me.
I think it is done.