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X-Plane 11.00 public beta 2 is out. Full release notes are here – please do read them to see what is changed.  For beta 2, the team closed 39 bugs (plus however many we fixed but screwed up the fix version or fixed but were never in the database), so we’ve tried to keep detailed notes but a lot changed.

As always, please report bugs to the bug reporter – this gets your report into the official triage process.

Please do not report bugs in the comment section – No one spends any time trying to gather bug reports from the comment section.

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.

53 comments on “X-Plane 11.00 Public Beta 2 Is Here”

  1. So to possibly clarify this nvidia threading behavior: is it a matter of closing the 50ish thread-hungry browser tabs before firing up Xplane so that there is less pipeline competition? Or is this one still so deep in triage that the only safe recommendation right now is “5fps=turn driver threads off”?

    1. The latter. I mean, turn your browser tabs off anyway – if 3/4 of your cores are recomputing flash ads, you’re hurting your perf overall! But the particular problme we see is netierly wthiin x-plane and happens even with nothing else running.

      1. How does one turn off threads if using NV drivers (the web drivers used to get rid of the artifacts that come with the default apple drivers) on a mac? Or, are they off by default?

  2. Ben: I have a discrete machine, i5 2500K 3.6Ghz ATI R9 290 and 8 Gb Ram, X-Plane 10 runs me at 30FPS, X-Plane 11 at 20FPS, I need to know if the rendering has already been optimized. Thank you

  3. Is it a bug or is a hack needed to get the 3rd and 4th external view running?
    Or is XP11 in beta generally limited to only one ext. view?

    1. I have the same issue and filed a bug report. As a temporary workaround, I selected the 3rd computer on the master machine as an IOS, but on the 3rd machine itself set is as an external visual. The weather and time don’t sync with the master machine, but the visuals move correctly.

  4. Hey Ben! Here’s a quickie (i know its off topic): are you guys planning to release a 3ds max x-obj exporter in the forseeable future? It would be great. Currently there is not much out there, and not everyone is native with Blender.
    Congrats for XP11 btw, you have really nailed it, finally!

    2. Steptosky has not offered a good enough plugin for this to work, I am not an Blender type of guy either, trained at 3ds max and I can say its more easy to export to Blender.

      Just export obj from 3ds max and import into Blender, add day/night texture and lights etc. and then export via the Blender2X-Plane plugin.

      Or with the new PBR, use 3d coat or zbrush to texture.

      1. Thank you guys both 🙂 Tom, I’ll try your approach, I just hoped that I can avoid going through Blender. Converting stuff just so that you can reconvert it into another format again really slows development down. But at least there is a way to put stuff in XP:) Nevertheless I hope that one day there will be a native plugin for 3ds max.

        On the forums I am really seeing many long time FSX guys (including myself) coming to terms with Xplane the first time ever. Back when XP10 came out, I’ve tried the demo but didn’t like it for numerous reasons. The negatives outweighted the positives. This time around however… Many things have changed, some of them during the tenture of XP10 (scenery gateway for example), and many of them with XP11. I see tremendous potential in 11, and I think the v11 looks really appetizing for FSX folks out there (or for any flightsim fan for that matter).

  5. There does not seem to be a way to update xp11pb1 to pb2 with the latest xp11 installer. It does not recognize that i already have the pb1 installed and tries to reinstall the entire xp11.

      2. Interesting. The installer works differently when it is inside the install directory vs outside the install directory. If it is outside it will only allow a total install (for the demo). But when inside the install directory it gives additional options to update.

        1. That should -not- be the case. But when you -run- the app, that tells the installer that that copy exists, and when you auto-launch the installer, it knows who launched it.

  6. Thanks for getting these fixes out, Ben (and keeping us updated here).

    On AVSIM, I saw you mention some cloud tweaks being done. Did those make it into pb2 already? I feel like they did, but did not see them in the notes.

    On another side note, the new tire model seems to have gone haywire and results in blown tires on almost any flight with a slight crosswind. I will of course be filing a bug report for this. Just wondering if it might be time to look at the ground friction model as a whole, as it is definitely one of X-Plane’s bigger weaknesses.

    1. Clouds are not in – the release notes are accurate!

      Austin _already_ worked on the tire model, so if you’re blowing tires, bug report time it is!

  7. Hi Ben,

    Any idea on when you’ll release the version of WorldEditor that allows us to place X-Plane 11 ground service vehicles? I really want to release my new scenery for X-Plane 11 but the only thing left to do is adding the ground service vehicles.

    Best regards

  8. Hi Ben, I was wondering if you could provide a little clarity on your hopes for X-Plane 11 and third-party VR implementations such as that already provided by Dan Church’s FlyInside application. (Just for background, I’m a beta tester for FlyInside and am currently testing the latest version that works with X-Plane 11.)

    While X-Plane 10 already has a VR experience that easily matches and possibly beats the other sims with VR implementations, X-Plane 11 is still a way off. In particular, there is some concern among other beta testers that your performance targets for XP11 on full release will not match the current performance of XP10.5.

    Are you able to give some guidance at this stage on what we can expect from XP11 with regards to VR? Not looking for any speculation about a native implementation, but rather just some comments on what you’re willing to do from your end to help third-party solutions like FlyInside.

    Kind regards!

    1. Hi Jamie,

      WE are already in direct contact with FlyInside. Regarding X-Plane 11: our expectation is that VR will be built in to X-Plane 11, allowing us to directly optimize the rendering engine for VR.

      Cheers
      Ben

  9. So are the aircraft we have now in X-plane 11 what it’s going to launch with, or can we expect more to be added later on in the beta? Because I’m hoping we get the F-22 or some other fighter

    1. No other aircraft expected to go in for 11.0. Other aircraft may or may not go in post 11.0 – we don’t have a firm plan yet. We do want to update the F-22 at some point.

          1. it needs to be a priority we have no good business jets

            also eta on g1000 and sid/stars for the gns430/530?

  10. Would it be possible for X-Plane to auto-set the rendering settings – even on the fly – to a specific decent frame-rate? Or is it more work than it’s worth?

  11. Ben, can the current version of DSFTool be used with X-Plane 11 dsf’s? (is it safe to convert dsf to txt and back with it, without loosing any new features etc)

    2. Hi Rob,

      I am able to use XP11 dsf in XP10 at least Maun (Botswana area) though it complains about some libraries missing and yes the south of Maun is all water but the North is OK. I am searching for this “lib/g10” which does seem to exists in XP10 / 11 so don’t know how to get those libraries but will do more tests.

      Till XP11 gets optimized 🙂

        1. Do the new libraries still support all the old XP10 objects or has anything been removed? (I’m thinking in terms of compatibility with older scenery packs.)

        2. Ben ,

          It seems to except some airport issues. This only meant as a test and also because XP10 runs quite well on my laptop.

          Actually the mesh works.

          But this is only till XP11 has been optimized .

          Rgds.

  12. Hi Ben,

    I don’t know if this is a bug or if you did not implemented yet, but my Saitek Multi Panel is not working or being recognizable in XP11. Although, the Saitek Yoke and Pedals are ok. Is this suppose to be working?

    And congratulations for Beta 2, X-Plane 11 is working GREAT now. Beta 1 was totally unplayable in my PC, crashing and with FPS way below 20’s. I’m running triple screens with 5760×1080 res, GTX 1080 and i7 4770k @4.8ghz, 16GB RAM. Something was very wrong but you fixed it.

    1. Regarding the Saitek Multi Panel, it was my fault… I forgot that I had to install the plugins first! Sorry!

  13. Ben Supnik,

    I want to share my experience.

    tl-dr: Never had 4 fps issue and thread opt actually gave fps boost using driver version 375.95. Updated to 376.09 and started to have fps inconsistency (strutters and huge fps drops, up to 15 fps) but no 4 fps issue. Downgraded to 372.70 (don’t ask me why) and began to have 4 fps issue. Upgraded to 373.06 and every issues was gone. In conclusion, it appears that there is a correlation with the driver version, in my case (i5-2500k + gtx 780) both 375.95 and 373.06 versions are fluid and shows no 4 fps issue (about 35-45 fps with high setups).

    Thanks in advance
    Willian

  14. Hi Ben,

    I’d like to buy X-Plane 11 DVD (final/stable release), are you guys planning to release the final/stable version this holiday season, or only the beta/rc version?

    Thanks

  15. Hi Ben,

    Any chance of getting a hot patch fix for the issue of brakes not working (cannot be bound to a joystick button) in add-on planes? Something changed with PB2, and all add-on planes are now unusable.

  16. From the release notes: “Joystick prefs now saved separately.”

    Does this mean they are saved per aircraft? 🙂

  18. Mac Pro 3.1 /ati 5770/OSX 10.9.5/10.11.2
    Hi Ben,
    FPS stuff not wanted in bug reports , I understand that .So forgive the mention here Beta 2 got halved to never going over 15 fps down to 10 even over sea (old machine I know) yet Beta 1 performed surprisingly well ( both on same low settings no 3rd party stuff) Did something specific change that would have caused such a noticeable difference on a a Mac/ATI machine?
    Many thanks

  19. Hi Ben,

    I have purchased XP11 but I was sad to find that the weather engine is simply atrocious.

    Are there improvements planned for the weather engine? For a modern flying simulator, I was expecting the weather engine to be one of the priorities. I would like to be “forced” to fly a precision instrument approach when the METAR implies one. As it stands now, I haven’t encountered a situation where I did not have visual with the runway from above.

    I get excellent weather representation in P3D with freeware weather engine plugins (one example is FSXWX). I don’t know if maybe you could contact the developer to work together. If he offers his weather engine for free for FSX/P3D, I guess he would be happy to help for a modest fee.

    Thanks.

  20. Afraid I’m not going to buy a new iMac every time Xplane produces its next version because my VRAM is insufficient. Also can’t afford the expense of guessing how far ahead of the game to get with an iMac. Don’t know how many there are like me but I’ll soon get bored just being able to fly the Cessna 172 with not very good rendering settings to get over 20 fps. Rather sad, but I’ll have to stick with v.10 because v.11 looks potentially so good.

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