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X-Plane 11.00 public beta 10 is out today – if you are an X-Plane 11 user, you should get an auto-update.

Linux Users: Beta 10 won’t run on Linux. Something went wrong with the build process, truncating the last 1/3 of the executable. I’ve been building X-Plane releases for over a decade now, and I have literally never seen this happen. I’ll get this fixed as soon as I can. In the meantime, you can download the correct executable here. You may need to chmod it to run it. Correct MD5 signature is 985dc19a246f303fbb0d484937cfab7c.

Update: Beta 11 is out and fixes the bad Linux version of X-Plane. If you hand-installed the fixed version, you’ll need to tell the installer to replace the previous version you downloaded.

As we get toward the end of the public beta program, one thing we’re trying to do is get our interfaces in order for creating airplanes and scenery with X-Plane. Beta 10 brings two new features for authors.

Metalness in Scenery. Finally, you can now use NORMAL_METALNESS in any art asset that uses the standard shader. That means facades, roads, forests, draped polygons, line-work, draped objects, and anything else I forgot can all mark their normal maps for the metalness work-flow and use the blue channel to specify the metal/dialectric property.

What about BLEND_GLASS? Sorry, not only is BLEND_GLASS limited to objects, but it is limited to objects that are attached to airplanes and set to glass-interior or glass-exterior lighting. Basically the airplane rendering code has a special “blending” pass that runs outside deferred rendering, only for glass, and only aircraft have access to it.

Someday we may have scenery-system access, which would let us finally solve translucency problems in control towers, etc., but until that happens, BLEND_GLASS simply won’t work in those cases. So that’s a scenery system extension for another da – it won’t be in 11.0.

One more note on the scenery system: When X-Plane 11 calculates the smaller mip-maps for a normal map, it will increase the roughness of a normal map’s alpha channel based on the bumpiness of the’s normals themselves. In other words, if you burn rivets into your normal map, it will mark those spots as rough in the reduced-res version where the normals aren’t visible.

This process runs on PNGs; you can also convert your normal map to an RGBA-format DDS and pre-build the mipmap chain yourself with DDSTool; if you do this, you can customize the roughness of the lower mips. If you find your bumpy models look “too shiny” from far away, this can help. If you find a case where X-Plane’s reduction doesn’t do a good job but your hand-built mipmap works well, please let me know!

2-D GPS Units

Public beta 10 features pre-made 2-d instruments for the X430, X530, and FMS CDU, all with the bezel and buttons attached and fully functional; simply drag them onto your 2-d panel and fly.

These new 2-d instruments exactly match the pop-up window versions of the instruments, and this gives you a way to customize the pop-up window’s appearance. Simply customize the 2-d instrument’s textures the way you would any other pre-made instrument, and the popup window will match its appearance. You can use this technique to customize the popup even if you don’t use the 2-d instrument on your panel.

We now have both 2-d and “screen-only” versions of both GPSes and the CDU. The screen-only version is meant for use in a 3-d cockpit, where panel space is only used for screens. The 2-d versions are meant for users building their own 2-d panels at home and as a way to skin the popup windows.

If you are building an advanced 2-d panel, you can either use the pre-made 2-d instruments or use the screens and build your own bezels out of generic instruments.

Plane-Maker 11.0 does not provide access to the legacy FMS and GPS – while they will work in v10 aircraft for compatibility, new aircraft must be authored with one of the new GPS or FMS choices. Our goal is to set a time-frame for deprecating the old FMS/GPS code and getting to an entirely modern GPS/FMS implementation.

Can I pop up my plugin windows? Not yet, and not for 11.0. This is a high priority for us for the next X-Plane SDK revision, but it isn’t quick to do; we need to write a bunch of new code to expose some of the new UI tricks to plugins.

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.

93 comments on “Public Beta 10, Metal Scenery, and Painted CDUs”

  1. Very nice…

    Thanks a lot for the native Reload Scenery at the Developer Menu.
    Few days ago I’m starting to create sceneries and its so boring close the XP11 and open it again, wait lots of time loading all to see my scenery changes!

    Thanks a lot!

  2. Thanks Ben for the fixed linux executable, works great! And as Lucas said the reload scenery command is greatly appreciated. *thumbs up*

    Cheers,
    Ronny

  3. I’m seeing a significant reduction in aircraft performance with public beta 10.

    Flying my BD-5J:

    In XP10.51, 40°F, No Wind, Level Flight, Throttle 50%, Pressure: 29.92, I can get ~ 170 knots airspeed.

    In XP11b10, ~ same conditions, I can get ~ 90 knots airspeed. Big difference.

    Anybody else seeing an aircraft performance drop with this beta?

    1. There is a slight change to N1->thrust in pb10; this will be a Plane-Maker option soon, letting you capture the v10 curve again. But that’s a huge change for a relative small power curve change.

      If you have ANY real world performance data on this aircraft based on intermediate N1, please ping Austin directly.

      1. Unfortunately, I don’t have real world performance data. I can’t say which version is “more correct” than the other. Perhaps other developers reading this, ones who know their aircraft specs better, will test their own designs and report back.

      2. Very interesting. Would it be possible for X-Plane 11 to recognize X-Plane 10 aircraft, and implement the v10 curve automatically?

    2. I have the same issue here. In beta 3 all performance was like XP 10.
      Later and up to beta 9 the Flight Factor B763 accelerated like hell during taxi – even with engines on idle.

      Now – using beta 10 – a thrust of N1 40 to 45 is required to even get this bird moving forward on the ground. Doing so in vicinity of the gates would blast a ramp agent or marshaller to high heaven… 😉

      I suggest some fine tuning is required to get it adjusted.
      ————–
      However: I am happy to say that XP 11 is rock stable – even with complex aircraft, HD payware scenery and ZL16 photo terrain covering most parts of Europe and xEnviro. I made XP11 run non-stop for more than 30 hours without any problems – until I shut it down intentionally. Really convincing!

      And: The reload feature for the scenery was needed so badly – thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

      Regards,
      Marc

      1. Same here with the default 737. Not sure if it is the engine modeling or the tire modeling that has been changed, but it requires loads of power to get it moving and keep it moving on the ground. Seems way off.

  6. Ben, I understand that you all are very busy and therefore you don’t send feedback for filed bugs.
    So let me ask one question here:
    I filed a bug about the B200 from Carenado, all reflective surfaces inside the cockpit are mirroring landscape textures, even above 8/8 cloud layers.
    This bug exists in Beta 10 too.

    Is this special to the B200 or is this bug on the list for bugfixing?

    Thanks
    Günther

    1. This is _not_ a bug in X-Plane.
      This _is_ either a mandatory update of an aircraft to be fully v11 compatible, or weird authoring.

      X-Plane 11 requires authors to tell us whether a surface is inside or outside the plane. For surfaces that were not marked as “glass”, we already have this info in v10, but for glass surfaces, the author has to mark them as interior or exterior – we can’t guess both, and we’ll be wrong 50% of the time with v10 planes.

      We _do_ contact users for some of the bugs – for time reasons, we can’t respond to everything. But in this case, Carenado has made no claim that their aircraft work in v11; my expectation is that at some point in the future at their determining, they will look through the complete migration notes for v11 (once we publish them) and then contact us directly if this isn’t a simple update.

      2. Ben, I will talk to Carenado developers,
        but only for the record, maybe it is usefull, if not, please ignore it.

        Flying above a closed cloudlayer, in reflective surfaces inside the cockpit the ground layer is the reflected, not the cloud layer.

      1. Thanks for the pb10. Great work, as usual.
        Do you also have the moon, the stars and the sun in your to do list before release? That would be really nice (and important). Against, thank you much for the hard work.

      2. Hi,
        speaking of visual artifact, do you think lights through will ever be addressed in the 11 run?
        I regard it as a killer immersion factor. Is there a technical reason (i.e. FPS heavy impact, long recoding process) why this is not sorted out before?

      3. Hello Ben,

        Flying above the clouds in xpx11, I can see all the autogen lights. Thats not a issue XPX10. Is this a bug in 11 ?

  8. Thanks for all the cockpit builders like me, I love the GNS and FMC 2D !please think of us, we just want to assign every switch easily,and run panels, gauges and modules on separates screens .I know it’s a hard work to do.
    I wish that a lot of improvement will come, just like new users and developpers,X-plane 11 is the future of the sim.
    proud to be of the family 😉
    Willswings.

  9. Hey Ben, I have a question.

    The Steam page of X-Plane 10 Global – 64-bit states ‘Aerosoft GmbH’ as the Publisher and Aerosoft has also published various add-ons for X-Plane 10 on Steam in the form of DLCs.

    However, the Steam page of X-Plane 11 states ‘Laminar Research’ as the Publisher, not ‘Aerosoft GmbH’. Does this mean that Aerosoft will not be able to publish its products on Steam as X-Plane 11 DLCs like it did with X-Plane 10? If not, then who will publish X-Plane 11 DLCs on Steam?

    I’m asking because I’m about to release an X-Plane 11 scenery add-on via Aerosoft and would like for it to be sold on Steam as well.

      1. Hi Guys,

        Christian, I answered Omar privately.

        As a general statement: if you have a business question about your third party add-on, the dev blog is not the right forum.

  10. Thanks Ben

    FPS. Doubled with this update, I am now seeing 60FPS where I saw 36 in PB9

    Anyway to adjust that the parking brake is on when starting a flight. The aircrafts seems to be rolling right of the bat. (B58)

    1. I have no idea why your FPS doubled, we didn’t change much in the performance department.

      ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

      I mean, yeah, I totally optimized everything! That’s definitely me!

      1. Hello Ben, reading in forums and/or facebook groups i see a lot of people complaining about FPS issues that get resolved after deleting their preferences folder.
        Would it be useful to implement an integrated option in the UI? Like “reset x-plane to factory defaults” or something like that?
        Personally i never had any FPS problem so far, but for some people messing with folders and files can be troublesome, it might help to have a simplified option.

        Keep up the good work guys!

      2. Figured that much, thank you my leech or was it leach, always got them mixed up

        ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

    2. On my rig, I’m afraid to report that it’s a bit heavier than pb9.
      No scientifically data gathered but I’m pretty sure that it was smoother at LOWI than now with the same render settings. I’ll drop all the enhancement customizations (clouds, lua scripts, …) to check which part is heavier.

      Nice to add the scenery reload.

  11. I want to consult you about the sudden changes of lighting of the environment, both inside and outside the plane, I do not know if it is a problem of XP 11 or the airplane or the scenarios or hardware, I do not know, but it is as if Suddenly they would turn on the light in the room or blink. That you are well, regards, Jorge

  12. The addition of the 2D GNS 530 and GNS 430 are really nice (along with a functioning FMS for version 11). I’m new to this developer forum so if I bring up something that is already covered my apologies.

    I did open up two bug reports the other day concerning the lack of the arc colors in xp 11 along with my wheel fairings/gear doors being absent in xp 11. Those are really the only two things I’ve found missing/not working in xp11.

    I am really enjoying xp11. The scenery seems nicer and I love the interface better than xp10. Being able to just reload aircraft is a really nice feature when testing the aircraft I am building.

  13. FPS has improved! But, the default 737 is still bugging out. AP not working properly, with all kinds of issues flying out of LAX. Also, the ND’s are nearly impossible to read. The font is not legible even when you zoom in all the way.

      1. Bug filed for the issue with text size on the ND. Interestingly enough this issue was raised in the X-Plane.org forum in early January and JGregory stated: “We are aware of this issue. It’s really more of a design limitation than a bug. We are looking into various options and alternatives… stay tuned !”
        …
        I know that the ND on the eadt.eu x737project looks like the ND on real-world 737s. Apparently they were able to overcome the design limitation.

        1. John… I was referring to DEFAULT instruments (map). it is very likely the EADt project is using something else.

  14. Thx, performence is very well with beta 10, an also the new function to hide the replay menu with key bindings. Great for video recording – thx a lot.
    But one big problem is still alive. During every IFR flight X-Plane hangs every 10-15-20 minutes with big reload lags 5-10 seconds (i think dsf reloading problem). This skills the whole nice simulator feeling. (standart scenery with no addons).
    I hope you will find an soulution for this problem, because a couple friends reportet the same big lags.

    1. Same to me here, on reloading the next set of whatever(?) my CPU load shoots up to the limit an XP11 hangs completely for 10-20 seconds. I fiddled around with all my settings but can’t get that fixed.

  15. The new GPS units are great. Would really like to be able to assign a button or keyboard combination to opening the GPS popped out. Ideally to the last used position.

  16. Each iteration, a pleasant surprise. I took pb11 for a quick spin on the C172. Now we need to increase power quite a bit from idle to get the thing to move. So much more realistic, I LOVE it!!!

    I’ve been taking some pics and making some videos and showing them to hardcore longtime FSX and P3D fans, and XP11 is making them hesitate. I really think the tipping point would be a strong weather engine with good weather depiction. It would blow the competition out of the skies 😉

    Cheers, thanks for your good work. Some of the best 60 bucks I’ve spent, for sure.

  17. Ben, how about another map option that would show rivers, towns and roads, for VFR navigation?

    1. I think we’ll get more VFR landmarks in a future update, but right now we don’t have the data; the new map strictly loads data from its own files and not from the scenery – this is what makes it so much faster than the old map.

  18. As for the control towers, is there a possibility of making the current glass so that it’s only visible from the outside of the tower? This would make views from the inside of the tower a little better.

    1. I’ll talk to Alex about what he thinks. It’s a good idea but it would decrease the accuracy of the lighting information from outside the tower. Note that there isn’t really a good correlation between the tower view camera type and the camera OBJ right now – it would be nice to make this work less badly.

  19. Ben, a question…

    As of XP 1050 the normal map has its alpha channel storing specular information, right?

    You said that with the new metalness workflow, this information will be on the blue channel. So the alpha stays with specular? And also, if the metalness information goes into the blue channel, how does the normal gets one of its axis info?

    Or am I understanding it completely wrong and it’s supposed to be used as a whole new map?

    Thanks.

    1. In the new model, the alpha channel has the roughness/glossiness of the surface, which replaces “shininess” in the old system – what you might have thought of as shiny in v10 is just really smooth and shiny and not rough in v11, resulting in a non-dispersed specular hilite.

      The blue channel handles the new “base reflectivity + metalness” – low values make dialectrics, high values make metal. Abledo color is used for diffuse in dialectrics, tints the reflection in metals.

      The normal axis is in tangent space and can be fully reconstructed from red and green.

      http://developer.x-plane.com/?article=x-plane-11-material-model

  20. “Our goal is to set a time-frame for deprecating the old FMS/GPS code and getting to an entirely modern GPS/FMS implementation.”

    While I suspect this is referring to Planemaker instrumentation, in the next paragraph you do mention needing to add code to expose new features in the SDK.

    My only concern here is that the current functionality that is present in XPLMNavigation remain as functional in the future as it is now. I would love to see Philipp’s new dataset exposed in this part of API, especially procedures as has been mentioned before. And I believe he’s got a great approach to that implementation. I would hope, though, that existing plugins that depend on older SDK elements will remain functional for as long as possible – knowing that “forever” is a big ask. Old is not bad. DC-3’s are still flying!

    1. Philipp has done a bunch of work to keep the existing XPLM APIs working with his instruments. If you find a case where they violate the API, please file a bug.

      My guess is there may be incompatibility around really crazy edge cases, e.g. if you make a route and leave 55 entries blank between parts of your flight plans, we have NO idea what the old code will do, and his code may do something different. But for legit cases, e.g. continuous routes, it should work.

  21. Hi Ben 🙂

    Performance optimizations. Did they happen already? (besides the fps jump in pb8 i think it was). Are there others coming before release or everything is already done from here to release?

    1. There’s only one more planned big perf change before 11.0 – when we ship Max’s cloud work it should make GPU use with clouds go way down.

      1. I or rather said many people have hard times trimming the default C172SP for a given airspeed by ATC or holding a climb/decent attitude.

        as the trimwheen is used in X-Plane the elevator moves too wich as we compare aerodynamics by the airflow that’s traveling over control surfaces wich are deflected changes direction. than we suposed know that adjusting the antiservor tab by trimwheel the elevator should not move with it…!
        e.g walk to the antiservo tab on the empenage, position your eye at elevator level and adjust your trimwheel, you’ll notice the elevator as well as the antiservo tab are moving wich X-plane thinks you are using your elevator (yoke movements) all together so, holding pitch for speed/attidude and using trimwheel separately to release elevator pressure (yoke pressure) ends always up with extra handling the yoke back and forth….instead releasing the yoke pressure after trimming.

        So conclusion is we can’t trim by trimwheel alone but with yoke simulataneously.

    2. The performance jump in pb8 was only for AMD users, right? I was thinking shader optimization was not done yet? If the only performance optimization missing is with clouds, I’m relatively disappointed… even if so far I don’t have performance issues, but when other devs (hopefully) start converting their high quality add-on aircraft and airports… not sure how this will hold up. And for an owner of a GTX1070… not very impressed…

  22. For me, almost, everything perfect in pb 11.
    Will we have a full 747-400 coming soon?
    Thank you.

  23. Hey, Ben! Any future plans regarding that old fashioned flickering ground due to the flight model errors?

    I know that it’s a tricky thing to go around, but occurred to me that if it goes away when the camera is free from the plane, isn’t there a way to avarage the camera micro movements or even free it below some threshold?

    Cheers

  24. I or rather said many people have hard times trimming the default C172SP for a given airspeed by ATC or holding a climb/decent attitude.

    as the trimwheen is used in X-Plane the elevator moves too wich as we compare aerodynamics by the airflow that’s traveling over control surfaces wich are deflected changes direction. than we suposed know that adjusting the antiservor tab by trimwheel the elevator should not move with it…!
    e.g walk to the antiservo tab on the empenage, position your eye at elevator level and adjust your trimwheel, you’ll notice the elevator as well as the antiservo tab are moving wich X-plane thinks you are using your elevator (yoke movements) all together so, holding pitch for speed/attidude and using trimwheel separately to release elevator pressure (yoke pressure) ends always up with extra handling the yoke back and forth….instead releasing the yoke pressure after trimming.

    So conclusion is we can’t trim by trimwheel alone but with yoke simulataneously.

  25. Hi

    by using TrackIr 5 the controles for adjusting eye height in cockpit are disabled wich is not convenient looking over the cowling in the C172SP that came with XP11

    So using TrackIr 5 and resetting the eyepoint view, the engine cowling disappears below the flightdeck wich looses also the horizon bit too much. can we alter restrictions made by applications? We need to see the cowling just a bit better….

    1. I can’t even read the writing on the panel of the C172 that comes with 11.11! As a genuine learner it would be useful to read which switch is for the landing lights and which for taxiing as I can’t always remember at my age. I think the rendering of the instruments is excellent but the panel itself is illegible. Still correcting this, the lowest demanding of screens(?) will probably reduce my fps even lower, so I’m just about ready to give up on Version 11 and stick with 10 and wait for 10.52 or winning the lottery.

    2. I also wish that the position adjustment would not be disabled when TrackIR is on. I like to change views positions with the default keys and also move freely with TrackIR to look around.

  27. Thanks for the update.

    I know you mentioned that the G1000 still needs a lot of work and likely won’t be ready for 11.0. Is that confirmed to be a no-go? Will we see it in 11.1? It is really one of the big new features that made me buy XP11 immediately. I doubt you are able to make any promises, but I figured it’s better than not asking at all. Perhaps a better question for Philipp than you, Ben.

    Similar question: will we be seeing any additional work be done on other default aircraft such as the B58 or C90 at some point in time? They’re not terrible by any means but the new ones definitely make them pale in comparison.
    Although I guess Austin did hint at other default aircraft he wanted to see get done (*cough* Lancair Evolution? *cough*), so maybe the focus will be on those…

  28. As a comment from the GA Aircraft legacy crowd I have to say that the proposed new panel instrument (430 2d) is removing good function from the cockpit panel of all aircraft which have used the legacy 430 instrument in the past. The new panel instrument produces no functions from its buttons but acts as a big button to pop up the GPS 430 Instrument. It must be reduced in size to .28 to fit aircraft panels of most GA aircraft. Since it is itself not operational, but only a big button which pops up the instrument, it is a space waster on the panel.

    The legacy 430, although not visually identical contains many controls which are operable and a visible readout of both com and nav frequencies together with the controls to manipulate them data co-ordinated with the 430 pop-up display. The legacy instrument is 0.25 to0.28 the size of the pop-up, but is fully readable for the display that it provides and the data it can present.

    Having both instruments allows the manipulation and reading of the old display data available for radio control and general information on speed, distance, and ete independent of the pop-up and its intrusion of the room on the screen. It allows excellent use of the map and flight plan info on the popup while providing excellent access to radio frequencies from the main panel in the instances when the pop-up is not desired because of view interference either out of the cockpit or with instrument observation. Operationally the pop up can be moved so only its GPS Screen is blocking views from or in the cockpit and still allow the reading of frequency data on the legacy GPS instrument.

    The panel display of the screen data on the 2d 430 proposed for replacement of the legacy 430 is also poorly displayed because the instrument size shrinkage renders the letters and presented data too small for the data, so although it reproduces it as well as possible, it is not truly readable and useful. The legacy instrument can display its information at a zoomed level in useful detail. In my opinion, the proposed substitution is a poor one and is a significant step backward in cockpit operation.

    The other major problem I am having is with the deep shadows in the cockpit which make even daytime reading of instruments in the shadows very difficult, and the fact that the 2d cockpit flood and spot lighting is not properly setup by the Plane-Maker 2d cockpit design system. It makes the conversion of legacy aircraft which work with great satisfaction in 10.51 not possible, at the present time.

    You have a big reserve of bug reports about this in your input basket.

    1. You can still use the old 430 bezel back from X-Plane 9 that has all buttons functional. We didn’t remove it.
      The new bezel is not meant to be shrunk to 1/4 of its size. It’s meant to be used full-size on custom 2d panels (that people can display fullscreen on a separate monitor).

      1. I think that you will find that the selection listing of the legacy 430 was in fact removed from the selection list such that a new aircraft cannot use it to build a new panel. This, unfortunately, then also creates a problem if a legacy aircraft with a legacy 430 is experimenting with changes and happens to eliminate the legacy 430 from its panel. In that event, its return to the panel via the standard selection process is prevented and must be carefully worked around to retrieve it and get it into the panel again. How about just leaving it in the selection list and make the process easy to use?

        1. Philipp won’t be surprised to find this – he wrote the code to do it.

          This mandatory upgrade is intentional. If you want to use your aircraft with X-Plane 11 and you’re in Plane-Maker, drop the right instrument in place. The legacy 430 runs in X-Plane for v10 planes, not V11 ones.

          Is there a reason why dropping a scale version of the new 2-d 430 into the slot where the old 430 used to be is a problem?

          1. The scaled version to fit does not have any function in its buttons and the display does not show data in readable form. It affords only a display of insufficient size which cannot be read because its data requires a larger screen. The resultant panel filler becomes only a button to control the pop-up of the full size real instrument.
            To me that means it is practically useless or even worse to put it in that 2d panel spot. I think my original explanation above says this. and makes good sense in providing a means for the conversion of good legacy aircraft and preserves their value for your users. Why would you want to not provide your customers and users the means to use their good legacy aircraft?

          2. Hi Bob,

            The new 2-d G430 absolutely has complete working buttons. It looks like there’s a bug where they pop up AND work – I’ll check with Philipp on that.

            The screen does look garbled at tiny size; however, if the panel ends up being drawn bigger because the user has a big monitor, the quality returns. We may be able to get some better anti-aliasing in, but in the end of the day if you’re going to make a Garmin at the scale that we use for X-Plane 6, it’s not going to be a terribly useful display.

            Here’s the thing about legacy tech and compatibility: there is a persistent tax on all new development of X-Plane to maintain all old features, particularly if we want perfect compatibility. For five years we really tried hard to avoid compatibility breaks, sometimes jumping through crazy hoops to make it happen.

            That’s one reason why there’s so much “why did you guys change X” in v11 – we have five years of accumulated architectural change.

            In the case of the GPS, we don’t think that the old legacy GPS/FMS components are adding enough value compared to their new counter-parts to maintain a permanent system that uses both code paths. Only by denying the old instruments to NEW planes now can we drop the old tech and stop paying for it in dev time in several years.

            cheers
            Ben

          3. That legacy price penalty description is very helpful, Ben. Thanks for that. I hope that there are some no price penalty options for some things… 😉

          4. The cost always varies – it’s very specific to the code, subsystem, etc.

            “Major version” compatibility between 10 and 11 is _definitely_ worse than between 9 and 10 – our goals for major version are never “perfect no-touch compatibility” but overall 10-11 has been harder for two reasons:

            1. “Holding our breath” for 5 years on compatibility breaks – we have a lot of stuff to clean up and we’re trying to get it all out now so we can keep the v11 updates trouble-free.

            2. Add-ons are WAY more complex than they were five years ago.

  30. I or rather said many people have hard times trimming the default C172SP for a given airspeed by ATC or holding a climb/decent attitude.

    as the trimwheen is used in X-Plane the elevator moves too wich as we compare aerodynamics by the airflow that’s traveling over control surfaces wich are deflected changes direction. than we suposed know that adjusting the antiservor tab by trimwheel the elevator should not move with it…!
    e.g walk to the antiservo tab on the empenage, position your eye at elevator level and adjust your trimwheel, you’ll notice the elevator as well as the antiservo tab are moving wich X-plane thinks you are using your elevator (yoke movements) all together so, holding pitch for speed/attidude and using trimwheel separately to release elevator pressure (yoke pressure) ends always up with extra handling the yoke back and forth….instead releasing the yoke pressure after trimming.

    So conclusion is we can’t trim by trimwheel alone but with yoke simulataneously.

  32. Hi

    by using TrackIr 5 the controles for adjusting eye height in cockpit are disabled wich is not convenient looking over the cowling in the C172SP that came with XP11

    So using TrackIr 5 and resetting the eyepoint view, the engine cowling disappears below the flightdeck wich looses also the horizon bit too much. can we alter restrictions made by applications? We need to see the cowling just a bit better….

  33. Hello Ben,
    great to hear all that progress. Question: when will you update the sdk documentation? I am currently fiddling around with a friend for an external application with datarefs via udp, and want to get some weapon information. As the last update was for 10.25 and is sparsely commented (at least on the [possible?] relevant refs, like mis_con_width and similar, like is that used on the standard weapons, how do I control it, …), can we expect at some beta stage also an update for the documentation? Or do you currently have another way of how we could get such specific information?
    Thanks, Niels

    1. The weapon datarefs are not available in 11.0. This is one area where the interfaces for authoring won’t be _complete_ (let alone documented) until after 11.0. Getting weapons back to 100% are on the short list after we ship, but we don’t have time to get them done for 11.0.

      1. When you say you don’t have time to get it done for 11.0, you must obviously have a time frame in mind. Is the listed Steam release date a fairly accurate assumption?

  34. It seems that these laminar datarefs, which are used by default C172, are not writeable.

    laminar/c172/fuel/fuel_cutoff_selector
    laminar/c172/fuel/fuel_tank_selector
    laminar/c172/knob_OAT

    I can’t synchronize these between 2 computers for shared cockpit flying. Why are some datarefs not writeable?

    thank you for all improvements

  35. Ben, is there anyway to turn of ground vehicle traffic such as cars on roads and on airport?
    1. The airport ground vehicles break immersion, driving through planes etc.
    2. Ground traffic on roads was a huge FPS killer in XP10, and not necessary for us high altitude passenger jet flyers.

    I would love to be able to kill all ground traffic and keep the framerate high, with far more autogen like I did in XP10.

    Regards

    1. Danny – this is your FOURTH post of this on this blog post. Please stop reposting this over and over.

      Please DO file a bug if you have not done so already; no amount of reposting on the blog gets the issue into the bug database.

  37. Hello
    it seems the simulator cannot load any kind of draped polygon that has a normal map specified in its settings

    how exactly can i load a normal map in these situations so that PBR can be used ?

    1. If that is the case, it is a bug – please file a bug with a complete small scenery pack demonstrating this (e.g. one draped polygon at an airport with a normal map.)

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