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X-Plane 11.20r2 is up – we’re just killing off the last show-stopping bugs – full notes here. Steam build should be available Real Soon Now™ – it’s already uploaded and just waiting to make we didn’t blow something up.

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.

29 comments on “X-Plane 11.20r2 Available”

  1. Well you should already know what my usual request is, Steam … lol But today there is more I’ve talked to you once about enabling an SLI support in X-Plane and you answered that I would not like to see people spending more with hardware etc, I think that SLI as well as CrossFire would help to save because whoever has a GTX 980 instead of buying a GTX 1080 could acquire a new or even used GTX980 which would help him very much with little expense. Greetings.

    1. The problem with getting a second 980 vs a 1080 is that you essentially have two halves of a bigger GPU that can only cooperate in minimal ways. So that’s great in the long term for two truly separate frames, but for example, not great for preparing intermediate textures like reflection cube maps that must go to both GPUs.

  2. Welcome aboard.
    I think 11.20r2 will be short-lived, it will only be 11.20 very brief
    For me everything ok

  3. I absolutely love VR! It’s amazing what you have accomplished, the experience is very immersive. A lot of people in the .org forum report that they will never get back to 2D again after they tried VR. This is definitely the future and not a hype.

    The only things I missed in VR were a way to display PDF charts and a moving map. But thanks to the SDK and the open data formats, I was able to quickly create a plugin for PDFs and will add moving map support based on X-Plane’s nav data soon.

    There are only two things I missed during the development of the plugin, does RC mean it’s too late to ask? Maybe I can disguise the first item as a bug.. 😉

    * last time I tried, only the vertical controller axis was reported to the wheel callback of the plugin (as axis 0). According to the SDK docs, the horizontal axis should be reported as well (as axis 1).

    * now that a lot of the native windows including the map are visible in VR, people in the .org forum report that they don’t need the xPad anymore and asked for a way to disable it since plugins can’t make use of it either. Maybe it would be possible to allow plugins to create a new entry in the xPad and draw in its window by getting its XPLMCreateWindowEx-compatible handle? Or if that’s too much, maybe just allow us to hijack its draw callback? I’d really love to have my plugin inside the xPad since the plugin is a tablet as well (AviTab).

    Regards
    Folko

    1. A dumb hack-around for the ipad – not sure if this would work, but make a library that maps its virtual lib path to an empty object. re: the horizontal axis, do you ever get horizontal axis input via the SDK with any 2-d controller? I’m under the impression we didn’t wire this up, but I have a one-axis intellimouse.

  4. A feature I thought might be cool for VR – in addition to the teleport to location to be able to ‘walk’ to a location. This would add to the immersive effect of walking around and within aircraft. Perhaps it could be a global setting so those who like to teleport can always do it and those who like to walk can do so. Just a thought.

    Great work as usual.

    1. Do you mean, when you pick a new spot you move to it? We have generally minimized the amount of moving the camera continuously when the HMD is not moving because it can create nausea sensations due to the mismatch of what you see and what your inner ear feels.

  5. Some people are reporting a noticeable performance improvement. I’m wondering if this is placebo or if there were really some changes that could have impacted performance, as there are no mentions of performance related changes in the release notes.

    Thanks!

  7. In the release notes I see this.

    XPD-9142 Updated plugin SDK to fix mouse coordinates in plugins.

    So should we rebuild out plugins with this updated SDK?

    Can the README.txt be updated so we can all be on the same page as the last update to it is X-Plane SDK Release 2.1.3 11/14/13

    Thanks Bill

    1. Hi,

      Further to the question, I’ve downloaded XPSDK301.zip on April 17 and April 26 and there are no changes. Is this an internal code change in X-Plane XPLM plugin or an SDK change?

      Also about VR:
      Our plugins don’t use the newest API yet: XPLM[Set|Get]WindowGeometryVR() and XPLMSetWindowGeometryVR(). They use XPLM[Set|Get]WindowGeometryOS() for now for VR windows and it worked fine at least up to 11.20R1.

      I’m quite interested in any feedback prior official 11.20 release and whether we should use ‘VR’ instead for all VR windows, ‘OS’ for all popout windows, ‘normal’ for all popup windows?

  8. An oddball issue occurred to me yesterday, running 11.20r2 on Fedora 28.

    Taking a flight from KDCA->KCVG under an IFR flight plan in the SF50 with 3 AI aircraft enabled: 2 x MD82 and 1 x 737. Clearance went fine and taxi went fine until I got behind one of the MD82s holding at runway 1. Another plane was on approach and tower gave them landing clearance so we waited. A few hundred feet from the ground, the plane on approach goes around; nobody is on the runway, tower never told them to go around, and they never announced a missed approach. Ok, strange enough but moving on. Tower never gave either one of us takeoff clearance, even after waiting 5 minutes or so.

    Thinking it might be a bug, I decided to taxi around the MD82 and takeoff without clearance (obviously not a real life choice). I get in the air and ATC hands me off to center. Suddenly, I get a TCAS alert because the MD82 I taxied around is on my tail, even though tower never cleared them for takeoff either.

    It may be a fluke as I’ve never had this issue before.

    On a side note, a local airport (I67) has a runway (9/27) in XP11 that has not existed for years, maybe decades. It also has an AWOS-3 on 118.15 that is unable to be tuned in XP11. Any idea on how I can improve that?

  9. Thanks for the update (steam available too). Is there a time frame for Aircraft VR documentation? Or am I looking in the wrong spots?

        1. Ah – uh the blender stuff is _not_ yet doc’ed — Ted’s working on that. I should probabyl write part 2, eh? I was waiting for Chris’s docs, and then got distracted, as I do.

          1. No Problem – I’m distracted too, Just that you guys have implemented this VR tech that is spot on. It’s been very easy to get in the left seat and fly. I’ve not had so much fun just flying the 172 in long time. I can’t get back to just development work. The longer you put the docs off, well the more time I will have to play I guess, darn it! 😉

  10. Is it possible to get the 747 altitude to increase by simply pressing and leaving your finger on the mouse button? It used to work that way which is similar to the real plane, but for some reason, it now only increments 100ft per left button click. Takes a lot of clicks to reach 37,000ft… 370 to be exact.

  11. Love following the progress here, you guys are rockstars. 2 questions. Would there ever be a way to “auto” convert 3rd party aircraft to VR. Somehow auto changing the manipulators when loaded into VR? I doubt it, and I assume it would be a lot of work, but its so frustrating that we have limited aircraft right now!

    Second, Any progress on the VR yoke bug where the yoke does not return to center when let go? This is really killing it right now. Thanks!

    1. Auto convert — not really…a “non-converted” aircraft will “kinda work” in VR…we do what we can with the info we have. If an aircraft isn’t optimized for VR, the 3-d mouse often works better than the controllers, because they’re closer to 2-d usage of the aircraft.

  13. I really hope all this VR stuff does not turn X-Plane into an arcade game:
    => “… this is hard to handle, could that be made easier…”

    X-Plane still has users who prefer maximum system depth on the flight deck and won’t like to see things turning down to a silly toy level. “Clap your hands twice to climb, stomp your feet quickly to accelerate…”

    VR looks amazing, yes. But doing longhaul flights with that face monster on, my wife would consider to split up or even divorce.

    As long as VR will not be going on at the cost of users who really prefer screens and TrackIr, I shall feel quite happy by simply avoiding it.

    Regards,
    Marc

    1. I don’t think there’s any risk of that. Austin absolutely refuses to change the laws of physics or cheat on the realism. And I’d say our avionics and systems have been steadily growing closer to reality, not further, especially with Philipp’s work in the last 2-3 years.

  14. Hi Ben,
    A previous poster mentioned the xPad. I am one who has complained greatly about the inability to turn the darn thing off in VR. It (and any other imported window like RealityXP GTN 750) will show outside the plane in an external view. That makes for some strange screenshots. I can throw the xPad under a seat when I am in the cockpit, but making videos from outside is weird with all the floating windows hovering in space. It’s really bad at night when they are brighter than the nav lights. If we can add or subtract a pilot when we change to an external view, why not floating windows???

    1. We have a long-term fix for xpad draw order issues coming….in the short term, we’re not going to be able to poke it in r2. I’d say anything that’s a window should be dismiss-able as a matter of UI design.

  15. Hello, Just got back from vacation and working on a Mac here. How do I obtain this update? When I go into settings, general and about X-plane, it says the current 11.11r2 is up to date. I have also tried running the installer but no luck there either. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thank you very much for this!

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