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We have fixed the two high visibility bugs reported over the last couple days, and now have beta two out. This build should have fixed the cloud rendering issue as well as the scenery pack typo.

If you had installed beta 1, you should be auto-prompted to update. It is also live on Steam.

About Jennifer Roberts

Jennifer came to X-Plane to update the manuals and stayed for the bug testing. You'll most likely see her answering bug reports or making video tutorials.

43 comments on “On to the Next: X-Plane 11.35b2”

  2. is there any word on whats going on with the “experimental flight model” setting.

    and any guidance on how to test it reliably.
    as of right now (non beta) unchecking it seems to cause strange behaviour.

  3. As per the Expo, is Ben going to do a write up of the vulkan/metal details. My question is with the current trend of twin or triple graphic cards with “Crossfire” or SLI, can you use them with Vulkan and what would be the best processors (are AMD’s to be considered) for Vulkan, for myself I’m in that phase of upgrading my motherboard and processors, so to be say “Vulkan Ready”. great show by the way…

    1. There’s going to a post of the conference talk once it’s excerpted, or you can watch the live stream – it’s still up.

      Short of it is: No dual-GPU support in the _initial_ Vulkan/Metal release – we’re not going to delay shipping Vulkan for it. In the long term, MAYBE dual GPU for dual monitor, but not dual GPU for one monitor, as it’s an inefficient use of hardware and an architectural mess.

      2. X-Plane already fails to load one fast GPU (yeah Ben I’ll just keep raising the AA issue ;)) with my 1080ti basically idling during flight. What in the world would you need a second GPU for? Also, isn’t this trend all but over? Why would you want to award (by buying 2) the GPU makers for failing to increase fillrate (and instead push Raytracing to cover that up)? X-Plane desperately needs (better) multi CPU/Core support, that’s for sure. But GPU? Yawn.

      3. When and if you ship with support for dual GPU Cards for dual monitors, Will it also be possible to have VR for captain on GPU card 1 and VR for co-pilot on GPU card 2?

      4. I run 3 displays, I assume eventually you plan on supporting one graphics card per display?

        1. It’s not something we’re sure we’ll do, but it’s something that makes sense architecturally in terms of efficient use of hardware, how X-plane is designed and what our customers want to do. Our Vulkan work is designed to -not- block this future expansion.

      5. Ben, not sure if I remember correctly, but have you stated there will be a performance update after 11.35.. I cannot for the love of all things X-Plane find that again, now I begin to wonder if Austin said it in one of X-Force PC videos. Help me clear it up?

      6. The main thing I’m hoping for when it some to GPU and monitor support is the ability to have a truly independent second view (like external visuals) running one instance of X-Plane. Right now, that requires a second X-Plane instance. I would mind if it required a second GPU (although… rather not of course)

  4. This is slightly off-topic but I don’t want to open a bug report for it (yet): somewhere between 11.21 and now, the way ATC info is stored in the apt.dat files has changed. I don’t keep a backup of all the different versions of X-Plane (maybe I should) so I don’t know where this happened exactly.

    The situation has always been a mess, IMHO: there are two apt.dat files from which X-Plane loads its airport data, one in Custom Scenery, and one in Resources. My app can import those files and create a SQLite DB from it, which is the (single!!!) source for all the data in MY apps…

    The important thing for me and my apps is to be consistent with the data that X-Plane *finally* uses to display airport data in its UI.

    Until recently, the following quote from Ben was true: X-Plane reads its apt.dat files in the order as defined in scenery_packs.ini, and the first airport entry found wins.

    Somewhere between 11.21 and now however, the ATC data rows (code 50-56) in Custom Scenery/…/apt.dat have been removed. They are still present in Resources/…/apt.dat but due to the first airport wins rule those rows are never read, or at least should not be read.

    Can someone please explain what happened?

    1. You will always want to check the apt.dat version number in the 2nd line of the apt.dat before reading it – XP11.30 added a new format and some (but not all) apt.dat shipping with XP or 3rd party sceneries are in the new format.

    2. It caught me out also with Airport-Navigator.

      https:/article/airport-data-apt-dat-file-format-specification/

      11 April 2019 Updated with new COM frequency capabilities added in 11.30.

      1050-1056
      8.33kHz communication frequencies (11.30+)
      Zero, one or many for each airport

      50 – 56
      Legacy 25kHz communication frequencies
      Zero, one or many for each airport. Ignored if row codes 1050-1056 exist.

      1. Aha! Thanks Duncan! And here we have the bug: although 11.30 introduced new row codes for ATC, it still shippes with the outdated Feb 2018 APT1100-Spec.pdf inside the “Instructions” folder! Which was my source for parsing apt.dat. I’ll fire the bug reporter up now.

        Also the “SAVE MY NAME, EMAIL, AND WEBSITE IN THIS BROWSER FOR THE NEXT TIME I COMMENT.” below doesn’t work for me (Safari Version 12.1.1 (14607.2.6.1.1))

  5. Advisory: Airport Navigator causes my 11.35b2 to crash when going to “view map”. Have submitted bug report – so this is NOT a bug report, rather a note to colleagues- but I was referred to add-on developers. Anyone else got this problem which has not occurred with other versions of X-Plane 11.

  6. Is the ‘Non-rigid nose wheel steering’, mentioned on FSExpo, already part of those updates? Or will it be on future betas within the 11.35 run?

    1. Not yet, and we’re not sure if it’ll be in 11.35 or a later release. Its current state is done but totally untested by humans…I think we’re going to get a few C172 pilots to go try it to see what they think.

      It is _implemented_, which is a huge step forward from where it was before, namely “fever dreams”. 🙂

  7. Sorry if I’m in OT mode here, I’ve noticed at the WWDC that with Metal 2+ in MacOS Catalina it’s possible to achieve real time high quality global shadows and reflections, are you going to look into it, as global shadows and reflections are really a huge performance hit on the Mac?

    1. Reflections and shadows are a massive performance hit on PC to the point hardly anybody uses them which is a real shame as they can add greatly to the experience so any advances there would a huge win. (plus reflections remain bugged, bouncing)
      I would also love to know their thoughts on the Microsoft FS E3 presentation and some of the tech used to produce the environments such as image data and machine learning.
      Technology and rendering techniques are advancing so rapidly it is impossible to keep us as just as a casual observer let alone having to keep a product relevant and cutting edge so full respect to all devs.

    2. they are a massive hit on the PC side too and need to be updated with modern shader based effects like what you saw with Metal 2+ OpenGL could do these things to btw

      but needed a newer ver the APPLE will support so it has held back both sides

  8. I’m sorry this is somewhat off topic but I am wondering if you guys are working on further VR support/optimisations to go with Vulkan release and specifically if you will add support for canted display HMD’s such as Pimax which currently needs software correction they call parallel projection to produce a correct image which costs a chunk of performance on an already extremely demanding program in VR.
    I know you are somewhat reluctant to support what you feel are a small part of your user-base but I think there is some catch 22 thinking here since people won’t use VR if it is not well supported and a great experience but devs won’t support it and make it a great experience unless there is an uptake in VR users.
    Hope this doesn’t come across as negative as that is not the intention and I very much appreciate you opened up Xplane to VR.
    If the we can get the performace to allow for higher graphic settings and more fidelity then VR would be by far the best way to enjoy Xplane (and any seated sim experience) in my opinion.
    Thank you for the continually pushing what Xplane is capable of delivering.

      1. Does that mean that the new Valve Index, which I have reserved for September delivery, will_just_not_work for VR in X-Plane? Or will it work with some visual glitch or distorsion?

        1. My guess is it will have visual distortion until we fix it. But I am not sure what the distortion will be or how annoying it is. I think we’ll get a fix out pretty quick once there are major headsets shipping this way…we just can’t shove it on the front of the priority Q for kickstarter-level sets.

          1. Pimax is way beyond kickstarter, it is shipping from Amazon in the US and Europe

          4. Hi Tyler, I don’t know how accurate your usage data is but Pimax is new to the market so I wouldn’t expect it to have a large share even though it is certainly among the best HMD currently available . They don’t have the marketing of HTC, Valve or Oculus but doesn’t the index also make use of canted displays and won’t that be popular?

            I can’t pretend it is in your interests to develop for VR platforms new to the market except to say it would be a good foundation as the uptake of VR slowly increases and it would make this old man very happy which is all that really matters 🙂

          5. Are the Pimax 5k/8k statistics low because few XP users have bought them, or because the ones that have, have given up using it for the moment, because the workaround robs too much performance?

            I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens with the Index.

          6. @Alwin, presumably the answer is the former… the usage data tracks the number of people who have ever used the headset once. So unless people gave up on it without trying, that’s the real number.

  10. In one of the dev blog it mentioned adding a way to manipulate/simulate rudder pedals in VR. This will allow us to fly 100% in VR without any hardware. Is this still in the pipeline?

  11. Jennifer, when you go to “Recent Release Notes,” 11.35 is not there – one has to search for it. Also, I Tyler told me XPD-8898 is fixed, but it is not in the list.

    1. Can you send me the specific URL for the “recent release notes”? I updated a subject tag for the article so maybe that fixed it?

  13. So what are the chances we’ll ever see a temporal anti-aliasing solution in X-Plane like TSAA + some (optional) post sharpening, like we see in a lot of game engines these days? SSAA, in my opinion, is becoming exceedingly ineffective at cleaning up the image properly, especially in autogen / custom 3D model heavy scenery, all at a very steep GPU cost.

      1. We decent TAA looks fine at 30FPS. Looks a hell of a lot better than the shimmery nightmare that is the current SSAA implementation.

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