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X-Plane 11.50b7 has been recalled before it even made it fully out the door.

We had a ton of changes in this one–at one point I pulled over 100 Git commits on our release branch. Ben and Sidney also knocked nearly all items off their features-to-do list.

But thank goodness we asked our third party developers to kick the tires early on this one. They found a beta stopping bug in about 30 minutes! In our attempts to fix some performance issues, we caused the aircraft to be blurry in almost all cases, and we knew that was not an acceptable regression bug for a flight sim.

So sit tight for beta 8 to come soon, and don’t panic when your version numbers skip b7.

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.

102 comments on “X-Plane 11.50b7 – MIA”

  1. Ah well….. so near but so far, but I hope Beta 8 isn’t too far away…. loving Vulkan so far. Thanks LR team.

    1. new System fresh install …. stutters more than my old machine?..

      better FPS with the new system, settings are MID i7 9700k OC 4.9GHZ 1080ti GPU
      at London, Gatwick etc there are a lot of stutters but only when looking at the airport..?

      crazy how a £2,000 machine can run everything max settings but not Xplane on med settings..:(

      im rly looking forward to Flight simulator 2020 so we can put all this stutter and fps issues to bed and just enjoy the hobby.

      1. Flight sim 2020 is supposed to be a brand-new cutting-edge flight sim, but with no VR support (Disclaimer I’m a purely VR user) at launch. And no word of when it may be added xplane for me has it beat. although I do hope Vulkan is not one trade-off for another ie needing very expensive graphics card to run it as it seems my 1080 with 8 gig of RAM doesn’t quite have the horsepower at this point but we have to remember 11.50 is still very early beta.

          1. No VR neil? it on the list 🙂 im a VR only pilot also but true enough Xplane was the First who did it right with VR and controllers, I can only hope FS2020 follows in there footsteps.. it just drives me nuts with all this power and i get HUGE stutters at FL330 only mid settings all defult.

            mostly over germany

          2. i7 9700k 5.0 GHZ water cooling
            Asus ROG strix z390 water block over VRM’s
            32G vengeance 3600 ram
            Evga SC2 1080ti
            systems a week old xplanes on evo SSD on its own.
            mid settings using the rift i get 45 fps solid on the ground ASW on, in flight above 20,000 starts to get real choppy and stutters like my old 2600K when i reach FL330 i need the sick bag… All Defult scenery fresh install of OS and XP drivers all up to date inc Bios, shadows off so water looks like crap. if i go above X2 AA the sim drops to 10 fps and freezing..

      1. When the final Release is released and Vulcan is official will there be better performance and smoother gameplay than in Beta 6 for example?

        1. Everyone knows that already except you I guess 😀 😀
          Jokes aside: probably, as that is the main goal besides less stutter.

          If your next question is “how much better?” I suggest to read a few of the Laminar Research Staff posts (they’re easy to find when you scroll down the posts – they’re all with a big blue edge).

          It all depends ( as usual)… what hardware you got, settings etc.
          Noone can tell you a correct answer at this moment.

  4. I’m loving the progress updates!

    There is one thing that has become more noticeable is how sluggish the UI (toolbar, especially plugins submenus) feels while flying. Is this something that you foresee Vulkan/Metal improving?

    1. Saw what sounds like a similar “input lag” issue under Ubuntu 18.04 (i.e. Linux). There was a visible delay between when the events happened and when they showed up on screen. I switched to Ubuntu 19.10 using the Plasma window manager and that fixed the issue. Still, this may point to a generic problem in the LR code about how user events are processed. Dunno.

  5. Since I always fly in VR and/or after slugging down at least a bottle of whiskey I wouldn’t have minded at all! :p

    Uh…wait..what kind of programming fluids are you guys using? 🙂

  6. Beta6 was very unstable and caused the VRAM out of memory to constantly show up where in opengl everything ran better
    can i expect to run the vulkan update at all when the offical release get’s out?
    i ran older betas better and i only got 4GB vram fps on openGL was 60fps and with vulkan 70FPS 5 seconds before it crashed..
    looking forward to a response!

    1. That’s why it’s a beta and not an official release. It is expected to be buggy. Be patient.

  7. What about error #: XPD-10769 ???
    It is not listed as a known error or as repaired.

    1. Not all of our open bugs are listed under Known Issues! (There are too many, honestly.) This one is still open and has been reported by multiple people so it’s on our radar to fix…sometime in 11.50.

      2. can you guys at some point go over the changes to the reflections and what the new slider level actually DO because i cant tell even looking

  8. unrelated to B, but B6 going really well for me. Some time ago, you had some artists working on lego blocks and they added quiet a few. is that still going on, it seems to have stalled.

  10. Thank you for the update and all the hard work all you people do. I love the new update and I know it will be perfect in time. Thanks again.

  11. Good catch then! Do you know if they re-added the VR loading cube? It is noticeably missing in all the beta versions thus far, and sorely missed.

      1. … and hopefully, because it wasn’t very nice before.

        I’ve created 2 different vr cube maps to improve it a little bit (uploaded on x-plane.org), but I was not able to find a solution to remove the grey floor in the loading cube.

        It would be great, if you could take this into account.

        best regards

  12. Thanks Jen. My b6 has been great, on PC and Mac (especially fps increase) so b8 is going to be incredible! Thanks to all the LR team. Cheers.

  13. “If terror comes without a warning there must be something we don’t see.” — John Prine

  14. Is there any documentation on the new TCAS datarefs? I checked the plugin developer docs, but saw nothing new.

  15. Beta 6 worked really well on my iMac i9 pro vega48, an amazing difference compared to running 11.41 in open GL. The gpu temp is hitting 98c with the fan on full blast, is that normal or will that improve with later betas?

    1. Thermal management is not up to applications but the operating system, so there is very little we can do here. Macs in general tend to run on the hotter end of the spectrum (to the point where Windows users get heart palpitations). If anything this is a sign that we are on a good track keeping the GPU fed and busy, which means it’ll generate more heat as a byproduct.

      1. I’m not an expert (as you’ll probably be able to tell from this message!) but I have a relatively lowly 1050ti graphics card. Even with all the X-Plane GPU sliders set all the way to the right, the on-screen GPU data output registers less than 0.03 time (until I run out of VRAM – it registers about the same with all the sliders one click down with no VRAM problem). Therefore, it seems to me as though my GPU could be given more to do, as a time of 0.25 would give 40 fps and a video of Jennifer’s said the we should aim for 30 fps or our system wouldn’t be displaying as much good stuff as it could. Is that right or have I misunderstood something?

        1. For FPS both CPU and GPU timing is important. Whichever is higher will dominate the FPS, so if you are aiming for 30 FPS you need to make sure that the slower of either will finish a frame in 0.03 seconds.

          1. So if I’m aiming for 30 FPS, my CPU is finishing frames in 0.30 seconds and my GPU is finishing frames in 0.25 seconds with the GPU sliders maxed out, does that mean the GPU isn’t being pushed to its full potential? If so, is there anything I can do to squeeze out more fps – other than buy better hardware! (I’m not criticising or complaining here, only asking out of curiosity; Vulkan is fantastic – with OpenGL, I couldn’t get the frames I’m getting with these good settings.)

          2. You could hit 40 fps if you could squeeze your CPU down to 25 ms, e.g. by turning down CPU intensive options, using a different aircraft, turning off add-ons if they’re burning CPU, etc.

        2. Don’t want to be picky, but it might be important.
          0.03 time per frame means about 30 FPS.
          0.25 would be 4 FPS, not 40.

          So 0.03 is a good number for GPU use, I’d say,.

      2. Thanks Sidney. I am well aware that the iMac isnt’t a gaming machine, I didn’t buy one primarily for that purpose. I just wanted to check that the temp isn’t out of range.You answered my simple question clearly; problem sorted. 🙂

    2. That’s because it’s the first time your GPU has been used in a meaningful way. It’s also hopefully drawing much more electricity. That’s sort of….like… the ENTIRE point of this beta.

  18. I will agree with jeffs comment my cpu temps run 10 degrees higher on vulcan. I have measured similar flights quite accurately and with only have my adds ons loaded in 11.50 this is a disturbing trend. Why would this be?

    1. As I understand it (and please correct me if I’ve got this wrong, because I’d like to know for sure) one of the big advantages of Vulkan is that it allows the devs to decide when/where/how different work on the rendering pipeline is done. This includes being able to have the CPU do more work, and this is where a lot of the gains are coming from. So, if the CPU is doing more work, it’s going to run hotter.

      Jeff’s comment did mention the GPU, not the CPU so different situations, but same reasoning I think: The OpenGL drivers never worked very well on the AMD GPUs, now those GPUs are doing more work, and thus higher temps.

    2. Like mentioned in my reply to Jeff, this is up to the OS, not us. Vulkan and Metal keep the system busier, so it’s entirely possible that this directly translates to more heat being generated. CPUs and GPUs have built in thermal protections and will actively clock back if they reach their thermal limit and no additional means to transport the heat away are provided. Recent Intel CPUs in particular are quite good at drawing massive amounts of energy from the power supply at peak performance, which has to go _somewhere_.

      1. I have two systems, a laptop with a intel i7 4 core 4770k, 8GB ram + NV 1050ti and a main PC with a AMD Ryzen 2700x 8 Core, 16GB ram, + NV 2080ti (11gb), both systems have only SSD’s, and both seem to run fairly similar with the GPU barely getting warm or feeling like it’s being tested compared to other vulkan/dx12 games etc. The laptop is surprisingly smooth even with the crap low end graphics card. Is the sim mostly CPU based and can other complex CPU intensive calculations be pushed across to the GPU in the future? It seems intel chips are favoured more, the ryzen 8 core chip should be outperforming the older intel chip.

    3. Grrrr,
      It is actually GOOD, when your CPU is running hotter. That mean, that XPlane could now utilize more CPU cores more effectively. Honestly Mac has poor thermal management, as everything about Mac is about design, not about functionality. If you would like to get better power for less money please consider going for custom built PC. Especially for applications like XPL it is worthy. As regarding my comment. It is not only my statement, please look for Linus Tech Tips channel on YouTube, he will explain to you in details with proof, why Mac s**s for any serious high load compared to average PC. 🙂

      For Laminar team, please keep going, I would like to see all my CPU cores boiling..

      1. “ Honestly Mac has poor thermal management, as everything about Mac is about design, not about functionality” That really depends on what Mac you get. Similar For windows and Linux machines, although you have more options regarding case and terminal management. Also don’t forget you can build a custom Mac if you want to…
        My MacBook Pro runs circles around the windows PC at work, compile time for some of our application went down significant. From minutes down to less then a minute..

        If you want a fast pc get Linux, if you need office… get a Mac 🙂 if you like to fiddle around with your os…get windows…

      2. A hot CPU (or GPU) indicates that the device is working busily. What it does not indicate is whether it’s doing useful or useless work, however. So the combination of doing a lot of useful work (name it : efficiency) is probably best…
        For my quad-core CPU fan speed-up typically happens when multiple cores are working busily, and amazingly only a few programs are able to trigger that 😉

    4. According to my tests, this could be a side effect of hyperthreading. On my 4-core i7700k there is absolutely no benefit (compared that many times) in using HT with XP, but the scheduling overhead appears to be so costly that the difference can be heard (fans) seen on TM and also via a paper towel over the venting holes above the idiotically top mounted radiator fans to keep some of the dust out of my computer, the towel is floating twice as high in the fan’s air stream with HT on.

      1. Your arguments are not really convincing: The more compute units you have, the less frequent you’ll have to re-assign threads to them. Whenuse of HT heats up your system it could actually mean that it’s getting more work done.
        If you have 50 threads and only two cores, the cores have to switch threads quite frequently…

        1. Well, I wasn’t trying to convince anyone. Do your own tests and see if the added heat is actually reflected in any kind of metric (FPS, scenery loading times, whatever…) in XP!

    5. Guys, you crack me up. X-Plane is utilizing your GPU to a better extent, of course it will run hotter. If you want your hardware to stay really cold, use a lot less power and also have it be safe in case of a thunderstorm – unplug it from the power outlet and never turn it on! It will last decades that way!

      Its like saying “I tuned my car´s engine for more horsepower, it goes a lot faster but now it is using more fuel! That is certainly a disturbing trend!” Sheesh…

      1. Remonds of my mis-hearing John Foggerty’s “Fortunate Sun”: “And when they ask you how much should we kill, they only answer: more, more, more…”
        (Of course the text is different, but just imaging it’s bugs…) 😉

  20. Hi Ben/Sidney and Jennifer,

    Will beta 8 have any fixes for this:

    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: +——————————————————————————-
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: | X-Plane has failed to allocate sufficent GPU memory.
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: | There is not enough VRAM available on your system to run with the current settings.
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: | We can not finish loading and will quit.
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: | Try running X-Plane with lower rendering settings.
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: | (gfx_memory_controller_backend.cpp:228)
    0:03:47.379 E/SYS: +——————————————————————————-
    0:03:47.379 D/STM: Transitioning from state state_Normal to state_ShuttingDown

    It still happens with some of my scenery..

    Thanks,

    1. I hope so, this error kicks me out at least 80% of the time. Figured with a RTX 2070 Super I not be facing this.

      1. Humm, I’m running it on a RTX 2080 TI (11Gb of VRAM) and still have the error..

  21. Is beta 8 or higher going to have intel compatibility with vulkan, since i have a high intel cpu and I really want to use It For Vulkan.

    1. No. We don’t support Intel + Vulkan right now because they do not support memory bridges between Vulkan and GL. If or when they update their drivers to support that extension, we will re-evaluate. We have run Vulkan experiments on Intel and they do work, and Metal works on Intel chips, so we don’t think there’s an outright hardware reason why we couldn’t run on their hw.

      I would not expect any benefit from Vulkan for Intel GPU users because they are very likely to be GPU bound, so having more efficient CPU dispatching isn’t the most important thing.

  22. Looking forwards to the next beta!
    I never had crashes on my iMac but beta 6 Made my CPU run do al the work and frame rate was limited to 25ish frames per second, even when I removed all scenery and used the default 172. This was different with the first beta’s where I could easily hit 40 frames/second.

    1. I can confirm that, on a new i9 iMac / VEGA48 frame rate was cut by 40% during the beta run. Perhaps this serves reliability or stability, but I think it’s worth a post.

      Other than that X-Plane 1150 is a great step, well done!

  23. I don’t know if this is actually a bug or not, so I’d rather explain it here. I was experiencing plenty of blurries (and I did filed a bug about it), and during that I saw that the VRAM consumption was near my card limit (6GB). On a hunch, I decided to try with OGL in b6, instead of vulkan, and I realized that the VRAM usage was a lot lower on OpenGL on the exact same scenario (from 5700MB on Vulkan to about 4300MB on OpenGL, all settings exactly the same, same scenery, same aircraft, same weather, same time/date). I was under the (probably erroneous) assumption that one of the things that Vulkan would do is to manage the textures depnding on distance to the airplane, so the VRAM usage was optimized to prevent stuttering and provide a more fluid experience, and I think it definitely does it. But, just for kicks, I decided to test performance (in a very primitive way, I know) between Vulkan and OpenGL and got (average/min) 35/28 on Vulkan and 33/27 on OpenGL on the exact same scenario… without blurries. I am pretty sure that you know about this, but since assumption is the mother of all …….., I decided to report it here. Did not filed it as a bug because, again, I’m not sure this is a bug, but I hope this information is useful to you guys. And, last but not least, I wanted to thank you all for the great job and dedication placed on this update, so we can enjoy your great sim even more.

    1. As far as I understand the difference and please correct me if I’m wrong:
      With OpenGL there is a lot of traffic between vram and cpu/ram. This doesn‘t happen constantly but in intervals and is noticable as stutters and also observable as spikes or dropping framerates in the developer graph (can‘t remember the name In the menu) caused by huge amount of data especially at that points.
      So if one think and is shown he has 33 fps, because of this microseconds long drops in between ,the average framerate is way below this, sometimes resulting in simrates near or below 1.
      That is btw. also the reason why online-network-clients disconnect these users, as they don‘t measure the average but the lowest framerate.

      The advantage of Vulkan is that here the vast amount of needed info is transfered upfront into the vram and the needed changes to data in vram are distributed over time in small pieces, besides the interface between gpu and system is more modern and effective which helps either. This reduces the spikes, if even any, a lot.
      You can see the difference even in the fps monitor where in OpenGL the count is dancing like crazy whereas in Vulkan it stays very, very smooth on one value.
      For sure, if the graphics setting are set too high and the graphics card is running out of ressources, there is a lot of swapping and exchanging data that leads to problems.
      My proposal is to stays at the same settings like in OpenGL and be happy with the much more improved and stable framerate in Vulkan.
      So again, this is just my understanding of this all and I would appreciate any correction.

  24. Hmmm… Just made a new (second) installation of 11.50b6 on MacOS catalina… X-plane is complaining that the app is not in the x-plane folder, even though it is. Any idea why this is? Some weird Catalina security thing? Folder is on an SSD

    1. It’s Catalina – two possibilities:
      1. The app is sand-boxed.
      2. The appp doesn’t have access to the folder it is installed in (e.g. desktop and downloads are both now privileged). Our new recommendation is install to your home folder, but also you have to give it access if it asks, and you might have to wipe out a quarantine flag if you’ve copied the app around yourself.

      1. Thanks for responding, X-Plane is in the X-Plane folder (the folder and app were never moved), and X-plane has the “full disc access” option ticked in settings. The external SSD is the only place i can have it for space reasons, is there any way to make it work?

  25. My comment wasn’t approved yesterday regarding the NV 2080ti GPU on a Win10 PC not really getting warm at all which is strange and a few other questions, when a lot of people here are stating their card is on fire – I’d put that down to age of the card leading to maybe bad thermal paste and they sound a bit low end.

    I fixed one issue with a Ryzen 2700x CPU based system, I’ve been running my RAM since a BIOS update at 2133mhz, which is rated at 3600mhz but Ryzen systems are finicky with RAM speeds. I know your not mean’t to be running addons such ORBX scenery/airports, ZIBO and Skymaxx etc on the beta, but the good news is I’m now getting about 60fps at ultra wide 1080p with all those turned on now just from pushing my system ram to 3333mhz, very pleased!

  27. Hey everyone at LR. I am an X-Plane unser since XP 10 but I have never seen a beta cycle like this.
    Broken beta, basically back to private beta. Wow…. As an engineer myself I can imagine the pains you must be going through.
    When you first announced Vulkan will be part of XP11 I was really surprised – a rendering engine re-write on a live and selling product, wow! Now we are in the middle of it. I am ruly, ruly excited as things evolve!

    1. 11.20 was in beta for a long time too because like 11.50 the first usable release was only complete for core features. We’ve had lots of broken betas in the past, but 11.50 really has been pretty brutal.

      I’ve been asked a few times why we didn’t save Vulkan for a paid upgrade. It’s not cuz I’m a super-nice guy who likes to give away big features for free. :-). It was, in my mind, a question of risk management. I was quite concerned (and in hindsight I think correctly so) that the new Vulkan code would take a very long time to stabilize to the point of ‘just working’; being in an upgrade, anyone who is annoyed by this can just check the box back to 11.40 or turn off Vulkan…it provides a safety valve while we work the kinks out.

      1. This must bode well for all the niceties you have planned for the paid version of X-Plane 12. Where do I send the money?
        Thanks again for all your hard work, it is all very much appreciated.

      2. Dear Ben, in my opinion it was the correct decision. It is a win-win situaiton for all of us. This kind of policy confirms once again my decision to purchase x-plane 12. For sure I am not the only one who thinks this.
        I very much hope version 12 will hit the shelves this year 🙂 !
        kind regards

  28. I am amazed at the results with 11.50b6. Occasional crashes, but the rewards in visuals are great! All settings on full except reflections two back, although it will run with everything on full. Seeing ground shadows and reflections on buildings on clear early mornings or evenings is great. OK my RTX 2070S is helping keep the room warm, but if you want performance you have to have this happen. Laminar, if you can get this to remain stable and smooth out the shadows it will be amazing. Good luck to you!

  29. Hi Ben,

    Will Beta 8 be released to Steam users? We are still running beta 4 which has many bugs.

    Thanks for your time,
    Alexandre

      1. We are going to jump from B6 to B9? I know you pulled B7 but we are skipping B8 now as well?

        1. Yes – both b7 and b8 were cut and sent to third party devs and had issues. We have something that we think is pretty damn close to b9 now – the 3rd party devs got a preview to kick, and I think it goes out this week.

  30. Hi, can I still obtain 11.50b7 (or b6) by performing a standard xplane update (with the option for beta checked) ? I had tried out b5 earlier. While I didn’t encounter any crashes (so far), I noticed slightly lower fps with vulkan mode active (by checking the new box in the configuration page and restarting xplane). On the other hand, none of my cpu cores now reach saturation under the vulkan option. With 11.39, one of the cores always saturated with the other three hitting around 95%. GPU hits around 50-60% in both cases. So, I am wondering if this could be because the version I downloaded didn’t have full vulkan functionality enabled(?). Thank you for any advice.

    ps, I have an old cpu (i5-2500K) and fast gpu (gtx1080Ti), so cpu ought to be the bottleneck, 16GB and two 2K screens (center and left views). For reference I used KSEA Rwy 16c threshold, clear weather, ZIBO mod 737. Without vulkan I clock at about 29fps (all cpu cores saturated), and with vulkan it decreased to about 27fps (no core saturated).

    Gopal

      1. Hello Ben:

        Thank you for your reply. I just did another update via the installer, and by following Settings/General/About X-Plane, I am now able to verify that I have “X-Plane 11.50b9 (build 115020 54-bit, OpenGL)”. The line below it confirms “Your copy of X-Plane is up to date; you have the latest version.” On the graphics page I have the “Use Vulkan driver for faster rendiering” option which is unchecked by default.

        Before I proceed further, I notice that my CPU is at 100% and GPU at 55%, right on the main menu. With the pre-vulkan version, these utilizations climbed only after initiating a flight, not on the main menu. I had read somewhere that upon starting Vulkan for the first time (which I am yet to activate), there would be a long initial setup activity. So, my question is, should I simply wait until the above settles before switching to vulkan or starting a flight ? I want to proceed cautiously, and don’t want to mess up anything this time around.

        Thank you.

  31. Hi,
    When do your team plan to resolve the stuttering problem in one of multi monitors? I had tested three monitors in visual computer for long, one of the monitor is always stuttering since 11.50b1.

    1. I have 3 monitors and stuttering has virtually been eliminated with Vulkan. Did you remember to select the Vulkan option and then restart X-Plane? Even running higher settings my FPS is 27 at my local GA airport and very smooth C172SP. i7/7700k GTX1080 and 48GB

  33. Hi!, when i try to update my x plane, the updater doesn’t show the beta 7, it update to the beta 6 even when the beta 7 is out. What can i do?.
    Thanks.

    1. Beta 7 is – not out – it’s…”missing in action” as the title says. We did not release it becuase it’s borked. the updater will get you b9 when i’ts ready.

  34. So if I understand correctly from recent comments, we’ll get 11.50b9 in a few days. What should we expect? More stability, more performance or both? Really looking forward to this one, b6 has been crashing quite a bit on my laptop…

    2. Ha ha, who am I kidding. You should expect chaos and insanity, although past performance is no guarantee of the future. 🙂

      1. I love chaos and insanity! Keep the good work. I am also looking forward to be immersed in this mayhem of craziness!

        Cheers

  35. Just had my first flight in 11.50b9
    Bit hard to get it going in VR, thanks to WMR / Steam 🙁
    But when you do get it up and running WOW!
    Best VR yet, what a treat
    Getting 40-45fps in the 172 on the strip, great update guys BIG thanks.
    My 7i @ 4.3ghz is getting hammered at ~ 90 percent but the GPU 1080i is having a party only getting hit at ~ 10 percent.
    Working very good in my HP reverb

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