Webservers, Documentation, and Terrible Titles

X-Plane 12.1.1 is out! This is a quick “bug fix” patch on X-Plane 12.1.0. If you could not load the sim due to problems with XPLM_64.dll, please update using the installer to fix it. Full notes here.

Websocket-To-Me Time

Besides fixing bugs, X-Plane 12.1.1 enables X-Plane’s web API*. Basically we were asked for this so many times at FSExpo that Chris and Daniela put the remaining work on the fast track.

Our plan is to build several services into the web server; the web APIs will not be exact mirrors of the plugin SDK, but will cover enough functionality to build wide range of apps. We have plans for:

• Datarefs (shipping now)
• Commands (in developement)
• Initiializing Flights (in development)

Documentation on the new web APIs can be found here.

Doc-It-To-Me Time

X-Plane alum and fellow X-Plane-10-survivor Tom Kyler is back working on developer documentation for us, and has finished a first release on some of the new X-Plane 12.1.0 features:

• Windshield Rain Effects and Wipers
• Windshield Ice Effects and Defrosting
• Detail textures (both albedo and normals).

Tom has big plans for X-Plane’s documentation; one thing that’s great to see in these docs is really good illustrations based on real sample 3-d models and test projects.

The Devil Is In the Details

A detail texture is a repeating, high detail pattern that adds high-res detail to an otherwise lower resolution texture. Detail textures let us add fine detail at high resolution without using a ton of extra VRAM efficiently. We use detail textures with bits of “gravel” to make the runways look more realistic.

We introduced detail textures over a decade ago in X-Plane 10 to enhance ground detail around airports and in the new (at the time) autogen cities.

What we did not do was give them a good name. At the time we called them “decal” textures. This has turned out to be incredibly confusing, because in every other game engine ever, a high-res texture applied over the entire material (which is what we have) is called a detail, and a decal basically means “sticker that you stick on somewhere”. Detail textures make the ground look more rocky, decals add blood spatter and bullet holes to the walls in your zombie-shooter game.

So moving forward, we are going to try to call detail textures “detail textures” wherever possible, to be consistent with the norms of content creation. Tom and Maya will be updating labels in Blender and doc to be consistent about this.

For X-Plane 12.1.1, Maya has extended the detailing system in two ways:

• Detail textures work on OBJs and not just in the scenery system, so aircraft authors can add detail too.
• Detail textures can affect the bumpiness of normal maps and not just the color of albedo textures, so detail textures now interact with the lighting model in realistic ways.

You can get the 4.3.3 beta XPlane2Blender plugin here to use the new detail textures. Maya is planning on a release Real Soon Now™.

* Please note that while the dataref API does use websockets, most of our web APIs are conventional REST requests over HTTP. I did consider “The X-Plane developers never REST..until now” as a section title.

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.

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