Category: News

X-Plane 10.40 Release Candidate Is On Steam

After a few false starts, X-Plane 10.40 release candidate 3 is now available to Steam users.

Steam users: to try the release candidate, you’ll need to go to the “properties” of X-Plane (in the steam client) and opt in to betas.

(If you can’t figure out how to do this, you should not opt in to betas!)

As with all pre-release software: if you would be annoyed by a crash or bug in X-Plane, do not try the beta or release candidate. The point of betas and release candidates is to find bugs, not to get X-Plane updates early.

Update Problems on Windows 10

Another post in the category of “things that go wrong due to stuff in your operating system”: some users have had problems automatically updating X-Plane when using Windows 10. The error manifests itself as a “permission denied” error when the installer tries to update X-Plan.exe. No one within the company has ever seen this error but we have seen multiple reports from users.

One user was exceedingly patient and ran half a dozen tests for me and sent me back mini-dump files; via this process I think I have learned what is going wrong.

• When X-Plane goes to auto-update itself, it has to quit itself after launching the installer. If it does not, the X-Plane.exe file cannot be rewritten to a new version because it is in use.
• A DLL (PlayToDevice.dll) gets a chance to run shut-down code as part of the OS process-shut-down procedure.  PlayToDevice attempts to de-register notifications of MIB changes and in the process hangs X-Plane.
• When the installer goes to update X-Plane.exe, X-Plane.exe is still running (since it is hung unloading PlayToDevice.dll) and the update fails.

The bad news is: I have no idea why this is happening, what is special about the users who have this problem, or what could be causing it. I couldn’t find any useful info on PlayToDevice.dll (if you know what this is, I’m all ears) – it’s definitely not something we asked the OS for.

The good news is: you can work around this problem quite easily:

• Quit X-Plane yourself.
• Run the installer directly from the desktop and
• Pick “update x-plane” and the update will work normally.

This isn’t as easy as auto-update, but it does still work.

A Possible Fix in RC3

I was able to jiggle the shut-down code to not hang one user’s system – this barely counts as a “bug fix” since it’s just me changing the order of shut-down calls and hoping something works out. But in case it helps all users, this fix is in 10.40 RC 3.

A note of warning: since the fix is in 10.40 RC3, all updates to 10.40 RC3 will have to be done by hand if you are affected.  Once you have 10.40 RC3, the next update should work correctly.  This delay is due to the bug being in the version of X-Plane being replaced.

X-Plane 10.40 release candidate 2

X-Plane 10.40 RC2 is out now. This RC has a few key bug fixes:

• RC1 had a bug in the file scanner that would cause some key frame tables in OBJs to be misread. This could cause add-ons to look wrong.
• There was a shader compile problem on Linux, definitely due to bad GLSL.
• I tracked down an out of bounds memory read in the autogen engine.

At this point I believe there is going to be an RC3 tonight because:

1. I have a reported work-around for auto-update failures on Windows 10. That’s pretty high priority – if auto-update doesn’t work, we get tech support emails from now until doomsday.
2. There’s a spurious error message in the log. This should really just be considered cosmetic, but for some reason y’all are really, really, really concerned about error messages in the logs* so if we don’t fix it, my in-box will fill up.

Steam users: there will not be an RC2 on Steam – if RC2 is indeed replaced by RC3 within 24 hours, then we’ll wait for RC3 to go to Steam. The reasoning here is the same as it was with RC1.

X-Plane 10.40 RC 1

X-Plane 10.40 RC1 went live last night – see the release notes for bug fixes.

If your add-on works in 10.36 but does not work in 10.40, please tell us four weeks ago. (But if you haven’t tested your add-on, please do so ASAP!)

If you find something is broken in 10.40r1 that works in 10.36 please file a bug ASAP!

Note that we do have a number of valid bugs filed that will not be fixed in 10.40 – these are mostly bugs present in both 10.36 and 10.40. The goal with 10.40 is to get digital download final and not introduce new bugs.

If we don’t find a major “oh noes” over the weekend, we’ll look at getting rc1 onto Steam as a beta on Monday.

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 11 Is Out

Release notes are (finally) updated. I’ve been stuck in a pattern of not getting the beta done until late Friday night (with the servers ready to go live Saturday morning), and the release notes whenever I can get to them.

With this release, we’ve moved screenshots and AVIs to the Output folder so that they don’t clutter up your main X-Plane folder and make it hard to find things. They’re not in their own “screenshots” or “AVI” sub-folders because the expectation is that you will do something with them, e.g. rename them, file them, email them, or delete them.

(If we wanted a permanent archive, we could show a “save…” file box like the Save Replay” option, but having us prompt you at every screen shot and AVI save would be totally annoying – it’s more important to be able to snap a lot of pictures.)

Windows XP support is fixed (after I briefly broke it). To be clear:

• Windows XP is within the system requirements of X-Plane 10 and will be for the rest of the v10 run.
• That said, I strongly recommend you not use Windows XP. It’s end-of-lifed, it’s not getting security updates, you’re basically just asking for your computer to get p0wned.
• When you do update, please update to a 64-bit edition of Windows.

X-Plane 10.40 had (for a while) new code to more aggressively manage the rudder when you don’t have a rudder axis assigned. This code has been removed, and behavior should match X-Plane 10.36. If you see weird behavior with the rudder, please set up X-Plane 10.36 and 10.40 side-by-side, and file a bug only if the behavior is different between the two builds. There are a lot of ways to have screwy control behavior that aren’t bugs (e.g. having mis-calibrated hardware).

We may re-visit auto-rudder in the future. The fundamental problem is:

• There are aircraft (most of them in fact) that you just can’t fly without a rudder.
• Some users won’t have rudder-pedal-equivalent hardware.
• We don’t want to turn off the laws of physics in X-Plane.

The inevitable result is some kind of AI in our control input subsystem to create rudder inputs to make the plane flyable. The big question is how clever that AI system should try to be. (The problem being that without knowing pilot intention, you can’t know what to do. Sometimes the goal is coordinated flight, sometimes the goal is intentional cross-control to maintain the runway centerline.)

Scrolling should be fixed in the advanced joystick button configuration screen; however if you are still seeing a bug setting up joystick buttons, please file a detailed bug report. We have had several bug reports that tell us something is wrong, but they have been very thin on details and reproduction steps.

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 10 Posted

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 10 is posted. This fixes a few big airplane compatibility problems: fuel flow and light size match X-Plane 10.36. (I will post in some detail on this on Monday.) The high-low idle switch isn’t fixed yet – that’s one of the few aircraft compatibility bugs still floating around.  See the full release notes for details.

I have seen some bug reports that auto-update is broken on Windows 10; I’m investigating those now. If you try to auto-update and something goes wrong, please do file a bug.

Ideally we will have a release candidate in one week; in practice I am out of the office for a few days this week and it looks like we have Windows-10 specific bugs, so we are more likely to have a release candidate in two weeks.

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 9 Is Out

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 9 is out. If you couldn’t run beta 8 (e.g. it wouldn’t start up or crashed), please update to beta 9. We’ve been thrashing about trying to deal with the problem where X-Plane asks for a user’s product key over and over every time they run. Beta 9 should fix this; if you still see your product key being blanked out frequently in beta 9, please file a bug!

Two known issues:

• The transponder commands have been dead for a few betas due to an accidental rename; this will be fixed in beta 10, which should be out in a day or two.
• We’re looking at screwed up fuel flow rates in airliners. If you have found an add-on other than the FlightFactor 757 or JAR Designs A330 where fuel flow has changed since 10.36, please file a bug.

Our goal right now is stabilization; what remains for 1040 is to fix the open bugs, not add new features. (So if your question is “will you add X to 10.40”, the answer is almost certainly no.)  We want to get to a point where digital download customers can run a non-beta as soon as possible.

I still have at least 30 bugs filed against me; if you filed a bug and it’s not fixed, you do not need to re-file it if it’s not mentioned in the release notes.

X-Plane 10.40 Beta 8 Is Out

Beta 8 went live today – it’s pretty much just bug fixes – the release notes list them.

If a bug is listed as fixed in the notes but is still broken for you, please do file a new bug – we need to know that we didn’t actually squash it like we think we did.

If a bug fix is not listed, don’t panic, and please do not file  another bug – we still have lots of bugs in the database that we have not gotten to, which is why beta 8 isn’t a release candidate.  Beta 8 primarily fixes some big high profile regressions from beta 7.

If you use a digital downlod product key, you may have to enter your key once for beta 8. If you are then repeatedly asked for your key over and over while using beta 8, please file a bug – it’s an indication that the digital download client code isn’t working as expected.

At this point I think all of the major code craziness for beta 8 is done and it’s just going to be fixes and locking things down – things should just become more and more stable over the next few betas as we head to a release candidate.

Digital Download and X-Plane 10.40 Beta 7

Over the last few days we posted a new version of our installer and X-Plane 10.40 beta 7. What follows is a big pile of notes about all of the new versions.

Fixes for Digital Download

The new installer and 10.40 beta 7 fix a pile of problems we found with digital download. Some major fixes:

• Installer crashing with old Intel drivers. (If you have a laptop with an NVidia card for games, the Intel driver may still kick in for the installer, and it may have an old driver that’s not upgradable.)
• Problems with computers running Windows in a language other than English.
• Problems authenticating.

X-Plane 10.40 beta 6 also had a bug where, for the very first aircraft start after entering your product key, the sim would still be in demo mode – change airports and demo mode would be gone. This was due to code using stale cached information to know if X-Plane was in demo mode, but it made things very confusing for new users. Beta 7 fixes this.

Important: if you have a digital download product key and X-Plane requires you to enter your serial number over and over and over, even when you do not delete preferences, please contact X-Plane tech support! A small number of users are affected by a bug in the code that checks product keys; since this bug isn’t reproducible on computers within Laminar Research, we’re looking for users who see this problem and can send us logs.

Other Stuff in X-Plane 10.40 beta 7

The normal X-Plane beta process goes something like this for a “major” beta.

• Early betas – putting in a fair amount of new code and large-scale restructuring to try to address feature requests and problems.
• Middle of beta – fixing bugs, often the high risk and tricky ones.
• End of beta – try to touch as little as possible. Unobtrusive bugs, small changes, nothing crazy.

The idea is to cut down the level of code bashing over time so that by the end of beta we’re not adding a new bug for every bug we fix.

X-Plane 10.40 beta 6 is a little bit atypical in that it is also the first release to have digital download. Since beta 4, we cut down how much code we were changing to try to get digital download released, since the servers and installer became ready to ship.

The result is that beta 7 contains the rest of that “large scale restructuring” and other code change that you’d expect from an early beta – it’s a significantly bigger jump in code than you’d normally expect from a beta that’s this many weeks old.

I am hoping that beta 7 represents the last of this kind of “change a ton” code and that we’ll get into stability mode shortly. But in the meantime:

• If you make a third party add-on, you should definitely plan to test one of beta 7 or 8 for compatibility in the next week. (Since beta 7 has a bug where the FMS is broken with certain planes, beta 8 might be a better candidate.)
• There are definitely still bugs we have reports for that are not fixed for beta 7. Check the release notes; if your fix isn’t listed, there’s no need to re-report, it means we just haven’t gotten to it.
• If you put in a feature request and we said “yeah, we’ll get that into 10.40”, we haven’t forgotten – I have a big backlog of datarefs to add, for example.

I think we still have several more weeks of beta; inserting the release of digital download has stretched the process out. How long beta lasts will be a question of how quickly we can stabilize.

New Commands

X-Plane 10.40 beta 7 adds a big pile of new commands. I will try to produce a comprehensive list later; one of our goals for our own fleet was to have a command to change any control that is all of:

• An in-cockpit control.
• Has more than two positions.
• Has discrete movement (e.g. up a notch, down a notch).

So besides commands added by the request of users, a number of commands were added to add “coverage” to the cockpit.