New Betas Soon-Ish
Quick note: 10.21 beta 2 should be out today – that’ll fix crashes for Mac users.
WED 1.2 beta 2 — it’ll be at least a few days. I have the submit-to-Robin code working, but I still have a number of export bugs open.
Quick note: 10.21 beta 2 should be out today – that’ll fix crashes for Mac users.
WED 1.2 beta 2 — it’ll be at least a few days. I have the submit-to-Robin code working, but I still have a number of export bugs open.
10.21 beta 1 is here – since this is the first beta of 10.21, you have to run the updater by hand and check “get betas” to see it.
This will be the only 10.21 beta, so please go try it now. Give it a quick once-over if you make custom scenery or a custom airplane. We’ve tried to put in a whole pile of low-risk bug fixes, but better to test than find out that something went wrong the hard way.
Release notes here, bug report form link is on the right.
One note about KATL: this update contains Tom’s KATL building layout, which is built entirely out of library components. It lives in the “Global Airports” custom scenery pack – this scenery pack will grow over time to contain all airports submitted to Robin’s global airport database.
I have a lot to blog about this week, but before I can get into any of it, let me describe the process of recutting DSFs.
Alpilotx and I are now working on DSF recuts. The recuts will incorporate a few important changes:
At this point you are asking the two most important questions: which tiles will you recut and how will you get them? The answer to both is: we are starting the process by recutting a small number of tiles that we think are most important to recut, and pushing them out over the network as part of the update process.
At this point we have enough bug data from users that we have a pretty good idea of which tiles need to be recut first. For example, trees on Chicago’s runway, Botany Bay not existing, and Edwards AFB containing a real (and not dry*) lake have all been reporting about 5,290 times each. So we will pick the first set of recut tiles ourselves to fix the most visible, highly reported bugs.
But the goal here is also to start an assembly line that can mostly run by itself. That is, once we get these bugs fixed, we can potentially recut a fixed number of DSF tiles every month and include them in an update, which will move us closer to having the scenery be “live” like the sim and not frozen for the entire version run.
I think moving to a live model for the base DSFs is an important step that we have to make. Back in X-Plane 6 when I first started flying X-Plane as a user, Austin sending out patches with a new version of the sim every month or two was viewed as crazy. Look at how far we’ve come: at this point application updates are built into the Apple app store on iPhone (and the Mac app store), and if you don’t push updates, users want to know if you’ve been hit by a bus. Updates are the norm.
That change is completely logical: back when I started working on commercial software (in the 20th century) distribution was by CD-ROMs, which were mostly sold in stores. Once your software went out, that was it, so “done” was “done”.
Now software is mostly distributed over the internet; with constant connectivity and increasing bandwidth, it would be crazy for a company to not respond to its customers needs and requests by issuing updates. One of the most important properties of software as a “building material” is its flexibility — if users want software to do something different, you can easily change that software. With widespread internet connectivity we have the matched distribution to go with the flexibility of the software itself.
This recut is not a global world-wide recut; I do not know when or even if this will happen. Instead the recut is a first step into keeping DSFs “current”, and the beginning of an on-going process.
The other question that I hear a lot (besides which DSFs and how will I get them) is “when do I need to finish my OSM/apt.dat mods to get them into the recut.”
My goal with incremental periodic recuts is to avoid this issue entirely. Once we recut a DSF, the cost of recutting it again is very low — we just hit “go” on the DSF generator and replace the files in the update.
In other words, don’t worry about when you “have” to get your updates in by. We will recut tiles, and if you make a useful change after the tile is recut, we’ll recut it again. Recuts should be like a train that leaves the station every 15 minutes, not once a week.
(With Robin republished the apt.dat on a regular basis again, apt.dat updates are already like this.)
TL;DR? Here you go:
* I’m still not sure what happened at AFB, but my guess is that our importer saw “lake”, got very excited, and ignored the word “dry”.
I have a bunch of stuff to post about in detail, so let me first clear out the “what’s going on” category.
That’s a rough picture of what’s going on – details to follow.
Some personal news: this fall a lot is going to change; I’ll be heading back out west (again) and back to school (for a third time) – this time to Stanford. Their joint degree program is really good if you’re looking to get into IP law. At $50k per year, it’s on the pricy side, but fortunately (for me) LR is paying.
Why would Laminar Research pay for this? Well, if you haven’t read the news…
PRESS RELEASE
Laminar Research announces concession to Microsoft Flight Simulator, will withdraw from flight simulation market.
New business model in Intellectual property announced.April 1, 2013
Columbia, SC:THE CANCELLATION OF X-PLANE:
Austin Meyer, author of X-Plane, announced today that he will be withdrawing X-Plane, and ceding the flight simulation market to Microsoft Flight Simulator. “Sales of X-Plane are growing exponentially, but I wanted sales to grow exponentially times TWO!” claimed Meyer, citing poor sales as one of the reasons that he will be removing X-Plane from the market.
As well as canceling X-Plane for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux, Laminar Research will be removing X-Plane for iOS and Android from the App Stores. When asked why, Laminar Research President Austin Meyer was very clear. “Let’s be clear”, Meyer said “The AppStore generates significant revenue for Laminar Research, but only after I have UPLOADED the App for people to buy, and this is a frustrating process that can take in excess of 30 minutes… sometimes even 45 minutes if I am downloading episodes of “Breaking Bad” at the same time! I just cannot justify that type of grueling WORK!” Meyer noted that he believes that the Apple AppStore is an old idea with “limited potential” that only benefits a few people at the top of huge mega-corporations, since small, hard-working, creative developers could never get an Application ON the AppStore, thus leaving all of the profits to a few huge, faceless corporations.
THE NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR LAMINAR RESEARCH:
Laminar Research is announcing exciting new prospects for the future, though! Beginning this April, when Laminar Research removes the X-Plane product from all servers and sales outlets, it will move into the “Intellectual Property Licensing” business. Laminar Research has filed or acquired a number of patents on “blade element theory”, and “using a computer to calculate forces on an airplane”, and will be suing all companies in the flight simulation market for a percentage of THEIR income, rather than actually making anything of it’s own. “Remember” quotes Meyer “Running a business that actually CREATES something is so much WORK! You have to create a product that someone would actually VOLUNTARILY WANT to BUY, and then find a way to PRODUCE, DISTRIBUTE, and SUPPORT it! This is far too much work. It is much easier to SAY that I invented the IDEA of SOMEONE ELSE building a flight simulator, and then SUING anyone that actually DOES! That way, THEY do all the work, and I get the money for it! This is really a much more enlightened business model, and will be very profitable for Laminar Research, since I can now sue MANY companies in the flight simulation space without having to go through the tiresome process of actually MAKING anything!”
When asked for the specifics of how Laminar Research could actually do this, Meyer elaborated his future plans: “The patent system is EXCELLENT!” claims Meyer “All I do is send a piece of paper to the United States Patent Office claiming that I am the first person to think of someone ELSE writing a flight simulator! Since nobody in the United States Patent Office knows what a flight simulator is (Why WOULD they!??! They don’t build flight simulators!!!!!!!!), they OBVIOUSLY approve my patents, and that allows me to sue anyone that has actually CREATED a flight simulator!” When asked how Meyer could do this, when flight simulators have been in use since 1909, Meyer claims: “I never HEARD of anyone writing a flight simulator before I did, so I just logically assume that I am the first person to think of the idea! So I must OWN the work anyone ELSE does in flight simulation. That’s how the patent system works!”
None of the other companies in the flight simulation industry could be reached for comment, but are advised to save up money for their lawyers: Patent-infringement cases run about $2,000,000 in defense fees.
I am very excited for the company’s new direction; I’ve been coming up with obvious programming ideas for years now; finally we’ll get to monetize them without having to debug code first.
X-Plane 10.20 went final last night – we are now officially 64-bit (as well as 32-bit).
We have a number of small bug fixes that we will put into 10.2x bug fix releases – the name of the game here is small, unintrusive fixes that make a big difference to the sim without risking more problems. We’ll get to bigger fixes in 10.30.
Small things may include:
Fog is invasive – that’ll have to wait until 10.30.
X-Plane 10.20 rc2 is out – just a few crash fixes and the final code to support Lua-based add-ons.
If you make a third party add-on, please: go try your add-on with 10.20 rc2 now!
If we don’t find any new bug reports, 10.20 will go final next weekend.
Edit: the Kingair is, weirdly, missing a small panel of its fuselage in the right rear corner. Tom has already edited the file and I’ll post it shortly. I’m going to let the RC sit for a day or two to see if anything else washes up.
Here’s a rough road-map for getting X-Plane 10.20 and friends out the door:
One of the goals of this roadmap is to make sure that 10.20 itself is a stable 64-bit release that authors can target and users can run. One reason why late bug fixes are going into 10.21 is to avoid delay in getting a solid, ‘final’ 64-bit release to everyone. (We also expect that at least one major bug that was not reported during the long 10.20 beta will pop up as soon as we hit “final”, hence the expectation of 10.21.)
Please do not turn the comments section into a guessing game about 10.30; we don’t have a precise list of what goes into it, and if we did I wouldn’t post it anyway, because it’s likely to change over time as we get new data.
I have some specific comments on airports and ATC, but that’ll be another post.
A quick follow-up on yesterday’s post regarding LuaJIT memory failures on Windows:
We will be making a change to how plugins interact with LuaJIT and X-Plane for 10.20 rc2. If you have an add-on that uses a LuaJIT-based plugin (SASL, Gizmo, or FlyLua) you must get new 64-bit binaries for your add-on! If you do not get new binaries, it will only be a matter of time before your 64-bit add-on stops working.
This change is unavoidable – it either has to happen now (in RC, when only beta testers have X-Plane 10.20) or later (when we’ve shipped the product and everyone is happily flying). I think now is better — I would rather not have to do this at all, but the memory problems are not going away.
I am already in direct contact with the plugin developers who use LuaJIT to work with them on the needed changes.
With this in mind, I am hoping to cut RC2 later this week.
A quick status update on X-Plane 10.20: