Beta 6 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.
This is another small update, with the main bug fix being for plugins trying to override engines. We also added a new feature: aircraft authors can now specify a preferred climb speed for when their aircraft are used as AI.
Update: B6 is also live on Steam.
Beta 5 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.
This is a small, quick update to fix the high volume of crashes we were seeing in beta 4. It also happens to include the latest cut of Gateway airports, which adds over 1400 new 3d airports.
Update: 11.40b5 is also now live on Steam.
Beta 4 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.
This update has a few more flight model fixes based on user feedback, a GPS error fix, and a fix for scenery decals.
UPDATE: We received a high volume of crash reports over the weekend with this beta. Because of this, we did not release it on Steam. We hope to have another beta out ASAP to help address the crash frequency.
Beta 3 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.
This update has fixes for a handful of user reported issues, as well as weather and time saved in .sit & .rep files.
Beta 2 of X-Plane 11.40 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.
This update has a few fixes to the experimental flight model and ground trucks. It also contains updates to code signing that start our preparations for the release of macOS Catalina.
We have a lot of exciting news for XPlane2Blender users on three fronts: the Blender 2.49 Converter, Blender 2.8 support, and v3.5.1-beta.2!
Firstly I want to say a huge thank you to all the community for all your patience, advice, and support during this time of heavy development and slow releases. One of the biggest changes, I think, to XPlane2Blender in the last few months has actually been all of you! I’ve asked for advice and gotten constructive comments in droves, I’ve asked for projects and I’ve gotten example files to work with! I even asked for help with contributions to the project and gotten several pull requests to merge! Your passion for Blender and X-Plane inspires my passion for making the tools you want and need!
Now for the details!
The XPlane2Blender 2.49 converter has been in development for nearly a year, and the alpha is almost here. Some doubted if it was even possible to save these old projects, but the results speak for themselves. Observe these screenshots of Laminar Research’s KingAir C90B, F-4, and Boeing 737 that have been converted and exported with XPlane2Blender for 2.79!
These are not proofs of concept, they actually work very well! Animations, manipulators, panel textures, meshes, lights, OBJ directives like shading, no shadow, DISABLE_DRAW, ATTR_light_level, and more, autodetecting textures, and preserving workflow features like picking the same OBJ file names and BULK export vs Regular export are all in the alpha. Basic scenery objects also convert, but some directives aren’t included yet.
We are not feature complete, and it will never be perfect: pre-conversion and post-conversion fixes will likely be necessary. However, spending only a day or two for the conversion is far better than redoing years of work!
The alpha is about two weeks away from release. In that time I HIGHLY recommend finding your old projects and doing the following
The cleaner the input file, the cleaner the conversion, the better the 2.79 file. That is why I’m releasing this guide before releasing the alpha – so that some of this work can be done beforehand and day 1 questions will be about the converter and not 2.49 problems.
One last note: Releasing our internal version of XPlane2Blender for 2.49 does not indicate support for it. It is merely there to help prepare your project for use with the converter. Remember, we’re trying to run away from 2.49 as fast as possible.
A person recently e-mailed me: “Will Blender 2.8 have support before the New Year?” My answer: Yes! Yes it will! Don’t lose hope!
During the alpha cycle for the converter I will be finishing the alpha for Blender 2.8 as fast as possible. We’re very close – the UI is working and I’m about half way through figuring out which API calls need to be replaced and how.
Before September is over you will start seeing more commits on the 399-blender-28-support branch. To keep up the hope, check out this screenshot of the BD-5J Microjet in XPlane2Blender in 2.8!
When I put out a desperate plea for some help developing the project I was gladly surprised by Kim Brandwijk, who has made several high quality pull requests that are small enough in scope to be added to v3.5.1.beta.2. I regret that I did not have time to merge them in a timely matter, but now with both alphas releasing soon all users can look forward to some excellent optimizations and speed increases soon. Hopefully the pull requests and community development can pickup some energy again.
I hope you all are as excited about this as I am! It has been a long summer of lots of coding, but I think people will be very happy with all the new features! Stay tuned for more news!
This version update includes the modified C172.acf and C172_G1000.acf that use the new nosewheel steering parameters, so you can try out the new bungee steering in default aircraft now. We’ve heard pretty positive feedback on the new handling from the pilots we’ve asked to try it so far!
The interaction of the nose wheel with the rudder and brakes now closely resembles a real C172: The nosewheel is no longer rigidly connected to the rudder, but by a spring-loaded steering bungee. This connection allows a steering angle of about 10 degrees, giving you three times the precision in steering that you had previously! But sometimes you don’t want precision, you just want to make a tight turn – in that case, you use differential braking. This will pull the plane around in a tighter turn, and with the new steering bungee, the nosewheel will follow that turn without skidding, because it can castor beyond the steered deflection.
If you don’t actually have hardware brake pedals, X-Plane will add the differential braking for you when you ask for maximum rudder (using your joystick twist axis).
For aircraft authors looking to incorporate the new parameter into their planes, there is a much more detailed description here.
Edit to add: As usual, Steam release will be delayed about 24 hours–expect it to be live sometime tomorrow.
A minor patch is now available for LR customers. We expect to release this on Steam in about a day. You will need to run the installer and opt into betas to get this version. It includes improved C172 steering, an asynchronous map, and .lin fixes. Full release notes here.
Update: the announcement here says better C172 steering but actually the aircraft file has not been updated and behaves exactly like the C172 in the previous release. The physics model does have an update that allows authors to simulate bungee-cable steering (like the real C172 has) – we’ll enable this in the default Cessna soon.
It’s officially out the door! (Steam should go “final” later this evening, but you can get the final now by opting into public betas — it’s still marked as a “beta”.) This was a fairly large release, and here’s everything it includes.
We expect to do a bug fix patch in the next week or three, depending on the severity of the seemingly inevitable “bug that got away” during beta testing.
Observant Steam pilots flying VFR noticed that the Cessna 172’s windows were completely solid gray in 11.35 release candidate 1 – not a huge problem for IFR, but not great for site seeing.
This should now be fixed – if you let Steam update the app you’ll get the clear windows back.
This bug was totally bizarre and astonishing. The interior glass texture for the Cessna was missing from the installation, but not from the master files we build the sim from or from the Laminar version. As best as I can tell, Steam’s tool for building the sim just lost the file randomly. I rebuilt the Steam install this morning and the file came back.