Just a few quick notes on the 10.10 beta process…

First, we have received well over 1000 automatic crash reports.  For those who have not figured it out from reading forum posts, 10.10b1 crashes on startup with some combinations of joystick hardware and its associated software.  Chris has a fix for this which will ship in beta 2, some time this weekend.

Thank you to everyone who has clicked “send to Laminar”.  Receiving such comprehensive and complete crash data is really really helpful.  We get a very clear picture of what’s happening with complete details.  Clicking “send to Laminar” is better for us than filing a bug (because the crash reporter is very thorough in grabbing forensic crash data and the crash submission system pre-processes the crash for us, saving us labor) and hopefully it’s easier for you too.

Also, thank you to everyone who has filed bugs on the bug report form!  We really do read every one of them, even though we do not reply to all of them.  We try to list fixes in the release notes so you can see what’s going on.

Overall behavior re: posting bug reports on the comments section has been quite good, but I will continue to trash bug reports here.  I apologize for the inconvenience, but my fear is that if I start responding to bug reports here, it will encourage other users to “file” bug reports on the blog too and then we’ll have a mess on our hands.

To be clear: my goal is not to snuff out negative feedback.  This is not “if you have nothing nice to say”.  But…most negative feedback really should be a bug report, e.g. “X used to work and now it is broken” really belongs on the bug report form.

I am fixing my last bug for beta 2, which I hope to have cut over the weekend.

***CHRIS’S EDIT*** We’re aware that having a joystick plugged in destroys frame rate…That’s already fixed and will also be in Beta 2.

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.

23 comments on “1000 Crashes…Sweet!”

  2. Hi Ben,
    congratulation for your work and of all LR!!

    I noticed this beta runs a bit more smooth with the same hw (even though frame rate does not seems to be improved so much)..
    BTW (not filing a bug 😛 ) I thought it would be nice if users had some options inside the sim to “benchmark” their own hw and report that data to LR.. Would it be useful to you to “trim” the sim more efficiently?

  3. Glad to see the auto-crash reporter is paying dividends! Should help you guys narrow things down now. I especially like the PAPI light changes. Beautifully bright at distance w/halo if you’re in their direct field of projection. A subtle enhancement I know, but it’s one of those things that just makes you go “wow, that’s nice! Well done guys”

    FWIW, I’ve had no issues whatsoever on my system (MacPro/10.6.8/4870/X52). I suppose I’m one of the lucky ones that is now getting 25-40 FPS in HDR mode. =)

    – chris k / Scenery Developer and Pie enthusiast
    (Not to be confused with the other ‘chris’ guy who likes to post here a lot =))

  5. By “helpful” you mean “painful”? 🙂

    Anyway glad you know what is wrong because something is very wrong with joystick code. I did not send a report because indeed it stroke like a general issue that indeed thousands might have reported already. I was right.

    I think you sweeten the pill by saying “some combinations”. I tried two different controllers (a Saitek HOTAS and a lowly X360 controller) and both give the same result (both if they are already plugged or I plug them in-game)… X-Plane freezes, not actually crashes (maybe it updates once every 20 seconds), it just crashed once when I inserted and removed the HOTAS 2-3 times in a row within 10 seconds.

    Anyway glad you (say you) found the issue. 🙂

    1. Which is sad …

      Today I saw the ORG is giving X-Plane with twenty dollars less than when was released … so that means that the people doing the “public beta-test” is paying more than who is waiting until x.20 version (historically accurate).

      This was the same as 9.x and 8.x … and here we are again.

      Ok, start the flame! (but this is really true).

      Bye

  7. One of the best things that can happen to us (the users) is, when we see that a bug has been fixed that was reported (like in my case 2 bugs). No doubt, this will ensure revenue for the future.
    The automatic crash reporter? A simple comment: Well done !!
    Greetings

  8. Pingback: » new Beta update coming soon Xsimreviews

  9. I don’t at all mean to be rude when I ask this, but how did a bug like “when a joystick is plugged in, the framerate tanks” slip through the cracks? Don’t you guys have joysticks plugged in like 90+% of the time? It sounds like if Blizzard released Starcraft, then said “the framerate tanks when you have a mouse plugged in”…pretty integral to using the software. As a non-developer, I’m genuinely curious as to how such a bug could have gotten through.

    Can’t wait to try the new update on my brand new GTX680/3770K desktop!

    1. I have a joystick plugged in about 1% of the time. I don’t work on the joystick code so I just never have one cluttering up my desk.

      Chris has a joystick plugged in all of the time when working oi joystick code on an iMac…but he has the rendering settings off so he can get work done faster on his iMac. So when he sees 110 fps instead of 170 (or more likely 60 because the window manager clamps him) there’s no danger sign.

      And…the slow-down is a function of OS and a function of how _many_ sticks you have…our theory is that it’s people with a _lot_ of USB devices who are seeing absolute fps death.

      One more factor: 10.10b1 contains a huge rewrite of the HDR pipeline…so when people reported fps problems, my first assumption was that this was the rendering code going off the rails! In that environment of rendering engine uncertainty other performance problems (especially seen in their more moderate “developer” form (e.g. higher overall fps, fluctuation from window mgr, only one device) don’t really raise the red flag a user sees when fighting to maintain 25 fps with all the options cranked on and four devices on a machine with more GPU and less CPU.

      1. I have a pretty descent semi-previous-gen PC. Nvidia 580GTX, 8GB RAM, Win 7 x64, i5 2400.

        I do not get a drop from 170 FPS to 120 or 60. I get down to one frame per 10 seconds when I connect any joystick. Pretty hard to miss.

        As I said before I am glad you already know what was wrong, on the other hand a “we blew it” would not hurt your PR… on the contrary (esp. since reaction seems to come within a weekend).

        1. This is going to shock you, but we do not have your computer in our offices. So we have not seen 0.1 fps on _any_ of the machines inside the company.

          If we had your machine, we wouldn’t need beta testing. 🙂

    2. Ha! Bad example. Starcraft DID tax the system when you were moving the mouse and mouse did have laggy response when in non-game screens.

  10. Hi Ben,

    I really enjoy seeing all the new things being done that improve many things is X-Plane but I do have a question on the priorities.

    It has been brought up few times by now, the look of the big cities that look more like a rural towns.

    I understand that there are top priorities, like crash, frame rate which enables the user to run the simulator but…

    Shouldn’t the look of the big cities be pushed up on the list?

    The HDR rewrite is no doubt a major step in improvement but I have a feeling that majority of average users like me would rather see the big ( and smaller ) cities looking realistic than enjoy the HDR effects, in that order.

    Again, all aspects of the sim are important to master it but as I said above … is the order of improvements right?
    I understand that right is also subjective ..*smile.

    Thank you for all your efforts and great job, Ben and LR clan.

    Cheers, Andrzej

    1. The cities _are_ being worked on…but work done internally isn’t visible until a product ships – same as 64 bit (and look how much people ask for that).

  11. Could it be helpful to implement a “file a bug” directly into X-Plane?
    The link to the bug report is a little bit hard to find on the website and sometimes things are hard to remember when switching from buggy sim to the website.
    If the crash report system would remember my email would help, too.

    Greetings Marc

  12. Well, I am one of the unfortunate users that the system crashes on startup and when my joysticks are also unplugged. Hence why these are called a beta release. Great job with the automatic system crash reporting. Love the startup interface, where you can choose, day, clouds, location. One question, can’t recall if you had the ability to just select live weather and time on the new startup screen? I ran into another crash at that point, so can’t recall.

    Thanks,
    Peter

  13. I see that the Beta is not available at the momemt I take it Beta 2 being made ready

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