After a last-minute morning recut (previous beta candidate was missing 80% of autogen, which is actually a great performance enhancement 😉 10.10 beta 1 is available for download to the brave and foolish.  Some notes:

  • No bug reports on the blog.  Bug reports go here!  Please, no back-door bug reports via “is X still broken”?  When it’s fixed, we’ll release note it.
  • Speaking of which, release notes here!
  • As long as those notes are, it still doesn’t do justice to how much changed.  For example, we spent a lot of time making things 64 bit safe, but since that’s not done, no release note.  I had 215 commits to go through for 10.10 – not sure how many everyone else had.
  • I’ll try to get docs up (and updated) on some of the new scenery features; further improvements to the rendering engine have put me even farther behind.  But a lot of the rendering engine improvements are either for Alex’s use in autogen or just make the existing stuff work better.
  • One thing you can tell from the 10.10 notes is that we’ve put a tremendous amount of emphasis on usability; when we looked at 10.00r1 after shipping, we identified a number of areas where using the sim (especially as a new user) just wasn’t fun, easy or welcoming.  The new features in 10.10 include those plans coming to fruition, finally.

To get the beta, run the X-Plane installer/updater or demo installer, pick “update” and check “get new betas”.  X-Plane will not prompt you to automatically update your stable 10.05r1 into the unstable 10.10 beta 1.

Finally, X-Plane 10.10 beta 1 is the first beta after a huge amount of code change.  If you like to fly X-Plane for fun, do not update your “working” X-Plane install to 10.10; it’s too new and too raw.  You can copy your X-System folder (or part of it) and then update the copy.

[Hint: now that we have sym-linked scenery, you can copy your folder minus custom and then sym link custom scenery back into place.  Sym-linking is not supported for airplanes and global scenery.]

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.

38 comments on “X-Plane 10.10 Beta 1 Is Here”

  1. Thanks! One of my fav release notes is the bug fix for carrier catshot with toe breaks. so glad to see the 10.10 ball getting goin, leading up to 10.20 64 bit yeah!

    great work downloading now, * ( yes i noted it is raw, ill only report an item once if it is a new issue.

  2. (Autogen improvements are still in progress and will be available in a later beta.)

    does that mean no new Urban/ autogen is in this 10.10b1 at all? or some, with more coming in follow up 10.10 beta x? this autogen rework is a widely looked forward to feature, hoped to see it early in 10.10

  3. Congratulations! After the long gestation period I knew some good things were coming. And there are lots of goodies to explore in this one. The next rc is going to be terrific; glad I bought in early.

  5. Question on the Hint: Can I have a Custom Scenery folder with just the default sceneries and place an alias of an external Custom Scenery folder holding just downloads in there and all of them will be available? Even if the external folder is called “Custom Scenery Downloads” or even “Fred”?

    What’s the best way to handle two versions? All this would be simpler if defaults were segregated from custom for both scenery and aircraft. I am juggling Custom Scenery, Custom Scenery Default, Custom Scenery Disabled and even Custom Scenery Default Disabled (for some Aerosoft ones).

    Anyway, two thumbs and a toe up for the usability enhancements. This is not a raw release, it’s more like sushi with a bent chopstick.

    1. You can’t symlink a folder of packs, only individual packs. The system is _not_ meant to handle multiple installs at all; that was _not_ a design goal.

      The goal is to allow people to run X-Plane on an SSD but keep their huge scenery packs on external storage!

      You might be able to get more clever at the unix level if you are on Mac or Linux.

          1. Merely the installation of any SSD in a computer will not make the world of difference in performance most are looking for. There are a number of factors, that combined, will certainly contribute to significant gains in performance.

            1. The SSD itself. Not all are created equal. Higher-end devices from brands such as Intel, OCZ, and Crucial are among the best.

            2. The disk interface. If the SSD is SATA III (6GB/s) instead of SATA II (3GB/s) and it’s connected to a SATA II interface, that will become the first bottleneck. A SATA III interface is mandatory. Fortunately, most newer motherboards will have this. Also make sure the BIOS on the motherboard and the firmware for the SSD are the latest versions available from the manufacturers.

            3. Set your motherboard BIOS to use AHCI (Advanced Host Control Interface) instead of IDE for the hard disk controller. Do not use a RAID configuration as TRIM commands (used to determine which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped) are not yet passed through the controller from the operating system. TRIM will maintain the speed of the SSD throughout its life. Otherwise the SSD will keep getting slower performance over time.

            I have an Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD in my flightsim rig and it will load XP10 at least 30% faster than the WD 600GB 10,000rpm Velociraptor I previously used for my X-Plane installation. The ‘raptor is already considered to be one of the fastest HDs out there. Imagine the difference when compared to most of the 7,200 or even 5,400 rpm drives commonly in use.

            So yes, SSDs are worth it.

      2. I assume the main advantage of running on a SSD is decreased load times. Assuming also that most of loading time is spent loading the scenery, what is the advantage of running only X-Plane (and not the scenery) on a SSD?

        1. I suppose one would prefer to save space on (expensive) limited capacity SSD by just installing the sim on it, and keeping 10s of GB of scenery on an external disk.

  6. Being a brazilian I’m wondering what are the “brazilian new
    features and improvements” that Austin mentioned in his announcement email…
    I loved the new “Quick Flight” screen. Kudos to the team.

    1. About the “Quick Flight”, I think it’s nice, but it’s missing the keep from real world time and weather, which I use. But the airplane and location is fine, I hope you will complete this.

      Thanks :).

  7. After a lot of years running my site devoted to MSFS and after the release of MSF I’d started to look at X-Plane, and I really love it.

    Thanks for your great work and for keep it community driven, I’ll promise to spread the word and to convert all my fans into X-Plane.

    I’m downloading 10.10 beta 1 as I speak.

    Regards.,
    Gonzalo Besoain
    SurClaro Flight Simulations

  8. Nice update! Okay, it has some rough edges, but the HDR performance is much better. Also, I really like the new quick flight screen, it adds a lot to the usability.
    The artwork looks a bit better now, but I am pretty dissatisfied with the colors of dawn and dusk and the cloud puffs being way too dark in many scenarios. The clouds look dirty, like huge, grey dust piles in the sky – they should be *white* in most “nice weather” conditions. I’m not sure how the sky looks in america, but I’ve never seen such a purple sunset or yellow morning like in X-Plane 10. :/

    That’s a point that really kills the immersion for me, a bit variation and more realism would be great here. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to flame around, it’s just my opinion about something with a big impact on the visuals, that should be obvious and relatively easy to improve.

    I’d like to ask, if X-Plane 10 is – on the code side – ready / enabled to support third party weather addons, I love Real Environment Extreme for both FSX and X-Plane 9 and it would be AWESOME to see that coming to X-Plane 10 as well. It improved V9 just so much!

    Also, I wonder, if you could make a contract with the guys from Carenado, their planes are amazing. I know, it might not happen. But the imagination that they do the default planes for X-Plane in the future is just so… mind-blowing.. 😀

    1. There isn’t really a third party weather SDK right now. You can control the weather settings to a limited extent by writing your own METAR files or by poking datarefs.

  9. just to let you know:

    sharing “Global Scenery” and “Custom Scenery” between multiple installs via
    “mklink /J” in Vista works just fine with XP9 and XP10. Don’t know about other windows.

  11. I would LOOVE to be all happy and excited about what I tried last night on Xplane 10.10, and confirm all the improvements and all the goodies that are part of this beta.

    ….

    HOwever, after the ugprade, Xplane would not start at all. Therefore after a full hour and a half of upgrading all my PC drivers, changing different parameters and resolution, I gave up and went to sleep.

    Too bad the installer doesn’t give an option to roll back to previous version………

    and yes I will submit a bug report

    1. Never mind I read you can rollback by unchecking the BETA checkbox in the installer menu.
      Sorry about that.
      🙂

    2. You can go backward – it’s just messy. Run an update, uncheck “get beta”, and then accept “overwrite all changes” a few times.

  12. Ben,

    I’ll file bug reports over minor stuff that I won’t mention here. What I will mention is that the tone mapping is MUCH improved! Night flying doesn’t leave me squinting at monitor to try to make out lights, and things look great at sunset. I also noticed that sunset color varies with altitude (i dunno if you changed it this run) instead of the whole world being lit with whatever color is appropriate for the altitude the plane is at. That helps a lot too!

    Feel free to push the adaptive tone mapping harder, I won’t complain.

    1. Yeah, Alex wrote a new tone mapping operator and it’s a hell of a lot better than the gak I threw in for 10.00. We’ve known for a while that the operator could be improved…

      Sunset color variation with altitude has been in since 10.0 I think!

  13. You mentioned: [Sym-linking is not supported for airplanes and global scenery.]

    The thing with me is I have 2 set of Global Scenery,
    a) with limited region sceneries about 20GB on my Laptop
    b) with Full Sceneries on my External HDD

    Using a shell script I have been un-linking and sym-linking the Global Scenery in X-Plane to either (a) or (b) as when required. And so far it works.

    I am a bit concerned about you mentioning that “Sym-linking is not supported for airplanes and global scenery.”. So my doubt now is will my method of sym-linking global sceneries still works. haven’t updated to 10.10 yet.

    Regards

  14. Hi Ben,

    Have you considered putting a bug reporting feature directly in X-Plane itself? It would give you the benefit of being able to automatically attach the log file, as well as include any other information like rendering settings and system information at the same time.

    Just a thought…
    Austin.

    1. I was thinking the same thing. Something along the lines of a plugin. You could send bug reports while flying and capture internals of the sim. What about an acars/fdams like system, something that can talk to the mothership.

  15. Just an aside, the Beta page still lists at the top the most recent as being 10.4B4. You have to scroll a good but just to see that 10.10b1 is the actual newest release. If I didn’t check here or on a forum to see the good news, I’d have still been waiting for 10.10B1.

  16. Loving 10.10 with its rough edges. The quick start screen is a nice feature. I was a little disappointed that autogen wasn’t updated more, but no big….

    Oh for your eyes here is my latest add-on in development….It uses a plugin to draw clouds which add to the XPX weather system:

    //youtu.be/usE_ndld4bs

    Hope you don’t mind I just wanted to share with the community…

  17. Yes!! Thank you for repairing ATI Windows issue!! I thought all time my HD 6670 was total crap for this

  18. Hi Ben,

    Great update, it’s coming along well. A few things I’ve noticed (positives mate, don’t sweat), the cars don’t seem to have so much of an impact on frame-rates, and ground textures and coastline (especially north of Seattle) seem to have improved. Did you make adjustments or is me just pouring happy juice into my coffee?

    PS. HDR on my 2011 imac has improved greatly. Well done!

    1. Ground textures were edited by Albert, and the car headlights did receive animation. Any coastline improve is happy juice I think.

  19. Haven’t yet tried this but I looked the release notes and you did some changes to view angels. How about the free cam? Would it be possible to get the V9 freecam mouse control back? You just can’t make proper movies using new freecam because you can’t move it much using mouse and you can’t get the view move naturally.

      1. Hi!

        Sorry, I’m not very good in explaining things in english but I’m talking about the view “Free-camera” and how it’s controlled using mouse. In new version free camera view when you hold mouse button and move the mouse view moves exactly like you move the mouse but in V9 free camera view when the mouse was moved the view continuously turned that direction.

        With the old controls you could get the camera moving very smoothly and make it turn as much as needed but using the new controls you can only turn the view something like 30 degrees at the time.

  20. Hi, At this time you are thinking of implementing a Tessellation solution? , for example on airports, AI airplanes, static airplanes, facades, gates, etc?

    This would help the renderer process, for example when we are on final approach at an airport with lots of complex objects

    1. Someday, yes, but it’s not on the short list. When we designed the v10 terrain upgrades, we made sure the terrain could respond to height changes on the GPU so that tessellation + some procedural terrain enhancement (tasteful enhancement, of course 🙂 could cause texture changes.

      But I do not think tessellation offers any performance improvement in the “busy scene” case; on systems performing at their peak vertex count is not a factor.

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