We posted an X-Plane 11.01 release candidate today.

  • The good news: it fixes the XPLM navigation buffer overruns that were crashing plugins. So that should be a big win for people using plugins with the beta.
  • The bad news: we found and fixed the flashing cloud shadows bug after the RC went out.

So we’ll do an RC2 with the cloud shadow fix over the weekend. We have a bunch of bugs we kicked to an 11.02, so that we could get the 11.01 fixes to everyone. We’re also looking to make WED 1.6b2 uploadable to the gateway so we can push out more gateway airports.

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.

70 comments on “X-Plane 11.01 RCs

  1. Is that the flashing cloud shadows also cause flashes in the cockpit ? I would assume so since it goes away when I turn off the clouds. Super annoying…..

  2. Very impressed with improvements, today I upload 1 airport for the first time with WED 1.60b2.
    I see improvements in appearance of Baron 58 (so far only flew it), has been modified, or improved light effects?

    João Alfredo

    1. I’m unsure why, but I’m unable to upload scenery using 1.60b2. I still get the message instructing me to use a non-beta version of WED.

        1. I am curious why it’s not approved for upload yet. Does it output bad data? I can understand why you wouldn’t call a WED release final due to bugs that affect the usability of the program for some users, but to keep users who aren’t having problems from uploading their work doesn’t make sense to me.

          1. We haven’t tested it enough to know it’s good. We’re close to having enough test time. 1.60b1 had a problem where hidden taxi route nodes and edges could cause corrupt exports. That’s the kind of thing that keeps us from going “anyone can use any version.”

      1. Well, yesterday I downloaded WED version 1.60, in help about it says to be WED 1.60, and very close to the names of authors says 1.60b2.
        I have in X-Plane Gateway my SWGO airport with status uploaded, ID 52111, Parent ID 30374.
        No problems found in upload.

  3. Is it possible that the XPLMNavigation buffer overruns were messing with things like using “DIRECT TO” from within a plugin? Or worse, corrupting loaded waypoints?

      1. Be advised… still broken in RC2. Filed a bug. XPLMSetDestinationFMSEntry will update the destination waypoint, but the autopilot will not fly to the specified waypoint.

  4. I do not understand your releasing technic. Could you please explain? The last final version 11.00 rc 1. It released on live channel, it is on Steam too.
    There was a 11.01 beta. It is beta, ok, understand.
    Now, you released 11.01 rc1 , but it is just a beta release too, not on live channel. And there will be. 11.01 rc2 which will be beta relase too.
    And you build 11.02 beta/rc1? Or what. Which one will be released as live? How long does it take to upload to Steam too?

    Thanks!

    1. The “get betas” and “in beta” check box apply to all not officially released builds. When we -think- we’re done, we label the build with “r1”, “r2” and we call it “release candidate 1, release candidate 2”, etc., e.g. we THINK this is going to be the one that goes final. But:
      – Until we decide that it IS final, you have to check “get betas” to get it – we test it for a few days before declaring it really done.
      – The words “release candidate” do NOT appear in the app itself, so that we don’t have to rebuild it just to remove those words when it’s final.

      For Steam: the only non-final builds that go on Steam are release candidates that survive for more than 24 hours. In the case of rc1, we found a critical bug and fix for it shortly after RC1 was released, so I decided to not bother with building a build for Steam that we knew we’d replace shortly. RC2 should be on steam and go final.

  5. I’ve read that the xEnviro addon development in stalled because of some blending problems in XP11. Is there any plans to fix this in the near time, or have it been stalled?

    1. I am not in contact with the X-Enviro team and I am not aware of “blending problems” in X-Plane 11 that are stalling them. That may not be their fault! I am behind on third party support and beta was like a hail storm.

      But I have definitely NOT heard from them recently and this is not good, because I am trying to contact all third parties that do 3-d drawing using OpenGL who would be affected by our move to Vulkan and Metal.

      1. Vulkan AND Metal…I can’t fathom the code maintenance pain that will generate.

        1. I don’t think it will be that bad – we expect a relatively thin layer for each, with an abstraction on top of them. They’re similar enough that most of our code will be “generic graphics” code and not “vulkan” or “metal” code.

          The shaders might be a PITA – we won’t know until we have a working way of porting them.

          1. you’re underestimating the amount of code Vulkan requires

            you will need a code path FOR EVERY GPU FAMILY not just vendor ex. Maxwell will need it’s own code path separate from Pascal

        1. No comments on timing — we really don’t know. Metal is several steps down a path we’ve already started, but given how many things we have to do, it’s too soon to estimate. And it’s not date driven – we’re simply committed to dedicating major coding resources to “making the rendering engine great again”; Metal will be one of the outgrowths of that but not the only one.

      2. The blending issues are about the transparency order, which causes the lights to appear through clouds. Since you said that would be a major change in the code, they decided to stand by the development until it’s​ done

        1. Ah. I’m not sure what can be done about that. We don’t have any guidance or time line on changing blending, so it’s not a great thing to wait for.

          1. It should be a priority since flying in the evening/night with broken or scattered clouds looks really bad with the autogen lights being visible through the clouds !

          2. Ben, will this be fixed sometime in the near future though? (Lights through clouds) because it REALLY interferes with night and IFR or IMC flights. It seems essential for a flight simulator to not have such a problem. These default clouds are stunning otherwise.

            Should I hold off on getting something like xEnviro or Skymaxx? It’s one of the gripes alot have shared here, with no clear answer as to whether or not it will be fixed, you’ve always given a not so clear answer about this, I mean all this with great respect, and also congrats on XP11

  6. Thank you Ben for the great update!
    The scenery online updater keeps on kicking in the old Aerosoft CDG which on the other hand gets removed by the update bringing in the new awesome Jan’s CDG.
    If you can fix this as well, thank you!

    Cristiano

    1. I don’t know what you’re looking to have fixed. If you delete the scenery, it comes back. If you don’t want it, disable it in scenery_packs.ini.

      1. I meant that the scenery updater and XP updater should be synced whereas it happens that the former keeps on installing a scenery package which gets removed by the latter. Aerosoft CDG now is obsolete and should be removed by both as it happened with other superseded Aerosoft packages. That’s it. Thanks.

        1. Oh that is not so good. We’ll get them in sync soon. It requires cutting a new “base version” of the sim. The 60 GB full product and 5 GB “latest update” are stored separately; we don’t update the full sim for every full update.

  7. Thanks for the updates, be nice to see the United livery updated to the current one.

  8. Did you fix the poor performance as well? Getting < 60fps with all details to minimum on a GTX 1080 Ti 🙁 Opening the map drops my performance by another 5 fps.

    1. As I have said in comments to this previously, X-Plane 11 is _not_ a 60 fps game right now, and no amount of “dumbing down” the graphics is going to change that. Run at 30 fps and turn the graphics UP and enjoy the scenery.

  9. Hey, I have a question, why is it that in X-Plane, the emergency Sound after a Crash is still audible, when you changed Scenario Location and plane and time after that Crash…seriously I could Report more such annoying Bugs. best, sebastian

    1. Probably efficient code, like not polling the radio volume in the middle of a radio message.

  10. I’m loving the night shading! I wonder what the 11.x run will have in store for us, just as it was with the 10.x run.

    I remember having reported a tree-shading artifact during the beta run, which makes it very noticeable that trees are just intersected quads, which it wasn’t on XP10, but I see still is there. Is it a “wontfix” or is it in the waiting queue?

  11. Interestingly, the Updater wants me to download 66MB to update the sim to r1 but the Settings/General/About button says the sim is up to date on 10.01r1. I’ll wait for r2.

  12. Hi Ben, as always thanks for your effort, not only in the development but also by the contact that you maintain with the community. Thank you.
    Now I have to make a few requests.
    – The interface to choose aircraft should have some system to be able to order them, I know the problem is the identification of the authors of the aircraft, but I think that generating several custom departments and being able to put the aircraft in them, would help a lot To find the desired aircraft.
    – It would be interesting to generate an alias of csl for multiplayer flights, when flying under these conditions the load of the other aircraft on the simulator give the fret fps, it is also impossible to eliminate the AI, something that did not happen before.
    – X-plane has one of its strong night lighting, it would be very nice that the night lod be increased to have a greater sense of distance, better ability to orient and forget about those blackouts and lit areas as we go. You could also gain a few fps if you fit the daytime lod to the distance of the atmospheric dispersion, I have verified that objects are generated that are hidden behind the fog.

    Thanks again.

    1. Really agree about the Interface and ability to order aircraft better. It`s really getting too crowded in there 🙂 Great idea!

  13. I also see more distant objects appearing in the fog, maybe they should not be there.
    But I also see objects that are close to what I consider, are dimmed in an excess of fog, maybe lighten more that is near, hide what is more distant.
    My observations always refer to pure X-Plane, without third-party modifications.
    But XP-11 is in the beginning, still “there is a lot of water to go under the bridge”.

  14. Question. How do we get the updates after V11 was released. During the Beta process I was always prompted to get the latest Beta. After the RC I do not get that prompt to update anymore?

  15. There is something wrong with the installer , it reverted back to 11.01b and not RC1/2

    Did a bug report .. Unless it is intentional .

    1. I get the same thing, Lawrence. It does not recognize the new Beta… I’ve tried 4 times now. Any thoughts, Ben?

  16. Recently after last update Xplane11 crashes all the time.
    I check Win Event Log and find this:
    X-Plane.exe
    11.0.2.0
    59023198
    nvoglv64.DLL
    21.21.13.7892
    58cb137a
    c0000005
    0000000000be8d48
    10dc
    01d2c36ce7332a96
    F:\X-Plane 11\X-Plane.exe
    C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\nvoglv64.DLL
    ff9b91f7-008f-48e2-b248-6b587b0c5d39
    Any idea what it means?

    1. Better place to ask this would be the x-plane.org forums. Try there first and then post a bug.

  17. Just installed RC2, and sadly the jittery cloud shadow problems are still there. Everything else seems fine after a quick flight.

  18. Ben,

    A Question regarding the Global Scenery Update, I suppose the new data is OSM based ? Will it be updated whenever the main data is updated ?

      1. How often do you pull data from OSM into X-Plane.
        I have been doing some updates to OSM around my X-Plane gateway airports.

        1. I’d also like to know this as I once (12 months ago?) set about getting local lakes into OSM. They appeared in a version of XP10. In XP11 they’re now gone – and yes they’re still in OSM.

  19. Is there any chance to fix the XP11 joystick problems anytime soon? I’ve filed some bug reports but did not receive any feedback yet.

  20. Hi Ben! I would like to take the opportunity to nag you and Jennifer yet again about the FMOD documentation (in my defense you said “right after 11.00” 😉 and ask you to please share the default 172 FMOD Studio project with it, because even though a forum user has managed to reverse engineer it and create a base project to go with X-Plane, it is becoming really hard to understand how to make the different mixer groups interact with each other and how to build mixer snapshots. An example of that would be very nice!

    Thanks again!

    1. Hi Daniela,

      I am working on the FMOD docs now. We are NOT going to share the 172 project – we have a _blank template_ project to share, and very specific instructions on how to use it. I don’t know what anyone derived from the 172, but they really need to read the docs carefully when they come out; the rules for multiple FMOD airplanes are complicated, and anyone who “ripped the 172” risks making a plane that won’t run with other AI planes.

      1. I don’t know, I think it was just to see how it works, not to use it to release anything. I think everyone is just toying with it and using it to get a peek to the future until the official docs are released because it is very limited what you can accomplish with it.

        Glad to hear they are on the way, the blank template project sounds fantastic! Is there any ETA?

        Thanks!!

  21. i ran the installer and wanted to update to 11.01 RC2.. when i load up the sim, it still shows 11.0 only.. log file also says 11.0.. log.txt for X-Plane 11.00r1 (build 110025 64-bit)

    what am i missing? installer says i’m all up to date.. i have the betas option unchecked. RC is not beta, right?

  22. So, we have all these improvements already to v.11 which enhances the performance. For people like me, with a pretty low level set up, how do I know whether these improvements will help me consider a purchase if the Demo is not updated as well? – or is it?
    I know I am in the minority, but unless my system blows up a new computer is not on my wife’s bucket list!

    1. I don’t know what you mean here. When the new version is released, you can get a new demo or update the demo and then re-try to measure your system’s performance.

      1. thanks ben, you must be fed up with me by now. I tried “updating” the demo and it told me it was up to date. Will try again. Thanks for your patience.

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