We just posted X-Plane 11.05 today – to try it, click “get betas” and run the updater. Steam users: we’ll try to get a Steam version up in a few days if no massive bugs are found.

This update is really a release of airports from the X-Plane Scenery Gateway – see the release notes here for a complete list of airports included.

This release also includes our first land-marks: custom buildings from the strip near Julian’s KLAS, which is also included.

 

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.

64 comments on “X-Plane 11.05 (Release Candidate) – Airports!

  1. Get this man some scotch !

    Vegas is looking pretty good ! But there is a office building just short of 19R at KLAS, will file a bug.

    By the way whats the story with 3D water ?

    Cheers……..

    1. It includes all recommended Gateway airports submitted before 20 July 2017, at 16:05:59 UTC.

  2. Will the new objects for airport authors come with 11.05? I have 2 airports almost ready, I just need some objects you showed in the presentation 🙂

  3. Oh. I thought all the landmarks shown would release together?

    Will these landmarks be simply folder or files we can remove if we already have an icon in an existing package?

    1. I think the landmarks will be rolled out by city.

      They’ll be in one pack. If the custom pack is set to higher priority then its exclusion zones can exclude the landmarks. Those custom packs _did_ use exclusion zones, right? 😉

      1. To be honest, I am not sure.

        All I know is LR landmarks look quite nice, and it would be great to be able to pick and choose if you want to use them instead of or with custom packs.

        ie; ( i know this is frowned upon) remove landmark folder just like global airport folder

        Your Sears Tower looks better than any available now

  4. Ok, I’m very new to X Plane but thought with the updated airports you just drag and drop into custom scenery folder, did that, still nothing shows up in sim, whats up with that ??

    1. New airports roll out with the automatic updates you’re prompted to get when you launch the sim. 11.05 is still in beta so unless you have the “get betas” option checked in the installer, you won’t be prompted to get it quite yet.

      It sounds like you might be downloading scenery directly from the Gateway. This can cause problems seeing the automatic updates as the folders in Custom Scenery override the default global airports file.

  5. Can you state how long it will take until 11.10 and whether the ground effect issue (pitch down during flare on certain airplanes, e. g. B1900D, B200) will be fixed in this next version? Maybe also some further performance will make it into 11.10?

    Thank you and regards

    1. We’ll start the 11.10 beta soon after 11.05 goes final. Austin is aware of the ground effect issue, and I believe he’s got some flight model changes coming in 11.10 to address it, although there may be more work to be done in the future. More performance tuning is indeed coming in 11.10… look for a future blog post to give all the details.

    2. I _think_ (not 100% sure though) that there should be a pitch down due to ground effect in real life as well. This should be due to two reasons: 1) the wing downwash is blocked by the ground, and hence the effective angle of attack of the stabilizer decreases (in absolute value), decreasing the negative lift it produces and pitching down the nose; 2) the slope of the lift curve of the wing becomes steeper, so the wing produces more lift. This has a cushioning effect but, at the same time, also a pitch down effect, since the center of lift of the wing is usually located behind the center of gravity. I think that the real A320 (fly-by-wire) automatically pitches down the aircraft when landing, forcing the pilot to “flare” with his sidestick, in order to recreate what he would do in a conventional aircraft.

      1. For what it’s worth, from talking to Austin, my understanding is that the issue Austin is actually not related to ground effect (though that’s the name the issue has been given on the internet). Instead, the problem he’s aware of is that our downwash modeling, while very good in the air, is not as realistic as it should be near the ground, because we don’t model the ground wash “bouncing” off the ground to provide lift from below. Instead, it’s as if your downwash passes through the ground without interacting with it.

        1. Yes, I followed the relevant discussion during the Q&A, you’re describing the same phenomenon I explained in my point 1, but with different words. And the change in downwash due to ground _is_ actually the only cause of the so called ground effect. 🙂

  6. The new LEMD airport has made the old Aerosoft one be erased from Custom Scenery.
    What about EBBR, EGSS? Aerosoft airports are still there and have to be manually disabled. Is a fix expected to avoid overlapping? Thank you for the good job!

  7. Question:

    It was said that 11.10 would come in the summer, is this during the summer that you’re currently in at the moment, or next year?

  8. Hi Ben,
    are you in contact with Andrey, the developer of xEnviro, regarding any issues with this plugin?

  9. Vegas looks really beautiful at night. At day it doesn’t look as good. The textures seem to be quite simple.

  10. Please oh please in some future version add a function to be able to set controls for each aircraft separately (saved in the aircraft folder for example). Aircraft specific controls would supersede the common settings, the rest would fallback to default/common. Like add some tabs in the control settings for “Common/Aircraft”, the rest of the interface can stay exactly the same. This would be much welcome improvement.

      1. Bruno says:
        August 2, 2017 at 1:47 am
        There is a plugin for that, for free. I believe it is called X-
        Assign.

        “It’s broken since 11.02”

        1. Yeah it does not work. And furthermore my approach is to keep my Xplane as vanilla as possible – that way I get the least amount of problems, which are usually caused by plugins. I use only a few and I got pretty much rock solid Xplane11 since the early beta. That’s why I’d like to see this as a native functionality.

          @Tyler Young: Thanks for answer, can’t wait!

  11. I saw shadow bugs were addressed in this release, however I found another, which has Helicopter rotor tip shadows going off into infinity. Happens on several helicopters. Bug report submitted.

  12. Over the years (XP10+11) I probably downloaded several Gateway airports and put them in the Custom Scenery folder. Is there a way to easily identify these sceneries in order to remove them from the Custom folder? I have probably 300+ scenery folders installed and going over them one by one might prove difficult. Thanks for a tip!

    1. You might check for the presence of the LICENSING.txt and README.txt files in the scenery folder. Airports downloaded from the Gateway will have a README.txt that look like this:

      ——————————————————————————-
      02 Ranch (E46)
      ——————————————————————————-

      Airport: 02 Ranch (E46)

      Uploaded by: WEDbot.

      Authors Comments:

      Airport upload from X-Plane 10.32’s default apt.dat

      Installation Instructions:

      To install this scenery, drag this entire folder into X-Plane’s Custom Scenery
      folder and re-start X-Plane.

    2. If you didn’t rename the Gateway pack folder, they all follow a similar naming scheme: [ICAO]_Scenery_Pack.

      You might be able to identify them quickly that way as well.

  13. On my wishlist there is one big point: Please, fix the ITT during turbine starting. This kind of bug seems to get into every 3rd new version.

    Thanks!

      1. Really?
        I did it already for 11.02

        Detauls are: start the PT6 (B200 or C90) and watch ITT, no peak at all.
        The ITT raises very slowly to 400C

  14. During the livestream, Austin and Chris said they had agreed on how to combine their ATC system approaches. Is there a chance we’ll be seeing this in 11.10 already?

    Love the first landmarks by the way, great job.
    What is the best way to pester Alex for specific landmarks, if any? The bug reporter? One particular landmark I see a lot of people missing is the church in Innsbruck.

  15. Hey, XP devs;

    1- I found a comparison video on youtube (//www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K4UCXYBcFc&), its about comparison between AMD RX 470 and nVidia GTX 1060 3gb, those cards usually performs same on most games or just little differences. But it seems AMD cards falls way behind nVidia card in video. What may cause this? Is it driver issue or game issue?
    With new AMD driver release (17.7.2) AMD also released GPU profiler and AMD Vanguard program, are those really helpful for you guys?

    2- How Vulkan improve AMD cards performance? I mean Vulkan is based on Mantle API which was developed by AMD. And it enables many AMD GPU features like Async Compute, Async Shaders, HW Schedulers… Are you guys gonna use these features on Vulkan?

    3- I didnt see anything about 3d waves on last QA video, but i notice since the release of XP11 when i change wave speed aircraft acts like its on huge waves but those waves aren’t visible graphically. I believe you have already done some works with 3d waves but how close 3d waves are?

    4- I notice some light sources cast light inside cockpit, for example AI aircraft wing lights or runway end lights casts light inside cockpit (green or red), meanwhile some major light sources like AI aircraft runway lights doesnt. Is it because of performance reasons?

    5- Shadows are turns off after/before dusk and dawn, i dont see any shadows in cockpit even there is a light (like moonlight, sunset, sunrise)… Is it because of performance reasons?

    Thanks…

  16. What was decided on how the LR Landmarks will manifest itself?
    Will it be a custom scenery folder per city / region / country or world?
    I didn’t see an ‘LR Landmarks’ or equivalent in the Custom Scenery folder, but I did see a new Las Vegas airport name in there – is the scenery an extension of an airport?

  17. Ben, relative to the shift to Vulkan, can we expect to see some of the fruits of this migration in seperate releases or do we have to wait till all the code is moved over to Vulkan and then we see the benefits in a major release?

  18. Great stuff. Looking forward for version 11.10. Can we expect the first beta to this week? Thanks for the great work LR.

      1. Any info on the status of 3D rain on windshields? As in 1) Huh? 2) On the planning board; 2) In process; 3) Testing; 4) Optimizing?

          1. Immersive visual representation of precipitation is what many user yearn for.
            Please reconsider you decision!

            Tom

  19. Love the updated KLAS and Vegas city Ben, can’t wait for other cities around the world to get similar treatment – London, Sydney, Rio, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Dubai, Tokyo, knock yourselves out !!!
    Would love to see all your ‘tall’ buildings get a LOD-lift though so they are visible from much farther out, at the moment they seem to fade to transparent then disappear at too close a range. Maybe some brighter lights on them too ?

  20. I just realized that my copy of WorldEditor 1.6.0r1 is running in 32-bits on Windows 7 SP1 64-bit (Windows Task Manager shows the process as WED.exe *32). Didn’t WED make the move to 64-bit some time ago? How am I supposed to make it run in 64-bits?

  21. [I’ve filed a bug -] my Mac and PC updates both still have the Aerosoft airports for (at least) London Gatwick. And London Heathrow is confusing too – Jan’s Heathrow is visually present but the Aerosoft Heathrow is present on the disk and above the Global Scenery airports in scenery_packs.ini – Confusing! How should people manage these?

    How will the ‘LR Landmarks’ be stored in the Custom Scenery folders? City / State / Country / Continent / World? Just wondering how large that folder will get and how tricky it will be to manage. The Las Vegas landmarks look like they’re very specific to a single airport.
    Will the landmarks plan also contain the massive bridges of the world? Surely everyone wants to fly under bridges…

  22. the tower looks fantastic, as for the rest of the buildings in vegas look generic compared to the photos show on x plane’s slide show of coming buildings, my settings are nearly topped out. gtx 1070 running the sim. so are you guys finished with the vegas scenery, or textures coming in 11.05 final

  23. What is the status of VR support? I saw the presentations and it looks like it is coming along great. I know it was said to come out shortly after 11.10 which, from what has been said here and in other places, sounds like it will be in beta sometime around the 10th to 13th of august. I know things change so there is not likely a firm date but is it planned to be a matter of weeks or months after 11.10 that it can be expected?

    1. Well, 11.10 is going to be a big beta… it will take months. (Hopefully a small number of months, but months nonetheless.) But VR is indeed planned for the next major update (11.20).

  24. No major issues found in 11.05. Does anybody find it odd that shadow improvements and shader fixes are what I’m looking forward to the most?

    Also, what is the status of the ground shaking bug? I’ve mixed this up with the downwash issue, and can’t remember if the “non-stop earthquake” is fixed in 11.10.

    Excellent work as always.

  25. I hope the new euro autogen will make its way into 11.10 along with all the landmarks.. Or do the landmarks come one city at a time?

  26. i have no sphinx , mandala bay is green, and many other buildings are off. they don’t look like the photos from the slide show. the luxor does not have the beam of light at night , and most of the buildings are dark. i was wondering if this is a bug or does everyone’s las vegas look like this. i believe it is landmark, the disk tower looks beautiful, not like the other buildings. the photos of las vegas in your recent slide show looks incredible, however mine looks nothing like it with exception to what i believe is landmark tower.

    do i need to redownload or is las vegas not finished , or is this a possible bug? i can send you photos if you need to see exactly what i mean. i would appreciate a personal email if this is just a random occurrence.

    thanks you very much,
    i love x-plane btw
    thank you again for such a wonderful flight simulator. i’m sold on x plane for the rest of my life with you people in charge.

    1. Uh… what you’ve described is the expected behavior if your rendering options are turned down. (I.e., at lower rendering options, everything in the sim gets degraded.)

  27. With the new SDK coming out would it be possible to add a feature to create a text file from the current commands that can be mapped to joystick buttons? My thought is it would be created after the aircraft was loaded.

    This would allow parsing of that file to make mapping of hardware to aircraft much easier.

    1. For 11.10, no… we’ve more or less locked down the SDK changes for that release. For a future release, maybe… but I’m not entirely clear on the use case. You want a list of all commands that can be mapped to joystick buttons… I assume to account for plugin-created commands that might not exist at the sim launch. And what is it you want to do with this?

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