X-Plane 10.20 rc2 is out – just a few crash fixes and the final code to support Lua-based add-ons.

If you make a third party add-on, please: go try your add-on with 10.20 rc2 now!

If we don’t find any new bug reports, 10.20 will go final next weekend.

Edit: the Kingair is, weirdly, missing a small panel of its fuselage in the right rear corner.  Tom has already edited the file and I’ll post it shortly.  I’m going to let the RC sit for a day or two to see if anything else washes up.

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.

21 comments on “10.20 rc2 Is Here – Test Now!”

  1. Thanks for the update On 64 bit Ben ,its very exciting and forward thinking! Also wanted the thank you and LR for what I know was a huge undertaking to bring 64 bit to xplane ! Really looking forward to this one ! You guys rock 🙂

  2. Thank you Ben..

    Is it normal now that everytime you start X-Plane 64bit you get an update notice, even though there is no update available? Kinda annoying to have to go through the update search before every flight?

    1. No Tom – That only happens to you.

      The rest of us are ONLY notified when there is an actual update to the main executable.

      You posted this before – saying that when you adjusted your textures for runways, you kept getting notifications.

      This does not happen to any of the 7 different XP10 installs I use – depending on platform, system, test box, etc.. which mess around with various XP10 internals.

      None of them exhibit the behaviour you describe.

      You should file a bug, instead.

      1. Hi agian Ben

        Sorry to say, but I have run the update and are now using the latest update with all files original. Nevertheless I keep getting update notifications every time I start X-Plane

        Bug report have allready been submitted Ben. Did that the same day as my previous post.

        I do appologies for any inconvenience this may have for you, but I start my XP alot and hate I do not know what causes this “bug” to me..

  3. It’s a bit unclear to me but with the release of rc2 do we now need to wait for developers to update their Win 64/Linux plugins? Or were the changes at your end suficient to fix the LUA memory issues?
    Phil

    1. Existing beta 64-bit plugin code will run on rc2. But plugin developers will be issuing new plugins with fixes so they’ll work forever.

      Code that worked in rc1 but is not modified _will_ break in a future x-plane if authors don’t update to the newest guidelines.

  4. Hi Ben. I’m pleased to hear that the progress continues apace with XP development. Keep up the good work.

    Before I update to the latest RC, please can you clarify something for me?

    In an earlier blog post (Dec 6th 2012), you wrote about the “phases of adoption” for 64 bit – “Beta”, “Crossover”, and “Acceptance”. I’m guessing that we are now officially in the “crossover” stage. If I update my XP installation to the latest RC version today, will that update still include the 32-bit version for compatibility with older plugins? (I’m thinking, in particular, of XSquawkbox. The other plugins I use add ease of use, and eye candy. XSquawkbox is the only one which adds functionality).

    Following on from this, I would imagine that its too early to predict how long the “crossover” period will last? Is this correct?

    Many thanks

    1. We are going to continue to ship the 32-bit builds for the rest of the v10 version run, at a minimum. We are not going to drop 32-bit support, since the product shipped without 64-bits as a system requirement.

      By cross-over I meant what the community would practically take advantage of. We will ship both 32 and 64 bits for a long time; probably much longer than third parties continue to support both.

  5. This blog is great.

    After pre-purchasing XP10 I’ve really only just gotten around to actually flying it. I’ve liked it so much I just went out and purchased a GTX 680 with 4GB of VRAM just for this sim. I’ve also gotten into FSEconomy, purchased about 5 payware planes and can’t wait for the plug-ins to go 64-Bit so I can get into them.

    Keep up the great work on these betas, I’ve not noticed any issues and look forward to the final release.

  6. Not sure if this is the right place to talk about this but all 3 of the RC installers have resulted in xplane immediately crashing during the first launch. In each case I clicked on the “fly Now” button. X-Plane launched but immediately crashed while booting.

    In each case, the next launch was successful using the same (saved) settings. I filed the auto crash log, but do you guys want bug reports on these things too?

    Tom

    1. The auto crash is all we need; if you file a bug, please include the same email that you used in the crash report so that we can link the two together.

  7. Hi Ben,

    concerning the graphics engine, I haven’t read of many interventions on it lately: do You think that XP has reached a sort of “mature” stage where almost everything that could be offloaded to he GPU has been done, or is there still room for further improvements in future releases?

    Thanks and keep up with Your fantastic work!
    Filippo

  8. Hi Ben,

    Are clouds on that list of possible improvements?

    They are still a bit of a performance killer.

    Dom

    1. No. I don’t know if there are things we can do to make the clouds faster (there may be), but there isn’t a known item just waiting to be done on the clouds to make them faster. By comparison, I have a few optimizations to the scenery rendering engine that just need to be coded.

      1. Hi Ben!

        Well I don’t know if it is a good way to improve clouds rendering speed but why not only draw the external envelope of those clouds?

        XP10 already drop the visibility when approaching a layer, which is not really a nice looking effect… So you would only drop visibility inside, not outside. That would also maybe give the possibility to render big CB for example without using monumental amounts of puff textures as you would only draw the external shape… Of course the latter will still be needed for smaller clouds…
        No?

        About rendering engine, I was wondering if it would be possible to recut DSF files using bathymetry topographic data? Not the whole precise set of data but just enough to naturally draw coastlines using physics for water to fill oceans and lakes. Just like Outerra-like rendering engines… Could XP10 handle this? Just a thought…

        Cheers!

        1. Hi Dave,

          The theme of this reply is: ‘we have already read your mind’. 🙂

          1. We already lower the density of puffs significantly inside cloud formations. There’s a limit to how much you can get away with that before it becomes _really_ obvious that you have flown into an ’empty room’ though.

          2. There is already some low-res bathymetric data in the v10 DSFs in another raster layer.

          cheers
          ben

      2. “I don’t know if there are things we can do to make the clouds faster (there may be)”

        One way I use since some days is using the 256×256 cloud textures somebody provided at the .org.

        Before that, I could not fly in 1920×1080 when I had 3 layers of cumulus clouds, even when clouds set to only 10%.

        Now I can, and I don’t really see a big difference.

        I don’t know if this is REALLY related to the clouds resolution, though. Rumour says it is 😉

  9. Hi Mario.

    I do the exact same thing but with original textures. Downscaling at 512×512 does not improve that much the frame rate, but it does improve it at 256×256 size. And the difference is great. Still, clouds look quite good like that.

    The weight of textures goes down from something like 800Ko to 50Ko, which is easier to handle for my old GeForce 8600m with 256Mo of VRam (MacBook Pro late 2008)…

    I think we can’t make more than that to improve clouds frame rate…

    I still set the general quality of XP on “high” to have something good looking (for aircraft and runway textures) but I do downscale cloud textures and few others, especially some big terrain textures. That’s not ideal but works for me.

    Cheers.

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