First, thanks to everyone who has filed bug reports for the first X-Plane 11 public beta. One of the reasons to have a public beta is to get information about bugs that we don’t see “in-house” (e.g. literally in-house since everyone at Laminar Research works at home). We’re still a small company with a limited number of total computers, so feedback from the field is critical to us.

This post will list the status of a few of the more common issues that we have seen reported in the public beta that will be addressed in beta 2, which should be out next week.

Installing More Scenery: the X-Plane 11 installer had a bug that would cause it to hang when adding and removing scenery; this is now fixed! Download a new installer from our website and you’ll be able to edit what scenery is installed. The new installer is version 4.01r1.

I Can’t Type My Product Key: a small number of users have reported the product key entry field freezing in the installer. This appears to be tied to a specific GPU (the Intel HD 520) and possibly to specific drivers. If you see this bug, please contact tech support; we don’t have this hardware, so we need people to help test a fix. (Intel GPUs present a particular problem because you can only get them with a new motherboard; you can’t just drop a new GPU into a PC.)

Out-of-Date Nav Data: this isn’t really a bug; the FMS will (correctly) tell you that the sample nav data that ships with X-Plane is older than the current AIRAC cycle. You do not have to buy a navigraph subscription to fly; simply press “clear” on the FMC keypad to get rid of the message.

Crash After GPS/FMS Flight: fixed for beta 2!

Sparkling Cessna VOR Gauges: NVidia users reported all sorts of sparkly strange artifacts on the VOR steam gauges; this was caused by degenerate UV maps in the 3-d model. This is a subtle problem that artists sometimes hit,so I’ll write up a separate blog post for modelers on how to avoid this. Beta 2 will fix this, and the sim now features a new debugging mode to help artists detect this case.

Purple Planes: (or other colors in Plane-Maker) – that’s what uninitialized memory looks like in your GPU – fixed for public beta 2.

Wrong Joystick Configuration: Tyler has fixed a ton of bugs for this; we’re programming beta 2 to ignore beta 1’s joystick preferences; this forces everyone to recalibrate and ensures that the misconfigured prefs from beta 1 don’t stick around and cause further confusion and bug reports. Once we have stable joystick configuration, we won’t have to do this anymore.

Transparent Panels in Third Party Planes: I removed a v10 legacy code path from v11 that, as it turns out, everyone still needs – it’s back for public beta 2. I’ll write more about this in a separate post, but for now v10 aircraft should look less strange than before.

Supported Hardware: Beta 2’s diagnostics for what hardware is supported should be a lot better than beta 1. If public beta 2 tells you your hardware isn’t supported but beta 1 worked without hacking (E.g. command line work-arounds, OpenGL interceptors, ignoring the fact that everything on screen is pure red) then please do file a bug – it’s important feedback.

Threaded Nvidia Driver: I now know what you have probably known for a while: you have to turn the multi-threaded driver option off on NVidia hardware for X-Plane to function well. What is happening is: X-Plane is launching enough threads to use all of your cores for background processing, water processing, scenery loading, etc. and then the threaded driver is launching more threads.  The result is too many threads fighting for too few cores.

What is astonishing here is how bad things get – when my i5 gets into “slow” mode with too many threads, it goes from 34 fps to 4.3 fps! I expected a slow-down proportional to the overloading of the cores plus a little bit of overhead for all the thrash. What actually happens is a lot more like “the machine grinds to a halt”.

Bottom line: the multi-threaded driver should be off – like you are already doing. I am looking at whether we can programmatically set this from within X-Plane.

Beta 2 should be out within a day or two – we’re working on final touches now. There are more bug fixes not listed here, and more bugs being fixed that aren’t in beta 2, and more bugs that aren’t fixed yet, so please be patient – we’re squashing bugs as fast as we can stomp.

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.

86 comments on “Some Bugs We’re Working on for Public Beta 2”

  1. Ben,

    About the “Supported Hardware” diagnostics will only be as an information tool ? I hope it will not stop XP11 from running on my laptop which is quite low but runs XP10 very well.

    I get some decent flyable frames in XP11 the main fps killer for me are the shadows / clouds. Because the laptop has only 1 GB VRAM GT525m.

    Rgds

    1. Your GT525m, while _not_ the swiftest of birds, is within hardware minima.

      For users who are below supported, they can run from command line with –force_run to tell X-plane “just try it anyway, I don’t mind my mobo catching on fire.” this is the same as v10.

  2. Thanks Ben! Not sure if this is a bug or something I am doing wrong on my end. I am trying to use the Master/Slave setup with two computers, one as the Master and then a second just running visuals. I have them talking with one machine set as the master and second as the visuals but the visuals machine doesn’t respond correctly and just starts to slew sideways. I get a response from the visuals in the networking setup saying that it is incorrectly trying to be the master. Have you guys successfully used this feature yet or is it still being worked out?

    Thanks!

  3. Good news. You are doing a great job. Now, if the stars and the moon make a comeback, I’ll be a happy camper.

    1. They’re still AWOL for beta 2….maybe we get them back for beta 3. I really tried to focus on bugs that were affecting third party developers first, before diving into the “big bucket o rendering artifacts.” (It’s more like a tank farm than a bucket really…)

  4. Congrats on the PB1 and of course the most entusiastic await for the PB2..
    Cannot see my filed bug was shown, but I do hope you get the language bug fixed. For every time I start XP11 I have to choose language, in my case english. Even tried the new installer without luck.

    Second I think there is a bug in either Nvidia driver or XP11, have not filed it yet as I did not know if it was even a bug. But it seems that XP both 11 and 10 is crashing when overclocking the GPU, not even my a very tiny increament on core clock or mem clock plays good with X-Plane, every other game there is no impact.

    Anyway, my GPU is back in default sadly without the extra 5-10 fps.

    Hopefully we see some performance fixes in the upcoming beta as well, you guys have layed the foundation for an excellent developement in the future, a strong platfor for the years to come.

    PS.. X-Plane 11 needs a Dash8-100 – Just sayin

    1. Same here…gtx overclock and many crashes.To much fog in the world that hides Sun and moon and a strange artifact aroud the Sun in low angles and around the moon, Like a 2d Bloom in the scenery.

  5. Ben we really need per axis dead zones for joysticks every other game that uses joysticks has this

      1. ok well it needs to user adjustable

        right now i can not set my own null zone the pot on my rudder is slowing dieing it needs a much larger dead zone

        go play Elite and see how joysticks should be handled

        also how about pulling from Direct input on windows your calibrations is WAY off compared to windows

  6. Ben,

    I am not sure if this is a bug or no, but when the VOR is set i receive no audio ? I am still learning VOR / DME hence I can’t be sure about it.

    Rgsds.

  7. First, I would like to say Thank You!!! to the team for the excellent product!

    Started flight simming in 1995 (MSFS 95). Did my solo in real Cessna 172…
    I remember when I ran to buy FSX the first day it was available. You know the rest…
    Purchased X-Plane 11 last week. This is the first sim since 1995 that after purchasing, installing and running, I am not somewhat disappointed. And, it only gets better from here!
    I was smiling when I was using the sim over the weekend. Perfect!

    Regarding the Sparkling Cessna VOR Gauges:
    Is this something that will be fixed universally; per aircraft; or per an individual location where you see the problem?
    The reason I am asking is that I can see the sparkling around TEMP and VAC and possibly FULE and FULE Flow gauges in the Cessna.

  8. Thank you Ben

    In my case and setup I have a higher frame rate with Threaded optimization ON , and with It OFF a 5 frame decline ,

    This is with the current driver and GTX 1070 .

    Regard
    Lawrence

    1. This is not entirely astonishing – the threaded driver is a win for us (often about +3 to +5 fps at 30-40 fps) unless the machine gets overloaded – then it catastrophically fails.

      1. then the problem is your engine as no other has this issue

        maybe ask nVidia for some help

        and others hit cpu harder like Witcher 3 and Battlefield 1

        btw xp10 loads up my 1070 to 100% use when the cpu isn’t holding it back so clearly you have something bottlenecking in 11 as even at low setting im not seeing frame rates much over 50-60
        wile that may seem not to matter its likely why the sim is running poorly at other times

  9. Do you also work on better support for amd cards in beta 2? Me and a friend have really bad fps with amd rx 480 and rx 470.

  10. Hi Ben,

    Great work. Glad to see you finally getting on top of the bugs. Don’t envy you one bit though, so well done and keep on plodding!

    Just a note on graphic drivers; have you had any luck with the AMD side of things? I know that you were trying to get to grips with performance issues, so any news on that front would be welcomed.

    Cheers

    Dom

  11. Thank you Ben! What about MCP ALT knobs rotating by steps of 10ft only? Can it be fixed in the following releases? Thanks.

    2. Yeah that’s irritating, even when clicking the left mouse button it goes faster but the knob must be moved via mouse wheel only to be good

  12. Congrats on a pretty successful PB1. Any chance of seeing the northern part of the scenery again (Northern Norway, Alaska etc) i PB2?

  15. Great news!

    One thing, it’s not just me – I have noticed that people that came to X-Plane for the first time don’t like the skid sound of the wheels, and I think it would be great to address this old and loud sound with X-Plane 11, if possible. Having the original skid_dry.wav-file replaced with an empty file (found at x-plane.org) helps for now.

  16. Ben,

    Those who are not hit by threaded opt ON, instead get a +10 fps bump. Do you still suggest to turn it off? i mean do you believe that in the long run there could be some fps hit cause by this?

    Thanks in advance

    1. If you turn it on and you get a win, go with it. But if your fps are horrible, it’s the first thing to turn off. If threaded optimization is killing you, you’ll know – it’s a big fail, not a small one.

  17. Nvidia driver 372.70 did not have the Thread problem, I had it on with this driver and was fast, than I made a bad decision and updated to 376.09 and boom, I have to turn thread opt off or I get 4 FPS, what is bad is that with the old driver I had better frames , probably because the Thread optimization was doing its job. I hope this helps nail down the problem, since it would be good to have this feature working as intended.

    I’m considering rolling back my driver for now.

  19. CH Eclipse Yoke…. Rudder and Elevator trim wheels are inoperative in 11. When I search for “trim” I only see Rudder Left… Rudder Right… and Rudder Center. Same with the elevator.
    I purchased the digital download.

  20. Thank you Ben!
    Phenomenal job as always. Looking forward to b2.
    I filed a bug regarding the local map visual. Would be nice to get that looked at sometime, even if it’s not b2 or b3…

  22. Will we see an “Advanced Graphics” tab coming in beta 2 or later down the line? It is nice to be able to select certain features and turn others off. That feature is nice in X-Plane 10 as you can customize to your computer specifically and what you prefer to have in the sim. So far the beta has been awesome and the new features are really cool! Just miss that one piece of optimization.

    1. I agree. We need to be able to customize the render settings like in v10 !
      Ben, I understand that’s a lot of possibilities but we need it, sorry.

  23. You could have told somebody you were taking the joystick commands out of the prefs file, should have been done long time ago but having to reassign all those commands would not have been fun if I didn’t have a backup. With multiple usb controllers out of old joysticks to build an over 500 button cockpit your new interthing is more of a headache than it is anything else.

    It is pretty though

  24. Hi!

    Fixed the “color banding” in the sky-textures ? (Downloading beta 2 tomorrow )

  25. Hi Ben,

    Excellent work. I have noticed on the default aircraft and the CRJ200 add on that all landings kick the aircraft to the right and hard left rudder is required to get it straight. Tried it at 10 + airports and different runways? Is it a possible bug or mis calibration of CH pedals. Or a bug in CH pedals calibration. I have re calibrated several times.

    1. If you don’t trust your hardware, you can use the data output on screen to view your rudder and other joystick inputs – if they’re not centered but you’re not touching the hardware, the calibration went wonky.

  27. Hey Ben,

    Just wondering if it will be possible to do an in-place upgrade to the final release of version 11 from the beta. In other words, if I install the beta will I have to reinstall the final version once it’s released, or will it just update through the beta installer?

    Thanks.

  28. Thank you Ben for your feedback, improvements. This new release is extraordinary.
    I have a question (and still an issue ) that I had in v10 and still here in v11.
    In HDR mode, I see always this pink /red line in the horizon and in the boarder of each object drown.
    That bug disappears when disabling “HDR mode “.

    I have a MacBook pro mid 2014 (i7 quad core 2.5 GHz, nvidia geforce gt750M, 16 GHz )

    I am using the Yosemite os

  29. My connection with Garmin Pilot has not been fixed yet. Do I have to file another bug or will you fix this?

  30. I still see this in Beta-2:
    0(57) : error C7531: global function texture2DArray requires “#extension GL_EXT_gpu_shader4 : enable” before use
    0(57) : error C0000: … or #extension GL_EXT_texture_array : enable

    What does it mean? Graphics card too old?

  31. Hi Ben,

    Your threaded driver issue is a bug in the NVidia OpenGL drivers related to the driver itself. You are correct in that the number of loaded threads should scale in relation to the number of available cores; however, the NVidia threaded OpenGL driver seems to have shipped with some monitoring that is very CPU intensive. For 8 core machines, people probably aren’t noticing (the driver can use a whole CPU core, but X-Plane doesn’t seem to absolutely load 8 cores), but for 4 cores it becomes a problem. It is not an issue with AMD drivers, or NVidia under DirectX.

    I’ve run into this recently myself, but as usual NVidia support is not really any help. Here’s a StackOverflow thread with some details, and code for the NVAPI to create a profile programmatically with the threaded driver disabled. Kinda a hack, but it does work.

    1. Hi Matt,

      Right – telling NVAPI to kill the threads seemed like the best bet. I looked at the problem in vtune and what was surprising was the “catastrophic” nature of it all. E.g. here’s the math:
      x-plane main rendering = 1 core
      x-plane FFT water = 1.5 cores (3 0.5 core tasks)
      NV threaded driver worker thread against main thread = 0.5 cores

      Soooo 1 +1.5 + 0.5 = 3 – on an i5 I should have plenty of headroom.

      What I saw instead was a catastrophic melt-down. As best I can tell from half an hour of staring at a driver with no back-traces or symbols is that there’s some kind of mutex for shared GL contexts and it’s protected by a spin lock, and if we’re overcommitted, we fall way out of the zone where the spin lock is okay and everybody just spins all of the time. I haven’t had a chance to get feedback from NV yet.

      1. Yep, that’s about how it looked to me too.

        I get why in the normally loaded case a spinlock might seem attractive, but I always caution folks on my team against them for this very reason. There really is no way to make them fair, so suddenly things are spinning all the time under lock contention. A normal lock on modern x86 is so cheap anyway on today’s hardware.

        Anyhow, best of luck with NV. I know you have some contacts there that certainly did not have.

  32. Hello
    I just updated with the beta2 and I just realized that the Push-back function for airliners, set with my joystick the vehicle does not come to repel the plane as it did with the previous version. On the other hand there is the voice as well as the inscriptions on the screen.
    Thank you

  33. With an i7-4770 at 3.6GHz and Radeon 7950 3GB, 16GB RAM, SSD, I get 50+ fps in prepar3d, but only 12 to 15 fps in x-plane 11 demo (both 1 and 2). What gives? This is the only thing stopping me from purchasing right this minute ! Monitor is 3440×1440 ultrawide. I have played with every setting in the graphics/traffic choices, and cannot get the frame rate up.

    1. There a problems with some AMD cards at the moment. I have also bad frames but with the RX 480. We have to wait until AMD or Laminar will find and solve the problems. I tested the new crimson relive driver, but the fps are the same.

  34. Ben, besides turning Multi-threaded off, is there any other setting in Nvidia control panel you recommend?

  35. Hello Ben!

    XP-11 is a work of art! I know its beta and has its issues but what an improvment from 10.51. Anyway, I am writting here because I dont know if this is a bug or its the way you and Austin want this but, when in pause mode, the sim pauses but the audio can still be heard. Let me know if I should file a bug or not.

    Thanks again for all your hard work!

    1. If this is happening even when there isn’t a third party add-on making the audio, please file a bug and be clear what the sound you are hearing is.

      1. Ben,

        Just did a test run on four airplanes and found it is “only” 3rd party add-on’s having this issue. I tested the stock MD-82 and the stock 737 and the audio paused correctly for both those planes. When using lets say the IXEG737 and the A320 payware planes, audio is still running 100% and you hear the engines, the tillers and everything like the sim was never paused.

        Let me know if you still want me to send in a file bug for this.

  36. I am a bit confused on the NVIDIA multi threaded issue? I have never seen that issues in Xplane 10 but it just started happening. X plane 11 I have not experianced yet. I have a GTX1080

    1. No issues for me either on a Titan X Pascal. There are some issues with 3rd Party aircraft artifacts in the wheel pant shadows, but since the fix of the “Snowy” VOR’s in the 172, I haven’t seen too many problems.

  37. Hi Ben
    I renew my post because I did not have an answer. I just updated with the beta2 and I just realized that the push-back function for airliners, set up with my joystick on Vehicle does not come to repel the plane as it did with the previous version. On the other hand there is the voice as well as the inscriptions on the screen. I think there is a bug,
    thank you

  38. Im running 3840X2160 (native) so I have to set my “User Interface Size” to 200% to be able to easily read everything. When I generate new “Icons” for 3rd party Aircraft it resets the interface size to 100% every time. Don’t know if this is a bug or not, but if so, I’ll be happy to report it. 🙂

    Bill Higgins
    System:
    Falcon Northwest Tiki
    I7-6700K @ 4.4mhz
    Asus Z170i Pro Gaming
    32gb DDR4 Memory
    TitanX Pascal

  39. Hi,
    This sim is looking very good and is showing great potential.
    I’m doing some test with my system and it seems that I’m having some problems with framerates. Setting to off the “multi-threaded driver” seems to have no effect on my frames.

    I’m running 4k monitor and everything maxed out (even effects) except antialiasing at 2x SSAA+FXAA and getting solid 1o FPS(But unflyable).
    If I lower the settings to the absolute minimum (everything)I get 30Fps but very low objects on screen.

    My system: xeon X5670@4,2(6 cores, 12 threads) and gtx 980ti.

    The curious thing is that on msi afterburner my GPU load is less around 45% and all 6 CPU cores are below 20% with 1 of them near 40%!!!

    Is there any option to max my CPU and GPU %? Why X-Plane is not fully using CPU and GPU. Would be possible to reach 60FPS adjusting setting in the future when the simulator is optimized?
    Thank you for this great sim!

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