If you guessed “X-Plane 11.00 public beta four”, you are right. 🙁  I screwed up the shaders, and they work on AMD cards and OS X but not NVidia cards.

So: public beta three is the official public beta again, and we’ll have a new public beta five out tonight that will fix this.

If you got the broken beta four (in the hour it was out before we caught this) you can re-run the updater by hand and force yourself back to beta 3, or just wait for beta 5 and then let auto-update do its thing.  Unfortunately there’s no work-around in-app.

This one is definitely a big omelette on my face; I regularly swap through all of the major driver stacks on my PC and Mac to try to make sure the shaders work everywhere. In this case, I had “one little last change” that I only tested in some places, and sure enough, it looked innocent, but failed only on the configs I hadn’t tested.

Update: beta 5 is out and works on NVidia Hardware – just run the sim and let it auto-update. Beta 5 does have interior cockpit flashing – until we fix this, you can set the reflection detail to its lowest setting to work around this.

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.

104 comments on “What Won’t Run On NVidia Drivers and Rhymes With “Rate a Four””

  1. Thanks for your quick reaction and transparency. You just saved the week-end flying XP 11! I know it is just a beta – but yet too cool to hang on with XP 10…

    Keep up the good work!

    Take care,
    Marc

  2. An omelet on our face is DEFINITELY better than boiling water. And thanks for reacting so quickly.

  5. Ben, will Beta 5 handle the nav data error also?
    My ‘full’ version of 11Beta has the XP10 nav data copied over.
    Beta4 caught this.
    My ‘Beta’ copy of 11Beta I removed the nav data, and got caught up on the Nvidia driver issue. Then I spoke to Randy about it, and started messing with the drivers.
    Anyway, the roll back to beta 3 is working well on my PC, as I climb out of O’Hare in the IXEG 737.
    Demo Beta4 on the iMac is working fine.
    So much for early adoption…

  6. A rare advantage for Mac users b4 up and running , thanks for the update and all the fixes , however I ( and others) now get light flickering in cockpit on 3rd party aircraft ( OSX Mavericks /ATI 5770) when reflection level is higher than zero perhaps this is related to the shader issue ? Also default prop engine sound loudly accompanies ATC voice, not sure if thats intentional ? I almost miss the purple missile exhaust 😉

    1. The flickering is a separate bug – ti’s fixed already for beta 6, but for now you can turn the reflection setting down to work around this.

    1. Right – but in the case of XP11, the beta is the *only* available copy, so we’ve been trying to go slower and be more careful with betas than we might with a regular update where you could sit on the old stable version. Given that this was me failing to follow my own check-list, it surely should have been avoided. 🙁

  9. Hi Ben quick question. After doing the update I noticed this error and the sim shuts down.

    G:\X-Plane/CustomData/eart_nav.dat. The navaid IDK in DIAVIK is miss an entry.

  10. I need more details for complete visualization. What do you like on your omelettes, Ben? Something tells me you must have really run out of coffee. 😉

  11. Will beta 5 allow the mouse pointer to be visible when using x plane 11 menus? you know the mouse is available because the menu selections are highlighted when moving the mouse randomly and get lucky when it highlights a menu item.

  12. Does PB5 include the new flight model changes ? I don’t see any of the new left turning tendencies from the spiraling slip stream.

      1. Feel and looks exactly the same as before 🙁 The ball in the turn coordinator stay completely centered on climb, turns, etc… Default 172s

        1. I thought the same thing. Almost feels like it’s reduced, I need basically no rudder in slow flight.

  14. Ouch! Luckily we are all not perfect, otherwise we’d have even more problems lol!! Moreover, what you’ve accomplished thus far for X-plane 11 highly outweighs that egg. Just make mine scrambled 😉 (some bacon too, please!)

  15. Hello,

    Just to clarify – if I have a PC with an NVidia card, I should NOT update to beta four, correct?

  16. Beta 5 fixed the issue, but now quite a lot got a flicker in cockpit. Turning Reflections to minimum stops it, in case someone looks for a workaround.
    Any eta yet when XPD-6898 Jagged sky color transition gets fixed ?
    It is the only thing that i noticed during my flights.

    1. Not sure on ETA – 6898 has been on my short list for a while – I’m part way through analyzing it but I may need to get the art guys involved. The sky overlay textures are authored in sRGB and are meant to be blended that way…since their levels are so low, almost any other light conversion brings out the quanitization artifacts in the textures.

        1. If you mean: what is the bit depth of X-Planes’ color surfaces, the answer is: a mix of 24-bit RGB color (sRGB encoded) and 48-bit float-16 RGB (linearly encoded).

  17. Is there a change log for the latest beta

    I installed beta 5 and my FPS is now approx about half what it was.

      2. So, here is what I did to try and figure out the problem

        Made sure clean install of Beta 5, no addons, no plugins, CYZX airport with default scenery. Turned ALL settings to lowest possible value (I mean everything). Selected C172 , engines off, no clouds, no wind. I get 55 fps at first, approx every 5 or so seconds, the CPU usage goes up and fps drops , after approx 5 mins or so, I am sitting at 3 fps. The gpu usage stays exactly the same thru out but the fps drop is consistant. I tried a bunch of different a/c and a bunch of different airports, same results.

      3. I figured out what is causing it on my system.

        AI Aircraft

        If I add more than 1 AI Aircraft, the CPU usage goes up rather steadily and FPS goes down. If I stick to 1 AI or none, it doesn’t. It doesn’t seem to matter which AI A/C I add, I tried many different combos, it seems to remain constant, Add 1, no problem, add 2 or more and the problem appears.

        Hopefully this helps someone else.

        2. Having same problem with mine after beta5 installed this morning. I haven’t found how to limit AI A/C number. Any help? Thanks

        3. Check out my video which shows something similar. I have teh dev console open to see what might be happening in the background and it showed a flood of AI Flightplans being introduced to the system. During this flood, FPS dropped by nearly 50%, once the flood finished the frames went back up to normal.

          Only solution was to remove all AI Traffic.

          //www.youtube.com/watch?v=21GWNvo0ppI

          1. Ah – this is not the “big” bug users are seeing, but it is a bug. The spawner is doing something wrong and spawning AI planes far away, which causes them to be immediately re-collected and re-spawned…this hurts fps. We have an open bug for this, but it’s interesting to see it live in the field.

      4. Yes, reflection Settings on lowest dramatically improved and brought back my fps to almost constant 50 Frames.

  18. No need to regret anything.

    I know the Linux community had its share in fighting with NVidia drivers, therefore I am just thankful that you continue providing a version for this nightmare combination.

  19. Huge step forward in the German translation! Very much appreciated. I guess it will make XP11 even more accessible also to younger users and help you consolidate your market share. Congrats!
    Just bought my Digital Key. Must now go and look at Europe and my home town. After all I have seen on Youtube so far the new Autogen is just really cool.

  21. Why on Earth people still use AMD CPUs, AMD GPUs and Macs?

    (ok I am going back to my hole, no need to flame – I just let that out of my chest)

    1. Thanks for reminder, can’t wait for the 8 core AMD Zen system 🙂
      I think this will boost up X-Plane on my system.

    3. because I can afford a good computer that is more than a super 360 game box.
      LOL. I let that out elsewhere.

      1. Now this does invite flame war. You should let “afford” out. You don’t know who affords what. You confuse it with “misspend”.
        Overpricing something and overstating its supposed differences and all extra money go back to marketing, not R&D, to continue the vicious circle – just because of people like you. Whole megacorps are built with this, who am I to comment on who is the smart and who is the dumb in this relationship.
        🙂

  22. How can I force back to PB3? I can’t find this option in the installer.

    I continue with same pb with PB5.

  23. Hello. Is possible to get back to beta 3. My fps get detrimental on flight with the beta 5…

  24. Ben, congratulations on your debut of XP-11! I’ve been an XP-10 user since it came out and I’m just starting to try out the Beta with my new machine. I really like what you’ve done with KSEA airport activity and with the performance in general. The user interface is also much improved even though a few controller button assignment options got left behind.

    I’m really underwhelmed by the appearance, however. Compared with 10 the scenery looks flat and lifeless. Everything is like looking through haze even at short distances and ground level.

    I see from the forums that this issue has been brought up several times before and you are quoted as not planning to do anything to improve it. If this is true it’s a real game-changer and I urge you in a friendly way to change your mind.

    1. Have you tried switching to summer with 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. You will see that the weather is more accurate (winter is sometimes more foggy) and it seem more like real life.

  25. Ben when + – do you think we can get any documentation for FMOD integration to start developing sounds for XP11?

  26. Ben, do you think you can do something about the clouds, they are very heavy on resources!?
    I lose 10-15 FPS with OVC, and I’m not the only one!

    Thank you!

  27. Very strange behaviour in beta 5. very hard loss of FPS at high altitude during flight: from 30-40 on ground to 10-15 while flying at FL380 even with clear sky and minimal reflections. What causes that?

    2. Your problem (it was mine as well and also affected many others, if not all) seems to be solved! Ben wrote further down below:
      “We found the fps problem – Austin’s smoke puffs are sticking around forever, building up over time. Beta 6 with fix coming soon.”

  28. Very much appreciating all of the work and improvements taking place during the public beta run so far!

    Is there any attention being paid to ‘shaky’ ground textures? By that, I mean how textures on the ground will rapidly move or shake while in the cockpit view while either taxing or parked. Very noticeable in small GA or helicopters that are close to the ground.

    This issue was quite noticeable (and annoying) in XP10 and it’s still present without any improvement in XP11.

  29. Ok. Many people in forums and Fb pages have noticed that behaviour and reported as a bug. So if you scroll the reports you will read them.
    Hope beta 6 will fix it!
    Thanks

  30. nice beta 5 working very well thx
    one thing
    with the beta 5 you killed the amazing view setting “3-D cockpit cmd-look” !!!
    This was great in X-Plane 10/-11 beta3.
    3-D cockpit cmd-look was remember the last set position in the 3D Cockpit. When i switched outside of the plane and back to 3D cockpit, i had my last set horizontal/vertical position again. Now gone very very bad.

      1. No.
        Do not suggest workarounds for problems. The problems need to be known to Laminar and fixed. IF you want to use a third-party program, fine – but its not a fix.

        And Kopelent – file a bug, don´t bother with bug reports here. Google “X-Plane bug report” if you want to help, please.

  31. Is Planemaker in XP11b5 operational such that I can make changes to a panel and its instruments and then save the aircraft with those changes? I don’t seem to be able to do an aircraft save as described in the planemaker instructions.

    I see that Planemaker has a global control on instrument lighting, and that the base illumination can be applied to the entire panel as it appears in the panel editor. However, I can’t seem to save the changes back into the aircraft.

  32. I want to give some positive feedback on Linux: These two “poor” graphics configurations work for the first time since X-Plane 11 public beta 1:

    OpenGL Vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
    OpenGL Render : GeForce 9500 GT/PCIe/SSE2
    OpenGL Version : 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.101 (330/0)

    OpenGL Vendor : Intel Open Source Technology Center
    OpenGL Render : Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Desktop
    OpenGL Version : 3.0 Mesa 10.3.7 (300/0)

    “Working” means the application starts and displays graphics. I’m not talking about frame rate…

    1. Just to be clear: these are definitely NOT suported, and if the GF9500 stops working at any time, “I told you so.” But I am not surprised they work now – we had an incorrect shader in b3 that is now fixed.

  35. Hello,

    After installing the update I got the error massage and the x plane was crashed

    “Reading file D:\Programme/X-Plane 11/Custom Data/earth_nav.dat. The navaid IDK in DIAVIK is missing an entry. Report to your Navdata provider.”

    The log file was sent today to LR

    BR Dimitri

  36. Hi Ben, just want to make my report.

    I’m using a i5 3470 + 16Gb RAM + RX470 4Gb with the 16.2.2 Crismon drivers.

    My main issue with the late beta is the poor FPS. This is the first beta I tried, so no experience with the last ones.

    If I sit on KSEA with ANY aircraft at ANY graphics settings, my fps starts at around 25-30 and slowly drops (24-23-22-21) to settle around 15-18. Sometimes its as slow as 10fps. Changing graphics settings doesnt seem to have any effect the performance of the sim. Having clouds or not doesn’t have any effect also.

    I hope this helps in any way.

    2. Similar I can confirm. My system:
      i7-6700K, 4,3 GHz, 8MB | MB Gigabyte Z170X G5 | 32GB DDR4 3200 MHz | SSD HD | GeForce Palit GameRock 1080 PE 8GB | Win10 Pro

  37. G’day, Ben,

    Just a note to say thanks for the team effort being put into sorting out the problems that the beta versions have been throwing up. I’m a newcomer to X-Plane, having been using MSFSX for many years. This looks very promising so I won’t ask you for my money back. 🙂

    Not that I’ll stop using FSX as I’ve too much invested in it and, for an ageing 32-bit program, it still does a jolly good job. It was nice to see on the beta notes section that one of the mentioned items was the ‘floating’ aerodrome which is YSSY. I hope that my comment on the subject elsewhere – although I’m sure it wasn’t – brought that to attention.

    Whilst I have 24GB of DRAM3 it looks like my 2GB AMD card might have to be upgraded to suit this power hungry beast. Such is life. *sighs*

    Should you still be working towards the witching hour and poring over reams of code, please allow me to cyber-transmit a couple of toasted Vegemite sandwiches in your direction.

    Regards,
    John

  38. Going forward, have there been thoughts on keeping the previous beta release as an option to install? This would avoid catastrophic issues like Beta 4, being able to roll-back to a previous build.

    1. Well when b4 failed, we pulled it in favor of b3, and we do have that option. We are really trying hard to _not_ provide a “range of betas”; doing so sort of defeats the purpose of beta…it lets people stay on old betas where we aren’t getting good test information and invites re-reports of fixed bugs from the old beta.

  39. Ben,

    Enjoying the progress on the beta. But there seems to be an issue with Beta 5 that I just noticed.

    1) upon landing the Baron, when I pull back engines to cut off, the whole plane is catapulted 20ft in the air, bounces and flips to land back on its wheels – engines on fire. I have video of this, but I’m unsure how to get it to you.

    2) brakes or parking brakes fail to hold the aircraft in position – I’ve tried all the GA aircraft. Full pedal or parking brakes on, and the aircraft still rolls.

    3) I can also confirm the fps issue experienced by neucoas above, but in my case, dropping down to 1 or 2 frames per second – usually after activating TrackIR, but occasionally when TrackIR is not activated.

    Running Beta 5 on a 32 gig, I7-6700 with geforce 970 gpu.

  40. Just a short comment on the low framrate issue. I have actually got better fps through the betas; even though I have not compared super-systematically, I’m pretty sure of it. For example, yesterday on b5 I flew for at least an hour in the Carenado c208 over Papuas dense forest with pretty dense clouds (SMP4), with at least as high settings as earlier (everything on at least high, including reflections, 2x AA, on 4770K@4.2, 16RAM, GTX 7704GB), and I were typically in between 25-40 fps, sometimes in the low 20s, but it never got worse during the run.

    1. Hi Mikael,

      the FPS dropping issue will be visible during longer flights. Within the first hour or two the FPS rate won’t drop significantly. Beyond that it will keep falling even way beyond 20FPS.

      It is quite weird. I started at a very complex payware scenery (KORD) with 46-50 FPS and went to EGKK in real time. Although the weather was great (almost no clouds, SMP4) and I only flew over default scenery, the FPS rate was further decreasing. Even at night over the Atlantic Ocean the FPS rate was falling. More than 08:30h later, the FPS rate was about 10-12. Flying over ZL16 photo terrain over Europe and even loading the complex EGKK payware had no impact to the already very low FPS rate. Parking at EGKK finally resulted in 9-11 FPS.

      I do not know if it is the smoke puff issue reported by Ben itself since they have been there in beta 3 as well. But in beta 5 the effect is reproduceable there. Flying trips longer than 90min is painful in beta 5.

      I hope beta 6 will be out soon.

      Regards,
      Marc

  41. The plane exploding thing happened to me yesterday in the default c172. Right at the moment when the prop would had come to a full stop it yanked the plane up and ripped both wings off. The fire and smoke looked nice btw. 😉

    I will try to replicate it and file a report.

  42. Hello, beside some little glitches, XP11 works like a charm on my system, so i’m not gonna point out bugs, but just some ideas. Since i like to record videos i would like to know if an option to hide playback bar during replay will be implemented, i know it’s possible to use built in video recorder but it doesn’t record sound.

    Thumbs up for the great work!

    1. +1 Here

      Something like the main menu disappearing when mouse looses focus would work perfectly. Great youtube videos work better than hundred advertising banners nowadays and always having to crop replays is not wise.

    2. great idea, i am recording via elgato hardware. to record the playback without the playback menü would be nice.

  43. “Give me any set of tests and I will build a piece of software that passes those tests gracefully but fails spectaculary in any other use scenario” (anonymous).

    Ben, it’a lost war. Cope with it. 🙂

  44. Ben, i found a “issue” (i think), when use runways until 650 metros in X-Plane 11, the AI doesn’t work. But in X-Plane 10 work. That’s a bug or have changes in X-Plane 11?

    Thanks.

Comments are closed.