The rate of comments on this blog sky-rocketed when I mentioned that beta 16 was the last beta. (As it turned out, beta 17 is the last beta, because I had to fix a stupid bug I introduced in beta 16.) I would describe this as “fear of missing the train” as it leaves the station.

What will be the impact of actually shipping 11.0?  The short summary:

  • We will keep fixing bugs.
  • We will be able to fix some bugs that we were not able to fix late in beta because the changes are complicated and need more testing time.
  • X-Plane 11.0 users who don’t want to deal with unstable betas can simply stick with 11.0 until a patch goes final. This should make the whole beta process more pleasant for everyone.
  • We will have to write compatibility code for add-ons that depend on 11.0’s behavior.
  • The set of major features of 11.0 won’t change – we’ve made our “big plays” for the version.

In other words, post 11.0 will probably be like now but less stressful for everyone. I expect we will do at least one bug fix patch – we’ve had to do one for every major patch we’ve done but we don’t have a specific plan. We’re waiting to see what gets reported after 11.0.

Will It Blend?

We’ve pushed hard to get compatibility and SDK bugs fixed for 11.0 so that third party developers can “get going”. There is one area of the sim where we’ve had a pile of bug reports that, realistically, aren’t going to be fixed in 11.0 and might have some impact.

X-Plane draws translucent, blended effects (lights, smoke, clouds) in a fixed order. Because these are translucent effects, they must be drawn from farthest to closest or they won’t look right, but X-Plane draws them in a fixed order. The results are not good – when the order that X-Plane picks is backward, you get rendering bugs.

X-Plane has been like this for a very long time, and a lot of these bugs are present in X-Plane 10, and only more noticeable in X-Pane 11 because of lighting changes.

My concern about these bugs is that they may affect third party plugin interfaces. My goal is to get this resolved as quickly as possible to avoid surprising people.

The good news is that this is a pretty narrow part of the sim – if you’re not using plugins to draw, or you’re making an aircraft, or non-plugin-enhanced scenery, this probably doesn’t affect you.

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.

114 comments on “Life After 11.00”

  1. Welcome X-Plane 11.0!
    We will have a period full of news, X-Plane 11.0, Windows Creators.

    João Alfredo

  2. Great job Ben! Great product, I’m happy that XP11 became as stable as possible. I’m sure it will be even more awesome after release. Good luck!

  3. Curious if any info can be shared about:
    – when will DVDs (bluray?) be available for purchase?
    – will home-use usb keys be produced for v11?

      1. Well, I got a connection shutdown fews weeks ago for 3 or 4 days.
        X-Plane tried to call home without success but let me use it “temporarily”. Could you specify how many days it let us use it ?

        1. I think 14 right now. If we fail to contact the server before your license expires, we don’t cut the term short. If you see this persistently, please contact support.

          1. Wait, so if your servers happen to hit a bad ditch, or LR goes out of business, does my hardware simulator all of a sudden become a useless pile of junk? Please don’t make me break out the assembly debugger to keep my stuff working!

          3. The DVD is certainly the most “business event” proof DRM mechanism we have – the USB dongle requires a proprietary driver, and the digital version requires a server.

      2. Actually, Ben, that isn’t remotely the case. The USB key is better for people that own the DVD set, but don’t want to leave a disk in the drive in the first place, and in the second may not always be connected online. I have a solid online connection, but I have two X-Plane 10 USB keys – one for the cockpit and one for the dev box.

        You guys are adding a lot with X-Plane 11, but you’re also eliminating things that provide convenience and features to many users. We’re not asking you to give away USB keys. Please rethink this and for once, ask the user base what WE want. I see no advantage for LR in this decision.

        1. If you really, really, really want a USB home key, email Austin and let him know.

          But the USB home key is kind of a wreck. The tech behind it is ancient and we’re never sure whether the technology provider will remain in business; we remain in constant terror that the proprietary driver that makes them work will fail under some new OS update and we’ll be completely f—ed. The cost of the keys is expensive and isn’t coming down and has no scale. Since they don’t provide any DATA, it means we end up having to charge our customers more – once for the DVD set that “is” the product, and then this extra surcharge for the dongle that time forgot. Us charging $10 isn’t us being jerks, that’s hardware cost!

          1. Recovering your cost (and making a bit on top) is perfectly fair. But are dongles really so passe that the tech is going the way of the dinos? Are there truly no other providers? I’ve lived for so many years with one in all my X-Plane systems it’s hard to change.

            I can also see where the digital key is a good thing too, *especially if you provided the ability to use a digital key with a DVD set.* The notion of leaving the disc in the drive is unpalatable, or even to have to only put it in every few days, which is almost as bad (Now where did I put that disc…?).

            My experience with the tech demo and it’s digital key has been silky – no issues re-confirming the key (although why it would need to reconfirm after being entered the first time is mystifying).

            But part of me will likely want the dongle. Can old dogs change? We’ll see.

          2. WHile I can´t say anything about Laminars problem concerning USB keys, I have to aggree with the general problem.
            While the USB idea looked very good from a consumer and user standpoint, the real systems always contained a lot of black magic.
            You don´t know what your contractor really does and what do you do, if the contractor can´t give you new drivers or goes out of business?
            The reality of USB keys nowadays is more inthe way of unsafe and unsecure.

          3. About the drivers. What would even stimulate the need for an update? The device serves one function – go or no go. These aren’t GPU’s we’re talking about. Once it works for a particular OS, it works forever. Or so I would think. How could that remotely lead to a lack of security?

          4. The fear is that an OS update (especially Mac OS) renders the existing drivers unusable, requiring the device manufacturer to update the drivers in order for the USB-dongles to work AT ALL. If the device manufacturer is out of business by the time it occurs to Apple to release an OS update with breaking changes, it’s game over.

          5. Thanks Philipp. That does shed light on the issue that a user like me, that’s stuck in the mud with an OS ( Win7) might not think of right off the bat. Both Win10 and MacOS are rather “dynamic” at this point, so indeed, game over could happen at any time. I’ll wish for a dongle, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Appreciate the extra explanation and the patience.

  6. Congratulations Ben for the new version of X-Plane. It was a long and really interesting beta and I hope everybody appreciates the energy and time you and the whole team of LR spent on bringing X-Plane to a new level.
    Keep up the good work!

    P.S.: And maybe now you can find some time to really enjoy what you’ve created over the last couple of months 🙂

  7. Is there going to be a final fix for aircraft contrails or is that the “Will it blend part”?

    1. Depends on what you think is actually wrong with them. We’re not planning to update the contrails until we deploy the new particle system for our default FX, and that’s post 11.0.

      contrails are part of the will it blend mess though.

      1. Is it possible that at least the colour will change before release? The grey contrails look pretty out of place, especially with the new fancy clouds.

        1. I have specifically asked Austin _not_ to tweak any aspect of the FX code until we can adopt the new particle system. We’re very close to doing that, and some of these issues in the old particle system are fundamental – it doesn’t participate in the new lighting model in a coherent way, it doesn’t support grouping particles into sub-systems for rough Z-sort, it doesn’t support replay, etc. Based on our experience during beta, I think we have to ‘deal with it’ until we can get the new FX in, and get the new FX in sooner.

          1. Im really concerned about the transparency of the clouds in 11. At night, whether i use the default clouds, x enviro or skymaxx, you can easily see through the cloud layer to see the city lights. This happens even with overcast. It looks solid during light hours but as soon as the sun goes down its like a clear sky and you see the ground.

      2. Color and length of the contrails come to mind.

        The contrails are quite often rather smoky grey/brown instead of pure fluffy white, and the longest contrails I’ve seen are not quite as long as in reality. Although, I figure that longer contrails mean longer draw duration of contrail particles/objects and therefore affect performance. Also sometimes contrails seem to start awfully far away from the actual engine exhaust (like several hundred meters). I do realize that this, as well as the total length of a contrail, depends on several factors (OAT,wind,humidity,EGT,etc.) but they do seem to be generally too short and sometimes too far from the exhaust.

        Nonetheless, I hope that you guys get the contrails right rather earlier than later. They really do contribute to the look and feel of a realistic scene.

        1. Right – the new particle system features “ribbons” – basically a long horizontal banner of particles. This allows us to drag a REALLY long contrail without having any of:
          – the particle count getting huge
          – the contrail over-drawing like crazy when viewed from the front
          – gaps in the contrail

          The only open issue with this is that viewed head-on the banner looks like hell. My plan was to introduce angle-dependent cross-fade:
          – When viewed from the side, the contrail is drawn as a quad-banner for fast fill and long trails.
          – When viewed from up front, the contrail is drawn as a sequence of individual particle puff billboards, but not too many, to get a sane front view.

          We’d cross fade by angle – similar to what we do on the prop disc (circular disc from front, rectangular billboard from the side).

          2. Thanks for the detailed reply, Ben!

            Just wondering, would it be possible or is it maybe planned to draw vortices this way? (the visible ones with condensation in them) Would 3rd party authors be able to use/trigger them via a dataref?

            I know I’m pushing my luck here.^^ I’m just a fan of those phenomena.

            Really looking forward to XP11( hope the DVDs will be on their way soon) and after that to the new particle system.
            Extraordinary work, guys!

  9. X-Plane 11 is looking and feeling amazing! Simply put, an amazing sim!

    Thanks Ben and all of the team!

  10. I assume the “runway lights visible above overcast” is part of the blending issue.

    Will it be resolved during the v11 run?

    1. Yeah I’m sure it will. It’s too big of a bug to let go indefinitely. It’s just a question of how soon, which depends on how big the fix is.

      1. Thanks Ben, you saying that makes me feel a whole lot better about my purchase. I have faith in you that It will get fixed. Now that I have peace of mind on that issue. I’d to thank you for what you accomplished thus far.

      2. I noticed in the RC that you fixed this by shutting down airport lights when the aircraft is above an “overcast” or “stratus” layer. Of course this creates issues when there are patches of clear sky (e.g. in an overcast layer) through which airport lights should be visible. Can we expect a better fix for the future or is this bug considered resolved?

        1. It’s a pretty massive piece of duct tape! But it does get us back to where v10 was: in v10 you could pick stratus and do flight training.

          The effect fades out based on layer thickness so that in theory as you transition from cloudy to clear the lights won’t pop but obviously this leaves a lot to be desired.

          So the bug is considered “not an epic show stopping hair on fire mess” anymore, e.g. y’all can live with this for a little bit, but it’s clear not solved or even a great solution.

          But getting into the problem of out of order transparent drawing was WAY beyond the scope of cramming into a late beta, so it’s gonna need more time.

  11. I wanted to echo that I think xplane 11 is fantastic. I am in the software business and I know how much effort it takes to deliver the superior product that is xplane. Thankyou LR food an awesome upgrade and we can now enjoy it in full.

    1. No. It’s intentional that the shadows are phased out when the sun angles are very low. We may look at tuning the lighting to compensate in the future, but this isn’t a bug, it’s a design limitation.

  13. The rumors on my streams and others is that LR is going to release a Citation X post beta, any truth in this?

  14. Hi Ben,

    First of all thanks for everything! That said will it take time to see you guys working on code optimization to help CPU load (eg. cars) that has been mentioned some posts ago? I remember you talking about why some options has been removed and explaining that instead of provide extra settings as performance workaround, you guys thought that it is better to improve the code itself.

    Thanks in advance

    1. Right – we don’t want to try to band-aid with complex and hard to tune rendering settings what should be made right in the engine.

      The god news is: perf work starts basically as soon as we go final. When we looked at the future road map, there’s something that Austin wants (and has wanted for a while) that now (finally) fits pretty well with a lot of aspects of our business and the code itself: _tuning the hell out of the engine_. This means:
      – higher framerate
      – more fluid framerate
      – getting rid of pauses and stutters
      – faster loading

      I don’t know how soon you see results, but we have a long list of things we want to do that will make X-plane better for everyone, and I get to start that pretty much as soon as we ship 11.0.

      (I, for one, am really glad about this. I really like performance tuning…it’s my equivalent of playing video games…so getting a block in the schedule to just work on perf is fantastic.)

      We’re also going hard into VR, but my part of that is…performance tuning. We want to be able to hit a locked 45 fps (for half-speed rendering with interpolation) on a VR headset with two eyes rendered.

      1. Looking fwd to Perf improvements ! Does involve Vulkan ?

        Do you plan on finishing 3d water first or is that on the back-burner ?

  15. Please use the Architecture of the ATC Window in XP10.50 to implement the ATC Functions in XP11. This has been filed as a bug. The user functions have been badly depleted in the new implementation.

      1. We can no longer bind ‘respond to atc’ to a joystick button or key in X11, in X10 this was a time saver. Now we have to spend time finding the mouse and clicking on the on screen button.

        1. I’ll have to check with Tyler to see if there’s a work-around, but yes, ATC on the joystick might be borked right now if ther isn’t some (hard to find) trick.

          Here’s what happened: our original plan was COMPLETE navigation of the UI from the joystick – mouse-free operation. This is possible because x-Plane mobile will run on a game controller, and X-Plane desktop uses mobile’s UI framework.

          But toward public beta it became clear that there were too many desktop specific UI elements that were not yet joystick friendly, so we dropped the feature out of 11.0 to ship sooner. The table view was the straw that broke the camel’s back – it dates all the way back to my rewrite of the Plane-Maker panel editor in X-plane 8 and is very much due for an overhaul; getting the joystick working wasn’t going to happen for 11.0.

          So I suspect that Tyler’s original plan was to let users navigate the UI with the joystick and not need special command bindings.

      2. Here are the details… I think other users might agree with the request to continue these functions..
        Description= The UI for the ATC Drop Down Window is significantly degraded from its operation in XP10.50 and it should be revised to provide that same effective and efficient operation in the XP11 release!
        The window should be popped to the cockpit panel by a selected keyboard press, and should stay in place until the window close controlled by normal window closure hot spots(s). (or kbd”a”)
        The window background should be transparent as in 10.50 so that it minimally covers up the panel display when it is invoked.
        The selections of ATC control should be listed in the ATC window and should be auto sequenced (if optionally check selected) and indicated by a highlight. Additionally this selection should be optionally controled by general UP/DN from theFlight controls.
        The Contact ATC ” button” should then INVOKE the Highlighted function displayed. (NOT pop/hide the window)
        The selection of the next sequenced ATC operation as now appears in the top bar in the XP11 is an OK new feature, and should maintain the next expected ATC function to be performed and auto enabled (highlighted) for selection by the Call ATC Keyboard Press.
        Selection via the Mouse should remain possible also but should not be the only method of function invocation.
        Essentially this is a request to use the 10.50 ATC window architecture in its full function and operation in the XP11 Release. All of the above features exist in the XP10.5 design.

        1. What you’ve done here is tell me a lot more about how to fix the problem than what the problem actually is. A lot of users do this. We get reports to “put this thing over here” without a lot of motivating context. This isn’t great because there’s stuff we know that we haven’t published yet that makes it hard for users to act as product designers. (For example, that we had complete joystick nav on the road map hasn’t been discussed until today in this comment section.)

          I’m not sure I’ve boiled this down in all the prescriptive stuff, but I think you’re saying:
          – Complete access to ATC menu functions from joystick command bindings, including menu browsing, picking commands, and toggling the UI.
          – Minimally invasive UI since it’s up a lot.

          Are there any other _problems to be solved here_.

          1. I believe your Synopsis above covers the points I tried to make.
            Minimally Invasive UI includes (1)making the window transparent. (2) Auto enable of next expected ATC command for pilot transmission.
            In my many hours of ATC controlled flight, my estimate is that the Call ATC button is required for use more than 10 times as much as the use of any other; all of which are in the most busy type of cockpit operations.

  16. As X-Plane 11 is now past beta I am just wondering when WED 1.6 will be out and able to send updates to the gateway? I have a lot of airport updates with vehicles that need uploading.

    Cheers,

    Brendan

  17. Could you, perhaps, do a quick list of improvements that will be done for the default aircraft in 11.x, and a “best guess” of when they can be expected to be released? I’m most interested in the G1000, but there might be others, and they’re all interesting 🙂

    1. Sorry, I don’t have a list of upcoming features and dates for you. I pretty much NEVER have a list of upcoming features and dates for everyone.

      PRO TIP: the white board used to organize the road map is often visible from Austin’s exterior windows during company meetings. So there is clearly an opportunity for industrial espionage here!

      Philipp is working to get the G1000 done. We’re not holding 11.0 for it and I don’t have a date to announce, but the intent should be clear: get the G1000 ready ASAP so that aircraft that use a G1000 or similar “glass for GA” avionics aren’t hobbled in their nav capabilities compared to small GA with 430/530s and airlines with the new FMC/CDU.

      When the G1000 is done we’ll have it in all of our planes for which it is appropriate. This definitely includes the Cirrus Jet and a G1000-equipped Cessna. I don’t know what else is on the list, but basically if it looks like it was meant to have a G1000 we’re going to go back and drop the real thing in – our art team knows this is coming.

  18. Hello Ben,
    seems I can’t comment your SDK post anymore, therefore I’m commenting here.

    We are using the UDP interface for our product (FS-FlightControl) a lot and would love to see some more functions exposed through UDP. One that we are missing a lot is the loading and saving of flight situations:
    That’s possible from a plug-in through XPLMLoadDataFile/XPLMSaveDataFile, but there seems to be no way to do the same through UDP.

    Is there a chance that functions like this get added to the UDP interface as well?

    We love this UDP interface as it makes life a lot easier:
    Our application can directly talk to X-Plane from any network computer without the need of the user to install anything in X-Plane itself. He even does not need to know the X-Plane computer IP as everything gets discovered automatically. Therefore we don’t want to go the plug-in way and would love to see more features being added to this great UDP interface!

    Thanks
    Andreas

    1. I think the odds of the UDP interface becoming a superset of the SDK interface are approximately zero. 🙁 The simplest way to cope with this would be to build your own one-time network bridge to RPC the SDK calls and then go from there. But the SDK functions often don’t have a great mapping to RPC/UDP. The SDK is completely _synchronous_ with X-Plane and can share data.

      So for example, if you register a dataref via UDP, how do we call you back to get its value? A logical UDP-based custom dataref interface would be inherently different in its “contract” with the sim than the SDK.

      When Sandy and I built the SDK back in the time of the Holy Roman Empire, our goal was to make a base foundation layer on top of which arbitrary functionality can be layered. I think you’d find that any sane UDP interface to plugin functionality can be built on top of the existing SDK C API with almost zero overhead induced.

      1. Hello Ben,

        first thanks a lot for your quick reply – can’t say how I appreciate that!

        The great plus of the UDP interface is that it is built-in into every X-Plane installation directly:
        This way every end-user that runs our product can directly connect to X-Plane from any network computer without touching the X-Plane installation itself – even without knowing the IP of the X-Plane computer!

        You would not believe how many support requests this saves. 🙂

        Anything what we would build on top of the SDK ourselves directly would lose this big advantage.

        Still I totally understand that the UDP interface will and can never cover all parts of the SDK – especially everything that needs to be synchronous/real-time.

        But it would be really great if you could expose some more functions like XPLMLoadDataFile/XPLMSaveDataFile that do not need to be synchronous/real-time at all.

        Products like ours (//www.fs-flightcontrol.com) that we currently make X-Plane compatible benefit a lot from this easy to access UDP interface and it does contain already 95 % of all functions you need – just few like the situation load/save are still missing.

        It would be really great if you could consider adding them to the UDP interface as well!

        Thanks again a lot for getting back to me so quickly, really appreciating this
        Andreas

  19. I am still seeing strange shadows in the sea from islands. Is this in the planned fixes?

  20. Does the final version support time of day, or do trees still glow in the afternoon/morning?

      1. Ah, the infamous ‘red line over the horizon’ on my Mac (which also plagued 10.x) makes sense now

      1. This is the fix where the shadow time of day is extended? I can revisit that but generally extending the shadow time duration had its own problems – a trade of a bug for a bug. We can revisit this further in future updates.

        As a general note: clever users who have made Lua scripts to make X-Plane better via art control hacking can contact me directly if they think their fix is useful in the general case and should be standard for the sim.

        1. Without posting your email address, Ben, how would you like them to contact you?

  21. Some questions:

    Does the dismemberment of configurations of graphic options and resurgence of selection of quantity of buildings, cars, roads, or something closer to previous versions, may re-emerge in the future?

    About the modifications made to X-Plane 11 pb9 for AMD hardware are extended to X-Plane 10, as commented on occasion, is it possible to be realized?

    1. We _do_ intend to ship the AMD fix for X-plane 10! I actually cut a beta of 10.52r1, only to discover right before making it “live” that the fix to external visuals (the original reason for 10.52) had broken multiplayer.

      So…once v11.0 goes final, I’ll try to fix multiplayer so that we can ship a 10.52 with AMD fix + fixed external visuals.

      I’d expect it to go beta some time in April. Shipping it requires Philipp to be on the right side of the Atlantic ocean because v10 has to be cut with very old operating systems, so he needs access to old machines. I haven’t scheduled this with him – we’re too heads down with 11.0 right now.

  23. Been trying the Demo, updating as each Beta came out which is now at 17, the Default Cessna 172 upon throttle up and brake release jerks left, it’s all I can do with the rudder to keep it on the runway, I’ve tried calibrating my stick (Logitech 3D Pro) but nothing helps, is this correct handling for the 172 ??

    1. You need to invest in rudder pedals, it’s a lot more manageable. Its probably a design limitation at this point.

      1. It needs to be addressed, no pilot could keep it on the runway like this, although I’m sure the real 172 does have prop torque, it can’t be this bad, little easier to keep in the middle of the runway is all we need.

  24. Hi Ben

    Any plans for XP to take advantage of Hyperthreading, and I mean not just for scenery loading?

      1. When we take a screenshot, it takes sometimes few seconds between the keystroke and the file saved (even on a SSD) and during this time, the simulator is hanged.

        Is there any possibility to defer the saving process besides the main sim loop to avoid this freeze ?

        1. Someday we can take this more async, but the REALLY big pause is due to left-over debug code – I’ll remove it from the release candidate.

          Way before public beta, I wrote a “reference” shader for the new lighting model using importance sampling. The reference shader is way too slow to run in real time – we’re talking 0.25 fps. But it produces more accurate lighting – the realtime PBR stuff we (and many games) use do some simplifying assumptions to get real-time speed.

          So I set up X-Plane to take screenshots using the slow reference shader – making the screenshot function slow but allowing me to see the reference model. Before we had the realtime shader we could see real-time flight using a really low sample count version of the reference shader – enough to see where the airplane was. This let the artists start experimenting and gave me something to compare the real shader to.

          As of public beta, we do NOT use the reference shader ever, but the mechanism to make screenshots “their own shader” is still in there slowing us down. I’ll turn it off.

          1. Hi Ben,

            only remotely related…

            Is it true that 2 monitors with 2k each perform better as one running at 4k?

            To me it looks like that 2 x-plane.exe processes are spun in case of two monitor setup, thereby better utilizing existing cores…

            Bernd

  26. I like the scenarious in xplane10 on ios. I.e IFR landing, emergency landing etc.
    Any thoughts about porting that stuff into xplane11 for pc?

  27. I managed to soften similar situation:
    1- Settings> Joystick> Control Sensitivity> Control Response and Stability Augmentation, all 100%

    2- Settings> General> Flight models per frame in 4, default is 2.

    João Alfredo

  28. Congratulations for X-plane 11.
    I’m still flying with xplane 10 and i find that Austin turned down the turbulence too much, that the turbulence are not noticeable.Can we hope for a fix to xplane 10.52?

  29. Hi Matey-Beans!

    Can you please confirm if the SF-50 will get a brake put in the cockpit because there isn’t one yet, (you cannot see it visually), but you can still turn brake on off using keys.

    Regards

    AJ

  30. Reporting Bugs:

    Ben, thanks for all the updates, the sim is looking awesome.

    For reporting bugs, it seems in the forums the general consensus is that if someone has reported a bug, then there is no need for someone else to report the same but.

    I would think you would want multiple reports from as many people as possible for the same but to give you more data. Would that be correct.

    Also is there a shortage of folks reporting bugs?

    Thanks,
    Dan

    1. It depends – if the bug report is fantastic and the bug is 100% reproducible, then one bug is enough. But for some bugs, having more people is useful because the symptoms change, or the hardware changes, or one reproduction case is easier to cope with than another, or the guy who said “I reported a bug” wrote a single poorly worded sentence with no log file and we can’t tell what the problem is.

      Multiple reports also serves as a signal for severity, which is particularly useful for intermittent bugs (which a lot of them are – the fact that it happens to YOU all the time says nothing about the overall frequency).

      Finally, bugs are overall under-reported…I don’t know how many times a third party developer reports something and I go “geez this has been broken for two years” and they go “oh yeah, we’ve known about this forever.” They’re surprised no one reported it. Everyone thinks someone else will.

      1. Thanks Ben, I’ll need to take video of the monitor for you since screen recording or screen shots won’t show what’s going on. It’s the flashing screen when set to default monitor which has been happening since PB9 for me. Fixed for others I guess. I’ll send in the official report as well as a couple other separate bugs. Once I change the setting to my resolution it goes away.

        I am thoroughly enjoying PB17 and look forward to all the upcoming progress.

  31. It’s great news the release is approaching, and i want to thank you again for all the nice posts you make on this “blog”. It gives an insight on what you are working on and also how you are thinking when dealing with those things (considering i have no programmer mindset, it’s interesting at least for me).

    I’ll be waiting to get my copy on Steam (where i keep most of my games nowadays), so hopefully the release will happen on Steam just like it will on the XP site. And Steam users will be able to use beta versions too, i hope!

    Thank you.

    1. Traditionally (with XP10), Steam users had access to the release candidate versions of a beta run. Most end users probably don’t want to use earlier betas anyway. Keep in mind this 11.0 beta run has intentionally been kept more stable, as it is really the only version of XP11 there is (mentioned by Ben on this blog before).

      1. We are almost certainly going to maintain this situation (RCs get staged on steam, betas do not). This is entirely about internal labor savings – we’d rather have Philipp work on the GPS devices than duplicate the installation work we do for our installer on Steam’s installer 10+ times per patch.

        Steam users can install a separate demo install of X-Plane and run betas on it. I realize that the demo limitation does cramp a number of test use cases, but it does make some possible.

  32. Completely unrelated but is X-Plane 11’s weather system as described here:
    //developer.x-plane.com/?article=custom-wind-weather-in-x-plane-10

    In particular I’m interested if there is an increase in resolution, a la:
    “A grid of 16×16 weather envelopes make up the X-Plane weather system. Each of these 256 weather “buckets” is about 1.0 degrees of longitude by 0.6 degrees of latitude, or about 35 miles or so.”
    – my interpretation is that we cannot specify custom weather within an area less than the 35 mile limitation – is this correct?

    1. Yeah – the -architecture- of the system is unchanged. And you are correct – while you can create “localized” weather, there are resolution limits that stop you from saying “a storm goes…right here!”

  33. Unbelievable! Amazing Job, Ben, Austin and team. XP11 is a truly amazing accomplishment. It is running very well with my sim – using XPUIPC and Sim-Avionics and Jetmax/CP-Flight hardware. Framerates better than XP10 with more detail – same system…absolutely knocked out of the park, guys. Thank you.

  34. Thanks for all your hard work with x-plane 11…it’s coming along very nicely. I have one issue that cropped up for me which is that the app fltplan go on my android will longer commuunicate with x-plane 11 in beta 17 while it worked in prior betas so i believe something got broke along the way and I just wanted to bring that to your attention and hope it can get fixed.
    Thanks

  35. Hello Ben,
    where can I report a bug?

    While cruising at FL300 in 737 during night, I got engine overheat (because of rapid climb, which is OK) and the 3 “fire lights” at the center console, right after the throttle levers got red. Now, the bug is, these 3 lights got reflected in cockpit windows (front and left) too bright I think, no other lights were reflected (have screenshot), and the next problem is, after decreasing throttle, the lights went off, but the reflections stayed at windows for another minute or two.

    Thanks

      1. Sorry my bad, could have noticed that link…
        Anyway, I just posted the bug, my first.
        It’s not particularly annoying or a “showstopper”, it’s just there…

  36. Hi Ben,

    has XP 11 been improved wrt. the maximum length of replays?

    In XP10 replays were cut off on longer flights from the beginning, since there seemed to be some kind of max in memory buffer limit also related to number of AI aircraft used.

    This happened although I had plenty of RAM (32 GB) and XP could write temporary replay data to disk anytime.

  38. No comment on the 172 excessive pulling left on ground, rolling left in air ? (Yes, I know props have a p factor, but not this excessive)

  39. First of all: Thank you for all the joy you are bringing us! I really love X-Plane 11 so much! Great work, though some things may need some work.

    Just one question: Do you still recommend turning threaded optimization in the NVIDIA off or is it safe to turn it back on? I think you said that in general users would benefit from it but in some special cases the FPS would sink dramatically.

    So, is it safe now to turn it on again?

    Cheers
    Stephan

  40. Hi Ben, good night.

    First, congratulations for LR Team to finish Xplane 11. That’s awesome. I would like to ask about one important tool to help us to develop scenery: flat ground. Is it possible to add this tool on a future WED´s update? I have tons of airports in Brazil with many runway variations and don´t know how to fix it. Is it too complicated? Thank you.

    1. This is something we want to do – it’s also not simple – it requires significant engine modifications. Localized ground control for airports is something we know is important.

  41. I’m rather disappointed that Toe brakes have been removed from buttons in this version.
    Having them be button selectable is a GOOD, no its not “ideal” but for those like myself who have nerve issues in their feet, having them on buttons made my life just a bit better some days. It does work in 10 and I really hope to see it back for 11

    1. Email Austin to discuss this. If Austin decides _not_ to put this feature back, it is possible to write a plugin to provide the functionality with no loss of behavior.

  42. Just to go back to the DRM issue, under no circumstances will I consider any product that requires “authorization”, be it online, telephone, HASP, etc. But I might put up with a DVD as long as I can rip the DVD to ISO and mount that as a virtual drive. It’s a waste of disk space, but not a drastic encumbrance. Is that still the case?

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