To get this beta you’ll need to run the updater and click “Check for New Betas” – we won’t ever prompt you to install a beta when you have a final release of X-Plane. Here’s the Release Notes. Please file bugs using the Bug Reporter!

11.02 is a small maintenance patch. Our main focuses were:

  • Performance tuning we could do without too much technical risk. (We’ll do the more adventurous stuff in 11.10.)
  • Fine tuning the various SDKs.
  • Bug Fixes.

As a small beta, I’m hoping the entire beta period will be less than two weeks.

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.

59 comments on “X-Plane 11.02 Beta 1 Is Out”

  2. Is this going to be available on Steam. Steam is still 11.01 as far as I can tell.

    Many Thanks

      1. Ah. Many thanks Philipp. I wish I’d realised this before I went with the Steam Version.

        Many Thanks

      2. Thank you Philipp, I can’t wait for it, can you predict a release date on steam?

      4. I probably understand the reasoning behind not releasing early betas on Steam but sure does make me feel like a second class citizen. I know what the pitfalls of installing a beta are and yet by subscribing to the beta updates in Steam, all I actually get is , to all intents and purposes, the final release version with a few remaining small bugs. No chance of releasing early betas as private betas on Steam and providing a code after having acknowledged a huge warning about beta installation? Guess I’m just a bit impatient.

        1. I guess that is due to Steam approval proces. When you want release something on steam, Steam stuff have to sign that is ok and they can stop that release. Not sure, but at least on consoles similar procesess are paid and of course it takes some time.

          Too many effort to something which will stay for few days.

        2. I second Jules for the ‘second class citizen’. I guess it is also because this new version seems to have such an impact on perf and I hate reading about it, while not participating in the beta. Now knowing that, I wouldn’t mind installing the stand-alone version, as I don’t need X-plane to be connected to my steam account per-se, I just didn’t know there would be any difference. Funny enough, all the threads I found were about people complaining not having a steam key with the stand alone purchase, while I was looking for the opposite, which financially and from a DRM point of view should be of no problem for Laminar. But I’d rather prefer spending another 60$ for addon-ons then re-buying the game again. Any chance to get a serial for the stand-alone version, which btw for any other software on Steam is usually included and presented at startup ?

          1. I second all of what Jules and Fred posted, I feel exactly the same, I didn’t know there would be any difference between buying XP11 on steam or directly on LR, in fact, on Laminar website it is given the option to buy it on steam!
            As an advanced user, and perfectly knowing what beta means, it’s kind of frustrating not to be able to participate and test the improvments on it before a RC on steam. That said, also for me, it would be a nonsense to buy the stand-alone version if I already have the steam version, so I think we the steam users deserve the same access to betas the stand-alone users already have.

      5. Is there any discussion about changing this? I would like to help test but I’m a bit put off by the idea of having to re-buy a 60$ game just to get access to the updater. Steam does have a beta opt-in option in the game settings that allows for optional beta downloads for advanced users.

        1. Let’s just hope for a RC to be out next week… I am to eager to try the improvements but aparently there’s nothing we can’t do, but to simply wait…

      6. How long does the process usually take from a beta release to the release candidate?

  3. FYI- Is the expected performance increase only for PC’s? I’m on a iMac with a Nvidia 2GB Vcard and see no improvements in FPS at all.
    Looking forward to 11.10
    Thanks

    1. There can be some FPS improvement on Mac, but it depends on your settings and what’s holding you back. If you have low 3-d world settings, no AI planes, and you’re limited by your GPU (easy to do on an iMac!) then this won’t be any faster, as it’s all CPU-side optimizations.

  4. Your small patch has doubled my frame rate. I’m using Nvidia hardware on Windows with a fairly high end system.

  5. Here working perfect, for me 11.02b1 best version so far.
    Significant performance gain, works very smooth.
    Thank you very much.

    João Alfredo

  8. My framerates improved too – with threaded optimization ON in nvidia control panel I can get almost stable 60 fps at medium world detail settings in the default c172. Of course, with 3rd party aircraft this is another story… but that is not your problem.

    So… thank you for this update and the work to get there.

  9. Did you guys recut this? I believe, this morning, when I grabbed the newest beta the installer identified the version as “11.02b1a”.

  10. As I said in the other post, I am kinda flabbergasted by the performance improvement on my 8 core Mac Pro. I am sure the 1060 helps over the AMD 5870 that came with it…

    But I noticed an improvement that I don’t know if it was a bug before. Previously the FPS would show say 10-15 fps, but I could literally count the 4 per second I was actually getting. In addition the the bump I have, it seems to actually match the number displayed, in that its no longer a slide show, but feels like a simulation. I am quite happy.

  11. Thanks for the update Ben.

    Is there an specific nvidia driver ver. (latest maybe) in which your code optimization may benefit the most from or it doesn’t really matter which one?

    1. We generally try to make sure we’re good with the latest released drivers; if the latest drivers for your GPU work, we don’t worry much about the older ones.

  12. Hi Ben,

    Nice upadate! Improved a lot my fps! will you continue to work to optimize Xplane or will address another functions in future betas ? (like ATC, new particles effects, cities lights, etc) . Thanks a lot!

  13. I’d guess I have a 50% increase in framerate on my GTX980. Amazing work!

    I’m not sure anyone has this, but I did notice on my very short circuit that the weather redrew about every 2mins, instead of the 30mins that is set. Anyone else notice that?

  14. My frames have gone up considerably but I have noticed one thing, there are pauses every 5-8 seconds. This is cruising along steadily.

    1. Also for various reasons I have hyperthreading disabled on my i7. Would turning this back on have any benefit in xp11?

  16. Works great! Thanks!

    Almost never saw a Linux user comments here, thought it might be useful.
    Things are running smoothly in the Linux section (Ubuntu 16.04). I’m Using X-Plane on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04). I haven’t noticed a *significant* increase in frame rate in this update with my current hardware (i7-6700@3.4GHzx8 + GTX1070, 32GB RAM) – but X-Plane is running solid and steady at ~40FPS with pretty high graphics settings. External views gets FPS higher towards 60.

    Thanks and Keep up the excellent work!

  17. It’s not 11.02 specific, I have this since XP11 beta, but is it normal to have 60fps when looking outside from captain’s seat, and drop to 30 when looking inside cockpit, e.g. overhead??
    my PC is quite powerfull I think, i7-6700K (not OC), GTX1060 6GB.
    No external scenery, for example yesterday at KDEN (no 3D airport), I had the very same “issue” in 737 of 11.02b

  18. Considering the modification of the task scheduling within X-Plane and the consequent different distribution of the workload across cores (at least, this is what I observed from the task manager in Windows, now I see all my 4 cores evenly loaded, while in 11.01 there was a somewhat uneven load distribution), does the recommendation to disable threading optimization in the Nvidia driver still hold?

    1. Generally yes – you’re welcome to mess with it, but we expect to use the cores ourselves, and if we run out of core, really bad stuff happens.

      1. OK I tried with threading optimizations both ON and OFF, the latter definitely delivers the best frame rate. Not a big difference (3-5 fps, more measurable than perceivable) but existent nonetheless.

  19. I have just installed beta 1 of XP 11.02 and see an average of 5FPS more than before. Although running it with way higher graphic details than I did with XP 10.51 in the past, the average FPS rate now is very close to XP 10. Great job!

    BTW: I have just seen some first impression videos of the brand new P3D v.4 64bit. I was amazed how much better XP 11 graphics are in comparison – especially at night! P3D v.4 has some nice clouds and some reflections at day that nearly reach XP 11, but HDR light effects do not even match match the quality of early XP 10 versions. P3D v.4 overall looks more “painted” instead if real – like XP 11 does. Yes, this comment is off topic, but I had to say this – sorry…

    Regards,
    Marc

    1. Hi,

      I just bought P3D v4 and already regret it. X-plane is way better (V10 orV11). everything is smoother and at night there is no comaprison x-plane beat them all (FSW or P3D). So I will stick with x-plane and invest in it. Much more possibilities and also free sceneries and utilities.

  20. Hi Help required
    I don’t seem to be getting the option to update Xplane 11 when going to the settings folder and looking for update. It still says I am up to date with version 11.01r or something similar. I am not getting the option to update to version 11.02. Any help appreciate.
    I am using Windows 7 and the download version of Xplane 11. (this was the initial beta release before final release)
    Cheers

    1. When starting the installer, you need to click the checkbox to also look for beta versions. After doing so, the installer will grab the beta.

      Regards,
      Marc

  21. Hello,

    great performance improve. 10FPS. But under Linux Mint not stable. It crashes after 20 minutes enroute to desktop.After rollback with installer non beta no problem. Stable enroute for hours.
    I figure out in the log: fails generate traffic and autogen. Maybe some datarefs run out or overload.

    But the performance was getting me a big smile. Wow.

    Cheers
    John

  22. Are the clouds still in the process of getting fixed? The clouds are still see thru at night from above the layer when scattered or broken layers are selected. I noticed overcast has been fixed, thanks.

  23. I wonder if there’s any way to freeze the cloud shadows on the scenery when the viewpoint is changed. They flicker madly during a change of view angle even though the relationship of the source of light to the scenery doesn’t.

    1. The texel grid of the shadows can be locked spatially, which does help flicker a bit. That’s on a list of things for Sidney and I to try.

  24. Hi, regarding having threaded optimization turned on, on nvidia cards. I found it increases GPU ram usage and also cause xplane to crash when using map or radio icon from top right, Xplane seems to do far better with it off. Juts for info 11.02b1

  26. Hey guys,

    Quick question, when do you expect to work on HTC Vive native support, if you have a timeline for this yet?

    Reason I ask is because I really want to start using the Vive with X-Plane, and I’m wondering if I should buy FlyInside or if I should hold off until you provide native support.

    Thanks.

  28. Hello Ben and LR,

    Alot of users are having to restart X-Plane before flying a second flight with the FMC.

    Meaning the FMC and autopilot get bugged out, if you do another flight, The only resolution is to restart X-Plane and this is the same with all aircraft FMC, this has been like this for a while; is there a reset option in X-Plane that completely clears FMC or something?

  29. What would be nice somewhere in the future. Is a folder in the Aircraft folder specifically for AI planes, that does not show up in the aircraft selection list unless you need to add ai planes. That way we wont have an overcrowded Selection list, and can add realy basic ai aircraft to xplane that wont have the performance hit

    1. This is definitely something we’d like to improve in the future. There are loads of otherwise great third-party planes out there that just absolutely won’t function as AI planes. As a user, it’s impossible to know in advance which ones will work… and even among the ones that work, as you said, they’re often way more resource-intensive than they need to be for AI use.

      We almost certainly won’t get to this in time for 11.10 (the schedule’s already very full), but it’s in the category of “some day.”

  30. Hi Ben and LR,
    is it possible, that access of private DataRefs has changed in this version?

    A user reported an error with my FWL plugin: (I could not test it myself, my GPU is too old for XP11, sorry.)
    “FlyWithLua Error: The DataRef “sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat” can not be accessed from FlyWithLua, as it is a private DataRef. Reading or writing private DataRefs is prohibited by Laminar Research.”

    It worked in earlier versions, so I just ask… I know what “private” means. : )

    Thanks for the great sim and the possibility to get in touch with you developers!

    2. The programmer of FlyWithLua wrote some days before, that he probably will prohibit the access of private controls out of FlyWithLua.

      A check of the FlyWithLua version could be usefull

      1. Sorry Ben, for bothering you!

        And thanks Günther for pointing that out, I’ve found that post of X-Friese now and I will discuss this topic on the FWL forum.

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