A new release candidate is now available for X-Plane 11.02. There aren’t many bug fixes listed on the release notes page, but we think (hope!) we’ve fixed the new issues introduced in r1 and sneaked in a couple other improvements such as:

  • Crashing when reporting the field in sight at an untowered airport!
  • FPS hit when using external cameras near aircraft with scenery shadows on.

 

About Jennifer Roberts

Jennifer came to X-Plane to update the manuals and stayed for the bug testing. You'll most likely see her answering bug reports or making video tutorials.

54 comments on “X-Plane 11.02 Release Candidate 2

  1. It certainly felt snappier but on the ground just off the runway stop at LFMN, changing viewpoint to watch an AI plane come in while another balked deciding which intersection to turn into, I had a full 5-second freeze. After a long time of avoiding AI acf I now use at least four. The team is doing an awesome job. Is there an .FML format doc anywhere?

    1. .FML is an internal format that is auto-generated rather than defined, and changes from version to version, so it’s not stable for data input-output.
      If you want to generate or load flightplans, use the old .FMS format (backwards compatible to X-Plane 8 or so) or the new .FLP format (supports airways, compatible with many FSX or X-Plane third-party aircraft and flight planners).

      1. I think it’s time to consider a separate hash file for parsing air navigation data essential for FMS’ functions, from ground navigation data in hundreds of thousands of lines that define taxiways, linear features, runway hold points or crossings unessential to air navigation. Among the essential things are apt.dat line headers 1; 100; 1302 region and transition alt/levels, 50-56 for frequencies; and frequencies for runways associated LOCs or ILSes that come from yet another set of multiple files. We could even use pre-calculated runway lengths and actual magnetic headings.

        At the moment we have to parse scenery_packs.ini for the load order of Custom Scenery apt.dat files therein, parse that for data, then parse the default apt dat folder for its apt.dat to get any missing 1302 items in legacy scenery, then the earth.nav data files in a similar order to associate LOCs and ILSes to runways. Just saying it’s a bit much 🙂

    2. For me, this release is a step down from 11.02 RC 1. I lost half the FPS gains of RC1, which dips me down below the 19 fps into “slow motion” time now and then. What dirtied up the code?

      The “inverse ground effect bug” is still there, which sucks by B1900D suddenly down into the ground once I’m within 10 feet of the ground with zero wind at 1.3 Vso. Feels like vicious wind shear, except I’ve set the sim for no wind, and I’m far from a stall. Crazy crazy.

  2. Hi Jennifer, thanks for the update!
    Just out of some curiosity: is there a good reason why the entries on the release notes pages are in such a strange order?

    1. Please be more specific–I’m not sure what’s strange about the order. We put info on the latest version at the top, and the fixed bugs are in numeric order.

        1. RD, thanks for your help.
          It is this page of the knowlegde base. Not a critical thing, but not very straight forward.
          Alex

  3. Great work guys!
    Re: updating
    Any chance of a single-click as an additional update option? So we don’t have to sit there waiting to confirm each step of the process. I cannot think of once when I cancelled an update at one of the intermediate steps.

      1. It would be great to have an option when updating to disable the installation of the old Aerosoft airports that came in the beginning of XP10. I always have to delete them after updating, because there are newer and better made sceneries today.

          1. EDLP and LPFR are pretty awesome goodies that Aerosoft put to the X-Plane package since X-Plane 10 and they still are really nice. The Aerosoft LOWI demo area is quite acceptable. They all are FSX conversions.

            The Aerosoft “default” EDDF, EHAM, EGLL, etc. are lousy and incomplete FSX conversions that put some minor value over their default 2D counterparts in the early days of X-Plane 10. Other Aerosoft “default” sceneries like EDDS have always been low end lego bricks. I think Carsten is referring his request on those poor FSX conversions and the early Aerosoft lego bricks. And I totally agree with Carsten that those sceneries should be removed from X-Plane 11. I think that some of them have been removed already (not sure about that because I moved my custom scenery folder from XP10 to XP11 since beta 3). IMHO all but EDLP, LPFR and LOWI should be removed from XP11.

            Regards,
            Marc

  4. So far – so good!
    Your attention to detail and your diligence in correcting problems and enhancing the experience is greatly appreciated – at least by this customer.

    Thanks

  5. Very curious I have been with the whole 11 beta program with relatively no problems with this latest release I have been unable to upgrade r1 to r2 so finally I tried the upgrade on beta 13 and that worked. Why won’t the latest r1 upgrade too?

    1. So not having heard for anyone yet, I tried the following:
      X-Plane is set up on a 1 terabyte ssd and exe 11.0.2.1 R1 was running fairly well days ago it said there is a recommended update after the installer did it’s check it said it was going to download 10 meg of compressed data. After connecting with the server it came back with an error occured during upgrade:
      Permission denied. Perhaps you do not have access to a directoryor the file system. You can continue with the upgrade and attempt to repair the files later, or you can stop the upgrade and try again later.
      I tried both over a few days always getting the suggestion to contact support which I did.

      So still hearing nothing I removed the aircraft and custom scenery folder contents and ran the update again it put back some of what I removed but came back with the same update failure.

      I tried an experiment and ran the update on my beta 13 copy and now it has and exe that reads 11.02 R2. So 11 B13 to 11.0.2.2 tried the 11.0.2.1 again and it still failed.

      Love the snappiness of my updated B13 but would love to clean up this problem.

      Best regards
      Brian

      1. For what it’s worth, I read your posts twice and still don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sure others feel the same.

        That said, the dev blog is not meant for tech support.

  6. I have just seen this wired flickering forest fire. But now I can’t find any forest fire to replicate the issue and maybee a video and a screenshot or two.

    Is there any way to force a forest fire to be able to investigate this further?

    1. In log.txt you will see a line like:
      0:00:17.308 I/REN: Setting |draw forest fires and balloons read from prefs as 0.
      If you edit file:
      …\X-Plane 11\Output\preferences\X-Plane.prf
      you can change line:
      renopt_fire_ball 0
      to:
      renopt_fire_ball 1
      if you want forest fires & balloons
      It used to be a setting in the XP10 rendering options.

  7. Hey! I’ve run the updater, but my app still says 11.02r1. Also still failing to download the metar file…

    1. Check (and trust) what the log.txt says. We’re still working on an issue with the app info being in sync.

  8. Thanks for the RC2 release, I’m seeing consistent improvements in performance and it’s a relief not to have to worry about it as much as in XP10! I was wondering if anyone at Laminar Research could provide and estimated fix time for the pronouced ground effect I believe one of the org forums members has discussed with Austin (interaction between wing downwash and horizontal tail).

    Kind regards

    1. Ground effect feels ok to me. Stronger than FSX/P3D, but maybe X-Plane is the correct one? Which aircraft are troubling you? I’m flying mostly the 737.
      Cheers.

      1. There’s been a lengthy discussion or two on the forums regarding rough landings due to a feeling of the aircraft being ‘sucked’ towards the ground within the last few feet of landing. One member has spoken to Austin at length and said member stated that he would correct the issue in a later update. I fly the 738 a lot too and it’s quite a pronounced effect on takeoff, with correct trim set, just after rotation the aircraft requires a sudden large increase in pitch input to maintain a steady increase of attitude. I have noticed it in most aircraft but the 738 is the one I feel it more pronounced in. It could just be because it feels different from how it was before.

        1. I have exactly the same experience with 738 (and other jets) as you, Liam…. I hope Austin will make ground effect physics better soon..

        2. I noticed it yesterday on the 737. Just wanted to say that the real aircraft is exactly like that (I have experience on a real 737 sim). I can’t feel the same in lighter aircraft in X-Plane, do I’d say the effect looks realistic to me.

        3. @Liam: Aircraft being “sucked” towards the ground sounds a lot like stalling. Which is what will happen if you “float” above the runway for too long (which is how you are supposed to land on a C172). After some practice I was able to do this landing, so I think everyone should be able to do it:
          //www.youtube.com/watch?v=js8jsRg5Hm0

          @João Guimarães: Yeah, it did seem like a non-issue to me. Thanks for confirming.

          1. I am definitely not stalling a 738 at 140+kt at Vr so I know it cannot be that. Many, many users have found this to be an issue whereby aircraft are having to be pitched excessively to rotate effectively, thus resulting in extreme over-pitch once the ground effect was no longer applicable.

        4. Is it only me?
          For me during takeoff the snappy effect is also there.
          If I pull the yoke gently the plane still sticks on the ground and suddenly it “jumps” into the air.

          Looks like it is the other side of this ground effect.

          This effect is not very strong, but for me with enough experience in real flying (PPL-A) it is at least irritating

    1. If you are using Steam, you cannot get this update yet. It has not been released there yet (but should be coming soon).

      If you have a copy of X-Plane purchased somewhere else (X-Plane.com, Aerosoft, etc), you can run the installer and check the box to get betas.

  9. also a trivial thing but very annoying. the german translation of the installer is all over the place with buttons overlapping and wrong words. And for the final touch, it says “fly x-plane 10 now” at the end 😀

    i submitted a bug report a few betas ago, so dunno if this is getting adressed. i can provide some translations if needed.

    1. We are aware of the German translation issue and have new translations pending. We need to cut a new version of the installer with them.

    1. I’m sure Laminar are aimlessly standing around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing 😉 (or Austin has discovered the thrill of the pirate life)

    1. As stated by LR even before releasing first public beta of XP11, initially the European autogen buildings are all German style (btw: they are extremely realistic for many German areas!). More autogen building types matching other regions are expected to follow.

      Yes, German houses in southern Europe or US buildings in central Africa look pretty odd.

      However: I do not think that all regions could be covered, but the German houses for the European area are a first step ahead. In X-Plane 10 all houses and roads have been typical US style only.

      Finally a set of buildings providing a rather plausible representation of the major world regions should fit in our future demands. Until then (payware) scenery should consider also creating the area close to an airport. Above 10,000ft the buildings – at least for IFR SIM-pilots – are no factor at all.

      Regards,
      Marc

  10. in the flightsimcon 2017, it was announced that 11.10 with the new autogen and landmarks will be released in the summer 2017.. are we still on track for that or do we expect any delays? thank you for all that the LR team does!

    1. I’m pretty sure 11.05 was to be released in the summer and 11.10 in the autumn. Mind you, 11.02 has been in beta for quite some time now – I can never get Ben’s words out of my head: “I’m hoping that this beta will last less than two weeks.”

      1. 11.02’s basically done – the only reason it lasted this long is we had to work around Philipp being OOTO. 11.05 will be short – just airports and 1 or 2 bug fixes, so 11.10 will be summer too.

        I hope EVERY beta will be two weeks – hope springs eternal! 😉

        1. I was in touch with Philipp three days ago on an SDK issue. Please don’t tell me I caught him on his honeymoon! (Welll….okay. If you must… 😉 )

  11. The fps is good for fly.But there is stutter sometimes.
    For example RJTT runway 04 take off there must have a stutter.

  12. Hi, Since the version 10 I noticed that the cloud coverage of “real weather” are bigger then “manual assigned”, but after the last updates, I noticed also that the visibility at high altitude with “real weather” are reduced (terrain and clouds distance) in comparasion with “manual assigned weather”, resulting on a less vivid sky at highers altitudes(too much fog). Is this an intentional behavior to improve performance, or maybe a bug caused by the new dataref (fog_be_gone)?
    Should I fill a bug?
    Recently I filled a bug of different “skycolors ratios” between the real weather and manually assigned at same weather conditions, but I don´t want spam your bug database if this is something you already know.

  13. someone asked about landmarks above, but which version they are coming in was not made clear. Any update to this? i.e. still summer and will all landmarks shown in the sim conference release together?

    lastly- will these landmarks be stand alone files, where we can remove them if we want assuming we have custom scenery already showing such object

  14. Hi, can you provide a list of touched files (add/change/delete) for future updates? The reason I am asking is that I am using Ortho4XP which requires base .dsf files to generate overlays. For example, once 11.05 is available, I assume there will be a huge update on scenery files which means I need to regenerate overlays for changed tiles as well. Without the list of touched files, I have to generate everything again but if you can provide a file change list, it will help me a lot. Thanks!

    1. Scenery was recut during the initial 11.00 beta run, but has not been modified since. I don’t believe we have another recut planned at this time either. 11.05 is designed mainly to get the backlog of new Gateway airports out. If you need to know which airports are updated in that, the release notes page will have a link to the list.

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