X-Plane 11’s native VR support uses SteamVR, so let me clear this up now:
You will be able to use VR directly in X-Plane 11 with any distribution of our sim:
- An X-Plane 11 digital download from Laminar Research (or any other reseller) if you have a 24-digit product key.
- An X-Plane 11 DVD set from Laminar Research (or any other reseller) if you have DVDs.
- X-Plane 11 on Steam if you bought X-Plane on Steam.
VR will work for X-Plane 11 no matter how you bought it. You do not have to have bought X-Plane from Steam to use VR.
(This post does not contain any guidance on supported hardware – I’d like to wait until we get further into beta and get some feedback on how system requirements affect actual users. This is just a reassurance that you didn’t buy X-Plane “the wrong way” for VR.)
What Is SteamVR
SteamVR is a free download from Steam’s app store that X-Plane (and many other games) use to talk to your VR hardware. We use SteamVR for both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift – X-Plane’s native VR support requires that you have both the Oculus drivers and SteamVR.
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After an intense year of development and a few demos of the technology at various Flight Simulator conferences, it’s finally time to let you all in on a preview of X-Plane 11 with VR support built-in! I will admit that I personally thought this was another technologic fad that was going to fade without ever gaining traction but I’m happy to say that I think I was wrong. Once you try a VR headset, you’ll never want to fly without one again. For the first time EVER, you can fly precisely and accurately by looking around and interacting with the cockpit without being anchored to a narrow field of view and small clickable hotspots viewed from unnatural angles. VR lets you have unlimited freedoms to move your head and body around naturally. You also get a sense of scale for the first time. Objects and manipulators are the right sizes and distances…just stand next to the tires or engines on one of the airliners and you’ll understand what I mean by scale. Read More
Posted in News, VR
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Chris Serio |
X-Plane 11.11 is now final – you’ll be notified to auto-update. 11.11 is a small bug fix release that fixes a few key issues that we didn’t find out about in time to get into 11.10. Here’s the release notes.
Our VR private beta program is underway – we’ve been cutting VR private betas in parallel to 11.11 testing; I’ll post more on VR over the next few days.
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X-Plane 11.11 is available for testing – to get it, run the X-Plane 11 installer, pick “Update X-Plane” and make sure “Get Betas” is checked. Two big fixes:
- This build should fix crashes for AMD users.
- This build restores functionality for FltPlan.go and a number of other iOS moving map apps that.
Release notes are here.
Posted in News
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Ben Supnik |
UPDATE: After receiving around 70 requests, we are closing applications for private beta testing at this time.
X-Plane’s native VR is nearly ready for beta. Possibly as soon as next week, we will be moving into private beta testing of VR-capable builds. We are looking for a small number of volunteers to participate in the initial private beta.
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X-Plane 11.10 went final Thursday night – you’ll be notified to update. Jennifer has a good write-up of the high level features here, or you can read the release notes.
11.10 was a big patch for us – new airports, new autogen, new lego bricks, the G1000, joystick profiles, London landmarks, and significant engine enhancements to both the physics and rendering engines.
We may do an 11.11 patch next week – we have a few bug fixes that didn’t make the RC. Jennifer gets a lot of bug reports over the weekend, so we’ll evaluate Monday.
VR Is Coming!
The rendering engine work in 11.10 gets the sim “VR-ready”, and Chris has been working on the actual VR features of the app in parallel to the 11.10 release.
The next major patch of X-Plane will be 11.20; it will feature native VR support for the Oculus Rift and Vive on Windows, and the beta is coming very soon.
XPlane2Blender v3.4.0-rc.1
We made it people!
Change log
This release encompasses all of the beta. You can read through the beta notes for more details, but, here are the highlights:
New Features
Important bugs
We could not have gotten this far without the incredible support of our beta testers, new authors, bug reporters, and all the wonderful artists who give us the inspiration and energy to make this product better! It has been an incredible journey diving into this facet of the community and I look forward to even more releases, including VR manipulators, full WYSIWYG lights, and more!
Thank you!