You can now grab the WED 2.1 beta here. This is a minor update with bug fixes and enhancements such as extending the facade preview to all types of facades and to the map window. You can also read Michael’s extended release notes here.
New Meta-tag Identifies 2D or 3D Airports
We’d like to point your attention especially to the new “2D” or “3D” meta-tag for export targets of 11.30 or higher. This tag tells the X-Plane GUI to list the airport as “2D” or “3D”.
Before X-Plane 11.35, the information in the “Features” column in the X-Plane airport selection menu came from any scenery in a user’s Custom Scenery directory, rather than being an entry in the system-wide apt.dat in the Resources/default scenery/default apt dat/ directory. The assumption was any addon airport would always be 3D. But starting with X-Plane 11.33, all global airports, even those with 2D-only layouts, were now included
in the Global Airports –which made the X-Plane GUI effectively list every airport as “3D”.
At export, WED 2.1 will analyze the scenery for 3D content and look for the existence of the meta-tag “GUI label”. If the export target is 11.30 or higher it will warn if the tag is missing or improperly set, ultimately leaving it up to the designer how they want the airport to be listed in X-Plane. If the target is “Gateway”, it will forcibly create or update this meta-tag to always be set correctly according to the actual scenery exported.
In order to fix the 2D/3D display in X-Plane 11.35 and later for any scenery not submitted via the Gateway, authors will need to manually add the tag via “Airport->Add Meta Data” and then re-exported to a target of X-Plane 11.30 or higher.
Does the system-wide apt.dat in the Resources/default scenery/ have any purpose anymore now?
Yes – it drives the GPS/FMS.
Right, I saw a warning about outdated data in the FMS.
So with the apt.dat in Custom Scenery supposedly responsible for the visuals, and the apt.dat in Resources responsible for the GPS/FMS, isn’t there the chance for a potential mismatch between the two?
There is in fact a mismatch in 11.34 right now – for example, the new Istanbul airport LTFM is missing. We have improved the process for 11.35, doing away with such mismatches, so you can fly to the new Istanbul airport in 11.35 as expected.
For almost all airports, there will be no difference at all – the visuals match the data.
The only exception to this is where the scenery would be unusable with default navigation data, in which case a compatibility airport stays in the default data.
speaking of 11.35 beta still coming today?
Is “Glo-mo” going to be added to the current mobile X-Plane or is it going to be a seperate app?
I’m assuming you have seen the e3 release of the new Microsoft flight simulator already. I understand that Microsoft has a massive advantage when it comes to money but speaking honestly, after seeing it, how are you planning or expecting to retain xplane users? I was a first time 11 beta user and fell absolutely in love with it For so many reasons because it literally destroyed fsx and the 32 bit fan boys it has. Does laminar have any serious ability to compete with the graphics/scenery that flight sim clearly has? I’m going to say when it comes to flight dynamics and things like that, xplane will probably dominate but then again, Microsoft isn’t releasing it for another year so that could be plenty of time for them to throw millions of dollars at the dynamic engine to at minimum, compete with xplane. Microsoft generally doesn’t like to lose or be second best so they are clearly tackling some major issues that I feel the community has been begging for, for years. I’m not one of those simmers who demand wing flex, contrails, or really any unrealistically visible while “ in the cockpit” flying and I wouldn’t be able to see anyways type of things. Idk, it just seems like I saw actual real time 4K simulation with insane environment graphics, not limited to clouds, rain, cities, or weather that’s using insane AI ability to assist in real world scenery rendering and laminar seems to still be a year + away from efficiently using more than one or two cores to get what, 10% to 15% more efficiency with Vulkan? After seeing what Microsoft is working with, could we expect to see comparable performance or scenery/graphics of the world environment by the time it’s released from xplane or is it going to be a 15 year later updated like Microsoft did with fsx? Basically, what is laminars plans to prevent a “ what I’m going to assume is a massive “ shift away from xplane11.