Beta 3 is now available for LR customers, and we expect Steam to be available within 24 hours.

This update has fixes for a handful of user reported issues, as well as weather and time saved in .sit & .rep files.

Release notes here.

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.

37 comments on “X-Plane 11.40b3”

    1. Elios – you filed a bug re: wake turbulence. The bug is _not_ fixed in beta 3, and the release notes are clear about that. The bug is assigned to Austin and he was out traveling this week, so we used the days while he was out to create a beta that put other fixes in. This lets us tell by when the beta appeared whether a bug is from the main part of 11.40 (Austin’s set of physics changes) or some of the other changes coming in (e.g. merges of changes from glomo or other refactoring).

      In other words, we chose to put out a beta even though your bug was not fixed because it will let us get to a finished release faster.

      In the mean time, I need you to tone it down a lot. Please stop posting grumpy snarky replies about the same bug in response to every single beta release announcement. It isn’t going to get wake turbulence fixed any faster, but it is annoying people.

  3. Watching the video I realized that the shadow still shows a whole plane, while the plane already broke up into pieces. Is tah tdue to precomputing the shadows?

  5. Well said Ben, people need to understand that this is a beta and therefore reported bugs might not be fixed/resolved for each beta iteration. I for one am very much looking forward to the new physics updates. I wrote Austin directly about the idea of separating the updates that directly affect the aircraft flight model from other general updates such as improved wake turbulence modeling. It would be great if the general improvements and bug fixes are made available to all XP users (people running XP with experimental flight model turned off) and only the changes directly affecting the flight model tuning of individual A/C’s can be toggled with experimental flight model checkbox. I would consider all improvements to the atmospheric model like improved thermals, improved wake turbulence, etc. to be part of the general update of XP. It would be a shame if most users will not be able to experience these great improvements simply because they run addons that recommend to leave the experimental flight model option off.

    1. I think it’s already like that – the experimental FM stuff only applies to cases where the plane would miss its book values because we changed the ACF physics out from under the author.

      1. Thanks for clarifying Ben, glad to hear some of the updates will be part of the general physics engine of XP. What would be really helpful for us developers is to have the updates available in the general release and updates to the experimental flight model denoted in the release notes.

  6. 11.40 betas may have introduced adverse taxying characteristics. With the Aerobask Eclipse 550, for example, taxying has become quite unrealistic, particularly when the aircraft is moving slowly. Excessive amounts of power must be applied to get this aircraft to turn when it approaches a halt or has stopped and when that excessive power is applied, it results in an unacceptably dramatic movement.

    I report this here because, strictly speaking, it does not fall into the category of a bug.

    1. Please do file a bug. If you see it with the experimental FM off, it’s a regression bug. If you see it with the experimental FM on, Austin might want to look at it.

  8. Hi,

    I am wondering if 11.40 has introduced or done something on the GPU load ?

    noticing that the “Number of objects” is really very heavy on the GPU under linux.

    very sure that the objects were CPU bound ? not complaining.

    Rgds.

      1. Hi Ben,

        Ok.

        Could be a driver thing. I will report back if i find a similar situation in windows.

        Rgds.

  9. Is it not a true statement that add-on aircraft have to be re-saved under 11.40 to use the new 11.40 flight model (the non-experimental version)? That’s been my understanding – want to be sure it’s valid.

    1. I don’t think there are any changes where resaving opts in to changing behavior. As we’ve said before the experimental FM is not something you opt into by saving because it’s still experimental. The changes I do see related to version are file format extensions: more flap track slots, more sophisticated afterburner thrust curve. In both of those cases, the old 11.36 data fits into the 11.40 data with no behavior change.

      1. My confusion is perhaps attached to my understanding that 11.40 brings in what was the “experimental flight model” in 11.36 and prior. It is also my understanding that the flight model X-Plane uses is specific to the file writer version of Plane Maker that was used to save the ACF.

        So with 11.40, we have an updated flight model that was experimental in 11.36 and before, along with all of the bleeding edge experimental changes that are available only by opt in.

        Since this is the first time that we’re getting the benefit of the past experimental flight model, I may be getting confused, especially since this goes back to a conversation we had at Flight Sim Expo 2018 in Vegas.

        Am I overthinking this, Ben? 😉

        1. Hi Steve,

          This is incorrect!

          The experimental flight model is _still experimental_. It has been revised.

          The right way to wrap your head around the experimental flight model is to think of it as a very, very long beta (think Google time-frames for a beta 😉 for an update to the FM – it basically STAYS in beta for months on end while the rest of the sim goes final. This gives people time to actually use it and fix bugs, something that just isn’t easy to do in a normal 4-6 week beta period.

          So:
          – The experimental FM in 11.40 is more advanced than the experimental FM in 11.30 – it contains yet more cleverness from Austin in his on-going quest for more accurate results.
          – The non-experimental FM in 11.40 is the same as in 11.30 for normal flight envelopes – there are some new features (e.g. the onset of stall is tweaked) but we don’t expect book numbers to change.
          – There are no non-experimental FM changes that you opt into by resaving.

          So you get the new stall behavior ALWAYS regardless of whether you want it (it’s NOT an experimental feature) and you do not get the delayed wash effect EVEN if you resave in Plane-Maker (it’s still experimental and will be made non-experimental in the future.)

          In other words, 11.40 is “Beta 2” of the experimental FM.

          1. Roger that. Fantastic. I am now deconfused about the experimental FM. It would be odd to have two variations of experimentation going on, and it would be difficult to discern which was which in bug reports.

            In comparing an 11.36 aircraft with it’s 11.40 version, it does seem like things have been added in 11.40 Plane Maker – the area rule parameter was just one I noticed in a test. This suggests to me that the file writer version is still the means of opting into any non-experimental flight model changes in 11.40. Am I in the woods on this?

            Thanks for the replies. I know you’re hella busy, and want to be sure to keep fingers, limbs etc. intact by getting Vulkan in beta this year. 😉

          2. Hi Steve,

            When a new option appears in Plane-Maker that’s _not_ experimental only (e.g. some of the new controls of afterburners), if there is a value to that new setting that would have matched the OLD behavior, we just stuff that value in as a default. For example, with 11.35 and the bungee cord steering, having a max bungee degree offset of 0 disables the feature, so that’s what old aircraft get when they are re-saved.

            Also, as a general rule, the file writer version should be pretty transparent to you – that is, saving in Plane-Maker has no effect unless the release notes say “if you resave in plane-maker, buggy behavior X will go away and your FM may change”. That’s basically the only time we use that trick.

          3. Understood. So if we don’t re-save in Plane Maker, we can only get the functionality that was available to the older saved version in the X-Plane simulator itself, even if the simulator has progressed to a new version with new functionality. If we re-save, we may still need to opt in to the new features explicitly by adjusting the default behavior, otherwise we get only a default behavior, which may be no improvement at all. Makes sense, and keeps older aircraft basically functional in the sim. But for payware authors, it makes sense to take note of the new features and adapt.

            Thanks again!

          4. Right. At times when we have an opt-in behavior change and a new feature, you can’t get the new feature and keep the bug-for-bug compatibility. We’ve had authors TRY to do this by hacking the file writer version number in the .pln file. This is a _terrible_ idea! Since the .acf contains OTHER info written by the new sim, when x-plane tries to read an “old” file with secret new data in it, things may get weird – we never test that hack.

      2. According to the Updating aircraft to 11.30 guide:

        Aircraft saved in Plane Maker version 11.30 will be opted into a few new systems & requirements. Aircraft will need to be updated accordingly. If you wish to avoid updating your aircraft, do NOT re-save it in Plane Maker 11.30.

        So there are definately some.. just not clear/obvious what – if you don’t know – what chance have we got?

        1. I’m afraid I didn’t understand this comment at all. You’re quoting the 11.30 updating guide, which was useful when 11.30 came out, but we’re on 11.40 now.

          Are you asking what opt-in features were new to 11.30 when you re-saved in 11.30 Plane-Maker?
          Or are you asking what opt-in features are new to 11.40 wen you re-save in 11.40?

  10. What are the planned changes between this beta (#3) and the first release candidate?
    Or are you just waiting for bugs to be found in the beta?

  11. Hi Ben!
    I would like to ask you if buying a GeForce RTX 2080 ti will bring a very noticeable difference over my 1070TI 11GB OC.
    I heard that XPlane is still not getting out the most out of RTX Graphic cards. Is that correct?

    Thanks a lot in advance,

    Guillermo.

    1. I don’t know if it will help – it depends on your usage case. But if making the window _smaller_ doesn’t make your FPS faster, a bigger GPU won’t help, because it’s not the bottleneck. We also do’nt use any of the crazy AI or ray tracing stuff on the 2080 so you’re paying a premium for some hw you wouldn’t be using.

  12. Laminar Research team just want to take a moment to say thank you for all the hard work and dedication you put into this simulator. I am a huge Xplane fan since XP10 and have been so excited to see how far its come in the past few years. I am always trying to get new people to use this simulator. I appreciate the constant vigilance in improving the simulator in so many ways from flight model to performance. I look forward to what’s coming with sim!

  13. Hello, how are you ?
    Many of us X-Plane fans have noticed a lot of ground helipads in the middle of the city with windsocks and rotating beacons, this is causing a loss of performance and weeding out those twirling lights throughout the night.
    I tried to resolve by upgrading Airac and X-Plane to latest version and beta 11.40b3 and to no avail.
    Can you give us a preview of where the problem is and how to solve it?
    Thank you so much, thanks.
    Cheers.

    1. I don’t know why you think this would be a performance problem – there’s nothing expensive about drawing helipads. They can look silly if the real world helipad is integrated with the scenery and we simply draw one on the ground.

    2. Hi Ben, thanks for the prompt reply.
      I was able to make the rotating beacon object “disappear” by creating a transparent texture for that particular object and deleting the light animations by opening the object in the text editor.
      There was really no performance improvement, and I didn’t do the same process for the other objects, as this mode is not the correct way to solve the problem, as these objects are required by XP.
      The amount of these objects in the ground is huge, I did not find the source of this bug.
      Please kindly request that you load the city of Sao Paulo in Brazil at Congonhas Aerodromo (SBSP) and take a look around at night, you will notice several groups of these helipads, just look for the rotating headlights.
      It has no custom scenario installed and no library, X-Plane is loading standardized, even in version 1.36 you can already see these helipads.
      We also check in Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, and the Helipads are all over the ground, in the middle of houses and streets.
      We are waiting, thank you.
      Cheers.

  14. Hi ben! Thanks for your previous answer, it was super helpful!

    I’m contacting you again because I noticed something strange, I’m experiencing a sudden loss of FPS for a second or two, let’s say, from 40 it drops to 19. I’ve asked in the Argentinian XPlane FB group and many other users are experiencing the same.

    Any clues?

    Regards!

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