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.

Stabilizer

Stabilizer wash was severely broken for high aspect ratio wing aircraft like fighters in older versions. This is the only exception to the re-save rule–it is fixed in 11.30 and is applied whether or not your aircraft is re-saved in 11.30. This fix was mandatory for fighter aircraft; most other planes should not see a difference.

Oxygen System

It is now possible to equip high-flying aircraft with an oxygen system rather than or in addition to the pressurized cabin, to allow realistic black-out behavior also with unpressurized aircraft. The new oxygen system is mandatory–if you do not want to use it, override the pressurization system with the new override dataref. See the article “The X-Plane oxygen system” for more information.

Lights

Lights attached to cockpit object of type glass (in or out) used to light everything. This is corrected for 11.30. If your aircraft loses interior lights upon re-save in Plane Maker 11.30, check your cockpit object’s lighting settings in Plane Maker.

Cockpit obj

The cockpit.obj is no longer a special object. It is attached to the plane in the Miscellaneous Objects screen in Plane Maker 11.30. Aircraft will be automatically upgraded upon re-save in Plane Maker 11.30. For more information, see the “Attaching 3-D Objects” section of the Plane Maker manual.

Cockpit Prefill

X-Plane 11.26 had a bug where it ignored cockpit prefill settings. 11.30 correctly handles prefill options so you will need to review your prefill settings to ensure they are set up correctly.

Autopilots

Version 11.30 offers to equip planes with preconfigured autopilots, in addition to the many configurable options of previous X-Plane versions. See the articles “X-Plane autopilot params” and “Preconfigured autopilots and other autopilot changes in 11.30” for more information.

Icing Systems

X-Plane simulates ice accumulation on your aircraft that will affect your performance greatly. X-Plane also simulates a wide variety of systems that can prevent the accumulation of ice on various surfaces (anti-ice), or get rid off ice that has accumulated (de-ice). See the article “The X-Plane Anti- and De-Ice systems” for more information.

Propeller Feathering

X-Plane simulates governors for constant speed propellers that can have various failure modes. Depending on the type of engine/propeller combination on the aircraft, the behavior of the governor in case of an engine failure will be different. X-Plane 11.30 allows you to select the type of governor to simulate, to accommodate a wide range of different engine types. See the article “Propeller feathering systems” for more information.

Vacuum Systems

X-Plane has two vacuum systems per airplane, one for the pilot side instruments and one for the copilot side instruments. By default, the suction is generated by pumps driven by the engine, so it is dependent on your engine RPM. Two additional sources of vacuum are now available in X-Plane 11.30. See the article “Vacuum systems” for more information.

Gyro systems

X-Plane can drive the attitude indicator, also known as the artificial horizon, from any of three systems. This yields a total of six gyros you can use for your attitude instruments (pilot and copilot side). See the article “Vacuum gyro limitations and caging” for more information.

Fixed turboprop engine governor

To get the correct governor type for a fixed-shaft turboprop, you need to set both the engine type and the failure mode of the prop governor correctly. Then, the prop must be configured for sensible blade angles to achieve correct alpha and beta. Correct behavior of the governor requires correct set up of the prop first. See the article “Setting up a fixed turboprop engine governor” for more information.

Default Particle Effects

By default, the particle effects from 11.26 are still enabled on all aircraft. To turn them off, go to Expert > Part Visibility in Plane Maker 11.30 and use the checkboxes in the section “Disable X-Plane’s Built-In Effects.”

Toe Braking

Previous to 11.30, automatic toe braking for users without hardware or plugin-controlled toe brakes was applied automatically to aircraft based on internal heuristics and analysis of the landing gear. The heuristics sometimes produced useful results, but sometimes not, and they weren’t easily author-controllable

Starting in X-Plane 11.30, authors can control the amount of automatic toe brake applied with rudder deflection in Plane-Maker; the field “left and right brake power” in the landing gear screen’s “Gear Data” field lets you control this feature.

A value of 0 will mean X-Plane applies no automatic toe brakes with rudder deflection; positive values apply the toe brakes based on a power curve. Use a value of 1 for linear brake application with rudder, and larger values to defer brake application to the strongest rudder deflections. Generally, if you need toe brakes, but you want less of them, use a larger number.

For older aircraft, this field will be pre-initialized to match X-Plane 11.26’s shipping behavior.

Vectored Thrust

Due to a bug, vectored thrust was applied even to engines for which the per-engine check box was not checked.  While these aircraft continue to have vectored thrust in 11.30 to maintain compatibility, you will need to correct your check-boxes when you re-save in Plane-Maker 11.30.

Todo for authors: review the engine tab and make sure the “Vectored thrust” check-box is set appropriately for all engines.

4 comments on “Updating Aircraft for X-Plane 11.30

  1. Dear Ben,
    Cockpit lighting , at least in VR, in most commercial add-on planes is broken since 11.30r1 due to :

    “Lights attached to cockpit object of type glass (in or out) used to light everything. This is corrected for 11.30. If your aircraft loses interior lights upon re-save in Plane Maker 11.30, check your cockpit object’s lighting settings in Plane Maker.”

    This is not feasible for buyers, and it will certainly take considerable time for the developers fixing all their products. On the other hand, it has disabled many aircraft models in one strike just stepping from 11.30b7 (where everything was still fine) to 11.30r1.

    Would it be possible for you to implement a button in graphics-settings to switch back to the old lighting model, ensuring backward compatibility?

    Kind regards
    Michael

    1. “Would it be possible for you to implement a button in graphics-settings to switch back to the old lighting model, ensuring backward compatibility?”

      No! We are going to *fix the bug*.

      The lighting change is a complete screw-up by me – nothing more, nothing less. It will be fixed for r2, and authors and users will not be affected in any way in the final product.

  2. I am trying to file a flight plan in the newest bata and use the new atc. However, in red below it states my “aircraft power is off. Communication with atc will not be possible.” My aircraft is not off. It is like this with every aircraft I have.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please do not report bugs in the blog comments.
Only bugs reported via the X-Plane Bug Reporter are tracked.