Beta 6 of X-Plane 12 Early Access is available on Steam & through the Laminar Research installer. You should be prompted to auto update the next time you launch the sim, if you haven’t already. Here is a link to Early Access release notes.
This version should fix the problems launching via Steam on Linux. It also has more fixes for magenta NaNs, so hopefully there is more or widespread relief on that front.
We’ve heard multiple reports about external visual networking being broken since beta 4, and we are currently investigating.
Finally, X-Plane 12.00 beta 6 includes internal changes to support the .ktx2 texture format. We are working on tools and documentation to go with these engine changes, and will post detailed information on how to use .ktx2 once the specs and tools are complete.
Beta 5 of X-Plane 12 Early Access is available on Steam & through the Laminar Research installer. You should be prompted to auto update the next time you launch the sim, if you haven’t already. Here is a link to Early Access release notes.
This build contains a fix for the crash at start many of you reported in beta 4. So again, if you are still seeing it, let us know by filing or re-filing a bug. Windows users should include their email in the crash report so we can find your specific crash. Mac users should send the Apple crash log with their report. We are actively working on restoring auto crash reporting on Linux.
We’ve heard a lot of reports that Steam users on Linux have been unable to launch the sim since beta 4, and beta 5 is no different unfortunately. We are investigating with Steam now.
Beta 4 of X-Plane 12 Early Access is available on Steam & through the Laminar Research installer. You should be prompted to auto update the next time you launch the sim, if you haven’t already. Here is a link to Early Access release notes.
This build contains multiple crash fixes, as well as our first go at fixing the magenta (aka pink or purple) sadness. X-Plane renders magenta when it hits a numeric error (a NaN value) inside the rendering engine. There may be multiple causes of NaNs – it’s not all one bug because magenta is a symptom, not a cause, and each bug has to be squashed one by one.
Don’t be surprised if some users see less magenta in the this beta and others do not. If you still see it, please file (or re-file) a bug that includes a screenshot or two of where you see it, and any steps needed to reproduce it.
Just a quick note that beta 3 of X-Plane 12 Early Access is available. You should be prompted to auto update the next time you launch the sim, if you haven’t already. Here is a link to Early Access release notes.
Beta 4 is currently in the works, going through test so we can release it next week. We expect to have our first go at fixing the magenta (aka pink or purple) sadness in that release, so please hold off on filing any further bug reports on this until you can try beta 4.
And this just in: X-Plane 12 for Steam is now available!
X-Plane 11.52r1 is now available & release notes are here. Steam will update automatically if you’re in the proper beta channel; Laminar Research customers will need to run the installer to check for the new beta.
We cut this release primarily to fix our number 1 auto crash report issue, which is a crash in the networking code. We do not yet have a fix for the G2 controllers–that should be next.
Beta builds of the 20-9 command line tools (DSFTool, DDSTool, ObjConverter, ObjView, XGrinder) are available to download here.
Highlights of the new versions include:
- All tools are 64bit binaries now–this is important mostly for Mac users, as newer versions of the OS won’t run 32-bit binaries any more.
- DSFTool has support for 7-plane base mesh vertex commands. This is used in many orthosceneries created with O4XP.
- DSFTool can directly open 7z compressed DSF files.
- DSFTool has support for set_AGL attributes introduced with X-Plane 11.50.
- DSFTool, DDSTool and ObjView have numerous minor crash fixes, mostly resulting from improved error checking of the input data.
Please file any bugs on the Scenery Tools tab of the Gateway bug report form.
X-Plane 11.50b14 is available via the Laminar Research installer & Steam “Unstable Betas” channel. We’ll make beta 14 the standard Steam public beta version once we have a sense that it’s not completely unusable.
Highlights of this update include fixes for stutters and freezes we heard a lot about over the last week. We believe users on the latest Nvidia driver (451.48) should see improvements as well.
We have seen some early reports of problems with VR and performance, and some of them are already identified and will be addressed in beta 15. We are going to keep with beta 14 for now to collect more bug reports – it also provides smoother flight for NVidia users.
Catching Problems Early
The plugin system has an iron-clad rule–you can’t talk to the plugin system from your plugin from a second thread. This rule is important because if a plugin violates it, the resulting crash may happen later, somewhere else in the code, or might just be impossible to decipher.
Beta 14 addresses this by crashing immediately when plugins run certain APIs illegally from the wrong thread. The goal here is to clearly identify these problems as an incorrect plugin, so the plugin author can fix the problem, and we can tell how stable the rest of the sim is.
Here’s the gotcha: when a plugin crashes the sim by doing something illegal on a thread, X-Plane doesn’t diagnose it as a plugin bug – you’ll just get a standard auto-report form. This isn’t perfect, but we think a clear auto-reported crash is better than a confusing auto-reported crash.
We quietly released beta 14 yesterday afternoon, and so far, the top four auto reported crashes are all plugin crashes in threads.
Plugin authors: we will try to find you and tell you if we see your plugin crashing in threaded code by calling X-Plane.
X-Plane 11.50b13 is now available. Steam users, remember you can access this version immediately by opting into the “Unstable Pre-Release beta” version. We’ll make beta 13 the standard Steam public beta version once we have a sense that it’s not completely unusable.
Beta 12 was released on Friday, however we quickly learned it had a major issue: Windows OpenGL users couldn’t launch. Our build process had a hiccup that caused a shader mismatch, so we rolled beta 12 back in favor of beta 11 for the weekend.
Beta 13 fixes this shader issue, and includes all of the beta 12 fixes such as:
- Even more crash fixes!
- Video recording fixes
- Fixed ocean “grid”
- Fix for sim “freezing”
View the full release notes here for betas 12 and 13.
X-Plane 11.50b11 is now available. Steam users, remember you can access this version by opting into the “Unstable Pre-Release beta” version. We’ll make beta 11 the standard Steam public beta version once we have a newer beta.
Release note highlights include:
- New UI option: anisotropic filtering
- New Plane Maker option: always use Experimental Flight Model
- Fixed hang on load
- Shadow & crash fixes
View the full release notes here.
Enabling the Experimental Flight Model in Plane Maker
The experimental flight model has proven to be quite stable since it was released in X-Plane 11.40, so authors can now set up their aircraft to use it by default.
The new check box is found in the Author screen in Plane Maker. When it is checked, the aircraft will always get the 11.40 experimental flight model, no matter what the user pref for flight model is in the X-Plane UI. You should use this option if you like how your aircraft performs with it enabled.
When the new check box is off (which it will be by default), the user pref decides what happens, just like 11.40. Aircraft creators should pick this if they target the older flight model. Note there’s no way to force the experimental flight model off.
X-Plane 11.50b10 is now available if you update via the Laminar Research installer. (Steam users: it’s on the servers and we’ll hit go in a few hours if we don’t hear reports of massive crashing and pain again.) You can view the latest release notes here.
This update has two major improvements: we fixed our top auto reported crashes, and optimized VRAM usage based on the reports many of you sent in. If you update to beta 10 and still see blurry textures, please create a new diagnostic report, and file a new bug report with it.
