One big massive bug fix! (and some optimizations!)
#264 caused some people’s lights to be put in the wrong place. The fix involved Ben coming up with awesome math to put things back in their place by a certain offset, and then us creating a way to parse the light.txt file that controls much of the lighting in X-Plane.
This Changes Nothing in Your Blend files!
Seriously! No Blender data should change!
However, It Could Change Your OBJs
XPlane2Blender is now more consistently WYSIWYG! Meaning that if you point a spotlight at a wall, it should show up pointing in that direction, regardless of what a named spill light thinks or the parameters of a param light think.
This is good news for new authors and authors suffering from the bug, but depending on how you’ve been making your lights appear rotated, it could result in needing to change the rotation or parentage of existing lights.
What Lights Are Affected?
All of the following conditions must be true for a light to be affected by this change
Be a Blender non-point light, for instance a spot light
The light’s XPlane Type must be Named or Param
The light’s XPlane Name must be found in the lights.txt file inside the addon’s new resource folder
In rare edge cases, special and less used lights will be excluded from auto correction.
So, as you can see its either somewhat common or very specific which lights are affected. So, if your eyes haven’t glazed over yet,
Please Send Reports Of How This Affects You – Good, Neutral, Or Bad!
We try our best for backwards compatibility and a bug free existence, but we don’t know everyone and their situation until they say hi! If you are faced with large hurdles to continued productivity, please file a bug! Preferably with before and after pictures and .blend files. Automated fixes may be developed for people affected.
This is just one step to a more WYSIWYG XPlane2Blender.
XPlane2Blender’s new version number system will allow us to debug .blend and .obj file even faster. It should also make making updates to the data model easier to implement.
Every exported .obj file’s footer contains information about the addon version, when it was compiled, and why. For example: 3.4.0-beta.5+1.20170922151901
A break down of the components
3.4.0: The traditional Blend addon number
beta: The type of build cycle we’re in. Other choices you may see are dev (a developer build), alpha, rc (for full release)
5: the build type version we’re on. Since this is beta 5, the build type version is 5.
The elements after the + are generally less meaningful to the average user
1: The version of the data model (the properties and settings for XPlane2Blender, used for comparing changes
20170922151901: The “build number” date this source code was packaged and released in the form of YYYYMMDDHHMMSS in UTC.
Communication
The build version number is partially shown (elements after the + are hidden) in the scene settings under Composite Normal-Textures, potentially along with warnings about the stability of the build you are using.
Examples
When starting this version of the beta, you will see this:
A future stable version of 3.4.0 for the general public will show this:
Notice the green check mark and lack of any warnings.
In a future pre-alpha cycle for 3.4.1, two types of people will see the following:
A developer writing and testing unreleased code
Someone who didn’t head the warning against using such code, or get scared off by the nuclear symbol and extra warning about a lack of a build number
It is the worst case scenario for stability and traceability, hence the nuclear symbol.
Why the extra warning about a lack of a build number?
A lack of a build number indicates that you do not have a good dialog (e-mail, chat, this release page, or other channels) with a knowledgeable and attentive developer. This means your work is more likely to be run through a bad version of the code and damaged, or your bugs will be harder to diagnose and repair.
In this case, despite the code appearing to come from a stable era of the code near a release, there is potential for something to be wrong and have very poor ways of tracing what it could be – hence the lack of green check mark and big red warning symbol.
If you see some new pre-alpha feature you’d like to try, just ask us about it first. Going forward, we want to start with a dialog about potential dangers, testing, and intentions of an incomplete feature rather than an autopsy later on. Don’t be scared, we always love hearing from users before there is a problem, not after!
Build Version History
Also, all .blend files will be keeping a log of every different version of XPlane2Blender that they are opened and saved with. This is automatic and needs no involvement from the user. Those who are curious can look in the Plugin Development Tools section at the bottom of the scene settings and see the history of their file.
Note: This does not record any history data about Blender versions, other addon versions used, timestamps opened or saved, or changes made to it (including XPlane2Blender settings changes). It is purely useful as a debugging tool, and is not fool proof.
This .blend file started as a legacy 3.4.0 pre-beta.5 file, and was then with a copy of 3.4.0-beta.5, with no build number. Then it was used with 3.3.12, then finally, used with a build of 3.4.0-beta.5 created on 09/18/2017 at 01:27:30am.
One could use this information to guess what transformations the data could possibly have gone through along each step of its journey.
#294 – A case where autodetect off was not fully trusting the author for Aircraft exports
An uncaught spelling mistake __upgradeLocRot vs __updateLocRot. The fix for the updater altering the animation types was written for object’s dataref animations and bone’s dataref animation troubles. However, with this spelling mistake and Blender’s uncanny ability to eat exceptions from addons, it wasn’t realized until later that bone’s weren’t also getting updated. Fortunately, the updater can be run-again without fear of messing something else up.
At the bottom of the Scene Settings, check “Plugin Development Tools”. Use the Re-run Updater tool at the bottom: Put in 3.3.9 in Fake Version, and click the button. You should see your bone values corrected, as long as you successfully reverted any bad changes from v3.4.0-beta.1. Please e-mail me if you have problems!
Improvements
Some spelling and capitalization in the UI. Great care has been taken to ensure that none of the actual value or order of the addon properties has changed!
If you have been doing work with manipulators during beta.1, please download this new one and review the notes! Download the latest here: io_xplane2blender_3_4_0_b3.zip
Fixes
#ATTR_layer_group_draped causing KeyErrors
Reverts bad change to manipulators properties*
Adds
“.beta.3” will be printed on all OBJs. This is not permanent, expect something better in the future
What happened to the manipulators?
A poor decision to change the Manipulator Type (Drag XY, Push, Command Knob, Toggle, Delta, etc) means that if you changed the type of manipulator between beta.1 (or 7fe534ad1f906b7853827 if you constantly check out the latest cutting edge commits [which I do not recommend for this exact reason]), this beta will make those changes irrelevant.
Example, suppose on 8/1/2017 you create a switch and set the manipulator type to Toggle, then with beta.1 you change the type to Push. Beta.3 will show the type as Toggle. All you need to do is go back to the switch and change the type back to Push. The rest of the values you set will still be there. If you created manipulators during the beta, they will be set back to the default “Drag XY” type and will need to be fixed.
This is an unfortunate lesson to be learned, and if you are facing a lot of tediousness (30 manipulators to hunt down and change) or potential errors (you can’t remember how many or which ones you changed) please contact me!
I will personally help you recover the changes you made during beta.1 – present.
Add X-Plane Layers button for new projects now longer hidden
Adds
Re-run updater button – USE WITH CAUTION! – to force re-running the updater as if the file was previously saved with a different version of XPlane2Blender
See the next release here, download the .zip here. As always on-topic feedback is appreciated!
The next version of XPlane2Blender is right around the corner, come test it! Highlights of this release are Optimized Animations, Increased Usability, and X-Plane 11 OBJ8 features (mainly Blend Glass mode and Normal Metalness). Read more about what has been changed on the release page and download it!
(Link to beta removed until major breaking bug has been fixed. Make backups of files before using any beta product.)
As with any beta, make backups before using a partially tested product. We don’t predict there should be anything breaking in it, but its never a bad idea to be safe.
Bugs and feed back on Github is preferred over this comment section, but most of all I want to hear your feedback. To stay focused, only comments related to XPlane2Blender, the beta, and Blender will be responded to for this section. The status of other 3D Modeling Plugins/VR/Weather Systems/etc is off topic.
Please tell me what confuses you about XPlane2Blender on this bug, or here!
We are going to be releasing the XPlane2Blender 3.4 beta soon, and with it, a refresh of the UI and documentation. Thanks to a great e-mail about a lack of documentation, it was put as an important part of 3.4 release roadmap. It goes to show… we can’t fix it if we don’t know what’s wrong, even if its not a code problem. And we do want to fix it, I swear!
In addition, I want to remind everyone a core part of the Laminar Research philosophy, identity, and business plan is a thriving modding and third-party plugin ecosystem. Aside from build scripts and the like, Laminar Research employees use the same scenery development tools that are available to all. This is was a deliberate choice that elevates everyone to the same level – except when there is a gap of knowledge. This is never intentional, and never benefits anyone in the long run, especially third-party-devs. If your work is suffering because we forgot that not everyone knows what every little checkbox means, tell us! We’ll put it in the bug queue like everything else, and try to get back to you, personally, quickly.
We have received at least 5 bugs for WorldEditor that seem to have similar characteristics
Inexplicable crash to desktop with no error message
Happening on Windows 10, not reproduceable on Windows 7, Linux, or WINE
Happens shortly after using the Truck Destination tool
In short, until we get a new beta out that officially fixes the issue, try downloading this nightly build of WED. Also, see all the bugs that are marked as duplicate and related to WED-780.
What happened?
Windows Tool Tips and You
Tool tips are those little pop ups that appear when you hover your mouse over UI elements. Sometimes their text includes helpful tips, sometimes they include data; it is whatever we program them to have.
Hovering the mouse over a cell in the WED hierarchy pane makes a tool tip appear with its content as its text.
The code to do that is located in xptools\src\GUI\GUI_Window.cpp:1252-1272. Windows passes a message to WED saying the user has hovered over some UI element, we hand over some text to a data structure (NMTTDISPINFO), Windows uses the data to display the tool tip.
Look at line 1272. This is the line that does the copying our tip string into the szText for Windows to display.
//wcs = wide-char-string = Unicode string, cpy means copy, _s means "more secure" version of the function
wcscpy_s(
di->szText, //The data in here will show up in
80, //Our stupid magical number
convert_str_to_utf16(tip).c_str() //convert our UTF-8 string to UTF-16 to please Bill Gates
);
This line was the source of the crashes.
What’s so special about the number 80 and “_s”?
Window’s gives you a free “no-work” string, szText, for your tool tip text that is 80 characters long. If you want a longer tool tip, you’ll have to do a bunch of (not well documented) work.
What makes this a “secure” string function is it immediately ends the program if you attempt to copy more than the specified 80 characters into the new string. This information is overwhelmingly under-documented. In addition, the crash doesn’t included any information about the cause, even in debug mode!
How did this go on for so long without getting caught?
Amazingly, we’ve never really had this be a problem, or previous versions of Windows have had this function not crash. One reason why this is now getting reported is due to the Truck Destination tool’s Truck Types property. When you add up enough of those strings and hover your mouse over them, it quickly ends up being much longer than 80 characters.
With enough selected types, this easily reaches beyond 80 characters.
It is also possible we’ve just been getting lucky with our memory, always having strings getting corrupted exactly just right.
It is also possible that all our data is short, with abbreviations being so common in aviation, its normally hard to reach more than 80 characters.
Maybe no one reported a bug (please report your problems so we can fix them!)
Please comment if you have some ideas of why this doesn’t seem to happen on Windows 7, but does on Windows 10. Maybe this “secure” function isn’t as secure as we all think it is.
The solution: truncation!
Our easy fix for this is to chop a string off at 77 characters and append a “…” at the end. Hopefully no-one will mind this.
Thanks to a video sent in by a user, this was a pretty easy WED bug to find and solve. The hard part was weeding through all the bug reports that seemed shrouded in unrelated but related mystery. No one was realizing their most trusted friend, the mouse and common tool-tip, were causing the problem.
If you reported a bug, and this helps, please comment and contact us so we can clean out all the mysterious non-mysteries and get back to triaging bugs that have not been fixed!
Thank you for your patience as always as we try our best to make WED the best we can, and thank you to the people who report their problems instead of suffering through it, making a work around, or assuming their simply doing it wrong: You make the product better for everyone, including the developers!
