Here’s our keynote talk from FlightSimExpo 2019 last week!
Evans video team really did a fantastic job with the feed this year – everything was live-streamed in great quality, and the talk has a direct feed to the slides and good quality audio. Totally what we were hoping for!
In the past, our posts breaking down X-Plane usage data have been… well… intermittent at best. Not because we don’t think sharing this stuff is important—it absolutely is—but simply because gathering the data, putting it into nice charts, and writing up a blog post took time away from developing X-Plane itself.
Whenever we encounter a problem like this, we try to pull back and take the humans out of the process. Out of that philosophy, let me present to you:
The new, always-up-to-date X-Plane usage data “dashboard.”
Like our blog posts, this is based on data collected from paying users of X-Plane 11 who have opted-in to data collection.
Unlike our blog posts, though, this updates daily based on live usage of the simulator!
Have a look, and if you spot any bugs or want to see something else, let me know in the GitHub project’s issue tracker.
We have fixed the two high visibility bugs reported over the last couple days, and now have beta two out. This build should have fixed the cloud rendering issue as well as the scenery pack typo.
If you had installed beta 1, you should be auto-prompted to update. It is also live on Steam.
Download it here!
It has been some time! I have been working as hard as I can on the converter (to great applause so far!), but, there have still been some features and fixes developed along the way. By now it was time to collect and release them!
As always This is a beta. It makes data model changes which may still have bugs. Make backups!
Previously, you could only set “Cast Shadow” to be on or off for “Scenery” and “Instanced Scenery” export types. This would, for the whole object, turn on and off shadows. Now, “Cast Shadow” has been removed from the OBJ settings and “Cast Shadow (Local)” has been placed in the material settings. With this, individual meshes can have shadows or not and it works for Aircraft and Cockpit objects too!
Read MoreThe first public beta for X-Plane 11.35 is now available! (Steam is staged and will be released shortly.) This is an update that includes new Gateway airports, FMOD sound for the Boeing B737-800 and KingAir C90B, improved aircraft systems, and landmark scenery packs for New York and Washington D.C.
Aircraft developers will want to review Philipp’s notes on the:
Bug fix highlights include multiple metar interpretation fixes, an ATC crash bug fix, and fixes to many of the default aircraft.
Full release notes are available here.
Update: We are aware of a cloud rendering bug with anti-aliasing. The work around for now is to turn off or use the lowest setting of anti-aliasing.
We are working on b2 to fix this issue and will be holding the wide release of the Steam beta for the fix. If you really, really, really want to use b1 with this known issue, you can email me directly at my first name @x-plane.com and I’ll get you into the private Steam beta.
As you may have heard, we’ll be at FlightSimExpo 2019 in Orlando this weekend! If you are attending, please stop by our booth and drop in on our talk Saturday afternoon. We’ll be qualifying people for a VR landing contest too.
For developers: Austin, Philipp, Chris and I will all be there – find us to talk about developing add-ons for X-Plane!
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.
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.
X-Plane 11.34r1 is now available as a beta for those who update via the Laminar Research installer. We expect to make it available on Steam in the next 24 hours or so. This update includes a Plane Maker UI fix and a couple crash fixes.
Gateway airports live in two locations in the X-Plane install folder: 3D airports live in Custom Scenery, while 2D airports live in Resources. X-Plane 11.33 now includes all airports in the Custom Scenery Global Airports folder.
This could cause issues with how your Custom Scenery pack displays. We saw this with the KSEA demo area — the 2D non-customized Gateway pack suppressed our KSEA Demo Area pack for some users.
We are fixing this for X-Plane 11.33r2, but as a general recommendation: please make sure that any custom airports you have installed are higher in the scenery_packs.ini file than the “Global Airports” pack that comes with X-Plane. This way the gateway airports won’t hide your custom scenery.
We have a small handful of web sites (mostly WordPress, but with one custom Node.js+Express app) that we’re looking to hire someone to provide ongoing maintenance for, including bug fixes, new features, dependency updates, etc.
This would be part time (ideally about 10 hours a week) and remote, working whatever hours you prefer. We’d like to start by dividing your time in half between WordPress and Node, but we may shift that balance as time goes on.
This is something we have an ongoing need for, so if you’re a freelancer, this is an easy way to add some stability to your schedule for potentially years.
A qualified candidate will have:
We won’t be doing any sort of grueling interviews for this position—we expect to hire based solely on seeing your past experience, plus maybe a Slack chat or two.
We do our best to cultivate long-term relationships with contractors—we want you to love working with us. With that in mind, we will:
If this is sounds like a good fit for you, please shoot me an email with the following (my email is my first name at X-Plane.com):
Fair warning: I expect to get an absolute flood of emails here, so I won’t be able to respond to every one. I’m planning to make a hiring decision two weeks from today (on May 13th), so if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP. 🙂