X-Plane supports connecting your favorite real-world EFB app like XAvion, WingXPro, ForeFlight and FlyQ. This way, you can use your iPad or tablet just like you would in a real cockpit – display enroute charts, approach plates, with optional weather and traffic overlays.
This worked extremely well with the XAvion app, a Laminar in-house product, but for 12.3 I wanted to improve support for other popular apps.
Foreflight showed me where I was, and also some traffic diamonds around me, but synthetic vision didn’t work, relative motion and tail numbers on the traffic didn’t work, there was no METAR and the NEXRAD didn’t show either.
Getting synthetic vision to work required sending the AHRS data in a way modern EFBs understand. Austin had coded this in 2013 when the ADS-B receiver of choice was a little plastic box called Clarity, that when you pushed the on-off button too hard just collapsed on itself. We’ve had several that lost their on-off button after you turned it off a bit too vigorously.
This was before the Appareo Stratus, uAvionics Sentry and other popular devices existed.
It’s been 12 years since then and X-Plane still pretended to be this falling apart, overheating plastic box… And Foreflight would flat out reject anything that X-Plane tried to tell it.
Luckily, it is easy nowadays to support ADS-B and GDL-90 thanks to an open-source project called Stratux!
I started by turning X-Plane into a simulated Stratux rather than a Clarity. Added the new AHRS messages, support for barometric pressure, etc.
Now, Synthetic Vision on the iPad was working! Traffic had relative motion!
But the weather was still stubbornly refusing to show up, even though all the weather packets were absolutely according to spec, and parsed to readable METARS, etc…
And glued my DIY Stratux into the window of my Tesla and went to see a tower!
These towers are optimized for sending data upwards into the sky, so you have to get rather close to them to pick up any signal on the ground.
I found one, parked my car, and started recording:
Unfortunately, the first tower I went to only rebroadcast traffic, but did not send any weather!
So, I had to drive to a different tower, until I found one that gave me the weather:
Picture me, parked outside the airport gate, with this thing in the window with wires coming off of it.
About 10 minutes in, some people from the local helicopter medical airlift service come out and politely ask me if I need help. I convinced them that I had no nefarious intent, was not spying, and merely taking advantage of the good reception under the tower…
Spoiler alert: I did not get arrested that day, despite having what looked like a makeshift detonator in the window.
With a few Megabytes of recorded FIS-B messages, I set up my remote office, and started to analyze what the difference was between the messages X-Plane sent and the messages I recorded from the tower:
Turns out, X-Plane didn’t fill in some header data containing a 80ns timestamp that shows when the packet was received from the tower (not the age of the weather report, simply when the receiver picked up the packet, measured using the GPS clock of the receiver).
Once I added this missing data, the weather is accepted as valid by my real EFB!
And boy does this work now! Look at all this data going into ForeFlight:
Now, you can tap an airport in ForeFlight, and it will show you the METAR of the actual weather in X-Plane at that airport, correctly indicating it came from ADS-B:
These two aircraft are AI aircraft, and the thunderstorm cloud north of Greensboro really was there on that day, but what you are seeing is the weather recorded on our server, replayed by X-Plane, and transmitted onto the iPad by X-Plane, showing what the weather looked like that afternoon!
And here you can see it works great with user-defined weather as well! Frankfurt did NOT have thunderstorms like that. This is simply me starting X-Plane in EDDF and setting the weather preset to nasty weather:
12.2.1 is out now, and the Gateway is now accepting submissions for airports authored in the current update. 12.2.1 represents a massive update dedicated to Gateway & scenery artists everywhere, with a variety of new assets, inspired directly by community feedback.
The art team have done an immense job with this update, and really deserves their flowers for this update…
Now as for “community feedback”, here is a list of collected results. Not everything will be displayed here, neither is this list representative of things we are definitely producing. I think the key takeaway here is “RELAX!” This won’t be the last time we add new art to the simulator (and we’re already underway on more items.)
On with the show…
A tip for future reference…
For 12.2.1, people have constantly been asking for a list of all assets, as they do not have any tool themselves to see the full range of new art.
In fact… you do. You do not need to wait for us to tell you! Simply open WED, and filter the library list to “Newly Released Objects.” You do not need the latest version of WED either to see the full list (although you will for uploading to the Gateway!)
Hangars
Before we get to the rest of the art assets, we do have to talk about ‘Hangars and Sheds.’ This was one of the items you guys have eagerly requested from our mini-survey a few months ago.
It would seem someone at Laminar locked Petr in his home, and drove him to insanity. Insanity really is the only way to describe the sheer number of hangars in this update. I can’t even show all of the new hangar assets here (about 1/10th of the actual size) but Petr has ensured that each Hangar type comes in multiple sizes + the option to use obj or facade-based hangars. IN ADDITION, he’s also added different sizes and options for Hangar doors, so the customisation for artists is endless (quite literally, the number of permutations is too big to calculate)!
For further documentation on these hangars, I would highly recommend you check out the article below:
Most of these have been brought to you by Justin. These will also play important roles as we slowly re-position ourselves towards next-gen scenery!
Airport Lighting
Airport lighting options come in multiple sizes and the option for Sodium vs LED.
Firetrucks
Colored Ground Polygons
Angled Roofs
Helicopter Dollies
Construction Vehicles
Emergency Ambulances & Police Cars
Cranes
Airport/Construction Cranes & Scissor Lifts
Size Category F Jetways
Some people have asked what a “Size Category F” is….
Zermatt has a secret…
12.2.1 also includes a new custom Heliport… LSEZ – Zermatt. Expertly crafted by Cristiano and Jan, this scenery holds a trick that may be useful for scenery creators. The glass has a feature we believe is undocumented called…
ATTR_layer_group blended
This helps mitigate some of the draw order issues previously experienced by artists for transparent materials.
Gateway Updates
Finally a huge thanks again to our Gateway artists. We have 613 airport updates/or additions for 12.2.1. (Not every airport is represented; the list is around 98% complete)
Australia
A013 – Bremer Bay Afghanistan OAKB – Kabul Intl Antigua and Barbuda TAPA – Antigua – V C Bird Intl XTA0004 – Barbuda Intl
Argentina
SABE – Jorge Newbery Aeroparque SADF – San Fernando SADO – Campo de Mayo
LFBA – Agen La Garenne LFBO – Toulouse Blagnac LFHP – Le Puy Loudes LFLB – Chambéry Aix-Les-Bains LFLN – Saint Yan LFOJ – Orléans-Bricy LFRS – Nantes Atlantique LFSB – Bale-Mulhouse France (Mayotte and Réunion) XFM0004 – Juan de Nova
MMAA – Acapulco Intl MMCZ – Cozumel Intl MMLM – Aeropuerto INTL de los Mochis MMMM – General Francisco Mujica INTL MMTJ – Gral. Abelardo L.Rodriguez XMM000O – Acocotla XMM000P – Loma Roja XMM000Q – Moralar XMM000R – Santa Ana Maloapan XMM000S – Felipe Terrones Acosta XMM000T – Los Tuxtlas
The X-Plane 12.2.0 beta is finally here! This update has been a labour of love from the team for many months, and we’re excited to see so many users enjoying the changes. The stars of this show go to Daniel, Daniela and Maya for their meticulous commitment to enhancing the atmospherics of the sim. Alas, this is a developer website. So let’s glance at some of the changes relative to our third parties.
1. Changes that concern third parties
Rolling back the time machine, Ben once discussed plugins using private art controls here and here. And that time has come once again because we have changed ALOT.
Developers who make use of private art controls in their work (that includes Aircraft, Plugins and Scenery alike) will need to review/remove them from their product.
Manipulating cube map positions (which if you used to attempt to solve dark cockpits… may now inversely create dark cockpits). Please return them to their default position. Cockpit lighting now honours the aircraft geometry, eliminating errors such as “glowing orange cockpit at sunset”
Atmospheric/Cloud datarefs will behave significantly differently. Cloud scattering and shading is improved, amongst changes in cloud layer presets.
Dark cockpits should now be resolved. Aircraft texture artists will need to review albedos, including attempts to brighten cockpits to compensate for previous versions of X-Plane.
Terrain roughness (and subsequent brightness) has been improved. However older generated content may appear differently. These will need to be updated with proper roughness and normal direction
We have a new AGX tonemapper. This has significantly improved the range of colors we can render, and subsequent “details,” bringing a gorgeous new saturation to the sim.
However, this will mean that colors* will shift in appearance. So please review your work. This concerns all parties (Artists, livery painters, scenery designers, system developers etc)
*As a Brit, it annoys me deeply having to constantly change “colours” to “colors.” So I hope you all appreciate this noble sacrifice 🤣
^ This is X-Plane’s lighting in 12.1.4. Notice how almost uniform the shading appears!
^ And this is 12.2.0. Not only are the color shades “deeper”, but colors also desaturate under direct illumination (like real life.)
2. Things we’re working on
Beer Shadow Maps – They are currently too sharp, and we are attempting to soften them up.
Updated cloud darkness – There are still a few cases where clouds are rendering a bit too dark, and in some cases still causing a minor amount of dark cockpits.
X-Plane2Blender Update
The above will be addressed in 12.2.0
In addition, we are also aware of the following
SSR
Cloud formations/Square clouds (This has been a persistent thorn in our sides, and won’t be addressed in 12.2.0. However, we are planning more improvements to this later this year)
3. Brakes!
We’ve radically expanded our brake system, with a plethora of different braking options and behaviours now available. Tom has ensured new documentation is available, which can be found here!
We’ve also introduced a new chocks mechanic, which is part of X-Plane’s ground handling. Only a select few default aircraft currently have this feature which includes:
Lancair Evolution
Van’s RV-10
Boeing 737
Cirrus SR-22
Aero-works Aerolight 103
Beechcraft Baron 58
How do I get chocks onto my aircraft?
We will have a new version of X-Plane2Blender out in the near future, along with documentation (and we will let you know) that allows for chock annotation, similar to particles are referenced. X-Plane provides the model for you, and references the position from the OBJ… not Planemaker. *On the subject of documentation, Tom has been hard at work re-vamping all of our docs. I think many will be pleased at the changes, which we hope to deploy this year!
5. New Gateway cut
We’ve included a new Gateway cut in 12.2.0. Thank you to all our Gateway artists! We’ve left a rough list of changed airports below.
Some of you may also remember a recent request-for-comment/poll for WED assets. We’ll have a lot more to talk about after the conclusion of 12.2.0. But the spoiler here is: we listened!
Following the success of versions 12.1.2 and 12.1.4 with our scenery and gateway artists, the art department is eager to understand which airport 3D/2D assets are at the top of your wishlist, and we would appreciate your input.
Guidelines:
Please focus exclusively on airport assets.
Limit suggestions to new static 3D/2D assets. This is not a place for new WED features or graphical (GFX) updates.
Please be succinct and polite.
Please provide references where appropriate and be as accurate as possible. Saying “I want a new bollard” is not good enough. Is there a size, shape, or colour that you need?
Understand that these are suggestions only, or “a request for comment”. There is no confirmation/timeline. Also understand that assets need to be accessible to all, not specific. So that weird hyperspecific 2-wheeled pushback truck at your local airport is not going to be appropriate.
We will close off comments on the 9th February
We encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments below or join the discussion on our *Discord server.
Many thanks, we look forward to your ideas!
*To access, click on this link here, and make sure you pick up the “creator” role. There you should see a channel called #rfc-wed-assets
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog post (quite some time right?). We have recently released 12.1.4 as a beta, and we highly encourage you to check it out here. There is some nice content released, that makes for an exciting appetizer for the new year. Whilst we don’t expect to be on this beta for too long (famous last words), most of the new additions will likely be subject to long-term feedback. Please message in support!
One of the major additions for this release is more content and updates for our scenery gateway artists!
New Default Assets
For those unaware, back in November, we welcomed Justin (MisterX) to the Laminar team. He likely needs no introduction, as his scenery work is the stuff of legend amongst the community. So we’re really excited to have him join the team, and Justin represents another infinity stone amongst our third-party hires!
Over the winter period, Petr (Our in-house legendary artist) and Justin went to town on some new scenery assets for X-Plane. Some of which, were highly nominated on our Discord feature requests. These assets include;
Trucks
Emergency/Fire Training Equipment
Airside Operations
De-Icing Equipment
Hopefully not to state the obvious, but these are not dynamic. So please don’t start placing these in areas that will obstruct the “simulator flow”.
We will have some more inbound assets over the coming months, so keep an eye peeled.
X-Plane Gateway
Whilst we didn’t highlight each airport in our initial release posts for 12.1.4, we did have a staggering 1400+ updated entries that we’ve included in our latest cut of the gateway. Take a look below (note, there are approximately 100 airports missing from this list)
Because of our new semantic versioning, internally we’re looking at having these cuts more frequently. Some of you have already noticed our update cadence has been picking up, and hopefully cycling in these updates more regularly will be refreshing to our gateway artists.
Last week Marco and I were on a live stream and had a chance to talk about some of the upcoming developments we’re working on; next month Marco will be full time with us, but for now here’s a few notes on things making progress in the lab. I’m sure publicly discussing them on Friday the 13th will have no unexpected consequences. (Knocks on wooden desk repeatedly.)
We should hopefully have a release candidate for 12.1.2 next week – this week the team was fixing crash bugs, and we’re down to trying to finishing up stability. Crash rates in the beta look good enough to ship. (Please consider turning on analytics – we don’t collect your personal data but we do record crashed vs non-crashed sim runs – this is how we know whether stability is getting better or worse!)
12.2.0
Dark Cockpits: Art team is evaluating Maya’s exposure fusion work. Generally things look better than the shipping product, but we discovered yesterday that the indirect lighting environment is pretty weird on cloudy days. We’ve been fixing bugs, removing old hacks we no longer need, and I’m optimistic that the update should be both better looking and closer to reality.
We also have some fixes to the PBR material model that may get X-Plane closer to Blender and Substance Painter 2. This is a double-edged sword: we don’t want to change the material model such that everyone has to repaint everything (that would be too much both for our team and for add-on makers) but we do want X-Plane to be as close to WYSIWYG possible to make development faster. Art is evaluating these changes too.
We’re targeting 12.2.0 (a “major free update”) for these changes so we can run a substantial alpha and beta program and give add-on makers time to report bugs.
12.1.X
ATC, Weather: we have two minor releases before 12.2.0 making their way through testing. The first is ATC with SIDs and STARs – as of now it looks like that will ship next, but all releases are subject to change based on bugs.*
The other update is a weather update, and it looks like it may have some substantial features:
New in-cockpit weather radar, with SDK support.
Fixes for real weather bugs, including jumps in pressure altitude (which are driving the autopilots crazy) and some fixes to cloud visuals.
Plugin-controlled weather across multiple locations.
Better weather sync over the internet.
As of now the weather branch also has network sync of trucks and jetways to external visuals. This only affects users using external visuals but for those users, it’s a big feature, and it’s also an important foundational technology for us.
* In the past we have announced “X” is next and if that code was buggy, we’d just delay shipping anything until we fixed it. We’re trying to be more flexible and ship what’s ready first, so good code doesn’t have to wait for unrelated bugs.
World Editor 2.6r1 is now available. This is the first release candidate, for which we encourage you to explore before we lock it down for release! Version 2.6 packs quite an extensive feature list. Features include :
New Shape Entities
Allowing users to define lines and polygons, and then export to .kml or .osm for use in third-party tools!
Polygonal Exclusions
A highly requested feature! (Note, these do not work on forests in current-gen scenery. The default behaviour will instead treat the defined exclusion as one large bounding box)
Terrain Objects
Some of you may have noticed that the terrain for TNCS and TFFJ in 12.1.2 looks a bit more defined. This is somewhat of an illusion, as we are still using the same base mesh that shipped in 12.0.9.
Terrain objects are designed to interface with orthophotos and create small scale 3D details.
*This is NOT a replacement/new/next-gen system for mesh-editing. But rather an additive tool that can help define more awkward structures
Dual-docking Jetway support
Another highly requested feature, WED can now support dual-docking jetways. Existing sceneries are NOT automatically ready, and must be defined by an artist first. Thanks to Michael, in a future version of X-Plane, we will push a new Gateway cut with some demo airports that are ready for dual jetways. These include (*subject to change):
Strings can now be defined down to the centimeter, instead of the meter… allowing for more accurate object spacing.
For WED newcomers
In the past, whenever users have attempted to open a scenery pack without an .XML file, all you got was an empty project. This was obviously confusing to users who did not know how to import the scenery files in. Now in WED 2.6, we analyze what is inside your scenery pack and offer to import the relevant files for you. If starting from a completely blank project folder, we now also give you the option to download directly from the gateway! These changes should help newcomers and seasoned artists get stuck into a project with ease!
Misc
In addition, a number of UI enhancements for users have been made available.
X-Plane 12.1.1 is out! This is a quick “bug fix” patch on X-Plane 12.1.0. If you could not load the sim due to problems with XPLM_64.dll, please update using the installer to fix it. Full notes here.
Websocket-To-Me Time
Besides fixing bugs, X-Plane 12.1.1 enables X-Plane’s web API*. Basically we were asked for this so many times at FSExpo that Chris and Daniela put the remaining work on the fast track.
Our plan is to build several services into the web server; the web APIs will not be exact mirrors of the plugin SDK, but will cover enough functionality to build wide range of apps. We have plans for:
Datarefs (shipping now)
Commands (in developement)
Initiializing Flights (in development)
Documentation on the new web APIs can be found here.
Doc-It-To-Me Time
X-Plane alum and fellow X-Plane-10-survivor Tom Kyler is back working on developer documentation for us, and has finished a first release on some of the new X-Plane 12.1.0 features:
Tom has big plans for X-Plane’s documentation; one thing that’s great to see in these docs is really good illustrations based on real sample 3-d models and test projects.
The Devil Is In the Details
A detail texture is a repeating, high detail pattern that adds high-res detail to an otherwise lower resolution texture. Detail textures let us add fine detail at high resolution without using a ton of extra VRAM efficiently. We use detail textures with bits of “gravel” to make the runways look more realistic.
We introduced detail textures over a decade ago in X-Plane 10 to enhance ground detail around airports and in the new (at the time) autogen cities.
What we did not do was give them a good name. At the time we called them “decal” textures. This has turned out to be incredibly confusing, because in every other game engine ever, a high-res texture applied over the entire material (which is what we have) is called a detail, and a decal basically means “sticker that you stick on somewhere”. Detail textures make the ground look more rocky, decals add blood spatter and bullet holes to the walls in your zombie-shooter game.
So moving forward, we are going to try to call detail textures “detail textures” wherever possible, to be consistent with the norms of content creation. Tom and Maya will be updating labels in Blender and doc to be consistent about this.
For X-Plane 12.1.1, Maya has extended the detailing system in two ways:
Detail textures work on OBJs and not just in the scenery system, so aircraft authors can add detail too.
Detail textures can affect the bumpiness of normal maps and not just the color of albedo textures, so detail textures now interact with the lighting model in realistic ways.
* Please note that while the dataref API does use websockets, most of our web APIs are conventional REST requests over HTTP. I did consider “The X-Plane developers never REST..until now” as a section title.
