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.
Austin Meyer will be hosting a Reddit AMA! Check it out tomorrow, August 16th at 9:30pm EST. Ask him anything! He’ll answer questions on X-Plane, flying, patent trolls, life, his new movie, game development, Android, and more.
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 just posted X-Plane 11.05 today – to try it, click “get betas” and run the updater. Steam users: we’ll try to get a Steam version up in a few days if no massive bugs are found.
This update is really a release of airports from the X-Plane Scenery Gateway – see the release notes here for a complete list of airports included.
This release also includes our first land-marks: custom buildings from the strip near Julian’s KLAS, which is also included.
A new release candidate is now available for X-Plane 11.02. There aren’t many bug fixes listed on the release notes page, but we think (hope!) we’ve fixed the new issues introduced in r1 and sneaked in a couple other improvements such as:
Crashing when reporting the field in sight at an untowered airport!
FPS hit when using external cameras near aircraft with scenery shadows on.
There’s a new 11.02 release candidate available – if you had the 11.02 beta, you’ll be notified to auto-update. In a break with previous policy, this RC is available now on Steam as a beta, despite us not having had time to kick the tires. (Normally we wait 24 hours to make sure the beta isn’t nuclear before posting it to Steam.)
Release notes here. This build has some work Sidney did to improve pauses and stutters when loading orthophotos. Also, by request from X-Plane users at FSConn: a new art control gives you writable access to the fog ratio (for fog hackers) – set “fog/fog_be_gone” to…well, whatever makes you happy. I can’t promise this art control will be around forever, but right now it works and is writable (unlike “fog/std_deviation_cutoff”, which is controlled by the sim to match real world observations).
