Now that Wade has XSquawkBox 1.0.3 out, I’ve been thinking about CSLs – that is, the collections of simplified airplanes that XSquawkBox uses to draw the other users. The CSL system was invented back in the days of X-Plane 6, and it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. You can’t use OBJ8 files, and it doesn’t understand a lot of the modern rendering tricks that authors use with the standard tool chain.
Plane-Maker has advanced quite a bit since then too – to make the original CSL, I had to create a special one-off hacked build of Plane-Maker to export aircraft as OBJs. This capability is now built into Plane-Maker, works a lot better, and even supports animation.
X-Plane now exports a native OBJ drawing interface to plugins. Besides giving plugins access to the fully optimized native OBJ draw code, this also means that plugins can draw objects with per-pixel lighting.
One more piece of the puzzle: in France Austin announced that we were working on a new ATC engine. One goal of this new engine is to provide ATC to the AI planes, as well as your plane, so that the other aircraft interact seamlessly in one simulated environment. (In X-Plane 9, ATC only directs you, and the AI are rogue planes that try not to buzz you when you’re on the runway.)
This makes me wonder: should there be a next-gen CSL format that is shared between X-Plane and third parties, based on X-Plane doing the rendering work?
Wade just cut the final build for XSquawkBox 1.0.3, and of all of the betas I have been involved in, this was the best one ever. I say this because Wade ran the entire beta and fixed pretty much all of the bugs without me! That is to say, Wade made 1.0.3 happen. So huge thanks to Wade for making a new and much needed XSquawkBox version possible.
Here are some of the features:
- Automatic download and update of the server list.
- Dual VoIP radios.
- Proxy client support for users with multiple copies of X-Plane for multiple views.
- A ton of work on the UI – a lot of little things add up to make a much more mature, usable client.
Now if only I had time to fly on VATSIM…
This will be a little bit “off topic”, and I am normally pretty adamant about not blogging (or even talking) about XSquawkBox. This is because XSB is not something I do as part of my job for Laminar Research, and it is also something that I no longer have time for. Thus my normal highest priority is to make sure that no XSquawkBox users expect timely support or expect this from Laminar Research.
So as I am about to blog about all of the new and cool things coming in XSquawkBox 1.3, let me first make this painfully clear:
XSquawkBox is a piece of code that Wade and I write in our spare time. After finishing our regular job of coding, rather than sit back and read a book or take a walk in the park, we go back to our computers and write yet more code. We don’t make any money off of XSB, and no one pays any money for XSB.
This type of freeware development has certain constraints: there is no time table, XSB will be on the back burner when real work comes up or when real life comes up. There is no support. There are no guarantees of features or functionality. If you don’t like those terms, I will issuse you a full refund and you can use a different piece of freeware.
Okay – that was a little bit over the top. We want people to enjoy XSB – otherwise we wouldn’t have published it. And 99.999% of XSB users are very understanding and appreciative of the development situation.
With that in mind, I can’t resist posting some of what is coming in XSB 1.3 – I think it’s going to be a really strong release. 1.3 will have the bug fixes people are waiting for, including a fix for the dreaded noise on push-to-talk on Windows. Also coming:
- Wade programmed the server list to auto-populate off the net. How did we live without that?
- COM2 can tune into voice channels too. COM2 has its own hardware selection for those with multiple sound cards or USB headsets.
- You can turn on “labels” for traffic. I actually hate this feature, but I programmed it anyway – it’s optional. I’ll post why I did it some other time.
- XSB can connect to itself for users with multiple X-Plane visuals. Simply run XSB on every computer, log in from one (the “master”) and then connect to the master from each visual (the “slave”). You’ll have traffic visible across monitors.
And of course the best feature of all (for me): Wade is doing builds. 🙂 People owe him a big thank-you..without him there would simply be no 1.3. I definitely don’t have time for it…I maxed out my XSB time for a while contributing some of the features.
When will 1.3 go beta? I don’t know…ask Wade. Wait – don’t ask Wade. He’ll get to it when he is able!
