April 25th, 2013· Reverted change to light sizes when monitor resolution changes. This means airplanes look the way they did X-Plane 10.5, 10.11 and 10.20.
· Fixed pitot heat switch on new C172 in 3-d cockpit.
April 24th, 2013· Updated Cessna with new, improved art files and flight model tuning.
· Fixed dim airport lights when using 4x SSAA - HDR SSAA no longer affects light brightness.
· Fixed crash on start-up on Japanese Macs.
· Fixed edge cases where facades could draw junk or incorrect paths.
· Fixed OBJ accuracy for scenery where 0 AGL is very close to Y=0 in the local coordinate system. This fixes bad object placement at KROC.
· Joystick tracking cross matches mouse location when flying with the mouse, even when joystick curves are applied.
April 13th, 2013· Fixed crash on Mac when running the CRJ plugin or resizing the window. Other plugins may have crashed too due to this bug.
· Fixed curved non-closed facades to not loop back on themselves.
· Fixed brightness of custom light billboards when HDR is on - they now match non-HDR.
· Included 2013.04b data cycle, which puts back DMEs.
· Fixed landing gear rendering in Plane-Maker.
· Fixed visibility in hard-ball IFR to be a little bit higher.
April 11th, 2013· Introduces a default KATL layout using the new library airport elements; this is the beginning of the process of rolling out buildings as part of the global user-created airport data.
This release contains a number of bug fixes:
· Latest (April 2013) airport and navaid data included. This data fixes a number of navaid bugs inclusing the KSFO glideslopes.
· Kingair windshield wiper animation fixed.
· Cockpit-object attached spill lights now light up only the inside or outside depending on the cockpit object lighting mode; this matches the behavior of all other plane-maker-attached objects.
· Default heavy-metal compass backgroudn art realigned.
· Frigate ILS and VOR are displayed on the local map screen.
· Autopilot disconnects completely if the airplane has no flight director switch.
· Knots/mach mode is reset to knots on loading a new airplane - just in case the airplane has no mach/knots switch.
· MTBF frequency fixed - it was previously misinterpreted to fail at 10x the rate displayed in the UI.
· Magnetic heading for glide-slope fixed in the navaid editing window.
· Fuel consumption correctly decreases when flying with an external instructor's station.
· Fixed wind interpolation from NNE to N to circle through NNW.
· Changed default number of flight models per frame to 2 to improve aircraft flight dynamics.
· Improved wording on rendering settings screen.
· Autogen in rural towns remapped to houses and not warehouses.
· Fixed error in scenery shift that caused the airplane to move 4 feet and crash when landing at KGDM runway 36.
· Added aliases to the audio monitor commands - this will allow v9 plugins to continue to control the audio monitoring system.
· Moved libfreetype for OSX back to 2.2.1 - fixes font spacing on Mac, which was too wide in 10.20.
· Fixed default gear light instrument to not light up when bus power is off.
· Fixed AI aircraft to not reset AI planes when a plugin overrides the AI autopilot.
· DSF allows facades and bezier control handles to hang outside the DSF box a little bit.
· Fixed memory scribble when apt.dat contains an ICAO code longer than 4 characters.
March 4th, 2013· This patch fixes the hole in the fuselage of the Kingair, and adjusts the taxi light on the Baron. No changes to the code.
February 25th, 2013· The Kingair and Baron have both been updated again.
Bug fixes:
· Airports with invalid runway configurations no longer crash ATC - instead the error is logged so authors can fi the airport data.
· Lua memory management interface changed for Windows and Linux - if you develop a Lua-based plugin be sure to read this: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/LuaJIT.
· Fixed crash on GP60 RC plane - airplanes with very, very, very small wings were crashing.
· Automatic crash reporting improved; in a few cases where X-Plane would have said "please report this to Laminar" it now bring up the automatic crash reporter so we can more easily collect the data. This only happens for cases where something has gone horribly wrong in the sim (typically due to an X-Plane bug, driver bug, running out of memory, or an invalid third party add-on).
February 7th, 2013· The Kingair and Baron have both been updated.
Bug fixes:
· Waste-gate has been fixed for turbo-charged recip airplanes with a waste-gate. For example, the Carenado Mooney will now develop 190 HP on the runway, not 40 HP.
· X-Plane won't recommend safe-mode just because Plane-Maker is open.
· French translation updated.
· Fix for crash in custom scenery when using library objects on sloped terrain.
· Fixed crash when using ppjoy virtual devices with analog hat switches. (We do not support analog hat switches, so do not set one up. But now they won't crash the sim.)
· The installer will re-launch the sim in the same mode (64-bit or 32-bit) as you had before when auto-updating. Note that this will only work on the first update _from_ rc1 to a new update.
· Worked around black sky on Intel HD GPUs in HDR mode. Note that these GPUs aren't very powerful, so we recommend running with HDR off.
· Worked around shader compile fail on Intel HD 4000 GPUs.
· Fixed nav-aid saving to not write out bogus NDB.
· Fixed crash on Mac with PS3 controller over blue-tooth.
January 15th, 2013Kingair Fixed:
· autopilot buttons for Flight Director, Autopilot on, yaw damper and pitch control added.
· Rudder pedals animated
· Several texture refinements / enhancements
· Added stall warning annunciator
· New plugin system build for Linux/OS X avoids junk in the log.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed missing gravel at 70S airport.
· Turbulence turned down for some METARs.
· MP pressure fixed on helicopters
· Reduced network bandwidth for multiplayer.
· Map placement bug fixed where the plane was not set up at the right speeds when clicked in the upper right corner of the iOS window
· Holding down AP knobs while sim paused still selects AP at high speed
· Mach-IAS button picks right mach number.
· Missing wings fixed for RC planes
· Safe mode starts with global shadows off.
· Fixed loading of BK117 plugin on Linux.
· Fixed crash on Linux with VirtualGL.
January 3rd, 2013· This build includes a few more global terrain textures.
This build features a new plugin system DLL:
· 64-bit Plugins that incorrectly link against common static libraries will generate log warnings.
· Plugin-induced crashes are listed against a specific plugin; crashes in X-Plane's threads are no longer attributed to plugins.
· Calling XPLMRemoveMenuItem on the plugin menu works reliably.
· XPLMGetNthAircraftName works during airplane unload message and airplane plugin unloading.
Bug fixes:
· Fix for missing base loads in electrical system.
· Some keys fixed on German keyboard layouts.
· Fixed incorrect layout of some autogen blocks.
· Fixed broken 32-bit QuickTime record.
· Foreflight output rate changed.
· Cloud puff bases adjusted again.
December 20th, 2012· Fixes missing library paths in the autogen (again).
· Runway lights tweaked slightly.
December 19th, 2012· New tropical terrain textures
· Beta 8 works with the newest update to Xavion iPad apps.
Bug fixes:
· King-air 3d cockpit fixed
· Windows XP machines should get their IP address without failing.
· Fixed METAR parsing with time-stamped winds.
· Fixed reversed scroll wheel for plugins.
· Fixed by missing line segments at EHAM custom scenery and others.
· Fixed keys not working with Romanji keyboard layout.
· Fixed height of type 1 facades.
December 10th, 2012Bug fixes:
· Fixed crash on scenery load when runways were set to 'flattened'.
· Mac & Linux: Re-exported libpng to the 32-bit builds of X-Plane
· Missing library paths: this wasn't actually fixed in beta 6 due to a source control mistake; should be fixed now.
· Kingair switches fixed.
December 10th, 2012Usability:
· Livery is saved as a preference - when you reopen a plane if there is no option to pick a livery, the last one you used is opened.
· New button in Open Aircraft dialog box to just change the livery.
Plugins:
· Fix for LuaJIT compatibility on 64-bit Mac integrated - see here. Plugin authors working on 64-bit Mac plugins should be able to continue with development without any special test builds.
· libpng, libcurl, and libfreetype2 symbols have been stripped out of the Mac and Linux versions. Please test your 32-bit Mac/Linux plugin; if it will not load, please report this ASAP! (The problem might be with your makefile.)
· Fixed system_window dataref. This should fix the 32-bit TrackIR plugins.
Airplanes:
· Prop heat and inlet heat expanded to up to 8 engines, with new datarefs. This should not affect existing airplanes, but please recheck your icing switches.
· Custom prop disc cross-fades fixed. If you use the prop disc override please confirm that your add-on works!
· Eagle claw landing gear dataref added.
· Fixed RGB light field in Plane-Maker exterior lights screen.
· Fixed IAS indicator showing airspeed when a plane is flying backward or stationary in a tailwind.
Scenery:
· Fixed incorrect library paths in autogen - this should fix a bunch of custom scenery packs not loading.
· More new terrain textures from Albert.
· Fixed texturing of type 1 repeating fence faces. If your facades still have texturing problems but used to work, please file a bug ASAP!
· Helipads like NK39 don't float in the air when sloped runways are turned off.
Bug Fixes:
· Fix for some Intel HD GPUs causing the sim to quit with an error.
· Fixed crash on Mac with Chinese input methods.
· Fixed hang when filing certain ATC flight plans.
· Bottom of cloud puffs should be closer to assigned bases.
· New commands for directional gyros.
· AI planes keep igniters on to avoid flame-outs.
November 26th, 2012Beta 5 brings in new art assets to beta 3 - no code changes:
· New autogen from Alex. This is not the complete autogen work he has done; it is an interim step.
· New terrain textures from Albert.
· Bug fixes to the Kingair and KSEA from Tom.
· New 3-d exterior on the Harrier from Javier.
· If you are a 32-bit Mac user, you may need to turn down rendering settings - we will further fine tune rendering settings later in the beta; for now you are getting the raw new art assets.
November 23rd, 2012· OpenAL sound is now initialized before any plugins are loaded. This changes which OpenAL implementation will be loaded for globally installed plugins. Please see the OpenAL technote for details. This fix should conflicts between Gizmo-enhanced and SASL-enhanced airplanes.
· OS X 64-bit: the app's zero page and base address have been modified. This allows LuaJIT to function on 64-bit OS X. Please note that LuaJIT will still fail frequently with out-of-memory errors once the sim is running. If you are working on a plugin that uses LuaJIT and have not contacted Ben, please do so.
· Vsync now functions on OS X. The vsync setting now takes effect immediately, without restarting. Please note that on ATI Windows hardware with the Aero theme enabled, Vsync locks to half-refresh rate; we think this is a driver bug.
· A bunch of features relating to airport ICAO IDs now work on 64-bit. This fixes real weather and the FMS/GPS ICAO entry on 64-bit.
· Multiple identical devices now supported properly on Mac.
· Native TrackIR fixed on Windows. Plugins that use TrackIR are not yet fixed, due to a plugin SDK bug.
· Log correctly identifies 64-bit versions of Windows.
November 16th, 2012· Fixed unresponsive keyboard and mouse on OS X when X-Plane is started in full screen.
· Fixed fatal shader error on older Nvidia cards on Windows and Linux.
· Fixed spinning ball cursor on Windows.
· Fixed OpenAL 64-bit library on Windows.
· Fixed a number of log warnings.
· 32 vs. 64-bit build is shown in the about box and startup screen.
November 15th, 2012· X-Plane 10.20 is the first 64-bit version of X-Plane 10. It comes with two sets of executable applications for X-Plane: Macintosh: X-Plane.app (64-bit) and X-Plane-32bit.app (32-bit).
October 29th, 2012· Fixed intermittent bug on Windows where some objects would randomly generate LOD warning and not hit the fast hardware path.
October 25th, 2012Bug Fixes:
· The constant hail from rc1 should be fixed.
· sRGB disabled for ATI Catalyst 12-10 drivers - it works in some cases but washes out the UI with HDR on.
· Put up error alert when x-Plane runs with Gallium drivers on Linux - we only support the proprietary ATI and NVidia drivers on Linux.
· Disabled HDR when the GPU can't support it _even_ if prefs have HDR enabled.
· Bumped version on situation format - the 10.05r1 situation format does not work with 10.10 and 10.11; this version change stops the files from being loaded in a corrupt manner.
October 25th, 2012Bug Fixes:
· Cessna windshield does not disappear when C172 is used as an AI plane.
· Fixed typo in joystick config screen.
· Fixed joystick bugs with various hardware.
· Changed default gamma for Windows to be 2.2 - the default of 2.5 was just wrong.
· Fixed occasional crash due in weather initialization.
· Fixed strobe light effect in clouds.
· Fixed scrolling of hail marks on windscreen in 2-d panel.
· Fixed joystick subsystem to work around ControllerMate issues on Mac.
September 21st, 2012· Updated car generation pattern - traffic should be more even and levels should be higher on high settings. Remember: traffic really hits CPU, and it takes a few minutes for X-Plane to generate the full traffic you have requested with your rendering settings, so turn the setting down if fps get bad.
· New German translation.
Bugs:
· Fixed missing runway through 747 windows.
· Fixed corrupt landing light after livery change on C400 Corvalis.
· Fixed corrupt cloud geomtry with HDR and ATI Linux drivers (by disabling pinned memory optimization). We'll work with ATI to see if we can get pinned memory working on Linux.
· Fixed shadows out the window for the C172 with shadows on "3-d on aircraft".
· Fixed squashed preview icons in airplane chooser dialog box.
· Fixed possible corrupt geometry in low level weather code.
· Turned down maximum brightness with HDR mode slightly.
· Fixed ejection seat camera sequence.
· Fixed export airplane to .OBJ in Plane-Maker on Windows.
· Fixed broken materials with shadows on Falcon 7x.
· Fixed inability to refile a flightplan after cancelling IFR
· Decreased nag timer on ATC handoff checkins
September 15th, 2012· Updated road art assets. The updated art assets contain more details and more templates for better road grids.
· "Open" dialogs now faster for users who had a "Custom Scenery (disabled)" folder. Read more here.
· Joystick axis now appear red in the dialog if they're uncalibrated or unassigned. Red means the axis is not going to work properly so fix it!
· Slightly improved Joystick calibration wizard.
· Runway and taxiway lights improved to be visible at various angles in a more realistic manner. NOTE: Taxiway lights SHOULD be difficult to see in many airborne situations. This is NOT a bug. This is how the real lights work.
Aircraft:
· Electrical system fixed on F-22, F-4, Baron, Kingair, and Piaggio.
· Fuselage shadow fixed on C172.
ATI Windows Drivers:
· This build works around sRGB problems in HDR mode and turns off sRGB for non-HDR mode.
· I am a member of the ATI driver beta program, and have tried newer drivers that fixes the sRGB problem for non-HDR mode. 10.10r2 is programmed to recognize these newer drivers and turn sRGB back on.
What this means to you:
· HDR mode will look good for ATI Windows drivers. Forward rendering will look okay but the night scene will be overly bright and a bit 'wet' looking in the far-ground.
· When the next revision of ATI drivers comes out, things should just start working.
· I haven't been able to reproduce the bug where clouds appear as crazy triangles; if you have this, please get latest drivers, re-test against rc2, and re-file a bug report so we can get more information.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed complete anarchy in the electrical system file-io code. Believe it or not, this fixes the roll in the 747 and other airplanes! Authors using 10.10, check the electrical system pages in Plane-Maker carefully in 10.10r2! See more here!
· Fixed import of v9 airplanes made on a PPC mac into v10.
· Fixed unclickable P-180 cockpit panel.
· Runway lights are visible when off-axis, e.g. on base.
· Fixed shadows disappearing in flight when set to "3-d on cockpit" for the P-180 and other planes.
· Fixed disappearing spill lights (when made by an OBJ and attached to an airplane).
· Fixed black boxes around LIGHT_CUSTOM lights in HDR mode.
· Electrical systems such as the Hydraulic, Vacuum and Gyro systems no longer "overspeed" when the bus voltage is over nominal (ie. a charging bus).
· Changing Axis assignments in the Joystick dialog, no longer throw away calibration data.
· EGT fixed to be scaled properly based on the appropriate N1 or N2 speeds.
· Command-line framerate test fixed
· We have disabled the wing import function in Plane-Maker - it can crash Plane-Maker (causing you to lose your work). We may put it back in a future update if enough users want it. As a work-around, you can copy wings with a text editor in X-Plane 10.
· Fixed ATTR_diffuse_rgb when used with global shadows.
· Fixed pre-fill optimization on NV Mac drivers.
· Fixed pre-fill for non-shadow objects.
· Fixed spill lighting on runway lights.
· Fixed anti-ice system failure labels in Plane-Maker.
September 8th, 2012Aircraft Changes:
· Default Aircraft startup times drastically improved! Sometimes on piston engines, you may even need to crack the throttle to get the aircraft to start...just like real aircraft!
Starter:
· The starter has been changed quite a bit; airplanes from v9 and 10.05 should now start as expected. See this post for details.
Bug Fixes:
· METARs with variable winds no longer create wind-shear/turbulence for low wind speed conditions
· Slung Loads are no longer defaulted ON...this was preventing the B-52 from flying properly!
· Mouse wheel scrolling now works in the Aircraft Livery panel
· Weapons drawn correctly in Plane-Maker
· Plane-Maker can import .inst instrument files.
· Light billboard color-space fixed; the runway lights should be quite a bit more visible now.
· Fixed misaligned roads.
· Fixed road bridges crashing into each other.
· Improved ramps going into road junctions slightly.
· Fixed P-180 panel going black when P-180 is used as an AI plane or HDR is turned on and off.
· Fixed missing landing light in 2-d cockpits and forward views.
· Jets will hot-start if __N2__ is below indicated value in Plane-Maker. Plane-Maker used to use N1 for jets, which was difficult to work with.
· No more crashes or other odd behaviour when you run the battery down to nothing
September 3rd, 2012· It's just like beta 10, but with the 'extra aircraft' folder properly included (this is where some of the old v9 aircraft and experimentals now live) and with code signing hopefully fixed.
September 3rd, 2012· This build closes our known bugs with aircraft and HDR mode - if you have created a custom aircraft for v9, you may have to update a few things to work with HDR mode and 10.10. Docs on what needs updating (the list is short) soon.
· Safe mode warning dialog box disabled for pro key customers.
· Mac apps are now signed to play nicely with Gatekeeper on 10.8 Mountain Lion
· There is now a command to toggle full-screen mode - bind it to a key or call it from a plugin.
P180 Updates:
· The P-180's panel now works with global shadows, and the visors don't block the clouds in HDR mode.
· The P-180's electrical system now puts a load on generators.
F22 Updates:
· New HUD elements added for attitude
· Revised Airfoils
· Heavily tweaked flight model
· Turn and bank with more control and stability, even with full stick deflection
· Nice manners on landing
Baron Updates:
· Fixed panel back shadow mode
· Fixed prop lever in 3D cockpit so it doesn't drop prop RPM down below governing range
· Fixed clipping of global lights in cockpit.
Airplane SDK:
· Cockpit spill lights in Plane-Maker show up in HDR mode too. Their lighting equation is changed - they always look the way they used to look in HDR mode.
· Fixed some cases of airplane lights showing through the walls of the 3-d cockpit.
· Fixed ATTR_diffuse_rgb and ATTR_emission_rgb in HDR mode.
· Fixed glass objs on ACF when airplane is upside down and atmospheric scattering is on.
· Airplane casts shadows even on glass objects in HDR mode.
Plugins:
· Flight loop callback is not called when the QuickFlight dialog box is up before the first flight.
· Post-FM callbacks are called when dialog boxes are up - this is consistent with pre-FM callbacks.
Bug Fixes:
· Airplanes with separate in and out cockpit objs work with GLOBAL_cockpit_lit
· Slightly improved ramps that would stick up in the middle of street-level road junctions.
August 21st, 2012· Supersonic engine thrust model improved to go from total pressure recovery to normal-shock recovery as you move towards the max inlet efficiency, and pass air subsonically to the compressor behind the inlet. This is still not a perfect inlet model since different inlets work in totally different ways, but this is the best superonic inlet model we have ever had, and the supersonic drag is now the best we have ever had as well. The supersonic drag model looks at each polygon of the acf model, finds its' normal vector and area, and treats it as a plate with a compression or expansion fan, and should now do a perfect job of tracking every single poly in the airplane.
· New commands: Spot lite on, off, and toggle... kind of sorely missing before!
· Helo rotor rpm trim runs 0 to 1, so it is an interpolation between the lo and hi rotor rpm trim. This way, motion of the trim always DOES something, even if only a high OR lo rotor rpm trim is entered in Plane-Maker!
· Automatic crash reporter no longer catches crashes that occur because of plugins. This is important so that plugin authors can get crash data from their users without us stealing it from them.
· UI Buttons in all products have been improved to be...well...like every other button you've ever used outside of X-Plane. Actions happen on the up-click, not the down-click giving you a chance to change your mind while also giving you visual feedback of the press itself.
Aircraft:
· Fixed Vacuum pressure and Oil Pressure gauges in the default C-172
· Fixed SR-71 flight model
Bug Fixes:
· Joystick Dialog now consolidates axis display so more device axis are visible. Important for people with many devices.
· Joystick calibration ranges from 10.05R1 are now blown away to prevent corrupt axis on an update. NOTE: This will require EVERYONE to recalibrate their devices on updating.
· Fixed broken "alt" button on Windows
· Fixed buttons on some home-cockpit devices such as the MJoy16-C1
· You can now save a situation and then load it again without exiting X-Plane to re-scan the file list.
· Landing lights and all other lights should go across to the external visuals now.
· Much less turbulence in light to moderate precip... but same trubulence in major (red) precip
· QuickFlight startup does put you on the ramp now, if set up as such in Operations and Warnings window.
· Weather goes to ALL the external visuals now, not just a random ONE of them!
· Right Click/Zoom no longer control the sim from IOS station.
August 13th, 2012· This is a recut of beta 7 that fixes Plane-Make crashing on startup on Windows.
August 13th, 2012· Quick-Look now supports our new 2D panel scrolling
· Quick-Flight is now under the file menu
· Major revisions to the Baron and Kingair
· Global scenery terrain regions tuned.
· Added "TEXTURE_CONTROL_NOWRAP" to correspond to TEXTURE_CONTROL. This is needed to make orthophoto pol files with decals.
Aircraft:
· 10.10 beta 6 attempted to mark older cockpit objects as 'glass'. This seemed like a clever way to make HDR work but actually breaks more aircraft than it helps. This change has been removed for beta 7. As a result, the CRJ and other aircraft that use the panel texture as a window will not show clouds correctly in HDR mode. These aircraft will need an update to work with HDR enabled, but will work correctly with HDR disabled. X-Plane cannot guess-and-auto-update these aircraft for HDR.
· The cockpit now contains most of the same options in Plane-Maker as the attached objects.
· Invalid use of ATTR_cockpit is now detected and logged.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed crash on Windows with facades with empty meshes. This fixes the crash using the "Classic 3" airport facade.
· Added support for some out-of-spec PFC Yokes
· Fixes to solve some strange button behavior on various joysticks (ie. Cyborg Evo)
· Fixed bus_load_amps dataref to read proper value
· Landing lights accurately reflect their load on electrical busses now.
· G430,G1000 and Avidyne instruments now work with panel regions.
· Fixed some cases where water fog looks funny - there are still some bugs with water and fog.
· Fixed black line when shadows on "Melt your GPU" with NV cards.
· Fixed missing cockpit objects in Chinook and other older-style planes.
· Fixed missing transponder on P32R and other panels that mix translucency and panels.
· Fixed intermittent drawing of airports in sectional map.
· Fixed plugin glue code: XPLMNavAid can find stand-alone DMEs.
· Fixed incorrect culling of trees when forest exclusion zones go outside a DSF boundary.
· Moved power tower wires to a later drawing group to avoid artifacts.
· Fixed world being very dark for the first few frames in HDR mode.
Other tweaks:
· if you ask to start on the ramp under operations and warnings, then the quick-flight screen honors that
· real-weather should grab dew-point to display in ATIS reports, which is kind of nice.
· supersonic model for bodies over-hauled a bit... should be more realistic now (the supersonic model for the wings should remain un-changed)
August 4th, 2012· Red/White Flashlight added!
· "Mouse-Look" Re-implemented in a new way...Double right-click and the mouse will lock-in as camera control in any view. Change views or right click again to disable it.
· Quick-Look view prefs have been renamed from *_prefs.txt to *_view_prefs.txt. If you already had quicklook commands set, they will not be used until you rename them in your aircraft's directory.
· Additional improvements to terrain textures. Albert hopes to have these finished by the end of the beta run.
· WE ONLY CALIBRATE JOYSTICKS WHEN THE JOYSTICK WINDOW IS UP NOW! So, to calibrate your joysticks, you have to go to the joystick window... you cannot just wiggle your joystick around to let X-Plane automatically find the joystick extrema... you have to be in the joystick window!
· Flight model refined a hair: There will be no measurable difference for any reasonably conventional flight, but now we handle sideslip angles of even 90 degrees, or backwards flight, on wings with crazy dihedral and sweep and incidence angles,with more geometric perfection... even though this does not represent a flight regime where you ever operate in a conventional airplane, we still nailed the theoretical geometry down just get mathematical perfection there.
· Also, the supersonic dynamics improved a hair in computing drag over the fuselage.
· My Evo is now in the EXPERIMENTAL folder. There s no external model, and the panel is a joke, but it FLIES right. Of course, we will improve this over time to be a good model of the aircraft!
July 31st, 2012· Now supports devices with an insane number of buttons and axis like the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog (That thing is an insane beast).
· Improved consistency in views. Right click and scroll are now used everywhere for camera movement and zoom respectively.
· Implemented Quick-Look view commands to allow users to save predefined views on a per-aircraft basis. See discussion here.
· OBJ File Format Extensions - docs coming soon!
· ATTR_no_shadow disables shadows for just one part of an OBJ; polygon-offset (ATTR_poly_os) geometry now works this way too.
· A new pixel-based manipulator lets you define drags that work horizontally or vertically, with scaling. This manipulator is intended to make draggable knobs.
· GLOBAL_cockpit_lit object attribute declares that ATTR_cockpit will use real 3-d lighting. This provides a better migration path for old airplanes that depend on translucency.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed broken hot-spots on Altimeters
· Fixed broken adjustment on attitude indicator
· Fixed 3/4 deflection on Joystick Axis page on some devices (Saitek Flight Stick, Epic USB, etc.)
· Fixed "sticking" hat-switches that would sometimes not turn off once pressed.
· Fixed Joysticks with missing buttons/axis on Windows such as the Logitech G940 or G25
· Bump maps now work in .ter files again.
· The HDR pipeline has been severely thrashed in an attempt to improve the look of translucent scenery. While there are still translucency artifacts in HDR mode (and all airplanes should use the "glass" option in plane-Maker for windshields and canopies) translucency should be better than it was before.
· Fixed ugly blue glowing water at night.
· Added back 3-d cockpit toggle command to match v9.
· Airplane is converted to metric before plugins are run.
July 20th, 2012· This beta updates and renames the Aerosoft airports that ship with X-Plane 10 global, fixing naming inconsistencies between different DVD editions. You should only notice the update if you have installed European global scenery.
· This beta also includes initial rough translations for Japanese and Portuguese; we'll be refining this over the beta period. The French translation has also been updated.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed crash at night (take 2, the fix in beta 3 was in itself broken).
· Fixed cockpits going dark and camera angle moving at night.
· Fixed support for Epic USB and other devices that send unsigned axis data but have LogicalMax with the signed bit set. 0xFF vs 0x00FF.
· Improved update screen dialog so users can reject updates without a crash.
· Liveries can be selected.
· Barometric pressure knob fixed on C172 and other panels.
· Plane-Maker won't prompt for safe-mode after an X-Plane crash.
· Fixed crash if previous flown airplane is missing when X-Plane is next run.
· Fixed sun glare on landing markings at KSEA when bump/normal mapping is disabled.
· Interior geometry shown for older planes. Note that showing the inside of the fuselage and misc bodies is not recommended, not possible in airplanes saved for v10, and will be dropped completely in the future.
July 18th, 2012· Fixed washed out cockpits on older airplanes like the CL415. Blog post coming soon explaining what this was, why authors might want to update their planes, and what's coming in the future for cockpits.
· Fixed erratic joystick behavior on windows that prevented proper calibration
· Fixed linux joystick problem preventing the detection of rudder pedals/trim wheels etc (NOTE: If it still doesn't find your device, you'll need to UDEV your /dev/input/event* device to give X-Plane permission).
· Fixed roads shooting into the sky at LSZA. (There are a lot of the roads on this planet and we can't check them all by hand, so if you find yet more roads shooting into the sky, please file a bug!!)
· Sim won't go into 'safe mode' after an auto-update.
· Aircraft carrier wake doesn't show through carrier.
· Fixed crash at night with C130 and other planes with no 3-d cockpit.
· Fixed heat blur to not show up in first class cabin of 747 and other interiors.
July 16th, 2012Bug Fixes:
· Fixed crash on startup on Windows caused by some Joysticks
· Joysticks no longer have a negative impact on frame rate.
· Roads no longer shoot up into the sky at DSF tile ends.
· Fixed crash with v9 DSFs with powerlines.
· Hedges and bushes in autogen no longer stick into the street.
· 4x SSAA HDR mode fixed to not draw into 1/4 of the screen.
· Fixed blue and red artifacts in HDR mode on Windows machines.
· Fixed white box around bomb craters in HDR mode.
· Fixed blue flicker when QuickFlight carousel spins.
· Fixed night water reflections in non-HDR mode.
· Fixed brightness of lights reflected in water.
· Improved UI tile scrolling in quick-flight dialog.
March 28th, 2012· Carrier landings now work correctly.
· The camera no longer goes through walls in 3-d cockpit mode on the Cirrus Jet and others. (ATTR_solid_wall now works again.)
· The warning message for 32-bit versions of Windows has been moved to the first time you pick rendering settings, and the language has been edited for clarity.
March 28th, 2012· V10 airplane electrical System and Bus Specs are now read correctly from airplanes. This was broken in later 10.04 betas.
· V9 airplanes electrical systems are read in correctly.
March 19th, 2012· V10 airplane electrical System and Bus Specs are now read correctly from airplanes. This was broken in later 10.04 betas.
· V9 airplanes electrical systems are read in correctly.
March 17th, 2012· Manifold pressure works the way it did in 10.03. We'll revisit better manifold pressure indications in a future beta when there's more time to get it right.
· Trim setting labels in Plane-Maker's control tab fixed.
March 7th, 2012· Bug fix for ATC issuing altimeter on descent.
· Fixed pilot-heading dataref to put sim in command-look mode.
· Fixed parsing of OBJs with hard surfaces.
March 5th, 2012Lots of new art:
· The C-130 is included!
· Lit textures on cities and more city facades.
· Tuning of spill lights in the airport library to improve fps.
· Tuning and revision to natural terrain textures and forests.
· For users with the X-Plane 10 Global DVD, you will get Aerosoft's European airports if you install scenery for those areas, or if you update and have those areas already installed.
Bug Fixes:
· Fixed crash when loading airplanes or quitting, introduced in beta 6.
· Fixed crash at EDDM on Linux (due to ATC taxi layout autogen running off the rails.)
· Fixed missing sky and clouds with P180, x737 and other wide panels when 4x SSAA and HDR are in use.
· Fixed the nasty bumps that airplanes were seeing when taxiing on runways at high altitude airports.
· Fixed multithreaded scenery load on Windows. This may help some users with flashing triangles.
Rendering Engine & Scenery:
· Object exclusion zones now also exclude autogen, so scenery packs that get rid of default buildings now get rid of the v10 default autogen. There is not going to be an "Exclude autogen" - just use the objects exclusion zone!
· Objects placed at high altitudes should now be at the correct location.
· Latest apt.dat data from Robin included.
Plugin bug fixes, included in this beta:
· XPLM returns a version with an extra digit, to match v9.
· XPLM load/save data file APIs fixed.
· De-icing failure datarefs fixed.
· Datarefs.txt now matches the sim.
February 27th, 2012· Just like X-Plane 10.04 beta 5, but with the texture files back.
February 27th, 2012· Was pulled due to missing texture files.
Clouds:
· Cloud performance has been tuned. The cloud slider is not calibrated the way it was in 10.04b4; please don't worry about the number you see. Tune the slider to get the trade-off of quality and performance you want on your computer. The "100%" mark represents what we think a high-end system might show; you can go past this if you really liked the older high settings from previous betas, but realistically there's no need to do this.
· The far view clouds should look less strange from orbital altitudes.
ATC:
· Controllers now issue altimeter settings to aircraft on handoffs, on descents OUT of a flight level and every 50nm when appropriate.
· Controllers now expect aircraft to fly with the correct altimeter setting and also properly monitors aircraft at flightlevels expecting them to be flying at a PRESSURE altitude (with their altimeters set to 29.92). At this moment, the transition level for the WORLD is set to 18,000 feet as it is in the USA. In the future, this will vary based on region.
· AI aircraft are spawned at more appropriate speeds. In the past, they were spawned too slowly which caused them to stall and lose altitude which caused ATC to constantly nag them to regain their altitude. This was the primary cause for radio congestion!
· Improved taxi routings across the world so they're a bit smarter.
Rendering:
· The 3-d cockpit draws correctly for multi-monitor configurations with offset views on the side.
· Our low-level OpenGL setup on Windows is now done a little bit differently; this change was recommended by people at NVidia who are very smart. But if you are running on Windows and you _can_ run 10.03 but you cannot start up the new beta at all, please file a bug!!
· ATTR_draped now works with objects that do not have any LOD statements! There was a previous bug in X-Plane so that if you used ATTR_draped and did not have ATTR_LOD anywhere, the sim would not draw the draped geometry. This is now fixed, so ATTR_draped really does work as a drop-in replacement to ATTR_poly_os. Docs coming soon!!
Scenery:
· Fixed facades in the airport library that were generating errors on load.
· The roof edge of urban downtown facades should look correct.
DRM:
· We are reworking our installer and DVD detection. If the sim won't go out of demo mode, but 10.03 works correctly, please be sure to file a bug!
MORE COOL NEW STUFF:
· Compressor stall failures are refined, and can be solved by pulling fuel to the engine to shut it down.
· Aircraft icing is now a bit more aggressive and realistic, and flexible with the ability to add 2 switches for AOA heat,
· pitot heat, static port heat, engine inlet heat, prop heat, and wing heat! This lets you control these systems more precisely... and expect the correct results from their operation in flight!
February 17th, 2012ATC:
· ATC checks aircraft altitude less frequently being a little more patient with pilots.
· New aircraft spawn "silently" which should drastically improve radio congestion.
· ATC should properly inform pilots of their expected approach and runway upon giving the pilot their FIRST vector for the approach.
Scenery:
· Latest version of KSEA demo area has variable density of objects with the rendering settings. If you have a lower performance computer and run at medium object settings, the demo airport should have better framerate.
Weather:
· Fixed black sky and broken transition from near to far terrain when flying over overcast cloud layers.
· Fog coloring tweaked in the clouds a bit... The color should be more realistic INSIDE of the clouds!
· More improvements in the read in of Real-Weather files... now handling more cloud types and report-types, including ones found in Europe!
Joystick:
· Left and right brake BUTTONS should always work, as long as you do not have joystick AXIS assigned to left and right brakes!
· Joystick can now over-ride autopilot, as in reality. BUT, beware! The autopilot will be fighting you with the servos, and the trim as well, and in some airplanes, the trim is stronger than the flight controls themselves!
Misc:
· Fixed white triangles in sky when looking straight up.
· Temporarily disabled alerts for illegally used ramp starts.
· Transition to supersonic engine dynamics a hair more realistic... applies to engine DRAG as well as thrust!
· Spherical and cylindrical projection corrected... See if you like it more! (If you have a pro-use key!)
· (real) Garmin430 and Garmin430 WAAS driven more perfectly now, with the ability to set the OBS on the Garmin unit or the X-Plane panel.
February 13th, 2012· Beta 3 contains a few fixes to bugs introduced earlier in the beta, as well as some experimental stuff.
· DRM: X-Plane 10.04 beta 3 will remember that it has seen a DVD for 24 hours, alleviating the need to keep the DVD in the drive all of the time. Chris will blog about this in more detail later.
· Rendering artifacts: X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 introduced a bug where the internal visibility could become a negative number. This introduced a ton of weird artifacts, including missing pieces of runway and broken lighting. Beta 3 fixes this. Please read the following carefully.
· If you reported a rendering artifact bug for X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 _and_ if that bug was _new_ to X-Plane 10.04 beta 2 _and_ if the bug is not fixed in beta 3, please re-report the bug.
· Please do _not_ re-report rendering artifact bugs that were also in beta 1. We already have those bugs in our database; we only want to see how many of the new beta 2 artifacts were fixed by this single change.
Other Fixes:
· Beta 2 was overly sensitive about misplaced airport beacons and windsocks. At this point you should be able to load any custom scenery that loaded in previous versions of X-Plane 10. If your apt.dat contains misplaced beacons and airports you will get a log warning.
· Facades that consist of one floor plus an angled roof should now work like v9.
· The internal version for .sit and .rep has been incremented because the formats are changed slightly.
February 9th, 2012· All buttons on the FMS's should work properly even if there are two different FMS's in the airplane.
· Wind-shear and turbulence model refined a little more to be more complex in it's randomness, and not always quite so strong in what are requested to be moderate conditions, and to change in a reasonable way with altitude. This should help improve wind and turbulence modeling, especially with Real-Weather turned on.
· X-15 drop and Space-Shuttle-carry missions should work properly now.
· Right-mouse drag to look around in 3-D cockpit command-look view, and mouse scroll wheel zooms. This is a pretty convenient way to look around the 3-D cockpits. (This works in "command" look mode, not mouse look mode! So when you are not right-mouse dragging, the view stays still and you can manipulate the 3-d panel.)
· Track-IR functions in ALL 3-d cockpit views now... It has WORKED for years, but is now easier to find since it engages in ALL 3-d cockpit views, not just one.
· Cool new feature for QuickTime movies: Movie quality! Set it high or low depending on how good you want it to look... and how much disk space you want to burn!
· External visuals should sync-up faster in the multi-machine setups, which should save some time in real flight-training scenarios.
· Landing lights, spotlights, and spotlight aiming-angles all go from master machine to external visuals now.
· Plane-Maker system screen: Option to auto-load with current values, or not, airspeed, vertical speed, and altitude when a new autopilot mode is engaged.
· Visibility tuned to change with altitude in a more accurate way to follow the reported weather more closely.
· AI planes should be better about holding desired altitude now, resulting in less annoyed air traffic controllers.
· Fixed: incorrect warnings about missing scenery
· Fixed (partly): the ocean shading should have fewer sharp lines on it. Far view shading of the ocean is still a work in progress...more color tuning in a future beta.
· Fixed: wing flex now works - X-Plane was incorrectly zeroing out wing-flex on some v10 planes.
· Fixed: sharp turns in taxiway lines now render correctly at KSEA and other airports.
· Fixed: right button on Linux is now the "right" button, not the scroll wheel itself.
· Fixed: plugins won't crash if they try to read the weather from XPluginStart
Facades:
· Roof behaviors now match v9 for legacy facadesA bunch of new features to control the exact appearance of facade-attached objects - docs coming soon!
· New facade features: attached objects on facades appear and disappear with "objects" rendering setting for better performance.
January 27th, 2012ATC:
· AI Aircraft now climb/hold altitude better dramatically reducing the frequency of hearing ATC yell at them.
· Protect against aircraft doing something WAY out of bounds like departing instead of taxiing or holding short.
· Stability improvements
· Step descents dramatically improved
· ATC should now tell the user what approach they're setting them up for
· ATC "Radio" box text color tweak
· Fixed AI aircraft names
Lots of tuning and tweaking to make everything just right here in this release:
· Plane should be able to hold still quite a bit better during runup, and not slowly drift with the brakes on!
· Manifold pressure model is now improved to be more like real planes.
· French and Spanish translation improvements to make the menus a hair more accurate in those languages.
· Better vertical resolution of the NMEA strings for newer (real) moving maps that plot vertical paths as well.
· More resolution in the FDR replays, so even little RC drones with small movements can have their paths recorded perfectly.
· Cylindrical projection should be able to handle changing the screen-res on the fly with no problem now.
· Better metar parsing: X-Plane should not be confused over various comments in the metars about the wind.
· As well ATIS should report the visiblity accuratley in all cases. Earlier versions did not report the very low-vis cases correctly.
· And, an option to re-scan real-weather to go along with re-download.
· The heat-blurr rendering effect is now offset by the exhaust offset specified in Plane-Maker, which is useful.
· As well, the heat blurr now draws for ALL planes, not just the one you are flying.
· As well, you can specify the exhsust offset PER ENGINE!
· Proper cloud textures used even if you have both cumulus and cirrus layers at the same time.
· The yaw-string is visible for the gliders and helos.
· A-I airplanes should be a bit more robust, really adding power if needed to get out of ditches or up hills, and not having systems break, rendering the plane stopped or otherwise motionless.
· TCAS system should only call out guys with their transponder on...and the AI should only turn on their transponder for flight, not taxi! This is getting down to a pretty crazy level of realism, here.
· New failure: brown-out! In the upper right of the first page of failures.
· A pretty nice failure for helos, added for use in real military training now!
Aircraft and Attached Objects:
· Aircraft can now have any number of attached objects; the interface is revamped to show this.
· Attached objects now have per object control over LOD, shadowing, and pre-fill. These options let you tune your plane for maximum performance. Click the "More Info" button in the Plane-Maker screen to view a description of what the settings do and how they should be used.
· The 747 and CirrusJet now have some of the pre-fill and shadow options set to improve 3-d cockpit framerates; we'll work through the other planes during beta.
· Wing flex for v9 planes now defaults to off; this prevents graphic errors when the attached parts aren't authored to flex with the wings.
· Plane-Maker taxi lights don't shine into the interior of the P-180.
· Fixed culling and drawing of OBJ-based weapons in the sim and Plane-Maker
Other random stuff:
· The fps test is fixed to not sit in the joystick calibration screen.
· New smoke puff artwork
January 12th, 2012Rendering:
· Fixed corrupt geometry at KBTR and other locations. (These were facade roofs being stretched off into space!)
· Sim will refuse to run with a clear error message for old non-supported hardware.
January 12th, 2012Performance:
· Framerate improved for 2-d panel views and forward-no-HUD, particularly with HDR enabled.
Rendering:
· Clouds look better.. best yet!
ATC:
· Fixed some minor crashes
· Improved approach altitudes slightly
· Fixed step descents and made the descents a bit shallower.
Linux:
· Fix crash when XRANDR is not installed.
· Replay mode slider restored.
January 6th, 2012· Fix for hang while flying with AI planes or on startup
· Fix for missing DSF tile on really heavily loaded machine (this is a really rare bug)
January 5th, 2012· Fixed a Windows crash bug in beta 8.
· Fixed missing runway and city lights at some monitor settings.
· Restored framerate with clouds visible.
· Fixed crash in ATC system on startup.
· Fixed missing sunlight in planet-wide view.
January 4th, 2012Coolness:
· City lights are better tuned to look nice at a wide variety of resolutions and fields of view.
· Cloud lighting is more accurate, which is really nice, especially for overcast and stratus clouds.
· Aircraft lighting is a hair nicer in cloud shadow.
· Rendering options are streamlined and organized a hair better... with "one-push to set to max frame-rate" button.
Flight-Control:
· Joystick should now be more responsive! You should see a more instant and accurate response.
· You now get help with joystick calibration on your first start-up.
ATC:
· Fixed stability issues in ATC system
· Fixed step descents
· Fixed problems with controllers that had multiple frequencies
Plugins:
· Fixed weather datarefs when real weather is in use
· Fixed airplane loading by plugins on Windows
Weather:
· Fixed disappearing objects when Real Weather is in use
Rendering:
· Fixed diseappearing horizon artifacts
· Tuned shadow options - hopefully they should be a bit less blurry and a little bit faster
· Improved GPU fill rate a little bit in 3-d cockpit view with HDR on
Bug-Fix:
· Now you can take screenshots even if already recording a quicktime movie or sending imagery to EFIS-App.
December 29th, 2011ATC:
· Fixed bug sometimes causing the wrong controller to be assigned during a taxi reroute (gnd vs twr)
· Fixed bug preventing Delivery from giving clearances to people who were given gate holds for weather.
· Runway Flow changes less unstable
· AI Flies Plane now picks less silly destinations
· ATC works properly with --no_sound options now
· File Flight Plan menu item now properly disabled when necessary
Weather:
· No more seeing the inside of the clouds
· No more seeing stars from inside the clouds
General:
· When you create a navaid in the editing screen in the map page, you CAN see that navaid, making it easier to edit
· Replay mode shows properly in IOS
· A little more room for airport data in the low enroute map when you click on an airport... leaves room for frequencies with longer descriptions
· Slight speed improvement when world level of detail is turned down and autogen is turned up
Aircraft:
· Weapons now move with wing flex
· Wing flex a hair faster and tighter
· More runways displayed in the map, if there is room based on your texture resolution
· 172 starter dialed down a hair
· Tire puffs from other planes should always be at right elevation
· Custom prop discs aren't used for AI planes
December 23rd, 2011ATC:
· Fixed bug preventing lowercase routings from working
· Fixed numerous crashes in the ATC system.
· Fixed bug causing AI planes to suddenly taxi through a hold short line wildly.
· Fixed bug causing the view to change while using the arrows to navigate ATC menus.
· Adjusted timers to let users communicate with ATC more easily.
· Adjusted "off course" tolerances to make it less annoying.
· Improved automatic layout generation at KTCM (and hopefully other airports that are long and thin)
Aircraft:
· CRJ and other aicraft cockpits should work at night in HDR mode on OS X Lion.
· Sim is more tolerant of missing textures - the rules now match v9 for OBJs.
· Slight improvement to braking model to aid in erroneous aircraft drifting.
· Baron 58: Added cockpit night lighting. Use the four lighting knobs under the copilot yoke to adjust.
· F4 Phantom: Adjusted the flight model for better in-flight handling and more reasonable manners on approach and landing.
· Fixed seg fault in weight/weapons window.
Rendering:
· Fixed cut-off global lights on ATI hardware.
December 15th, 2011Rendering:
· Fixed cut-outs in rain when HDR mode is enabled.
· Fixed square white runwy lights in heavy Cat-III IFR when HDR is disabled.
· Fixed corrupt drawing on UFMC when HDR mode is enabled.
ATC:
· Fixed a bug causing bad taxi routings which may have caused ATC to constantly issue new taxi clearances.
· Joystick General Command Up/Down and Contact ATC key assignments now work with the ATC menus.
December 13th, 2011Scenery:
· Custom scenery packs with legacy file organization now work
· Fixed crash for RealScenery Oahu (and any DSF with car-only road networks)
· Restored some v9 library paths for overlay scenery
· This update should install the bug fixes to Paris, Denver, and a few other tiles if you have them installed from DVD.
Aircraft:
· Fixed erroneous FMS clear
· Fixed Auto-throttle auto-engage
· Prop disc plugin override is not reset when the flight is restarted
· Fixed out-of-order key-frame tables for generic rotaries
· Fixed black area in 3-d cockpit of P180 and other planes with HDR on
· Temporarily removed generic map instrument - we'll put it back once it's fully finished
ATC:
· Fixed a common ATC related crash due to weather changes
· Fixed common ATC related crash due to an audio issue
· Corrected Heading/Altitude Rounding
· Improved efficiency and quality of ATC taxi routes
Misc:
· Removed 16-bit color option from monitor-res popup. 16-bit color is not supported!
· Fixed ghosting on NVidia cards
December 8th, 2011· This beta adds Plane-Maker and Airfoil-Maker back to the beta - sorry about that.
ATC:
· Fixed crash when taxi routings were short/zero (like being next to the runway)
· Fix to improve reroutes
December 7th, 2011Aircraft:
· Vectored thrust and rocket powered aircraft should have their thrust-vectoring and rockets engines working properly.
· Situation replays should work, even if they are based on a different type of aircraft that you are flying at the moment you load.
ATC:
· Improvements to how "AI Flies Plane" works
· Disable ATC voice when "All Sound" is off.
· Fix for crash caused by moving the user's plane from one region to another while communicating with ATC
December 5th, 2011Aircraft:
· Forward-no-panel views now never show random parts of the airplane. This may help some users with performance in that view.
· Fixed a number of rendering bugs with HDR mode and weapons, including weapons with missing or pixelated fuselages.
· Steerable landing light goes in the right direction.
· Fix for v9 aircraft crashing when saved in v10 format.
· Fixed needle deflection generic instrument to actually deflect.
Updater:
· When this beta is updated to the next, restarting X-Plane on Mac/Lin won't fail with a UDP socket error.
· Web update URL fixed - this may help with some ISPs.
General Data:
· Updated Nav and Airport database to 2011.13 to correct problems with incorrect/impossible controller comm frequencies e.g.(109.60)
Scenery/Rendering:
· V9 DSF roads with duplicate points will load correctly.
· Fixed black spots in KSEA demo area.
· Stars dimmed slightly.
ATC:
· Fixed issue where going to some remote untowered airports would cause the AI aircraft to spawn and be destroyed repeatedly.
· ATC now continues to function even in special situations e.g.(Tow/Shuttle/Carrier etc.)
· Fixed several smaller stability issues related to active zones.
· Fixed broken runway phrase during takeoff/landing clearances.
· ATC now properly stops running when the sim is paused, in replay mode or in a modal dialog.
November 30th, 2011Artifacts:
· Fixed triangle artifacts in the sky on some cards
· Fixed "missing engines" on some jet aircraft
Stability:
· Fixed numerous ATC related crashes
November 29th, 2011Hardware Support:
· Fixes crash with Intel GPUs on Windows.
· Fixes fatal error message with ATI Radeon X1000-series GPUs on all operating systems.
Performance:
· Rendering settings will default based on category of hardware - in some cases this should give better fps on default settings.
· X-Plane now detects cards that advertise instancing but don't have native hardware support; avoiding software-emulating instancing may help fps with heavy objects and moderate world level of detail. This affects the GeForce 8800, 9400, 9600, and 330M on OS X.
· Smoke puff code is optimized - this can help fps with AI traffic enabled.
Artifacts:
· A number of artifacts in HDR mode are fixed.
Plugins:
· Non-fat Linux plugins will now load.
· Some plugins that had drawing problems in HDR mode may now work.
November 25th, 2011· a brand new system for auto-generating plausible scenery for the entire world,
· a new, highly-detailed cloud and weather rendering system,
· a flight model with improved accuracy and even greater power,
· a completely redone ATC and AI Aircraft system, and
· the ability to more fully utilize multi-core CPUs for enhanced realism.
January 31st, 2011· Sim gamma defaults to 2.2 for OS X 10.6
· DVD will be found on newer Linux distros
· QuickTime Record won't fail for long aircraft names
· QuickTime Record won't hang on exit for huge screen res
· New December apt.dat data
· New Datarefs
· Hang on start with NVidia hardware on Windows fixed
January 9th, 2011· Sim gamma defaults to 2.2 for OS X 10.6
· DVD will be found on newer Linux distros
· QuickTime Record won't fail for long aircraft names
· QuickTime Record won't hang on exit for huge screen res
· New December apt.dat data
· New Datarefs
August 3rd, 2010· A few bug-fixes and functionality with the soon-to-debute EFIS-App for iPad! Run the installer with the beta box checked to grab it!
June 14th, 2010· Real Garmin-430 can be driven by X-Plane properly again (it was turned off in RC-2, sorry!)
June 10th, 2010· Windows version optimized to run faster, and a tiny change to let multi-prop single-engine planes handle auto-feathers properly after an engine failure.
June 2nd, 2010· Real Garmi-430 nav-id operative.
· Normal maps don't get corrupted when a livery is reloaded.
· Clicks behind menu bar and menus won't hit the panel. (Note the menu bar was not blocking the _2d_ panel either, so I fixed both the 2-d panel and 3-d cockpit.)
· There is a new "key" dataref that lets authors make a Cessna-172-style ignition key for a 3-d cockpit. (Previously you had a dataref for the magnetos and a command for the starter...in a 3-d pit you can only attach ONE dataref or command to the physical key, so you couldn't make a key do both without a ton of hacking. )
April 12th, 2010· A few teeny tiny bug fixes.
April 8th, 2010· A few teeny tiny bug fixes, and a new airport-nav data file with tons of airport and navaid updates.
April 7th, 2010· Added: New commands for the rest of the sliders, and a rotor-brake.
· Fixed: Bump maps can be reversed without the bumps being reversed - useful for texturing symmetric airplanes.
· Fixed: Text export of instruments exports rheostat number.
· Fixed: HUD glass inside group obeys group show-hide.
Other new stuff for 9.50:
· NAVAID editing works perfectly... add new DMEs, markers, etc, in the MAP screen in EDIT mode and have them all added and working perfectly without having to re-start X-Plane!
· Tiny change to an autopilot instrument for the little 'alert' message to come up at just the right times.
· Replay works as you expect, evern if you are paused when you enter replay mode.
· Flight data recorder works properly with the CALI statements, even if the real elevation of the ground is different than the elevation in our scenery database.
· Less wind shear in direction from real weather... should make planes more manageable.
· Space shuttle GPS operational.
· Custom transmission pressure and temperature limits settable in Plane-Maker.
· Custom mast torque instrument limits settable in Plane-Maker as well.
· The current livery is available as a dataref.
· Even more customizable airport lights for airplane authors.
· HUD instruments will hide if inside a group that is hidden - customize your HUD.
· Tuned: load time improvements on Windows.
· No more stutters while flying for a long time in one area.
· Objects were rotated a fraction of a degree, now fixed.
January 27th, 2010· A few speed optimizations and the ability to control individual throttles on multi-engine helos.
January 19th, 2010· No extra drag for jet engine nacelles, as was always intended.
· Rain, hail damage, birdstrikes, sun glare on scratches on the windshield should now cover all of the monitor, no matter the screen res... let me know if you find a case where this does not happen!
· Control-s in Plane-Maker to save the plane... any time.
· Kind of convenient.
· Fixed: Mouse won't jump when fly-by-mouse is selected.
· Fixed: Draped lit orthophotos become lit all at once.
· Fixed: Idle speed dataref works on turboprops.
· Fixed: Landing lights start off - better for panels without lan-light switches.
· Fixed: Generic text instrument works with "mechanical" lighting now.
· Fixed: Key frame table works right with generic rotary push button.
· French translation improved.
December 11th, 2009· Keyboard preferences labeled in the menus.
· Multiplayer dataref fixed.
· Orthophoto scenery night lighting comes on all at once, to avoid a checkerboard effect.
· Mouse jumps to the current yoke deflection in mouse-flight mode. This will avoid sudden control deflections when flying with the mouse.
· CUSTOM_LIGHT bugs fixed in OBJ files.
· The current livery is now available in a dataref. Improved memory use with OBJs. Rosetta can be overridden via command-line. Default livery can now be picked again after a custom livery is selected. Cmd line --no_autovary option can be used to turn off dithering of urban textures.
· Multiplayer should not cause any problems with the FMS.
· A number of changes to make the IOS with 20 students work a bit smoother... being used at a school in Georgia to teach 20 students at once! A lot of fun, and good training.
· Should not crash on quit while text-to-speech is playing, as it could before.
· Electrical system should work fine even for planes created on the ancient old PPC macs from many years ago.
· Marker-mute command now only mutes the marker audio, and does not dim the lights as well.
· Airfoil-Maker defaults to a 10-degree linear region for the lift line, which is a much better default.
· EFIS-App should have all navaids now... more accurate for those avidynes... EFIS-App to be published soon. A few changes in the Eclipse jet avionics for FAA-certification in EFIS-App as well.
· Support for "generic" lights on airplanes (sample plane coming soon)
· More accurate amp calculation for panel lighting
· AP self test datarefs added
· Electrical System for 930 planes loads with correct generator setup
· Lighting fixed on glass artificial horizon
· "Null texture, how?" Bug fixed on NVidia/Windows Hardware.
November 29th, 2009· The current livery is now available in a dataref. Improved memory use with OBJs. Rosetta can be overridden via command-line. Default livery can now be picked again after a custom livery is selected. Cmd line --no_autovary option can be used to turn off dithering of urban textures. Multiplayer should not cause any problems with the FMS.
· A number of changes to make the IOS with 20 students work a bit smoother... being used at a school in Georgia to teach 20 students at once! A lot of fun, and good training.
· This should stop crashes on Mac-OS 10.6 with ATC text to speech.
· Electrical system should work fine even for planes created on the ancient old PPC macs from many years ago.
· Should not crash on quit while text-to-speech is playing, as it could before.
· Marker-mute command now only mutes the marker audio, and does not dim the lights as well.
· Airfoil-Maker defaults to a 10-degree linear region for the lift line, which is a much better default.
· EFIS-App should have all navaids now... more accurate for those avidynes... EFIS-App to be published soon. A few changes in the Eclipse jet avionics for FAA-certification in EFIS-App as well.
· Support for "generic" lights on airplanes (sample plane coming soon)
· More accurate amp calculation for panel lighting
· AP self test datarefs added
· Electrical System for 930 planes loads with correct generator setup
· Lighting fixed on glass artificial horizon
November 20th, 2009· A number of changes to make the IOS with 20 students work a bit smoother... being used at a school in Georgia to teach 20 students at once! A lot of fun, and good training.
· This should stop crashes on Mac-OS 10.6 with ATC text to speech.
November 13th, 2009· Electrical system should work fine even for planes created on the ancient old PPC macs from many years ago.
· Should not crash on quit while text-to-speech is playing, as it could before.
November 12th, 2009· Marker-mute command now only mutes the marker audio, and does not dim the lights as well.
· Airfoil-Maker defaults to a 10-degree linear region for the lift line, which is a much better default.
· EFIS-App should have all navaids now... more accurate for those avidynes... EFIS-App to be published soon. A few changes in the Eclipse jet avionics for FAA-certification in EFIS-App as well.
· Support for "generic" lights on airplanes (sample plane coming soon)
· More accurate amp calculation for panel lighting
· AP self test datarefs added
· Electrical System for 930 planes loads with correct generator setup
· Lighting fixed on glass artificial horizon
October 28th, 2009· Systems Modeling New features, mostly added for total system-realism for FAA-Certification: New elec sys modelling improvements. Now you can have up to 4 buses, and each system can draw from any of, or all of, those buses. As well, you can assign any generator and any battery to any bus. As well, each generator can have a different max amperage. This really lets you start to dial in the electrical systems really well! New feature in the IOS: Shut down tailwind ILS. This checkbox in the map screen lets you shut down all ILS's that are not aligned into the wind, as is typically done in reality This is really needed at airports like KLAX, which have ILS's in opposite directions BUT ON THE SAME FREQUENCY! Any shut-down and failed NAVAIDs turn red so you can see that they are not operational. Kind of nice! New setting in Plane-Maker systems screen: Number of degrees of heading error needed for the autopilot to switch turn directions. 180 by default, 20 for the G-1000. New instrument: Radio alt decision-height light... A little light that goes off when you make it down to decision height. Oil pressure modelled a hair differently to show change in response to rpm change a hair more. Emergency gear extension override commands now avail... Can be assigned to any joystick button of course! New Plane-Maker feature: Import AIRCRAFT... This imports everything EXCEPT the panel... nice if you want multiple acf files that are the same except the panel! The ENGINE_VAC gages in the ENGINE ROUND folder show the suction from each engine... You can have two of these. The SUCTION_LO_LITE_GA instruments show the suction from each engine... You can have two of these. The SUCTION gage in the SUPPLEMENT folder shows the total suction of all available vacuum pumps... It shows what the instruments are GETTING, and you only want ONE of these! Inverter failure will fail the trq indicators now if the trq indicators are hooked up to the inverters as per the system screen in Plane-Maker. Click on any airport in the IOS screen... You should get airport info and the weather at the airport as well. New option in Plane-Maker: The altitude tracks the aircraft current altitude when the cws button is down: yes or no. Set your ports for listening and receiving in the net screens now. Oil pump failure a little more realistic... We see more gradual engine failure, with rise in oil temperature. A few (real) G-430 failures, useful if connected to a real Garmin-430. Cool new Plane: New plane: Stinson l-5.,. It is in the general aviation folder, and very nice. Nice little features and UI tweaks: Glideslope plot on the IOS now shows the width of the glideslope region, and shows the marker beacons as well.. kind of nice! Reversed/beta/forward thrust engine-mode saved in replays. Better throttle response from the fadec.. closer to linear. 3-D cockpit will let you look around when paused now. Toll-spoiler logic just a hair smarter with speedbrakes: Spoilers will not extend beyond max speedbrake deployment. Boat-drawing rendering-option is now separated from the forest fires and balloons. NAVAID failure-page shows the type for each NAVAID... makes it easier to see exactly what NAVAID you are failing. All 'situation-movies' are now referred to as 'replays' everywhere in the UI Engine-failure options that do not apply to the type of engine in your plane do not appear in the engine-failure list... A bit easier to spot the failures you want. New instruments and commands: New flight director/autopilot commands and instruments in the BUTTONS folder to turn the flight director and autopilot servos on and off. Commands restored: "sim/instruments/ECAM_mode_down" "sim/instruments/ECAM_mode_up" New command that you can hook up to any key or joystick button: Marker beacon mute. It's in the ANNUNCIATORS group. New annunciator: GPU connected. You can assign any joystick button to the COMMAND to connect the GPU, and when you hit it, you will see the gpu-connected light activate, and also get plenty of power to bus #1 on the airplane. Minor tweaks and Bug-Fixes: Mean time between failure causes random failures when checked in the failures screen, otherwise does not! IOS glideslope map properly labelled as AGL, not MSL, altitudes. EFIS-app tweaked a hair to display both adf's and display a few more things a hair more accurately, and let you enter initial fuel No blackout in external view modes ,and Cinema Verite should not respond to G-load at very low G. Planes with only 1 inverter switch should still drive all inverter-driven systems ok! Flaps deploy at the right speed now, ion all cases... they were sometimes too fast before. Arrow keys to scroll large 2-D panels in side-views, as is used for some older planes, now work!
· Rendering Engine The rendering engine is more heavily threaded for better use of multiple cores. The sim should start faster with very high tree settings, and forests will appear sooner on machines with many cores. Normal maps available for OBJs. File format information coming soon. Prop disc can be customized by plugins - see Custom Prop Discs Better memory efficiency with the apt.dat file. V7 cockpit objects don't slow Plane-Maker to a crawl.
· Just a few tweaks to the plugin system read and adjust glideslope and flaps that were not working QUITE the way some people wanted.
· Lat-lon waypoints from Goodway-generated flight plans import correctly.
· Rare crash bug when parsing liveries fixed. Normal maps are no longer distorted by customized gamma settings.
· X-Plane will generate an Apple crash report instead of a one-line X-Plane crash report in a few cases. This will give us more info when the sim does fail.
· Air driven generator needs to spin a bit more to power the system, as in reality.
· Tail wheel lock applies at any elevator aft of nuetral, as in reality.
· No crash when AI airplanes have panel tooltips. (This should fix a number of crashes during startup.)
· No incorrect log warnings when loading liveries.
· Updated the command list.
· No more erroneous master caution on the Cirrus Jet.
· Indicated airspeed tweaked just a hair to get the Mach-compression effects... this tunes the fast jets jut a bit.
· A tiny modification of the file-reading system to solve a few random data-corruption issues.
· Objects and other text files with no newline at the end of the file load correctly.
· Airplanes whose default livery is not available run without fps hit.
· A few bug-fixes for a few plugins.
· Your path should always plot on the map screen when in 3-D mode.
· Alignment of plugin text is now consisten with the rest of X-Plane.
· A hair more refinement on the various hydraulic, vaccuum, fuel, and oil pumps.
· A few tiny refinements in the prop-pitch model.
· Glideslope indicator should only show up when desired.
· Livery should be auto-loaded in X-Plane ifd pre-selected in Plane-Maker.
· A few more datarefs now available for custom prop discs - sample plugin coming soon.
· No more crash on start on Vista with full screen selected.
· Calair FMS programmer should open without as many spaces.
· Pushback plugins won't get "stuck". x737 FMS should work again.
· Some cases of upside down video capture and hangs should be fixed with ATI video cards on OS X.
· OK the FMS and GPS is now really awesome... better than anything you have seen before with X-Plane. Here is the deal: Enter any plan you like into the FMS... The distance and time enroute will display at the bottom from your CURRENT position to whatever the final destination in the FMS is... So as you scroll through waypoints in the FMS, you will see the distance and time from your current location to the displayed fix. Now, while this is going on, if you have a GPS in addition to the FMS, the GPS will always display the distance and time to THE NEXT FIX YOU ARE FLYING TO... No matter what fix you have selected in the FMS! In other words, you can set your FMS to the last fix in the plan to see when you will really arrive at the final destination, while the GPS is displaying the time and distance simply to the next fix. All of this runs at the same time, no problem. As well, you can enter a full FMS plans into the FMS, or, if you like, enter direct->to routes into the GPS... the FMS will simply display that single-leg plan that you just entered into the GPS! We have had GPS's and FMS's for a long time, but now all the pieces fit together just PERFECTLY. This is lots more important than it sounds: This is what will allow us to easily add even MORE GPS and FMS detail in the future! (Something, obviously, we have planned!) Various 'prop feathers on engine-fail/prop-pull/mixture-pull' and other odd engine-reverse cases should be perfectly operational. Emergency engine power is available only after engine failure, regardless of how many times you have flown since you started X-Plane. Spool time for jet engines is back... I THOUGHT we could get by without it, but it hurts the SHUT-DOWN spool-down times to take it away... so it is back! Radio altimeter decision-height selection should always move in steps of 10, as is probably desired. Idle-speed switches should be operational in all types of craft. A few little engine-sync/prop-sync issues should be sorted out... the systems should be good for jets, turboprops, recips, etc. 172 autopilot now operational.
· Planet-map zoom does not affect map zoom, as is probably desired. A hair more internal code re-organization to avoid bugs in the future involving many different planes all flying at once. A nice new interface on the serial-port selections on the joystick and equipment screen, for things likeGarmin 430 and PFC hardware... The text indicating what serial device you are listening for flashes in the lower-right of the screen if data is coming in to that device. This is all about getting certifiable sims quickly developed, tested, installed, and running... And being able to quickly hook up and test serial devices is needed for this in many cases, with a nice UI showing which serial devices are talking and which ones aren't.
· More refinements to the GPS-FMS-Garmin-430 model to make plugins work as they always have, even in the new improved internal organization of the code. Goodway Plugin can program GPS CAX FMS plugin can program FMS Yet a few more tony enhancements in the "autopilot/autopilot select/ott_seldisp_ALT_VVI.png" instrument, as we make it EXACTLY like the old KAS-297. 3-D Panel will animate for complex aircraft like the EC120. Fixed crash on quit on some machines.
· More tuning on DEFAULTING the number of batteries, generators, and inverters to decent values, no matter what version, format, and method of controlling these things you used in the old ACF files. Prop "feather on fail" a hair better... If you have various 'feather on engine failure, prop control at min, mixture pulled' options in Plane-Maker Systems screen checked, the props will fail to feathered pitch at no oil pressure, whether on a single or twin, as you probably intend. As well, refinement of things like propeller-rendering and reverse and beta and reverse pitch on unusual planes that have a different number of engines than props.
· RC6 Small refinement to auto-set the number of batteries and generators FOR you, if you have not specified them in Plane-Maker.
· Small refinements in carb-heat model. Failures-page re-organized a hair... It is really nicely-organized now, with no redundant failures, but plenty of nice failures to have! Specify the number of batteries, generators, and inverters in the system window in Plane-Maker... No more guessing based on the number of switches on the panel! specify if the starter is electric or air-driven in the systems window in Plane-Maker... No more guessing based on the starter amperage!
· Ever-so-slight tuning of a few bits and pieces of the low enroute map. Subtle difference in Plane-Maker, Engines screen, second tab over: The top number is the number of ENGINES, the bottom number is the number of PROPS... This is not QUITE what we had before, where the bottom number WAS the number of 'thrust points'... but this is a bit more intuitive, and clear, I think. A few really really ODD designs MAY require updates in Plane-Maker. Improvements in the flight-replay: The flight should be properly saved and re-playable no matter how many times you enter and exit replay mode at various different points in the replay. As well, the flight-replays should include ALL the planes that were in flight at the time, so replay of entire 20-plane formations should be possible! As well, replay for your flight now lasts about 85 minutes (up from about 35 minutes in earlier versions). BUT, that is assuming you are flying by yourself! The more planes you have flying with you, the shorter the replay duration! New autopilot buttons: Altitude ARM and TOGA... kind of nice! A few more failures in the g-1000 failure-list... lo and hi generator and battery voltage... They live in the g-1000 page for now, but do in fact work for everyone. A few more failures in the failure types tab in the failures screen for various engine indications Now your challenge: can you find any failures that DON'T WORK? Try failing every indication in that page, and check every engine instrument in the sim... Do all the indications fail, as they should? And do all SYSTEMS continue to FUNCTION normally, as they should? Gear indicator failure is a bit better... it just fails ONE bulb, as is typical in the real plane. Distances and times enroute on the FMS should update just fine. As well, the plugin APIs for the GPS and FMS have been fixed. If your GPS, FMS or flight planning plugin does not work in RC4, but worked in 931, please file a bug immediately! As well, a number of other datarefs have been fixed. Annunciator on the screen if FROZEN (different than paused!)
· Minor enhancements: Plane-Maker: It is now possible to enter negative generator and battery current redlines and the like. This could be useful for some planes. Plane-Maker: You now enter the BETA pitch of prop. This is the prop pitch that you see when the prop is in beta mode, which turboprops often have, and this will happen when you hit the . key to go into reverse, but have not yet advanced the throttle to really hit the reverse. A number around -10 or so should work pretty well for most planes, if you do not know the exact prop pitch of the real plane. If you have an electric hydraulic system but no electric hydraulic pump switch, then the system will default to 'on', as is probably desired. When you show ALL ILS's or just the ILS you are trying to fly in the IOS window, the markers associated with the ILS are also show, or not, to further refine the ILS display. In the profile view on the IOS, where we see the plot of our approach down the glideslope, we now have better AI to tell what approach you are trying to fly, and you can see that approach description in the lower-right of the screen, and that information is stored for recall during replay!
· The autopilot/autopilot select/ott_seldisp_ALT_VVI and autopilot/console_filled_GA are very true to the real instruments, right down to every light-flash and operation, even including the test-modes. Be sure to assign a joystick button to 'autopilot test' if you want to fully use autopilot/console_filled_GA, which has the trim indicator stay lit up until that test is run, as in the real plane! Smoother action on the linear tapes in the cockpit, like you find in the SR-71 primary displays. More named lights for strobes and beacons. Example plane coming soon to the wiki.
· Bug-Fixes: AudioPanelHM instrument is now fully controllable... You could not set com-1 before this. We have functioning glideslopes to the carriers and frigates now... so use 'em! Little glitch in sky color that left a barely-visible seam in the sky is now fixed. Plane follows GPS paths entered in FMS properly The livery you select should be visible to multiplayers flying with you! LINUX: taxiways and runway lines and lights are fixed. ATTR_light_level works correctly even when shaders are off. Adaptive engine gauges will show arcs again. Generic rolling instruments don't have an extra mask o them. Panel texture will work properly for planes with very large cockpit objects. Engines will work for AI planes contorolled by plugins.
· Oil and fuel pressure modeling improved: Now we simulate both the pump and the over-pressure regulator. This should lead to more accurate simulation of these systems. Be sure to set the low and high oil and fuel pressure green-arc limits in Plane-Maker to really get the best use out of these systems, since the simulation I wrote does tune the pumps to try to keep the pressures in the green-arc range! New instrument: Select/engage vvi/alt, in the autopilot sel/engage folder... This is used on the Bendix-King autopilots that used to be popular.
· Making the aircraft out of 1 obj in Plane-Maker will auto-position the landing gear for you (rather than making you find the right dataref to place the gear), which makes things a bit easier to generate aircraft objects for airport scenery and the like, with the landing gear already in the right place. The 'x-mapped file ran out of memory' error that a few of you got sometimes should be solved... give it a try now! Memory use while flying is reduced as well. Airplane named lights can be used for static aircraft - they will stay "on" when used for a static plane rather than copying what the user's plane does. As well, there are new datarefs for airplane lights. Panel drawing optimized slightly for a hair more speed.
· NEW FEATURES: New plane-maker autopilot option: Adjust alt hold when pitch buttons on autopilot pushed. If you have this option, then the nose up and nose down commands will adjust the held altitude if you are in altitude-hold mode when you send them. New Plane-Maker option: Auto-feather the prop on mixture-pull, as used in some prop planes. New plane-maker autopilot option: Go to pitch mode on altitude arm. Some old autopilots do this. Cool new command: Reset last flight... Available in the advanced buttons settings. This resets the last flight you did.
· REFINEMENTS: Vacuum system gives annunciator lite and lo-vac flag if the vacuum system falls below the lo-end vacuum REDLINE, not the green arc! Set the lo-end vacuum redline accordingly in Plane-Maker. Better weather reports for airports that you click on in the Low Enroute map! We now scan the METAR file, if you have it, for weather at that airport, and give the clouds, visibility, wind, and baro pressure! If you do not have carriers or frigates selected, then the IOS will show the autopilot entries in that space instead... better for pro training! Sim-time and ground-speed multiplier both give on-screen text warnings now. Back course and APPROACH annunciators and modes tuned a hair. If you have 2 Garmin 430s in the panel, each can have it's own GPS destination. HSI, etc, will follow GPS #1.
· BUG-FIXES: Airplanes should not appear backwards on the glideslope view in the map screen when heading back along on downwind to the ils-intercept. Simulated Garmin-430 commands should all work now. No water tiles shown in orbital view, and less pause when coming out of orbit, while we are on the that topic.
· Beta 6 Autopilot: Alt will not arm when you do the arm-alt command if the glideslope is already engaged. This is as most real airplanes behave. New engine-failure mode: Thrust-reverser accidental-deploy... can be a tricky one to deal with. If you do NOT have the 'altitude tracks aircraft when CWS is held' checked in Plane-Maker, then X-Plane will NOT track your altitude when CWS is held... but it WILL track your vertical speed! This as the way some real autopilots behave. Improved EGT, TIT, and engine-braking modeling based on flight-test in the real plane. No more NAV signal wandering around near the edge of reception range. It seems that most modern systems can filter this out, in reality. Fuel burn should go with ground coverage speed now.
· Refinements in EGT-modeling. We get closer to redline in redline power and mixture conditions. Refinements in CHT-modeling. CHT should not go to huge negative values when you enter unrealistic values in Plane-Maker. Better ability to hold position on the runway under high power settings, if the real plane would have the braking ability to do so. Flight path should plot in the proper place in the weather-map in the set-weather window. If the localizer fails on a localizer or ILS with DME, the DME will continue to broadcast, as in reality. If you are in approach mode and hit the APR button, it will drop you out of all approach modes, as in reality. New button in Plane-Maker to enter the number of degrees off that the autopilot will auto-select back-course on. Enter 0 to not auto-select back-course. X-Squawkbox works again!
· A number of odd graphical artifacts fixed. You can now select buses for all systems in the amperage-selection screen in Plane-Maker... You could not select the amperage for a few systems before. Autopilot can be set to auto-load the current altitude into the altitude pre-select window, or not, in the Systems page of Plane-Maker. Spoiler deflection limits should now be perfectly respected. UI should always be visible... it was sometime a hair dark, or very dark, or red at night. We now just keep it the same no matter the lighting conditions to be a bit more consistent. Can anyone find any case where any bit of the user-interface is improperly-colored at night? A few more electrical-system details ironed out.
· King-Air and a number of other planes should function normally that had an electrical-system glitch in beta-2. Mouse-wheel throttle should not conflict with joystick throttles any more Brakes should hold the plane back a bit better during runups, etc. The trim-deflection time is entered in Plane-Maker in seconds, rather than ratio, so we all understand exactly what it means. This lets you do a better job of acf-design: Measure the time it takes the trim to move full-distance from one extreme to the other and enter that in Plane-Maker to get the perfect trim speed. New feature in Plane-Maker Equipment Options screen: all engines: Shut off fuel when prop control at minimum! Check this to have the fuel to the engine shut off when the prop control is pulled back to minimum. This is used on some turboprop aircraft. New autopilot altitude-warning options. Check out the Systems window in Plane-Maker to see them all. Basically, you can have the X-Plane autopilot beep at various altitude warnings or excursions. Airports with old runways won't appear incorrectly oriented or mis-sized. New datarefs for additional failures and glide-slope detection.
· NEW STUFF: The filled autopilot annunciator now displays pitch-mistrim 'TRM' alert if the autopilot is unable to trim out the pitch-loads, as it is in the real plane. Improved FDR (Flight Data Recorder) replay: We always read every line of the replay, and the propellers and rotors spin during playback of FDR files, as desired. New button in the weight and balance screen to set to max gross weight... Kind of convenient to flight-test at gross weight every time. Improvement in FADEC mode on recip engines to limit power more accurately for turbocharged engines. Plane-Maker:Panel Editor: You can now specify the buses that each instrument depend on, regardless of the number of buses on the plane. Remember that you can have up to 4 buses, and each instrument can depend on any bus! The generic needle can rotate around an arbitrary location. Useful for making various types of "wiper" instruments and fuel gauges. Key frames can optionally wrap around. Use the generic pointer with wrapping and clipping to make a "tape" or "ladder"-style instrument. Instruments can be tied to more than one electrical bus. Non-generic instruments can be tied to an electrical bus too!
· FIXES: Piper Malibu throttle handles should not turn gray in clouds. No stars in the water at very low reflection settings - before the reflections were pixelated and ugly. Real weather and version-checks should work. Glass instruments on bus 2 won't turn off when bus 1 loses power. Electrical system settings for panel should import better from 930 planes.
October 21st, 2009· Lat-lon waypoints from Goodway-generated flight plans import correctly.
· Rare crash bug when parsing liveries fixed.
· Normal maps are no longer distorted by customized gamma settings.
· X-Plane will generate an Apple crash report instead of a one-line X-Plane crash report in a few cases. This will give us more info when the sim does fail.
· Air driven generator needs to spin a bit more to power the system, as in reality.
· Tail wheel lock applies at any elevator aft of nuetral, as in reality.
October 12th, 2009· No crash when AI airplanes have panel tooltips. (This should fix a number of crashes during startup.)
· No incorrect log warnings when loading liveries.
· Updated the command list.
October 12th, 2009· No more erroneous master caution on the Cirrus Jet.
· Indicated airspeed tweaked just a hair to get the Mach-compression effects... this tunes the fast jets jut a bit.
· A tiny modification of the file-reading system to solve a few random data-corruption issues.
· Objects and other text files with no newline at the end of the file load correctly.
· Airplanes whose default livery is not available run without fps hit.
October 8th, 2009· A few bug-fixes for a few plugins.
· Your path should always plot on the map screen when in 3-d mode.
· Alignment of plugin text is now consisten with the rest of X-Plane.
October 5th, 2009· A hair more refinement on the various hydraulic, vaccuum, fuel, and oil pumps.
· A few tiny refinements in the prop-pitch model.
· Glideslope indicator should only show up when desired.
· Livery should be auto-loaded in X-Plane ifd pre-selected in Plane-Maker.
· A few more datarefs now available for custom prop discs - sample plugin coming soon.
· No more crash on start on Vista with full screen selected.
· Calair FMS programmer should open without as many spaces.
· Pushback plugins won't get "stuck".
· x737 FMS should work again.
· Some cases of upside down video capture and hangs should be fixed with ATI video cards on OS X.
October 2nd, 2009· OK the FMS and GPS is now really awesome... better than anything you have seen before with X-Plane.
· Here is the deal: Enter any plan you like into the FMS...
· The distance and time enroute will display at the bottom from your CURRENT position to whatever the final destination in the FMS is...
· So as you scroll through waypoints in the FMS, you will see the distance and time from your current location to the displayed fix.
· Now, while this is going on, if you have a GPS in addition to the FMS, the GPS will always display the distance and time to THE NEXT FIX YOU ARE FLYING TO...
· No matter what fix you have selected in the FMS! In other words, you can set your FMS to the last fix in the plan to see when you will really arrive at the final destination, while the GPS is displaying the time and distance simply to the next fix. All of this runs at the same time, no problem.
· As well, you can enter a full FMS plans into the FMS, or, if you like, enter direct->to routes into the GPS... the FMS will simply display that single-leg plan that you just entered into the GPS!
· We have had GPS's and FMS's for a long time, but now all the pieces fit together just PERFECTLY. This is lots more important than it sounds: This is what will allow us to easily add even MORE GPS and FMS detail in the future! (Something, obviously, we have planned!)
· Various 'prop feathers on engine-fail/prop-pull/mixture-pull' and other odd engine-reverse cases should be perfectly operational. Emergency engine power is available only after engine failure, regardless of how many times you have flown since you started X-Plane.
· Spool time for jet engines is back...
· I THOUGHT we could get by without it, but it hurts the SHUT-DOWN spool-down times to take it away... so it is back! Radio altimeter decision-height selection should always move in steps of 10, as is probably desired.
· Idle-speed switches should be operational in all types of craft.
· A few little engine-sync/prop-sync issues should be sorted out... the systems should be good for jets, turboprops, recips, etc. 172 autopilot now operational.
September 24th, 2009· Planet-map zoom does not affect map zoom, as is probably desired.
· A hair more internal code re-organization to avoid bugs in the future involving many different planes all flying at once.
· A nice new interface on the serial-port selections on the joystick and equipment screen, for things likeGarmin 430 and PFC hardware... The text indicating what serial device you are listening for flashes in the lower-right of the screen if data is coming in to that device. This is all about getting certifiable sims quickly developed, tested, installed, and running... And being able to quickly hook up and test serial devices is needed for this in many cases, with a nice UI showing which serial devices are talking and which ones aren't.
September 24th, 2009· More refinements to the GPS-FMS-Garmin-430 model to make plugins work as they always have, even in the new improved internal organization of the code.
· Goodway Plugin can program GPS CAX FMS plugin can program FMS
· Yet a few more tony enhancements in the "autopilot/autopilot select/ott_seldisp_ALT_VVI.png" instrument, as we make it EXACTLY like the old KAS-297.
· 3-D Panel will animate for complex aircraft like the EC120.
· Fixed crash on quit on some machines.
September 22nd, 2009· More tuning on DEFAULTING the number of batteries, generators, and inverters to decent values, no matter what version, format, and method of controlling these things you used in the old ACF files.
· Prop "feather on fail" a hair better... If you have various 'feather on engine failure, prop control at min, mixture pulled' options in Plane-Maker Systems screen checked, the props will fail to feathered pitch at no oil pressure, whether on a single or twin, as you probably intend.
· As well, refinement of things like propeller-rendering and reverse and beta and reverse pitch on unusual planes that have a different number of engines than props.
September 20th, 2009· Small refinement to auto-set the number of batteries and generators FOR you, if you have not specified them in Plane-Maker.
September 19th, 2009· Small refinements in carb-heat model.
· Failures-page re-organized a hair... It is really nicely-organized now, with no redundant failures, but plenty of nice failures to have!
· Specify the number of batteries, generators, and inverters in the system window in Plane-Maker... No more guessing based on the number of switches on the panel! specify if the starter is electric or air-driven in the systems window in Plane-Maker... No more guessing based on the starter amperage!
September 17th, 2009· Ever-so-slight tuning of a few bits and pieces of the low enroute map.
· Subtle difference in Plane-Maker, Engines screen, second tab over: The top number is the number of ENGINES, the bottom number is the number of PROPS... This is not QUITE what we had before, where the bottom number WAS the number of 'thrust points'... but this is a bit more intuitive, and clear, I think. A few really really ODD designs MAY require updates in Plane-Maker.
· Improvements in the flight-replay: The flight should be properly saved and re-playable no matter how many times you enter and exit replay mode at various different points in the replay. As well, the flight-replays should include ALL the planes that were in flight at the time, so replay of entire 20-plane formations should be possible! As well, replay for your flight now lasts about 85 minutes (up from about 35 minutes in earlier versions). BUT, that is assuming you are flying by yourself! The more planes you have flying with you, the shorter the replay duration!
· New autopilot buttons: Altitude ARM and TOGA... kind of nice!
· A few more failures in the g-1000 failure-list... lo and hi generator and battery voltage... They live in the g-1000 page for now, but do in fact work for everyone.
· A few more failures in the failure types tab in the failures screen for various engine indications Now your challenge: can you find any failures that DON'T WORK? Try failing every indication in that page, and check every engine instrument in the sim... Do all the indications fail, as they should? And do all SYSTEMS continue to FUNCTION normally, as they should?
· Gear indicator failure is a bit better... it just fails ONE bulb, as is typical in the real plane.
· Distances and times enroute on the FMS should update just fine. As well, the plugin APIs for the GPS and FMS have been fixed. If your GPS, FMS or flight planning plugin does not work in RC4, but worked in 931, please file a bug immediately! As well, a number of other datarefs have been fixed.
· Annunciator on the screen if FROZEN (different than paused!)
September 14th, 2009Minor enhancements:
· Plane-Maker: It is now possible to enter negative generator and battery current redlines and the like. This could be useful for some planes.
· Plane-Maker: You now enter the BETA pitch of prop. This is the prop pitch that you see when the prop is in beta mode, which turboprops often have, and this will happen when you hit the . key to go into reverse, but have not yet advanced the throttle to really hit the reverse. A number around -10 or so should work pretty well for most planes, if you do not know the exact prop pitch of the real plane.
· If you have an electric hydraulic system but no electric hydraulic pump switch, then the system will default to 'on', as is probably desired.
· When you show ALL ILS's or just the ILS you are trying to fly in the IOS window, the markers associated with the ILS are also show, or not, to further refine the ILS display.
· In the profile view on the IOS, where we see the plot of our approach down the glideslope, we now have better AI to tell what approach you are trying to fly, and you can see that approach description in the lower-right of the screen, and that information is stored for recall during replay!
· The autopilot/autopilot select/ott_seldisp_ALT_VVI and autopilot/console_filled_GA are very true to the real instruments, right down to every light-flash and operation, even including the test-modes. Be sure to assign a joystick button to 'autopilot test' if you want to fully use autopilot/console_filled_GA, which has the trim indicator stay lit up until that test is run, as in the real plane!
· Smoother action on the linear tapes in the cockpit, like you find in the SR-71 primary displays.
· More named lights for strobes and beacons. Example plane coming soon to the wiki.
Bug-Fixes:
· AudioPanelHM instrument is now fully controllable... You could not set com-1 before this. We have functioning glideslopes to the carriers and frigates now... so use 'em! Little glitch in sky color that left a barely-visible seam in the sky is now fixed. Plane follows GPS paths entered in FMS properly The livery you select should be visible to multiplayers flying with you!
· LINUX: taxiways and runway lines and lights are fixed. ATTR_light_level works correctly even when shaders are off.
· Adaptive engine gauges will show arcs again.
· Generic rolling instruments don't have an extra mask o them.
· Panel texture will work properly for planes with very large cockpit objects.
· Engines will work for AI planes controlled by plugins.
September 7th, 2009· Oil and fuel pressure modeling improved: Now we simulate both the pump and the over-pressure regulator. This should lead to more accurate simulation of these systems. Be sure to set the low and high oil and fuel pressure green-arc limits in Plane-Maker to really get the best use out of these systems, since the simulation I wrote does tune the pumps to try to keep the pressures in the green-arc range!
· New instrument: Select/engage vvi/alt, in the autopilot sel/engage folder... This is used on the Bendix-King autopilots that used to be popular.
· Making the aircraft out of 1 obj in Plane-Maker will auto-position the landing gear for you (rather than making you find the right dataref to place the gear), which makes things a bit easier to generate aircraft objects for airport scenery and the like, with the landing gear already in the right place.
· The 'x-mapped file ran out of memory' error that a few of you got sometimes should be solved... give it a try now! Memory use while flying is reduced as well.
· Airplane named lights can be used for static aircraft - they will stay "on" when used for a static plane rather than copying what the user's plane does. As well, there are new datarefs for airplane lights.
· Panel drawing optimized slightly for a hair more speed.
September 7th, 2009· Oil and fuel pressure modeling improved: Now we simulate both the pump and the over-pressure regulator. This should lead to more accurate simulation of these systems. Be sure to set the low and high oil and fuel pressure green-arc limits in Plane-Maker to really get the best use out of these systems, since the simulation I wrote does tune the pumps to try to keep the pressures in the green-arc range!
· New instrument: Select/engage vvi/alt, in the autopilot sel/engage folder... This is used on the Bendix-King autopilots that used to be popular.
· Making the aircraft out of 1 obj in Plane-Maker will auto-position the landing gear for you (rather than making you find the right dataref to place the gear), which makes things a bit easier to generate aircraft objects for airport scenery and the like, with the landing gear already in the right place.
· The 'x-mapped file ran out of memory' error that a few of you got sometimes should be solved... give it a try now! Memory use while flying is reduced as well.
· Airplane named lights can be used for static aircraft - they will stay "on" when used for a static plane rather than copying what the user's plane does. As well, there are new datarefs for airplane lights.
· Panel drawing optimized slightly for a hair more speed.
September 3rd, 2009NEW FEATURES:
· New plane-maker autopilot option: Adjust alt hold when pitch buttons on autopilot pushed. If you have this option, then the nose up and nose down commands will adjust the held altitude if you are in altitude-hold mode when you send them.
· New Plane-Maker option: Auto-feather the prop on mixture-pull, as used in some prop planes.
· New plane-maker autopilot option: Go to pitch mode on altitude arm. Some old autopilots do this.
· Cool new command: Reset last flight... Available in the advanced buttons settings. This resets the last flight you did.
REFINEMENTS:
· Vacuum system gives annunciator lite and lo-vac flag if the vacuum system falls below the lo-end vacuum REDLINE, not the green arc! Set the lo-end vacuum redline accordingly in Plane-Maker.
· Better weather reports for airports that you click on in the Low Enroute map! We now scan the METAR file, if you have it, for weather at that airport, and give the clouds, visibility, wind, and baro pressure!
· If you do not have carriers or frigates selected, then the IOS will show the autopilot entries in that space instead... better for pro training!
· Sim-time and ground-speed multiplier both give on-screen text warnings now.
· Back course and APPROACH annunciators and modes tuned a hair.
· If you have 2 Garmin 430s in the panel, each can have it's own GPS destination. HSI, etc, will follow GPS #1.
BUG-FIXES:
· Airplanes should not appear backwards on the glideslope view in the map screen when heading back along on downwind to the ils-intercept.
· Simulated Garmin-430 commands should all work now.
· No water tiles shown in orbital view, and less pause when coming out of orbit, while we are on the that topic.
September 1st, 2009· Autopilot: Alt will not arm when you do the arm-alt command if the glideslope is already engaged. This is as most real airplanes behave.
· New engine-failure mode: Thrust-reverser accidental-deploy... can be a tricky one to deal with.
· If you do NOT have the 'altitude tracks aircraft when CWS is held' checked in Plane-Maker, then X-Plane will NOT track your altitude when CWS is held... but it WILL track your vertical speed! This as the way some real autopilots behave.
· Improved EGT, TIT, and engine-braking modeling based on flight-test in the real plane.
· No more NAV signal wandering around near the edge of reception range. It seems that most modern systems can filter this out, in reality.
· Fuel burn should go with ground coverage speed now.
August 28th, 2009· Refinements in EGT-modeling. We get closer to redline in redline power and mixture conditions. Refinements in CHT-modeling. CHT should not go to huge negative values when you enter unrealistic values in Plane-Maker.
· Better ability to hold position on the runway under high power settings, if the real plane would have the braking ability to do so.
· Flight path should plot in the proper place in the weather-map in the set-weather window.
· If the localizer fails on a localizer or ILS with DME, the DME will continue to broadcast, as in reality.
· If you are in approach mode and hit the APR button, it will drop you out of all approach modes, as in reality.
· New button in Plane-Maker to enter the number of degrees off that the autopilot will auto-select back-course on. Enter 0 to not auto-select back-course.
· X-Squawkbox works again!
August 27th, 2009· A number of odd graphical artifacts fixed.
· You can now select buses for all systems in the amperage-selection screen in Plane-Maker... You could not select the amperage for a few systems before.
· Autopilot can be set to auto-load the current altitude into the altitude pre-select window, or not, in the Systems page of Plane-Maker.
· Spoiler deflection limits should now be perfectly respected.
· UI should always be visible... it was sometime a hair dark, or very dark, or red at night. We now just keep it the same no matter the lighting conditions to be a bit more consistent. Can anyone find any case where any bit of the user-interface is improperly-colored at night?
· A few more electrical-system details ironed out.
August 25th, 2009· King-Air and a number of other planes should function normally that had an electrical-system glitch in beta-2.
· Mouse-wheel throttle should not conflict with joystick throttles any more
· Brakes should hold the plane back a bit better during runups, etc.
· The trim-deflection time is entered in Plane-Maker in seconds, rather than ratio, so we all understand exactly what it means. This lets you do a better job of acf-design: Measure the time it takes the trim to move full-distance from one extreme to the other and enter that in Plane-Maker to get the perfect trim speed.
· New feature in Plane-Maker Equipment Options screen: all engines: Shut off fuel when prop control at minimum! Check this to have the fuel to the engine shut off when the prop control is pulled back to minimum. This is used on some turboprop aircraft.
· New autopilot altitude-warning options. Check out the Systems window in Plane-Maker to see them all. Basically, you can have the X-Plane autopilot beep at various altitude warnings or excursions.
· Airports with old runways won't appear incorrectly oriented or mis-sized.
· New datarefs for additional failures and glide-slope detection.
August 24th, 2009· NEW STUFF: The filled autopilot annunciator now displays pitch-mistrim 'TRM' alert if the autopilot is unable to trim out the pitch-loads, as it is in the real plane.
· Improved FDR (Flight Data Recorder) replay: We always read every line of the replay, and the propellers and rotors spin during playback of FDR files, as desired.
· New button in the weight and balance screen to set to max gross weight... Kind of convenient to flight-test at gross weight every time.
· Improvement in FADEC mode on recip engines to limit power more accurately for turbocharged engines.
· Plane-Maker:Panel Editor: You can now specify the buses that each instrument depend on, regardless of the number of buses on the plane. Remember that you can have up to 4 buses, and each instrument can depend on any bus! The generic needle can rotate around an arbitrary location. Useful for making various types of "wiper" instruments and fuel gauges. Key frames can optionally wrap around. Use the generic pointer with wrapping and clipping to make a "tape" or "ladder"-style instrument. Instruments can be tied to more than one electrical bus. Non-generic instruments can be tied to an electrical bus too!
· FIXES: Piper Malibu throttle handles should not turn gray in clouds. No stars in the water at very low reflection settings - before the reflections were pixelated and ugly. Real weather and version-checks should work. Glass instruments on bus 2 won't turn off when bus 1 loses power. Electrical system settings for panel should import better from 930 planes.
· IMPORTANT: if you have a 930 airplane you should go back to the 930 version for beta 2 - do not use the conversion for beta 1. 940 beta 1 had bugs in the airplane conversion code, so your electrical system and instrument bus settings will not have converted properly. 940 beta 2 should fix this.
August 20th, 2009New features, mostly added for total system-realism for FAA-Certification:
· New elec sys modelling improvements. Now you can have up to 4 buses, and each system can draw from any of, or all of, those buses.
· As well, you can assign any generator and any battery to any bus.
· As well, each generator can have a different max amperage.
· This really lets you start to dial in the electrical systems really well!
· New feature in the IOS: Shut down tailwind ILS. This checkbox in the map screen lets you shut down all ILS's that are not aligned into the wind, as is typically done in reality
· This is really needed at airports like KLAX, which have ILS's in opposite directions BUT ON THE SAME FREQUENCY!
· Any shut-down and failed NAVAIDs turn red so you can see that they are not operational. Kind of nice!
· New setting in Plane-Maker systems screen: Number of degrees of heading error needed for the autopilot to switch turn directions.
· 180 by default, 20 for the G-1000.
· New instrument: Radio alt decision-height light... A little light that goes off when you make it down to decision height.
· Oil pressure modelled a hair differently to show change in response to rpm change a hair more.
· Emergency gear extension override commands now avail... Can be assigned to any joystick button of course!
· New Plane-Maker feature: Import AIRCRAFT... This imports everything EXCEPT the panel... nice if you want multiple acf files that are the same except the panel!
· The ENGINE_VAC gages in the ENGINE ROUND folder show the suction from each engine... You can have two of these.
· The SUCTION_LO_LITE_GA instruments show the suction from each engine... You can have two of these.
· The SUCTION gage in the SUPPLEMENT folder shows the total suction of all available vacuum pumps... It shows what the instruments are GETTING, and you only want ONE of these!
· Inverter failure will fail the trq indicators now if the trq indicators are hooked up to the inverters as per the system screen in Plane-Maker.
· Click on any airport in the IOS screen... You should get airport info and the weather at the airport as well.
· New option in Plane-Maker: The altitude tracks the aircraft current altitude when the cws button is down: yes or no.
· Set your ports for listening and receiving in the net screens now.
· Oil pump failure a little more realistic... We see more gradual engine failure, with rise in oil temperature.
· A few (real) G-430 failures, useful if connected to a real Garmin-430.
Cool new Plane:
· New plane: Stinson l-5.,. It is in the general aviation folder, and very nice.
Nice little features and UI tweaks:
· Glideslope plot on the IOS now shows the width of the glideslope region, and shows the marker beacons as well.. kind of nice!
· Reversed/beta/forward thrust engine-mode saved in replays.
· Better throttle response from the fadec.. closer to linear.
· 3-D cockpit will let you look around when paused now.
· Toll-spoiler logic just a hair smarter with speedbrakes: Spoilers will not extend beyond max speedbrake deployment.
· Boat-drawing rendering-option is now separated from the forest fires and balloons.
· NAVAID failure-page shows the type for each NAVAID... makes it easier to see exactly what NAVAID you are failing.
· All 'situation-movies' are now referred to as 'replays' everywhere in the UI
· Engine-failure options that do not apply to the type of engine in your plane do not appear in the engine-failure list... A bit easier to spot the failures you want.
New instruments and commands:
· New flight director/autopilot commands and instruments in the BUTTONS folder to turn the flight director and autopilot servos on and off.
Commands restored:
· "sim/instruments/ECAM_mode_down"
· "sim/instruments/ECAM_mode_up"
· New command that you can hook up to any key or joystick button: Marker beacon mute. It's in the ANNUNCIATORS group.
· New annunciator: GPU connected. You can assign any joystick button to the COMMAND to connect the GPU, and when you hit it,
· you will see the gpu-connected light activate, and also get plenty of power to bus #1 on the airplane.
Minor tweaks and Bug-Fixes:
· Mean time between failure causes random failures when checked in the failures screen, otherwise does not!
· IOS glideslope map properly labelled as AGL, not MSL, altitudes.
· EFIS-app tweaked a hair to display both adf's and display a few more things a hair more accurately, and let you enter initial fuel
· No blackout in external view modes ,and Cinema Verite should not respond to G-load at very low G.
· Planes with only 1 inverter switch should still drive all inverter-driven systems ok!
· Flaps deploy at the right speed now, ion all cases... they were sometimes too fast before.
· Arrow keys to scroll large 2-d panels in side-views, as is used for some older planes, now work!
July 15th, 2009· Joystick support for Linux totally operational, including yaw-axis.
· Flaps up-down labels laid out a little more clearly in the joystick screen.
July 15th, 2009· Airfoils labelled a hair better in Plane-Maker.
· 3-D cockpit view panning and tilting working as desired.
· Replay mode should be a little more reliable... Tt could get confused with many airplanes coupled with airport placement coupled with rapid toggle in and out of replay mode before.
· New airport and nav data.
· Fix for crash on GF4-Ti with 3-d clouds.
· Displaced threshhold lights correctly placed with transparnet runways.
· Better logging of illegal LOD cmds in objs.
· Linux joystick yaw axis should be normally operable.
July 9th, 2009· 3-D panel does not get stuck when facing due north.
· Correct logging of bad png files.
· Memory log format is a little easier to understand.
July 9th, 2009· Panel-scroll should be back.
· EFIS maps of various sizes should scale properly.
· Electric-engined airplanes should be properly functional now.
· In-cockpit elevation of viewpoint can be really low.. useful for small seaplanes.
· Waves should not 'rush' too fast when real-weather is turned on.
· A fix to the 777 shadow.
· A possible fix to crashes with clouds.
· Tweaking the helo rotor model just a teeny bit, yet again.
July 6th, 2009· GPWS annunciator stays lit up for as long as the GPWS system is activating... it does not just pulse.
· If you hit the fire extinguisher, the engine is recovered normally when you open a new plane or reset the flight.
· A handful of new gps commands to control the software Garmin-430.
· Various fail-at-speed-altitude failures should be operational.
· Twin fuel gage instrument can now handle it properly when people put the fuel tanks on the wrong sides of the plane in Plane-Maker.
· (Obviously, the LEFT tank should be tank #1, and the RIGHT tank should be tank #2, in twin-tank planes... a number of people have been breaking this rule...
· the new fuel gage should be smart enough to handle that).
· Multi-IOS should work as intended.
· The control-o view lets you get a bit closer to the ground, as needed for some really low airplanes.
· Map mode is transmitted from master to external cockpits.
· Ramp-start option applies to initial start of the sim as well.
· Conditions under which rain is encountered are tweaked a bit.
· 1 more decimal for wing sweep and dihedral in Plane-Maker.
· Shadows won't be clipped from inside the 3-d cockpit.
· Shadow fades out at night.
· Shadow angle is fixed for AI planes.
· Frame rate will not jitter as much on OS X 10.4 with ATI hardware and heavy rendering settings.
· ARC on engine ECAM in Cirrus shows up in 3-d cockpit now.
· Generic rotary now works correctly when mode is "rheostat".
· Allow_rosetta flag allows plugin authors to test ppc plugins on an x86 mac.
July 1st, 2009· Real-Weather 'allow cu clouds' preference is now remembered between runs.
· Helicopter rotors, and tail-rotors, no longer require rpm to change pitch.
· Turbulence effects somewhat less strong.
· 'ramp-start' option should start you on ramp when opening new planes, as well.
· iPod/iPhone app 'X-Plane Remote' should work with old Power-PC Macs now... give it a try!
· Workaround for texturing problem on NVidia cards on OS X 10.5.7.
· Fix for crash on OS X 10.4 when setting full-screen with ATI hardware.
· Panel doesn't jitter up and down anymore.
· OBJs with diffuse material attributes look correct when shaders are on.
· Rotaries with reversed key frame tables work right.
June 25th, 2009· Plane-Maker can snap wings OK now.
· RESET PATH map-button and menu-option now reset the paths of ALL planes... not just yours.
· Frame-rate counter should run a bit smoother.
· Ever so slight tuning of the rotor/propeller model.
· 'Start on Ramp' option back in the Operations and Warnings window.
· Should now work with REMOTE for iPhone, even if you are still on an old power PC!
· APU n1 saved with the situation and replay.
· Runway bumps fixed when "runway follows terrain contours" is off.
· Runways no longer bright at night with shaders on and per-pixel lighting off.
· Facades drape on sloped ground.
· App icons look correct on OS X 10.3 and 10.4.
· Orthophoto distance tuned for anisotropic filtering.
· 72 hz frequency monitors recognized in rendering settings.
· Text entry into numeric fields improved.
· Datarefs for PFC equipment are writable.
· Rotation-speed datarefs for wheels/props/engines won't go negative.
June 19th, 2009Fine-Tuning:
· Turbulence from other planes toned down a bit.. makes glider-tow easier.
· Fuel-tank placement a hair more accurate in a few planes.
· Greater flexibility in setting up g1000 software version numbers to facilitate testing with new planes when driving real g-1000's.
· The dynamic airplane shadow is now an optional rendering setting. This feature is usually pretty cheap but for very complex custom planes you can get fps back by turning it off. The dynamic airplane shadow is only for your airplane - making 19 AI dynamic shadows is way too slow.
· Per-pixel lighting is now a rendering setting. If you have a "cheap" card (GF7300, GF8400, HD2400, X1300, etc.) then turning off per pixel lighting will help fps a lot, especially when FSAA is on.
· Some shader tuning may be coming, but to get 922 style performance, you'll need to turn off both of these new extra bits of eye candy. Fps tests of 922 vs. 930 without per pixel lighting and shadows show 930 as fast or faster than 922.
Plane-Maker:
· Plane-Maker Visual-Texture-Tegions window is now working
· Overlapped text in Plane-Maker Systems screen fixed.
· Insert-section into body is undoable.
· Plane-Maker detects backward key frames for handles.
· Plane-Maker won't quit with an internal error if you undo a misc body edit after changing the number of stations.
Tech-Notes for Designers:
· EVERY SINGLE PLANE MADE IN 9.30 BETA needs to have it's 'FADEC automatically keeps engines from exceeding max power' option reversed in the Engines screen.
· This is to maintain compatibility with version 9.22 and earlier... though you will need to change this setting in 9.30 if you made a plane in 9.30 beta.
Bug-Fixes:
· No more clouds rotating with the viewpoint.
· Orthophotos should not get "stuck" at low-res.
· Orthophoto res will be higher when anisotropic filtering is on, to avoid blurry images.
· The transition from DSF to planet rendering is smoother for oceanic areas.
· The landing light does not attempt to light the airplane. This fixes the airplane turning black when shaders are off.
· Runway anti-incursion lights (wigwags, etc.) have their LOD fixed.
· One-way roads go in the right direction in the UK.
· Precision of key frames improved for generic instruments
· Two-sided facades should render properly.
· Taxiway lights should be evenly spaced on curved paths.
· Plugins: The y-test prober will not be fooled by boats.
June 12th, 2009· Plane-Maker: Option to run it in metric-dimensions mode!
· Thrust and the like are still in pounds, but all dimensions are in meters.
· This should make things easier for our European customers.
New flap option in Plane-Maker:
· Flaps are INFINITE-ADJUST. HOLD the button or keyboard flap command to move the flaps up or down smoothly as long as the button is held. Please check ALL flap functionality: Long deflection times of over 60 seconds, failure to deploy with flap failures,
· failure to deploy with and hydraulic failures if hydraulically activated, failure to deploy with electrical failure if electrically activated,
· manual-pump deployment, auto-deployment with landing gear, or approach-to-stall, and overspeed-protection on deployment.
· (And, of course, aero, visual, and sound effects for all of the above).
New settings in Plane-Maker SYSTEMS window:
· Conditions under which the gear warning will activate: You can make your warning systems a hair more accurate here.
New Plane-Maker entry:
· Min runway length. Your moving maps will only show you airports with runways longer than this length to cut down clutter and select good airports for your particular bird. Also enter whether you can accept grass runways and helipads on your moving maps there.
New Refinements:
· Frame-rate enhancements with cumulus clouds... you should see nicer frame-rates with scattered and broken clouds.
· Aircraft carrier catshot: Better physics and placement when locked down for the cat!
· When starting up WITHOUT engines and systems running, the manual electric hydraulic pump will be left in the OFF position by the last pilot.
· Contrails should not typically come forward of the engine at hi-speed/lo-power conditions.
· Contrails should expand a bit slower. The contrails will start a hair smaller, and fade in smoothly as the ice crystals form from the engine exhaust.
· there should be no rain under scattered or broken clouds if not selected in the weather screen... let me know if you still see any!
· Localizer on the map screen is plotted at EXACTLY the same width as the localizer as presented on the HSI and VOR displays..
· This means that if you are exactly full-scale deflection in the cockpit, then you are exactly on the edge of the
· localizer on the map. As well, the glide-slope on the map should EXACTLY match the glideslope you have tuned, if any.
· When using the FMC, the VVI will auto-set to the perfect VVI to hit your target altitude for your next fix.
· Feel free to over-ride it if desired.
· Refinement to helo auto-rotation model... should be more accurate descent rates.
· Rotors should be visible on all craft, whether a zero-design-speed is entered or not... Earlier betas did not handle the proper properly if it had a zero-design speed. (What can I say: When I wrote X-Plane, I was really only thinking about propellers that were design to.. umm... move a craft forwards).
· The control-o view should function just fine in external-views, as long as you only wander around in the cockpit area.
Bug-Fixes or nice "Code-Tightening":
· No more data output putting un-needed carriage-returns or un-changing data when the disk or inet outputting is paused in the data-output selection window.
· N1 and N2 do not dip slightly below 0 when stopped any more.
· No more burners being accidentally disabled after flying vectored-thrust aircraft.
· If you have a real Garmin-430 hooked up to X-Plane, the to/from should be accurately displayed on the HSI.
· o cloud shadows on the airplane when above the clouds.
· No cloud shadows inside the airplane.
· Cloud shadows appear on the water (when shaders are off).
· ATTR_light_level fixed for some cockpit objects.
· New "button"-style manipulators.
· AC3D plugin support coming soon!
· Docs coming soon!
· http://wiki.x-plane.com/Manipulators
· LED instrument lets you customize the number of rows on the texture
· World level of detail distance fixed for very wide monitor resolutions.
· WARNING: If you have a very wide resolution, you may need to turn your world level of detail setting down to get good framerate.
New features for expert ACF-Makers:
· New datarefs for the TCAS system, as requested to make custom TCAS systems.
· Quick tech note: If you are designing your own autopilot plugin, you may want to set "sim/operation/override/override_autopilot" to TRUE
· so X-Plane does not over-ride your autopilot commands.
· Bouncers: Damping constants now go to 0.1 digits... so you can do better bouncer control.
June 10th, 2009· Exit-alerts in X-Plane and Plane-Maker for certain planes with odd configurations solved.
· A little instrumentation-issue solved in the sr-71.
· A few little refinements in the fuel-consumption and FADEC-response code for engines with very high critical-altitudes, to make things a hair more realistic.
· Small refinements in landing-gear warning system for FAA-Approved customers.
May 18th, 2009New failure:
· Engine-driven pump LO.
· This will simply cut the fuel pressure from the engine-driven pump in half, possibly activating the lo-fuel-pressure annunciator for that engine.
· Turning on the electric standby pump should solve it!
· CHT and Oil temp start off at ambient if you are not starting with engines running in the operations and warnings screen.
· New commands for previous and next checklist-item in the checklist that you can open in the special menu.
Plane-Maker features:
· If you make the Plane-Maker window big enough, the airplane will be visible to the right of the main window. This lets you see the plane while you move the CG or attached objects.
· Use the control-number keys to toggle visibility of the attached objects. Use this to see inside the plane more easily. Note that you may need to delete your keyboard preferences to get the new commands, or manually set up the keyboard equivalents.
· Visualization of 3-d cockpit lights has been improved.
· OBJ parts animate when "show with moving parts" is checked.
· Cool new plane in the 'Experimental' folder: the XM8-Sparrow... an imaginary design by Ben Harber.. check it out!
· A number of little bug-fixes.
May 7th, 2009· Space Shuttle orbiter model improved... some dimensions were off before.
· More realistic night vision... kind of cool.
· Engine nacelle angular offsets should be properly represented.
· Missiles should only draw their little fire-trail if they are firing, and not during the drop-phase, if they have zero-thrust for that phase.
· If you have a custom 'compass_GA-1' in your plane, be sure to copy that file from the resources/bitmaps/cockpit folder,
· and/or customize your compass heading file, being sure to follow the same heading range as the 'compass_GA-1' in resources/bitmaps/cockpit!
In Plane-Maker:
· Instruments will automatically align to avoid blurred pixels.
· Object offset is not cleared when an object is cleared.
· Generic Annunciator flashes when instrument animation is turned on in the panel editor.
A few bug-fixes:
· fixed plugin crashes for a number of heavily used plugins.
· shadow in cirrus jet does not have "holes" in it.
· sectional map shading works correctly.
· crash when starting with IOS screen ope.
· X-Plane will detect when no OpenGL drivers are installed on Windows.
· Old-style LIT instruments work.
· fractions may be entered by keyboard into numeric fields.
May 2nd, 2009· Helo rotor-wash tuned WAY down.
· Wake turbulence from other craft, most visible in the glider-tow, tuned way down.
· Various volume sliders should control the correct sounds now.
· Improved Avidyne PFD pointers and frequencies and the like.
· DG Linear instrument wraps properly through all headings.
· Power-curve for sliders now functioning properly!
· 2-d Panel horizon should match X-Plane 922's behavior.
· Changes to framebuffer handling - might help shadow problems for 10.4.11 users.
· Airplanes that use generic triggers should load correctly.
· More monitor modes are available. We are still tuning this - if your monitor mode list overflows, please file a bug WITH a screenshot!
· You can load a scenery pack with missing objects - it's a warning now, not an error.
· Window resize box looks nicer on OS X.
April 28th, 2009· Further flight-dynamics refinements... I think we can actually, consistently, pull off a pretty decent approximation of a SPIN now!
· The secret: No longer does the airplane really have any idea of a flight path!
· Instead, each PART of the airplane has it's OWN flight path.
· So now, an airplane is NOT really a single entity: It is a whole bunch of parts all moving in formation!
· As odd as this seems, THIS is the way to understand how EACH bit of the airplane has it's OWN flight path (different for each bit of the airplane if the plane is pitching, yawing, or rolling), and THIS is the secret that really allows us to get a good SPIN: Each bit of the wing, stabilizer, etc all have their own flight path angle and speed... this builds up the forces in the dynamic cases of hi spin-rates: Most noticeable, not surprisingly, in a spin. We have had an approximation of this since version 1.00, but only now, for 9.30 Beta-8, have we really completely overhauled the physics to really have no concept at all of the flight path of the 'airplane', and instead handled it totally independently for each ELEMENT of each surface of the plane. This, combined with the new wind model that has no concept of the wind on the 'airplane', but instead knows the wind on each BIT of the airplane. THIS is really where we start to get into serious computations to learn new things about how the plane will fly.
· Just a HAIR more refinement the lift, drag, and moment lookup calculations... just enough to make the propeller efficiency model just a hair more accurate, in theory. A little more refinement in the transonic flight-model as well: That tricky speed between Mach 0.85 and 1.00. It's a very minor refinement, but we may see a hair more accuracy here. Remember: If you mean to break Mach-1, you really will want THIN wings to make that happen! (And plenty of power, and altitude, and a jet engine inlet efficiency speed of more than Mach-1).
· To give you an idea of the accuracy we are seeing here, if you design a wing with a bit of extra incidence near the root, or an airfoil that produces more lift near the root, and less so at the tip, then X-Plane will see, in flight, that there is more lift near the ROOT of the wing, and INCREASE the effective aspect ratio of the wing in flight, reducing the spillover of air around the wingtip, and increasing the efficiency of the wing. Warning: As in reality, the reciprocal is also true!
· Improvements in the propulsive-efficiency indication: It USED to indicate the transmissions losses as well, which was really sort of WRONG, since most people would not lump the transmission-losses into the propulsive efficiency of the propeller... so now the propulsive efficiency of the propeller is really showing the ratio of power GOING TO THE PROP that is making it to the airstream as thrust, not making any reference to losses in the transmission. This also now properly indicates propulsive efficiency for unusual configurations, such as where multiple engines drive one prop, or vice-versa. This is only a difference in INDICATION on the data output screen, and should not actually effect the flight model, but there you have it.
· Further electrical system modelling... We should now handle the various cases properly where the APU, ground power, air-driven generator, and regular generators are all overloaded, going into a voltage sag and passing the load down to the battery, all as in reality!
· Flap-Overspeed protection system (Plane-Maker, Special Controls screen),
· Flap-Overspeed Indicator (EFIS airspeed indicator as moving red barber-pole),
· and Flap-Overspeed flaps-removal (Operations and Warnings screen) are all now scaled to run the max allowable flaps smoothly between Vfe1 and Vfe2 based on all intermediate flap deflections and speeds.
· A bit more tuning on the FADEC system, to give finer throttle control and make overboost a bit less likely.
GENERAL FLYING FEATURES:
· Towplane should circle to the left on climbout, as desired.
· EFIS-App Avidyne now has ADF-1 and option for ADF-2, as requested.
GENERAL SIM FEATURES:
· If you put the mouse over the lower-right corner of the screen in X-Plane, then a small rectangle appears there to remind you that you can just drag the corner to re-size the X-Plane window now!
· Tuned mouse-control input now follows the non-linear power-curves that you can set for the joystick, which is kind of nice for mouse-users.
· Generate OBJ from ACF gives a much more detailed OBJ for you to use as a starting point for your aircraft OBJs for the plane or custom scenery.
· New commands for transponder and fuel-transfer.
· Sound volume sliders show %, as requested.
· SLIDERS can go to a power curve as specified in plane-maker, now.
· Mag compass and clock should function in FDR replay mode. No change in fdr format at all, we are just extracting more data from it to display!
MINOR TWEAKS OR BUG-FIXES:
· Proper HUD-colors restored.
· The custom setting of prop incidence in plane-maker now auto-sets for all subsequent props when you enter data for the first one.
· The parachute should not catch wind from the propwash now... typically this will be a bit more accurate.
· Old ARGUS nav-instrument back working again!
· Tip-rockets operational again... they were out for the earlier betas.. sorry!
· Bezier lines can now use the LAYER_GROUP command - see http://scenery.x-plane.com/library.php?doc=linspec.php
· WARNING: ATTR_light_level has a syntax change - see http://scenery.x-plane.com/library.php?doc=obj8spec.php
· New apt.dat (from April-09) cycle included
· Newer version of the C172 and Cirrus Jet
· Generic rotary brightness fixed. It will now match the EFIS when set to "glass" mode.
· Panel texture does not cut a hole in the airplane shadow.
· Planet map is much faster.
· 3-D flight path with FDR recorder files is faster.
· Translucent panel mode should work.
· Fixed: newly created key binding won't be "stuck" down.
· HUD won't turn black when brightness is turned down.
· LOD handling tuned for large monitors.
· Cockpit object texture is now uncompressed for better visual quality.
· Generic trigger instruments won't double-press commands when combined with ATTR_cockpit_region
· "Draw outside of fuselage" checkboxes in Plane-Maker should work as expected.
· Gamma level on windows defaults to 2.5
· "make_panel_previews" command makes one panel texture even when subregions are used.
· Lots of new datarefs - documentation will be posted shortly.
March 22nd, 2009· Joystick Window and Nose-Wheel steering issues addressed.
· Fixed rain and snow effects when the sim is paused.
· 3-D Cockpit Fixed for Airplanes with large Panels
· Plugins: overriding nav needles works even if nav frequency is not tuned to a VOR.
· Improved performance on nvidia cards on OS X.
· Shadows no longer jitter with shaders on.
· Shadows correct for the R22-beta.
· Removed plugins that were accidentally included with beta 5.
· Cockpit lighting fixed.
March 19th, 2009· Track-IR should run smoother.
· Prop-sync command fixed, but props gotta be within a mere 50 rpm for it to WORK perfectly!
· Nosewheel tiller should have a 10% nullzone
· A bit more tuning on the thrust-reverse joystick axis... They should be just like airliners now!
· Various 'throttle with pitch, roll and yaw' options, as you can set in Plane-Maker, now work for engines offset at any angle.. so you can build little puffer-engines at all angles now to maneuver your plane!
· new commands: sim/radios/RMI_L_to and sim/radios/RMI_R_tog to toggle the RMI VOR/NDB sources.
· Various little bug-fixes.
March 7th, 2009· Various issues with full-screen mode and aircraft icing rapidly loading the plane up with ice are now addressed.
· Minor visible flow-field improvement: The streamlines are now oriented along the flight path so you get streamlines over the plane at all angles of attack and sideslips.
· Minor FADEC enhancement: FADEC hold MANIFOLD PRESSURE, not POWER, on the recips. This lets you see subtle power-variations with manual mixture control, as in reality!
· Ccut/copy/paste works in text fields in Plane-Maker, Cursor fixed on windows,
· Sim will now restart correctly after quitting in full-screen-at-current-res mode.
· ATTR_light_level works on alpha channel too, fixed error in plane path when scenery shifts.
· X-Plane will set the screen res if it is too low on startup, title bar should be gone from full screen mode on OS X 1.4.
· Title bar won't show up in full screen mode on OS X, Plane-Maker will flag instruments with corrupt key-frame tables.
March 5th, 2009· Open the Cessna 172 or Cirrus Jet and take it to 10,000 ft and set the time of day to dusk or so in clear weather.
· Now go to external view with the | key and hit the / key a couple of times, watching the result with each press.
· The RED vectors are at 10% speed BELOW ambient.
· The GREEN vectors are at ambient speed.
· The VIOLATE vectors are at 10% ABOVE ambient speed.
· Now try it at low speed, flaps down, nose up, near the stall, full power.
· Now pull up into the stall.
· Now you really start to SEE what sets X-Plane apart from: ALL the others.
· You can SEE the propwash (accelerating the air-flow to violet under full power, or decelerating it to yellow on the engine-out).
· You can SEE the downwash (the downward-moving vectors behind the wing).
· You can SEE the wake (decelerating the airflow behind the wings due to the drag of the wing!).
· Of course, this airflow, modified by downwash, propwash, and wake, impacts the wings, bodies, and even propellers that live in that airflow!
· And this goes beyond anything we have done before: We now find the downwash and wake not just from each wing, but from each ELEMENT of each wing!
· This means that if you have a flap or aileron on a wing, the downwash on the surfaces BEHIND that BIT of the wing
· (such as the horizontal stabilizer) are affected differently depending on WHERE in the flowfield the various PARTS of the stabilizer are!
· There will be more downwash on the part of the stab behind the flaps when the flaps are down, for example! Everything is handled PER-ELEMENT,
· not PER-WING, so all the different flow off of and onto wings and stabs that varies across the span is considered!
· Then it gets BETTER: This new 3-D model with wake looks at the geometry of each wing casting downwash and wake in real-time, so the origin of the wake and downwash
· actually move AFT in real-time as you sweep the wings, for example, if you are in an F-14 or F-111!
· And it gets BETTER: We now have an improved stall model that psuedo-randomizes the flow when any wing is stalled!
· Pull aft enough to stall in the | view after hitting the / key see the flow and get ready for information-overload!
· Try getting in various different planes at various different speeds, power settings, and flap settings, and hitting the / key a bit in the external view...
· you will see how the streamlines and velocity vectors are affected by all of these things. Then turn on some turbulence if you want things to get really wonky!
· New command: sim/view/hold_3d_angle.
· Assign any key you like to this command in the joystick button/keyboard command-binding screen
· and then hold that key when in 3-D cockpit mode to keep your viewpoint from moving around with the mouse...
· This makes it easier to click on stuff in the 3-D cockpit because the viewpoint is not moving as you move the mouse,
· as long as you hold that key or joy button down!
· New joystick axis: Nose-Wheel steering Tiller. Nice for airliners if you set that up!
· The TILLER axis ALWAYS steers the nosewheel thru the 'lo-speed steering' range specified in Plane-Maker, no matter the aircraft speed.
· As well, we have various framerate optimizations. You may, or may not, SEE these improvements because we now spend more time doing the 3-D flow-field math
· for the new physics specified above.
· Generic rheostats can "wrap" their dataref values. Use this to make OBS knob that go from 360 back to 0 degrees.
· Back-lit (additive) style lighting is now available on all instruments.
· You should now have trim on the helicopters, no rocket thrust on the rockets without fuel, rudder key-control whether the mouse-screen is up or not,
· Space Shuttle and B-2 aileron/elevator linkages are now hooked up properly, you should only hydroplane on WET runways, not icy ones, de-ice systems
· should be able to keep all the ice off the jets, replay mode should show smoke-puffs from touch-down in the right place, and external cockpits should give
· good engine indications. We fixed crash that could happen sometimes on Startup on Vista, and a panel jittering when you scrolled with a strange-size window.
· Check "Matrox triple-head" in the equipment settings dialog box and the sim will not try to zoom the cockpit across all three monitors.
· ENV files will render correctly, and the runways will not flicker in the textured map.
· Cursors for generic rotaries and rheostats work better, and the default rolling generic instrument will default to six digits.
· VOR reception range is increased by 25%, and the show-hide for instrument groups fixed.
· Windows plugins can override the mouse cursor without flicker, planet textures are fixed to not have a big black square over Southern California,
· the Mac version can run without sound even if OpenAL is not installed, and Windows and Linux versions can run without internet!
· Non-generic instruments will follow the correct lighting rheostat, and 3-d Panels should load using any naming convention.
· Plugins replay mode dataref works, fixes x737 and ACARS plugin, and the engine start command is fixed, which fixes x737 plugin.
· Linux build should properly detect whether it is a demo or full install, and you can animate a non-deck hard surface in an OBJ.
· Custom full screen settings are saved properly in the preferences.
February 18th, 2009COOL NEW FLIGHT-MODELING:
· Oh MAN this is cool.
· We no longer try to track the downwash on a per-element basis on the wings,
· but instead we now deflect the air down behind the wings in 3-D space.
· This means that fuselages, bodies, air flow into pro-discs.. EVERYTHING, is affected by the downwash of any wings in front them.
· As well, we continue to consider all PROPS in front of all wings, tracking prop-wash in 3-d space as well.
· This means that all wings and props and bodies are in the propwash and downwash of all wings and props in front of them,
· in all cases.
· You can even SEE this!
· Get in a plane and go flying. Hit the / key twice to see the airflow vectors.. you will SEE the downwash (vectors going DOWN)
· and propwash (vectors going AFT) in 3-D space... these vectors affect the bodies, other props, other wings... EVERYTHING!
· The Math. The Math!
· (Note that the downwash vectors will point STRAIGHT down... this is because you only see the CHANGE in airflow-vector
· from the free-stream, so you only SEE the the DOWNWARDS part of the downwash).
· We now have improved fuselage lift, drag, sideforce modeling... this even helps the HELICOPTERS HOVER MORE ACCURATELY.
· How? Well, in a hover, the body of the helicopter is in propwash, putting out significant force even though the machine is
· not moving! We are getting these dynamics right on the money now, tracking the airflow over the bodies in propwash even if that
· propwash flow is totally different than the freestream flow, as shown above.
· Reducing control authority with speed in the CONTROLS screen in Plane-Maker should no longer reduce TRIM authority.
· This makes for some interesting dynamics: If you reduce the control effectiveness to 10% at high speed, but the plane has 20% trim authority,
· then the trim is actually MORE powerful than the joystick input once you get moving fast enough!
· Of course, this is perfectly correct: It means that at high enough speed in the real plane, the trim is more powerful than you are!
· This can be perfectly true!
· All plane designers: Please check all control deflections and mixing and authority-with-speed and trim and everything...
· Lets make sure all the trim, authority, phase-outs-with-speed, and mixing are all perfect!
· While looking at special-cases of interesting control-systems,
· the 'Auto-Set RPM based on Throttle' option in Plane-Maker SPECIAL EQUIPMENT screen now works just fine with planes
· that have beta and reverse. This lets you do Cirrus SR-22's, PC-12's, the works.
· And now another FADEC option: RPM-limit. This adds power as needed to keep you from sagging below idle, and cuts fuel to keep you from going
· over redline. We have had this option for a long time, but now have separate checkboxes for the mixture-ratio, power-limit, and rpm-limit
· functions of the FADEC in Plane-Maker.
· As well, we now have further jet and reciprocating engine model refinements, pursuant to new data I have gotten on engine performance.
· We are taking no prisoners in the engine-modeling.
· We now have independent throttle control possible for VTOLS and the like... useful for modern blimps.
· Props can auto-feather, even if if single-engine, if that option is selected in Plane-Maker.
· 'Spool Time' for jets variable is back. This lets you control the spool time of the jet engines independently of the start-fuel-intro time,
· throttle-advance time (which are fuel-introductions rates) and starter strength (which is starter motor strength).
· This is pure engine inertia.
GRAPHICAL REFINEMENTS:
· Data Output text modified a hair to line up perfectly and be easier to read.
· This will make it a bit easier to do the step above.
· Horizontal and Vertical 'bow' options in the Rendering Options screen to hook up many computers to form a spherical projection.
· ATC interface should be fine at ALL resolutions.
GENERAL REFINEMENTS OR BUG-FIXES:
· Cirrus-Jet was not capturing all those localizers... should be OK now!
· Various new commands you can assign to any joystick button or key.
· Generic rotary instruments have a new click mode: Radio buttons.
· Whole instrument groups can be hidden based on datarefs. Useful for glass cockpits.
· Fixed intermittent crash during scenery load.
· ILS and Glide slope signal length increased.
· Shadows are less pixelated.
· Fixed black square shadows on some NVIDIA cards.
· Renaming groups works better in Plane-Maker.
· Generic rotary instrument does not write to dataref unless it is clicked.
· Running Plane-Maker no longer resets full-screen prefs.
· Cockpit object 3-d lighting works even in external views.
· Glare turned down in Plane-Maker.
· Fixed jittering panel when the window is resized.
· Fixed weapon-airplane drawing bugs on XPFW A320.
· Small generic instruments wont disappear during scrolling.
· Free view followed by 3-d cockpit no longer moves camera far away from the plane.
February 5th, 2009NEW ENGINE MODEL:
· New engine-modeling system to handle critical altitudes, jets, turboprops and recips, with and without FADECs, with and without automatic waste-gates. It's all in the ENGINES screen of Plane-Maker, top right: Only 3 values to enter to control it all: Critical Altitude and two FADEC-equipped check-boxes.
NEW FLIGHT-MODEL ENHANCEMENTS:
· Auto-throttle PRESERVES the differences between various throttles in multi-engine airplanes, if you dragged the throttles apart yourself, as is the case in real planes. In other words, if you MANUALLY drag the throttles in a multi-engine plane to somewhat different settings, such as, for example, 10% more throttle on engine #1, and then engage the auto-throttle, engine #1 will continues to run at 10% higher throttle than the others.
· When you turn the artificial stability off, the control deflections are not limited by any art-stab system constraints.
· Better flight dynamics on the fuselage... most noticeable in odd cases like a hovering helo, where the nose is level, the craft is not moving, but the angle of attack of the fuselage is negative 90 degrees at 30 knots due to rotor wash!
OTHER NEW FLIGHT-MODEL-RELATED FEATURES:
· Rudder-pedal joystick-button/key-commands are back!
· I found a way to do this that makes sense: Hitting the rudder key commands is EXACTLY like moving real rudder pedals left or right 10%... with all the results in nosewheel steering and rudder deflections that this implies.
· New option in Plane-Maker: Auto-slats below a certain SPEED.
· We already have the option to auto-lower the slats near the stall alpha.
· Now we can also lower them below a given indicated airspeed.
· Folding prop option!
· Check it in the special equipment options screen in Plane-Maker, and the prop will fold up when not turning, and spread to normal disc at idle speed.
· With oil pressure failure in prop-driven planes: if you are in a single-engine bird, the prop fails to FLAT pitch; in a multi-engine bird, it fails to FEATHERED pitch, as happens in real planes.
· A few more autopilot commands with regard to connecting and disconnecting.
· Done to get the Eclipse-500 sim just right.
NEW GRAPHICS ENHANCEMENTS:
"Rotating beacon is STROBE" option in Plane-Maker:
· This will make the 'rotating' beacon be a strobe light, if desired, as in some planes.
· Some guy REEEEEAAAAAAAALY wanted this, so, um, here it is!
· Option in Rendering Options screen to auto-sync the rendering options in the external visuals to the cockpit... or not!
· The 'show your aircraft' checkbox avail to show, or not show, our aircraft on the map is back.
· This was removed, but some folks wanted it back, so, ummm, it is.
GENERAL NEW FEATURES:
· Plane-Maker: Export 'Basic' or 'Detailed' OBJ files.
· The difference is the moving control surfaces.
· The 'Basic' export does not have moving control surfaces, so it plots faster!
· This makes it ideal for building airplanes to have around the airport scenery.
· The other option is the 'Detailed', which gives you moving controls surfaces.
· This should NOT be used for custom scenery packs that have airplanes lying around the airport,
· because it would waste CPU and RAM, but it is perfect for making starting-points for custom 3-D object aircraft.
· Room for more parking spots in the airport-selection dialog.
· A number of new failure modes: engine indications.
MINOR ENHANCEMENTS:
· FDR display is better: Fills in indicated altitude and angle of attack, and a number of other things.
· V-22 osprey flight model improved based on feedback from a V-22 pilot.
· More accurate flight modeling... the drag of the various misc bodies is now more accurately predicted.
· The HUD in the FSNH view has a full-screen field of view... much more convenient for sure!
· Real-weather wind phases in the wind more gradually, as requested.
· Lift of blimps is now constant regardless of altitude, as is the case in the real thing.
· Plane-Maker, systems screen: Specify whether or not the plane has a radio-altimeter audio call-out when reaching decision-height,
· and how far in advance of the decision-height the audio call-out is made.
BUG-FIXES:
· Round trim indicators indicate properly in both directions.
· White arc on airspeed-indicator goes to FULL-FLAP deploy-speed, not first-notch deploy-speed, as is the case in the real cockpit.
· Correct thermometers show total vs. ambient temperatures, as indicated in their little instrument-descriptions in Plane-Maker.
· A few instruments like the altimeter in the B-1, heavy metal chronometer, and magnetic compasses were not working quite right...
· should be perfect now!
· Bullets in aimable gun really emerge from the exact barrel location.
· Commands for brake hold and toggle were reversed... are proper now!
· You can now fly slung loads for long distances in helos no problem... a math error made this impossible in earlier versions.
· Glideslope view in enroute chart gives correct elevation presentation now.
· Weight screen in X-Plane always shows correct weight, including weight of ordinance currently on board.
EYE CANDY:
· X-Plane now featuers per pixel lighting when shaders are on (requires GeForce 6 or newer or Radeon X800 or newer). This means rounder, smoother
· looking airplanes and nice tight specular hilights. Specular hilites are separated from regular lighting and match the sun color for better glare.
· When shaders are on, the airplane shadow is calculated dynamically, showing wing sweep and other changes to the ACF shape. This is only a stop-gap
· measure, not an ultimate shadow solution.
· Panels use linear filtering on large monitors, so they won't look pixelated or chunky.
3-D COCKPIT:
· The 3-d cockpit now has real 3-d lighting - set up to 3 global spot or omni lights in Plane-Maker - tie them to any rheostat or any dataref you want.
· Plane-Maker can save a PNG file of your 3-d panel texture - use it to model 3-d cockpits in ac3d or Blender.
· Attached objects can now be set to "interior", "exterior" or "glass". Use glass to get translucency without Z-order problems; use interior objects
· with the new 3-d lights.
· You can now walk away from the airplane in 3-d mode without the airplane disappearing. Use the 3-d viewing mode to do a walk-around.
· The HUD should be visible in the 777 in 3-d cockpit mode no matter what the graphics card.
2-D PANEL:
· Plane-Maker can import and export all or some of a panel as a text file. Use this to save or share parts of panels, or to quickly edit dataref names
· using a text editor.
· Generic glass instruments can fade to transparency.
· The pie generic instrument can be used to make arcs.
MODELING AND SCENERY:
· OBJs can have an attribute to make geometry impassable to the camera. Use this to keep the pilot from leaving the 3-d cockpit unless the door is open.
· Hard surfaces can be animated. Put the plane on an elevator!
· DSFs can have patches at multiple LODs withot artifacts.
· The _LIT texture brightness can be controlled with a dataref. Dim the lit texture based on cockpit lighting.
· Object geometry can be set to not draw at all. This can be useful for making OBJ triangles that are only used for clicking, stopping the 3-d camera, etc.
· For example, you could make a very simple mesh to keep the camera inside the plane, separate from the real 3-d cockpit.
USABILITY:
· Windows can be resized simply by dragging on the corner. Go full screen without restarting.
· X-Plane's Gamma control is available in the rendering settings now. Windows users: if X-Plane is too dark, try turning gamma up from the default 2.2 to perhaps 2.5.
· Mouse look will stop panning while you click. 3-d free viewing mode (ctrl-;) will start viewing at the current camera position.
PERFORMANCE:
· Warning: pixel shaders have been changed a lot and are not yet optimized. It will be a few betas before they are really tuned.
· X-Plane does a better job of skipping off-screen objects for OBJ-based planes.
· Replay mode uses a lot less memory.
· Clickable cockpit geometry is much faster.
· Large panel textures (larger than 1024x1024) should run a bit faster.
FIXED:
· Crashes and panel corruption when laoding multiplayer planes should be fixed!
· This bug particularly happened for plane with generic instruments.
· Plane-Maker Fixes
· Cut-copy-paste of instruments won't corrupt panels. Use the new "flatten" command to fix panels that are having problems.
· Plane-Maker's preview of generic instruments now has the same drawing order as x-Plane.
· Divide-by-zero errors should be fixed when opening v901 planes.
· Size property shows 2 digits.
Rendering Fixes:
· Cloud shadows appear on airplanes
· The starburst during rainy weather should be gone
· Car lights are visible from further away
· Terrain won't look "blobby" with pixel shaders on
Scenery System Fixes:
· Legacy v8 objects can be used anywhere in the world ont just in Europe.
· Road type 46 is fixed.
· Draped Orthophotos with bezier curves work.
· PNG files will be found on case sensitive file systems.
Panel Fixes:
· generic LED instrument lighting works.
· panel.pgn is now a legal file name in the 3-d cockpit folder
· Bird strikes scroll with the panel.
· Glare appears on panels no matter what combination of panel sizses are used.
Usability fixes:
· GMA 950 should work with OS X 10.4.
· X-Plane will now alert with an error when used under Rosetta. This is to avoid confusion about slow performance.
· Linux: X-Plane will work with OpenAL .so.0 or so.1.
· Cards that cannot handle threaded OpenGl will show an alret instead of crashing.
· OS X can now change resolutions, not just color depths.
December 5th, 2008· Almost nothing on top of 9.21.
· Just a few bug-fixes.
September 18th, 2008· Almost nothing on top of 9.20.
· Just a few bug-fixes that were biting some people, and improvements in the various language translations.
September 8th, 2008· Countless frame-rate and RAM optimizations. One of the many examples is the new scenery-loader: Texture loading now uses as many cores as you have. Photo scenery should load a lot faster on multi-core machines, especially if you have four or eight cores.
· DOME projection option!
· It is in the rendering options screen.
· This is designed for the bigger sims... It requires a level-2 key to use!
· All sorts of edge-blending and offsets are avail as well in the Rendering Options screen to get multi-projector setups on conical or cylindrical screens!
· Pick a joystick axis (on MASTER machine if a network) to be VIEW LEFT/RIGHT
· Pick a joystick axis (on MASTER machine if a network) to be VIEW UP/DOWN
· Go to the buttons: ADV
· Pick a joy button to be: view/circle
· Pick a joy button to be: view/forward
· Pick a joy button to be: view/3d_path_toggle
· Pick a joy button to be: general/zoom_in
· Pick a joy button to be: general_zoom_out
· Now fly around with a different joystick, or on autopilot, or with PFC hardware, or with A/I flies, or whatever.
· Then, hit the joy button for view/circle, then the button for view/3d_path_toggle, and you will see the plane from the outside, leaving a flightpath behind it.
· Hit the buttons for general/zoom_in and general_zoom_out to get a better look, and steer your view around with the joystick
· NOW HERE IS WHERE THIS GETS AMAZINGLY COOL: YOU CAN DO THIS WITH MANY EXTERNAL VISUALS, AND THE DISPLAY WILL SPAN THEM ALL.
· NOW HERE IS WHERE IT GETS EVEN COOLER: AN INSTRUCTOR CAN HAVE HIS OWN JOYSTICK AT THE INSTRUCTOR OPERATORS STATION TO STEER THE VIEW AROUND AFTER AN APPROACH TO SHOW THE PILOT WHAT HE DID!
· So, if you have networked copies of X-Plane, and an instructor station, and an extra joystick, the instructor can steer the view around with a joystick at the IOS with the flight-plan displayed to show the pilot what he just flew!
· MAP page shows a magenta line sprouting out from any VORs that you have tuned on the OBS radial you have selected....
· kind of nice for evaluating whether you are tracking the radials OK. Really useful on the IOS.
· See the systems screen in Plane-Maker, BOUNCERS tab.
· You can enter the spring and damping constants of various stuff that could bounce around in the cockpit.
· The data you enter here will drive datarefs that you can then use in your custom OBJECT cockpit files that you make.
· Garmin-400 support as well as 430 and 530... This is nice for the Eclipse-jet, which uses this system.
· Put them on in the special equipment page in Plane-Maker, and be sure to add a parachute-flare button to the panel as well.
· Then, toss out marker flares that float down!
· They will float down, and sit on the ground and burn as well!
· There is also a joystick command to deploy them.
You can have up to 4 landing lights. New "named lights" let you create independently controllable landing lights in your attached OBJ files. More docs on Airplane development:
· http://wiki.x-plane.com/Category:Aircraft_Development
· All new user interface for the Plane-Maker panel editor!
· New slip indicator type: INVERTED.
· This is like any slip indicator, except you only use it when you are upside down.
· Used on aerobatic airplanes.
· New 4-digit ADF-frequency selector instruments.
· Well, they use 'em in Russia!
· 4-digit angles for generic gages... lets you make metric altimeters
· Better instrumentation for Thrust-Vector on the HUD and vector handle.
· (X-Plane is now being used by duPont Aerospace to fly a VTOL jet concept). (Importing instrument panels from other planes will keep the custom instrument attributes).
· ANY number of instruments can now be added to the panel.
· There is NO LIMIT.
· Is that enough instruments?
· 6-digit fuel-flow for the EFIS-digital and engine-digital-only gauges.
· The round gage with scrolling digits at the bottom will indicate in thousands of gph or pph if needed to fit the max fuel flow into 4 digits.
· HUD reference changed a hair: The CDI's now sit on the glideslope angle, not the horizon.
· Round trim indicators indicate trim, like they should, not control deflections, like they accidentally were.
· The generic instruments have a ton of new features. Every instrument has key framing. There are new instruments (text display, pointer) and some of the other instruments have new features.
· You can distort the moving parts of generic instruments by dragging their corners to make perspective views in 2-d panels look just right.
· You can now specify parts of an OBJ file to be dragged in 3-d in a cockpit. Use this to make dragable throttles and yokes, or 3-d switches that can be moved around. File spec and ac3d plugin support coming soon.
· You can specify up to 16 different dimmers for the instrument lighting, and pick which dimmer each instrument follows.
· Generic instruments can have a new "back-lit" lighting mode... the LIT and daytime textures are combined. Use this to make back-lit mechanical instruments. Back-lighting will respond to the instrument brightness dimmers.
· You can create up to 3 "spot light" masks for the 2-d panel. 3 dimmers control the spot light, which apply to burned in backgrounds and overlays.
· 3-D flight paths work with FDR files... nice for people importing FDR files that want to see the whole flight in 3-D at once.
· Seaplanes go to nearest water on the Planet-click, and the seaport you requested if you request if you requested one of them.
· Track-IR works a little better... Now we have 5 axis: pitch, yaw, and 3 axis of translation.
· No more time of day seeming to get out of sync between master and external visuals sometimes.
· PREFERENCES folder lives in the OUTPUT folder now, not the RESOURCES folder.
· This makes it easier to copy X-Plane to other machines without messing up its prefs... just copy the RESOURCES folder, not the OUTPUT folder.
· Flight path display kept in sync across all external visuals. Get a lot of computers with X-Plane and make all but one of them external visuals and zoom out and hit 'o' a few times to see the flite path displayed across all the monitors... cool!
· Better job of keeping track of flite path display and markers and stuff across all the external visuals.
· Flight Data Record and Joystick-Dropped file markers go to all external visuals, as is used by the National Test Pilot School.
· Rendering Option: Limit FR to monitor refresh.
· This can reduce OSCILLATIONS in frame-rate if your computer is super-duper fast.
· Better language-localization
· Up to 3 chutes now!
· Like the XB-70 has!
· And you specify the angles the chutes come out of the plane, so you can get them in the right places better as well!
· The parachutes also rotate around a little when deployed because, umm, I like them to.
· Control-O auto-centers the mouse so the view does not jerk around when you switch to that view.
· Reset flite path on the IOS or master to clear it from all displays.
· Set the transmissions-per-second to the external visuals to whatever you like.
· 40 transmissions per second is default, but you can set it as you like if you think a different send-rate would be better.
· Basic simulated Garmin 430 should allow you to go to fixes and navaids now, as well as airports.
· More advanced ICING model for FAA-certified use... We now build up ice on individual propellers and engine inlets and wings,
· and can fail individual parts of the de-icing system to have more ice on one wing than the other, for instance, if you fly in
· icing conditions with the de-icing system on but the LEFT wing de-icing system failed!
· Turbines and exhaust systems stay hot after shut-down for a while, as in the real planes.
· Wake turbulence from other planes is now more realistic... we now consider the size of both planes,
· and the G-load of the pane producing the turbulence, which determines the amount of lift, and thus wake turbulence, produced!
· If you set the auto-brakes to RTO, and arm the speedbrakes, then the speedbrakes will auto-deploy on the rejected take-off.
· Autopilot disco takes out the auto-throttle as well.
· 'Hide-prop-from-airflow-when-retracted' checkbox in the vectored thrust screen in Plane-Maker
· to hide props from the airflow when retracted works better now... It really does stop all forces on the prop.
· Oil cooler designed differently for recips, turboprops, and jets to give more accurate oil temperatures.
· Jets actually use their FUEL to cool the oil, unlike recips.
· You can now assign electrical systems to run off of EITHER bus: They will run as long as EITHER bus is powered.
· This is in Plane-Maker systems window.
· Yet more electrical system refinement!
· If the load is too high for the generators, their voltage starts to sag until the batteries take over!
· The batteries are turned off or dead? Then systems start dropping of-line!
· The more rpm you are spinning, the more amps the generators can put out!
· It is when you demand too many amps of the generators that the voltage sags.
· For some Cessnas, King-Airs, and Lancairs, this is a consideration during taxi: The load may be higher than the generator can provide, and higher rpm is used to keep the generators meeting the electrical system demands!
· If you DON'T do this, then the BATTERIES will be taking the load, and gradually dis-charging during the taxi!
· Enter a different fuel pressure per tank in Plane-Maker: You can use this to control what tanks are burned first!
· Also the l/c/r fuel-tank selectors and transfer-to and transfer-from buttons will take from or give to ALL
· the tanks on that side, which can be nice for multi-tank planes! This is useful for various planes that always burn the MAIN tanks first, leaving the SUMPS full until you are fuel-critical.
· Plane-Maker option in gear screen to specify whether or not the gear can retract on the ground. Amphib planes sure can use this!
· The autopilot heading, alt, vertical speed, and airspeed adjust commands all now give a nice increment with a ONE-button hit,
· but continue to give continuous motion when HELD.
· Engines and oil pumps quit when inverted or otherwise pulling negative G!
· This happens in most real planes! Don't like it?
· Then check the INVERTED FUEL AND OIL SYSTEMS checkbox in the engines screen in Plane-Maker!
· Inverter powers: Radar, autopilot, electric gyros, and/or torque indicators, all as controlled in Plane-Maker
· If you find other stuff in real planes that are power by the inverters, let me know and I can add them easily!
· Sep switches for art stab in pitch, roll, and yaw. (The yaw damper is art stab in yaw).
· The XB-70 Valkyrie has this, so this could be useful if you are going to be taking in a check-ride in an XB-70 any time soon.
· They might want you to know about the individual control of art stability on each axis, maybe.
· Auto engine-sync option in Plane-Maker, Engines screen. Works for props and jets, too, like the real Eclipse-jet has.
· ADG: Air-Driven Generator!
· This keeps your elec system going after an engine-driven generator failure.
· As your speed decays below stall speed, though, you will lose power for sure!
· New options in Plane-Maker viewpoint screen for verbal 500 agl, gear, and stall warning callouts.
· Autopilot discos in the stall, as it should.
· Ground-power unit option in the failures screen... used to plug in the GPU!
· INDIVIDUAL autopilot servo failure options: Aileron, elevator, auto-throttle, and yaw-damper!
· New failures: Electric and engine-driven fuel pumps... Either can run the system!
· The elec pumps have amperages that can be assigned in Plane-Maker, so you get a change in generator load
· when you turn on the various fuel pumps!
· Of course, you can assign those pumps to either bus, and any lack of generators and batteries that power that bus
· will cause the electric fuel pumps to go down, which will fail the engine IF the mechanical engine-driven pump as failed as well.
· New failures: bleed air, left and right. Used for pressurization
· Gear INDICATOR failures. Kind of nice for training.
· New failures: Elec trim runaway!
· We have failures in pitch, roll, and yaw trim!
· So now we can fail trim to lock it down motionless, or have it run away out of control!
· New joystick buttons page to make it easier to assign joystick buttons to ANY function!
· New data output, flite plan legs: Useful to see what the autopilot has planned for you next!
· OK, for the first time I know of, I have REMOVED a key command: Key commands for all flight controls are GONE! They never were right, since there was no right answer as to when the rudder and nosewheel steering would be connected... no matter what I did, half the people said it was wrong. So, use the mouse to fly, or, if you want to do it RIGHT, use a joystick and pedals!
· New commands: Audio selector to com1 or com2.
· Total energy audio control now is available as a joystick button and key command. (New button in key-command window to REMOVE commands, as well).
· A few improvements on the V-22 thanks to help from a crew-cheif on the real plane
· A few improvements in the linear-tape instruments for airspeed and Mach number and the like
· No more rain starburst pattern.
· A few problems with replays and loaded situations addressed
· Minor improvements in the EGT modelling.
· New cmnds: Fuel pump: PRIME. HOLD DOWN the button to run the electric pump.
· Flight model enhancement: We got RID of a variable that everyone was mis-using: Critical altitude of jet and turboprop engines.
· The critical altitude is the max altitude at which the engine can put out full power or thrust.
· Plenty of jets and turboprops have critical altitude way above sea level: They can put out full thrust or power way above sea level!
· BUT, they can only do this by going ABOVE 100% N1 flying high, or by staying well BELOW 100% N1 when flying low!
· In other words, these engines are air pumps: They can NOT make the air any denser!
· They can only continue to put out rated power in thinner air by spinning the N1 up higher!
· SO, if you want to have a flat-rated turboprop or jet engine in X-Plane that has a critical altitude well above sea level,
then you have exactly 2 options:
· 1: Enter the true thermodynamic power of the engine in Plane-Maker, and keep the N1 well BELOW 100% N1 to avoid actually hitting that power.
· Only advance the throttle as you climb into thinner air to use the engines' excess capacity to continue to put out full power during climb.
· or
· 2: Enter a max throttle of OVER 1.00 in Plane-Maker. Take off at 100% N1, and as you climb, advance the throttle so the N1 creeps OVER 100% N1,
· holding constant thrust as you climb!
· In both cases, you will see an increasing N1 as you climb to hold a constant thrust up to the airplanes' critical altitude... AS IN REALITY.
· Now, for RECIP engines, it is a bit different! THOSE engines can be turbocharged, and the turbo can AUTOMATICALLY spool up faster-n-faster as you climb,
· resulting in a constant engine horsepower as you climb with no change at all in engine indications (other than higher cyl-head temperatures, in reality)
· So, we are leaving THAT critical altitude in place in Plane-Maker.
· Double click time matches OS preference - easier to double click now
· Menus drag and click like OS X and windows
· Better framerate - up to 10%, depends on CPU, GPU
· PAPI lights at LOWI go in the right direction
· More translations
· Dark areas and stripes fixed in Planet
· Generic pointers don't jitter
· More commands, and some command re-organization of the commands.
· Keys do not activate commands now when you press them in the key-assign screen!
· Enter fixes into the g430 now! (Could only enter navaids and airports before... sorry!)
· Enter destination into airport screen, bring up the location map, and the airport ID is auto-entered for you there to do runway selection.
· APU operative
· Magneto control operative
· Bug-fix in recip engine modeling was costing us 5% power, now fixed.
· When you pan around using the q/e keys, if you have the 'default to full-screen' button checked in the rendering options screen, then X-Plane will do so coming back to the forward view with the q/e keys.
· Background bitmaps in Plane-Maker fuselage screen align left-justified.
· A handful of labels have had spelling and punctuation corrected, and the like.
· The IOS screen has the airport-browser button that some people like (from the location menu) as well as the airport ID-entry field
· New command: APU start.
· The cloud layers can be made infinitely close to each other now.
· Weather rate of change does not change weather when the sim is paused (it did before... oops!)
· Cursors are better aligned to the instruments in the panel.
· Comment saving in PLN won't copy comments randomly to instruments with no comments.
· Show-hide filters on generic instruments work correctly even on array datarefs.
· VOR range corrected - long-range VORs were broadcasting too far before.
· Click on generic rotaries won't double-increment the dataref when the instrument has "mechanical lighting"
· Preview animation of generic rotaries shows last animation frame.
· Plane-Maker popup menus won't go off the bottom of the screen.
· New airport rendering detail control in the Rendering Options screen. You can now control how smooth the airport taxiway curves and lines are. Check out KSBD with high settings to see smooth lines.
· Control the CAR-traffic density with a rendering setting. You can now get an LA traffic jam even if the object settings are lower.
· Mostly just bug-fixes, but a large handful of new joystick/keyboard commands as well... specifically for pressurization and bleed-air control, and various bugs and settings, cowl flaps, and ADF radio frequencies.
· The electrical low-volt annunciator will come on when the bus voltage is below the LO-END-OF-GREEN-ARC GENERATOR voltage.
· The electrical system will stop working when the bus voltage is below the REDLINE LO-END BATTERY voltage.
· As well, a minor flight-model refinement to be a bit more accurate at very low speeds in vehicles that sit in their own propwash. What sort of machines do this? Hovering helicopters!
August 30th, 2008· A few little error-fixes... just minor tweaks.
· Panel lighting correct for planes with 3-d panel and ATTR_cockpit_region.
· Latest language translations
· Pixel shaders should look less strange in cities.
· Panel zoom is back to the way it USED to be (one 747 panel in the center of Matrox).
August 25th, 2008· A few little error-fixes... just minor tweaks.
· Panel lighting correct for planes with 3-d panel and ATTR_cockpit_region.
· Latest language translations
· Pixel shaders should look less strange in cities.
· Panel zoom is back to the way it USED to be (one 747 panel in the center of Matrox).
August 15th, 2008· A few improvements on the V-22 thanks to help from a crew-cheif on the real plane
· A few improvements in the linear-tape instruments for airspeed and Mach number and the like
· No more rain starburst pattern.
· A few problems with replays and loaded situations addressed
· Minor improvements in the EGT modelling.
· New cmnds: Fuel pump: PRIME. HOLD DOWN the button to run the electric pump.
· Flight model enhancement: We got RID of a variable that everyone was mis-using: Critical altitude of jet and turboprop engines.
· The critical altitude is the max altitude at which the engine can put out full power or thrust.
· Plenty of jets and turboprops have critical altitude way above sea level: They can put out full thrust or power way above sea level!
· BUT, they can only do this by going ABOVE 100% N1 flying high, or by staying well BELOW 100% N1 when flying low!
· In other words, these engines are air pumps: They can NOT make the air any denser!
· They can only continue to put out rated power in thinner air by spinning the N1 up higher!
· SO, if you want to have a flat-rated turboprop or jet engine in X-Plane that has a critical altitude well above sea level, then you have exactly 2 options: enter the true thermodynamic power of the engine in Plane-Maker, and keep the N1 well BELOW 100% N1 to avoid actually hitting that power or only advance the throttle as you climb into thinner air to use the engines' excess capacity to continue to put out full power during climb.
· Enter a max throttle of OVER 1.00 in Plane-Maker. Take off at 100% N1, and as you climb, advance the throttle so the N1 creeps OVER 100% N1, holding constant thrust as you climb!
· In both cases, you will see an increasing N1 as you climb to hold a constant thrust up to the airplanes' critical altitude... AS IN REALITY.
· Now, for RECIP engines, it is a bit different! THOSE engines can be turbocharged, and the turbo can AUTOMATICALLY spool up faster-n-faster as you climb,
· resulting in a constant engine horsepower as you climb with no change at all in engine indications (other than higher cyl-head temperatures, in reality).
· So, we are leaving THAT critical altitude in place in Plane-Maker.
· Double click time matches OS preference - easier to double click now.
· Menus drag and click like OS X and windows.
· Better framerate - up to 10%, depends on CPU, GPU.
· PAPI lights at LOWI go in the right direction.
· More translations.
· Dark areas and stripes fixed in Planet.
· Generic pointers don't jitter.
August 11th, 2008· More commands, and some command re-organization of the commands.
· Keys do not activate commands now whe you press them in the key-assign screen!
· Enter fixes into the g430 now! (Could only enter navaids and airports before... sorry!)
· Enter destination into airport screen, bring up the location map, and the airport ID is auto-entered for you there to do runway selection.
· APU operative
· Magneto control operative
· Bug-fix in recip engine modeling was costing us 5% power, now fixed.
· When you pan around using the q/e keys, if you have the 'default to full-screen' button checked in the rendering options screen, then X-Plane will do so coming back to the forward view with the q/e keys.
· Background bitmaps in Plane-Maker fuselage screen align left-justified.
· A handful of labels have had spelling and punctuation corrected, and the like.
· The IOS screen has the airport-browser button that some people like (from the location menu) as well as the airport ID-entry field
· New command: APU start.
· The cloud layers can be made infinetly close to each other now.
· Weather rate of change does not change weather when the sim is paused (it did before... oops!)
· Cursors are better aligned to the instruments in the panel.
· Comment saving in PLN won't copy comments randomly to instruments with no cmoments.
· Show-hide filters on generic instruments work correctly even on array datarefs.
· VOR range corrected - long-range VORs were broadcasting too far before.
· Click on generic rotaries won't double-increment the dataref when the instrument has "mechanical lighting"
· Preview animation of generic rotaries shows last animation frame.
· Plane-Maker popup menus won't go off the bottom of the screen.
August 9th, 2008· More commands, and some command re-organization of the commands.
· Keys do not activate commands now whe you press them in the key-assign screen!
· Enter fixes into the g430 now! (Could only enter navaids and airports before... sorry!)
· Enter destination into airport screen, bring up the location map, and the airport ID is auto-entered for you there to do runway selection.
· APU operative
· Magneto control operative
· Bug-fix in recip engine modeling was costing us 5% power, now fixed.
· When you pan around using the q/e keys, if you have the 'default to full-screen' button checked in the rendering options screen, then X-Plane will do so coming back to the forward view with the q/e keys.
· Background bitmaps in Plane-Maker fuselage screen align left-justified.
· A handful of labels have had spelling and punctuation corrected, and the like.
· The IOS screen has the airport-browser button that some people like (from the location menu) as well as the airport ID-entry field
· New command: APU start.
· The cloud layers can be made infinetly close to each other now.
· Weather rate of change does not change weather when the sim is paused (it did before... oops!)
· Cursors are better aligned to the instruments in the panel.
· Comment saving in PLN won't copy comments randomly to instruments with no cmoments.
· Show-hide filters on generic instruments work correctly even on array datarefs.
· VOR range corrected - long-range VORs were broadcasting too far before.
· Click on generic rotaries won't double-increment the dataref when the instrument has "mechanical lighting"
· Preview animation of generic rotaries shows last animation frame.
· Plane-Maker popup menus won't go off the bottom of the screen.
· New airport rendering detail control in the Rendeirng Options screen. You can now control how smooth the airport taxiway curves and lines are. Check out KSBD with high settings to see smooth lines.
· Control the CAR-traffic density with a rendering setting. You can now get an LA traffic jam even if the object settings are lower.
July 28th, 2008· Mostly just bug-fixes, but a large handful of new joystick/keyboard commands as well... specifically for pressurization and bleed-air control, and various bugs and settings, cowl flaps, and ADF radio frequencies.
· The electrical low-volt annunciator will come on when the bus voltage is below the LO-END-OF-GREEN-ARC GENERATOR voltage.
· The electrical system will stop working when the bus voltage is below the REDLINE LO-END BATTERY voltage.
· As well, a minor flight-model refinement to be a bit more accurate at very low speeds in vehicles that sit in their own propwash. What sort of machines do this? Hovering helicopters!
July 11th, 2008· Mostly just bug-fixes, but a handful of new joystick/keyboard commands as well... specifically for pressurization and bleed-air control, and various bugs and settings, and ADF radio frequencies.
· As well, a minor flight-model refinement to be a bit more accurate at very low speeds in vehicles that sit in their own propwash. What sort of machines do this? Hovering helicopters!
July 7th, 2008· Bug fixes
July 2nd, 2008· Countless frame-rate and RAM optimizations. One of the many examples is the new scenery-loader: Texture loading now uses as many cores as you have. Photo scenery should load a lot faster on multi-core machines, especially if you have four or eight cores.
June 7th, 2008· X-Plane 9.01 is a localization patch, providing French and German support.
April 16th, 2008· Frame-rate improved! DSF meshes are optimized on load - saves about 50 MB of RAM, can increase frame-rate up to 10% when shaders are off in areas with lots of mountains and few objects. Enhanced use of VBOs increases frame-rate. There are COUNTLESS frame-rate optimizations that are too numerous or proprietary to mention here.
· ALMOST NO DELAY IN SCENERY-SHIFTING! (but you need a multi-core or multi-processor machine to fully realize this benefit!) Now you can fly around the entire planet without every having a significant pause to load scenery... you can look at continuously-varying textures across the whole Country from San Diego to New York and ditto that world-wide. Imagine: You get into a light plane in San Diego and fly it clear to New York, watching the terrain change from the green coastal conditions to the deserts of the SouthWest, then transition to the fields of the midwest, then forests of the Northeast, then the cities of New York, right down to Central park greenery. It's ALL THERE, and you can watch the whole thing in one continuous flight, with hardly a delay to load scenery if you have a dual-core or multi-processor machine. It is simply stunning, just like doing it for real.
· As well, QUICKTIME MOVIES are now much, much faster, also using multiple cores, to give you much higher framerate during QuickTime movie creation.
· AMAZING NEW PLANES with INCREDIBLE DETAIL: We now have a new Cessna 172, Piaggo Avanti (you have been waiting for this one!), ASK-21 glider, and even a Cirrus-jet! Be sure to load the Cessna, Avanti, and Cirrus jet in the 'General Aviation' folder, and hit the '|' key to check them out! The Cirrus Jet, as a matter if fact, is the SAME .acf file that Cirrus used in-house with their copy of X-Plane! (We also have first-drafts of ALL the Vans RV homebuilts, so if you are an RV pilot, you can use these as a quick-start to modelling YOUR RV!)
· Aircraft panels can be up to 2048x2048. Those who want to every bit of detail on a B-36 or B-52 cockpit: Your time has come! Check out the 'Example Airplane WideScreen' in the 'Instructions' folder. Use the left and right arrows to see the whole screen, or run in a res of up to 2048x1024 to see more at once! Now you see you can make very wide-screeen airplanes! Of course, if you make the left half the panel the pilot's side, and the right half the copilot's side, and split your output to two monitors running 1024x768, then you get a pilot and copilot display from one computer, and one copy of x-plane! kind of convenient.
· It gets better: If you want 3-D cockpits, the 3-D cockpit has 3-D lighting for panel texture, to really make flight with 3-D cockpits immersive! Get in the Cirrus Jet and hit 'control-o' to see this. Then use the mouse, arrow-keys, and page-up/page-down keys to move around the cockpit while flying. Try it as well in the Cessna 172 or Avanti. The 3-D clicking into 3-D cockpit tracks a lot better as well, so you can do full flight operations in 3-D... a real experience in the Cirrus Jet! (It's inside the 'General Aviation' folder)
· Custom liveries! Look at the 'Example Airplane WideScreen' in the 'Instructions' folder. You can make all the custom liveries you want, with all the names you want! Then, in X-Plane, go to the 'open liveries' menu item (right under the 'open aircraft' menu item!) and select the livery you want!
· Moderate User-Interface overhaul. Every single menu and window has been re-evaluated for optimum placement. Every windows has been re-evaluated for optimum organization, with many changes. The interface has a mildly different look and feel, and much re-organization to be quicker and more friendly to use. This has included countless changes, including: Fonts are now bigger and clearer... in fact this is the font that was designed specifically for (the real) Charles De Gaulle airport!. All interfaces to enter DIRECTION are are now done with round compass-rose type interface. Interface to assign keyboards is now a dream: Every function can easily be seen at-a-glance. Any function can be assigned to any joystick button as well. So now any function can be assigned to any key and any joystick button.
· Generic Instruments! In Plane-Maker, Hook ANY variable to ANY digital readout, handle, needle, tape... ANYTHING. You could, for example, have digital oil pressure or hydraulic quantity gages... Just choose the generic LED instruments (in the generic folder in the instrument list in panel-editor of Plane-Maker) and select whatever variable you want to attach to each digital readout! Using this technology, you can finally view any variable you want on the panel! This really lets you make your own instruments. Now, I am adding a new variable and dataref: EFIS PAGE. This is an integer that can go 0 to whatever, and you can hook it up to a generic instrument rotary. So, your generic rotary instrument can run the EFIS PAGE variable to any value. Great. NOW, the NEXT thing you can do with generic instruments is set the instrument to only be VISIBLE when a certain dataref is a certain-value. Let that dataref be the EFIS-PAGE variable and you can make multi-page EFIS systems!
· Look in the airliners in the 'Heavy Metal' folder in the 'Instructions' folder. You will see a file ending in 'icon.png'... this is an image of the airplane that will be visible whenever you scroll thru the aircraft-selection window in X-Plane. Now you can see what each plane looks like when deciding what plane to fly!
· Complete new electrical system model. In Plane-Maker: You can now set the bus and amperage of many electrical systems, to get your plane's electrical system just right! As well, set the actual watt-hours of the battery in the SYSTEMS window in Plane-Maker. So now you can now get every amp of every system set just right for your plane, and each system on the right bus, so you draw just the right power from the generators or buses, and lose just the right systems when buses go down, after electrical failures. It's in the SYSTEMS window in the DEFAULT menu in Plane-Maker.
April 2nd, 2008· A few of the teeneist little tweaks and bug-fixes.
March 17th, 2008· Oil temp no longer goes too high at hi alt.
· Visibility displayed properly in the weather screen.
· Keys for flight director mode up-dn operational.
· Certain older planes would lose their instruments when read in... that should no longer be the case.
· Propeller custom chord offsets functioning as desired.
· General-aviaiton autopilot console works as intended.
· Default GPS works as desired.
· Generic trigger now has a dual-slot layer-1 png, 1 slot for trigger NOT pressed, the other for trigger pressed.
March 10th, 2008· Enhanced: Better fps when flying with heavy rain. Less of a visible "tunnel".
· Enhanced: Fuel tank datarefs now work for all 9 tanks.
· Fixed: sim should find the DVD on all computers (Beta 25 had trouble finding the DVD on some Macs).
· Fixed: Joystick works on Linux.
· Fixed: XPLM for Linux is up to date.
· Fixed: Gyro datarefs now work.
· Fixed: v8 scenery that uses European objects will show objects again.
March 6th, 2008· New button and command to show auxilary fuel tanks... It's nice if you have more fuel TANKS than fuel GAGES. Hit this button to show the other tanks on the same gages. This works if you have twice the number of tanks as you do gages. (2, 4, 6, or 8 tanks are all OK, if you just have half that many gages). The KingAir, for example, has 4 tanks but only 2 gages... hit this little button on the panel for the gages to show the aux tanks! Cool!
· The Garmin 430 instrument can plot your course properly.
· Vert Nav mode follows FMS altitudes (if entered) using vertical speed rather than flight-level-change.
· Cool new failures: Bird strikes and wind shear. Rather than the random strikes and wind shear which can already happen, the instructor can trigger those in the IOS as well. Good for training.
· New failure: Yaw damper.
· New master caution, alert, and warning silence commands for joystick buttons.
· Windshield wiper behavior tweaked a hair.
· Auto-cowl-flap option. Set in the Special Controls window in the Expert menu of Plane-Maker. The ME-109 used this. In X-Plane, the cowl flaps will automatically open or close to maintain a CHT right in the middle of the green.
· Map screen, when you check the EDIT box, lets you enter latitudes in all ranges... we could not enter small southerly latitudes before.
· External visuals track accurately in control-o cockpit viewing modes.
· We have a handful of scenery enhancements, including: Lots of new objects for Europe from Cris. Taxiway signs are now always lit (even during the day) to make them easier to read. Lighting on cars at night. Prop alpha is a little bit more opaque at high RPM.
· And scenery improvements for scenery authors: Animated objects and lego-brick instruments can animate based on whether commands are pressed. You can pick commands from a plugin in the keyboard-setup dialog box.
· Fixed: Mac books with the X3100 won't crash (even if you've installed Leopard Graphics Update)
· Fixed: Airplanes that use ATTR_cockpit outside te cockpit won't crash the sim. (This is still a bad idea - only use ATTR_cockpit in a cockpit object.)
· Fixed: Two-sided taxiway signs don't show the front sign color on the back.
· Fixed: Preview of generic "lego brick" instruments in PlaneMaker updates when the PNG file is changed.
· Fixed: Code to find the DVD should be slightly smarter about finding the DVD.
· Fixed: All airplane-object textures are reloaded when the plane is reloaded.
· Fixed: "Scenery not installed" warning should match the v9 DVDs now.
· Fixed: various datarefs fixed, including replay_mode.
March 6th, 2008· New button and command to show auxilary fuel tanks... It's nice if you have more fuel TANKS than fuel GAGES.
· Hit this button to show the other tanks on the same gages.
· This works if you have twice the number of tanks as you do gages. (2, 4, 6, or 8 tanks are all OK,
· if you just have half that many gages).
· The KingAir, for example, has 4 tanks but only 2 gages... hit this little button on the panel for the gages to show the aux tanks! Cool!
· The Garmin 430 instrument can plot your course properly.
· Vert Nav mode follows FMS altitudes (if entered) using vertical speed rather than flight-level-change.
· Cool new failures: Bird strikes and wind shear.
· Rather than the random strikes and wind shear which can already happen, the instructor can trigger those in the IOS as well.
· Good for training.
· New failure: Yaw damper.
· New master caution, alert, and warning silence commands for joystick buttons.
· Windshield wiper behavior tweaked a hair.
· Auto-cowl-flap option.
· Set in the Special Controls window in the Expert menu of Plane-Maker.
· The ME-109 used this.
· In X-Plane, the cowl flaps will automatically open or close to maintain a CHT right in the middle of the green.
· Map screen, when you check the EDIT box, lets you enter latitudes in all ranges... we could not enter small southerly latitudes before.
· External visuals track accurately in control-o cockpit viewing modes.
We have a hadful of scenery enhancements, including:
· Lots of new objects for Europe from Cris.
· Taxiway signs are now always lit (even during the day) to make them easier to read.
· Lighting on cars at night.
· Prop alpha is a little bit more opaque at high RPM.
And scenery improvements for scenery authors:
· Animated objects and lego-brick instruments can animate based on whether commands are pressed.
· You can pick commands from a plugin in the keyboard-setup dialog box.
· Fixed: Mac books with the X3100 won't crash (even if you've installed Leopard Graphics Update)
· Fixed: Airplanes that use ATTR_cockpit outside te cockpit won't crash the sim. (This is still a bad idea - only use ATTR_cockpit in a cockpit object.)
· Fixed: Two-sided taxiway signs don't show the front sign color on the back.
· Fixed: Preview of generic "lego brick" instruments in PlaneMaker updates when the PNG file is changed.
· Fixed: Code to find the DVD should be slightly smarter about finding the DVD.
· Fixed: All airplane-object textures are reloaded when the plane is reloaded.
· Fixed: "Scenery not installed" warning should match the v9 DVDs now.
· Fixed: various datarefs fixed, including replay_mode.
February 26th, 2008· Profile path in map screen shows height in MSL not AGL.
· No more crash changing freqs on the BC DME's.
· Zooming in on the plane from very far away (like the tower view) centers right on the plane.
· Rolls are replayed correctly in replay mode.
· Flight director is now limited to within 10 degrees of your current pitch, as is the real g1000.
· Temperature affects indicated airspeed, as it should.
· 'De-ice All Systems' actually... umm... de-ices all systems.
· If you dial flite-plan altitudes into the FMS, the plane should auto-follow the altitudes in FLCH mode.
· Generic one-way rheostats and annunciators should have customizeable images now.
· Weapons stay fully-attached to the plane, no matter the angular positions and rates.
· In the SYSTEMS page in Plane-Maker, you can now assign the LAST battery to hav a different voltage than the rest.
· This can be useful for having a standby battery that is a different voltage than the rest, as is the case on some planes.
· Default panel scrolling in the viewpoint window in Plane-Maker, View tab, properly labeled and functional.
· Wide-panel scrolling still lets you grab all the instruments.
· Airfoils have higher drag at angles of attack beyond 20 degrees... this may help make spins more accurate.
· After an engine fire, you aren't getting that engine back. ;-) Put out the fire with the extinguisher button, but the engine is down for the count. Interesting note: In an engine fire, the engine will continue to put out power for some short period of time... but hitting the extinguisher will stop the engine NOW. So here is the interesting point: On take-off or go-around, you may be better advised to let the engine run (even though on fire) for a little while before hitting the extinguishers, if the airplane depends on having the engine for a few more moments.
February 19th, 2008· Pulling the engine fire extinguisher should shut down the engine.
· Visibility not automatically pulled down when you command thunderstorms.
· Side views should not scroll to default when q/e 'ing to different views.
· Shutting down HUD shuts down ONLY the HUD, not everything. ;-)
· Rotor ground effect and wind and turbulence effects all tuned down a good bit.
· No annunciator lights if no electrical system available to power the airplane.
· Terrain-following radar now follows the altitude entered into the decision-hight of the radio altimeter, if you have one. (It shoots for 200 feet, otherwise).
· Refined Garmin 296, 396, 496, f30, and g1000 driving.
· Floatplane dynamics improved a hair: You may have noticed that the floatplanes floated sort of nose-high in the last few betas, but they should be back to their prop attitude in the water now.
October 20th, 2007· Magenta course line appears on the garmin 430.
· No more objects moving around when approaching airports from different directions.
· Sectional map colors now better.
· The plugin menu won't move to the right when a developer reloads plugins.
· Flight on Mars won't cause crashes any more... other than the impact-with-the-ground type.
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