XP pb12 is out

[Mountain Man 142]

9 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Those issues you mention are cosmetic (also the moon and stars missing in HDR), but I would be very surprised if they're not fixed in a last pass for the release candidate versions.

These are non-critical for those of us mainly interested in the flight aspects of the sim, but X-Plane will be savaged by non-aviation reviewers on "gaming" sites and YouTube reviews if that sky banding is still there. Non-aviation gaming reviews (especially on Steam) are still important to overall X-Plane sales and interest.

I know we're all anxious to see a final version so we can start looking for updated utilities and plane models. But if it takes another month to fix the graphics glitches, then they should take that extra time (IMO). It's not like we can't fly the betas in the meantime, and they're getting more solid with every release.

My suspicion is that things like the banding in the sky textures and glowing trees are very easy fixes.  In fact, I bet Ben knows exactly what he needs to do fix them, but because they are so quick and easy, you push them off until the end of development and deal with the more time consuming issues upfront and save the easy stuff for just before release.

 

9 hours ago, tonywob said:

Yep it is certainly cosmetic, but I also think very important if you're a VFR flyer who spends most of the time looking out of the window. Also don't underestimate how much harm a Youtube video or screenshots can do to a potential buyer (The sky banding in particular is actually pretty bad).

XP11 is still in beta.  If we were 6-months post-release and these issues existed then you'd have a point, but I think most people are aware that things will improve as the software developed.

[Mountain Man 142]

8 hours ago, Novation said:

Thank you OP for the heads up. I've not started XP11 for a few days, so its nice to have something for the weekend

Of all the bugs XP has the ground shaking is one of the less annoying, and of all the visual elements that need correcting I would put this fairly low on the list myself, but, It has to be said, they seem to find the time to model a bobblehead Austin, which must have taken a few hours, but leave glaring issues untouched across major revisions. But luckily its only a game and therefore not a matter of life or death.

As I understand things, the aircraft were designed by a freelance developer hired for the purpose.  In which case, his putting an Austin bobblehead inside the airplane as a joke/Easter egg would have taken nothing away from the rest of the development resources.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

Backed up pb11 and updated tonight. Downloaded the latest vFlyteAir Traveler as well, as I'd been flying a beta version and didn't realize there had been an official update.

Started fine (unlike pb11, where any version of the Traveler would not start at all) & took it up for a bit of a flight. No issues whatsoever. Seemed like a tiny bit more FPS. Hard to tell, since I've been getting pretty good performance for awhile now.

Noticed that it was idling a bit low, and since the first point in the changelog mentions idle settings, I opened up PM to take a look. Changed the lo idle fuel adjustment to 1.0 (100%), saved it, restarted, and it's all good.

This one might of broke things for a lot of other addons, but it's working better than pb11 for the bit of payware I have installed

[Novation 534]

3 hours ago, Mountain Man said:

In which case, his putting an Austin bobblehead inside the airplane as a joke/Easter egg would have taken nothing away from the rest of the development resources.

That is probably right, and its a small niggle tbh. I am simply keen for them to start pushing through of the the glaring bugs, and hope they are as simple as you suggest. I'm sure they could bolt down some of this visual stuff now and move on to other things without that being affected.

 

Anyone else seeing funky stuff with xEnviro and pb12?

[Jimm 437]

6 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

Believe the folks at IGEX has basically stated it would be very unwise to update anything to XP11 until which time it is final as this Austin will and does change things without warning nor explanation. I believe that is the best policy. Im happy using XP 10 with stars, sun etc. I also see very little difference if any apart from the interface.

I believed them, but then again, I didn't buy any weather add-on or aircraft for XP11 yet, and not so much for what they said, it was just common sense.

[rayharris51 5]

Hi All, 

Not sure if this report on pb12 will help anyone

As a new X-plane 11 user just downloaded pb12 - with some trepidation after some of the posts, I loaded up the Carenado B200 at the add-on Inside Passage Nanaimo (CYCD) Airport. Note, I have W2XP America, UHD3 mesh, Xenviro as well as the Inside Passage scenery loaded. Flew to CYAZ at 12,000. The GNS430 GPS flight plan generated in Plan G worked fine.

Settings: Visual Effects  - High (HDR)  Antialiasing 8x (highest), World Objects - max, Reflections - full, Texture Quality - Max (compressed).

System: i5 4690 @4.4GHz, GTX1080, 24Gb 1866 DDR3 RAM, cheap Thrustmaster T controls and Saitek Rudder Pedals.

Absolutely perfect flight. Frames 25 at CYCD, 35 at CYAZ. This is marked improvement over pb11 (about 20% better). Also noted much faster program and scenery loading. Note though I normally start with engines running in x-plane (though not in P3D).

I have also tried the Baron B58 with REP addon which I had some problems with earlier. Engines not able to start.

Default C172 started with no problem and everything working at add on airport PAKT (Ketchikan) over 40 fps in pouring rain and heavy cloud.

Rather relieved that something works but still more tests to do.

 

Ray

[Paraffin 2,197]

Ben just posted this on the dev blog -- Beta 12 and Engine Chaos.

Jet engine thrust at low N1 should be fixed; you should no longer have to kill the ground crew to taxi around the ramp. If you find weird jet engine N1 behavior, please report a bug ASAP!
Reciprocating props will need to have their idles adjusted, perhaps a bit higher, particularly if your idle adjustment is < 1.0 in Plane-Maker.  We had to bump up our Cessna, which was set to about 0.8 and was stalling if not given a little extra throttle.
The engine start code has some kind of bug that is stopping engines from starting.

A new beta 13 is due by Tuesday to address this. I think there is more going on than just with recip props based on what I saw with a recent PC-12 flight, so I'll post that bug along with the non-starting planes I've seen. Everyone, please file bug reports.

P.S. I know a workaround has been mentioned for users editing the idle flow settings in PlaneMaker to get payware planes working, but if your'e doing that, then be sure to name your backup .acf carefully, or take notes, because you'll just have to do it all over again when Laminar makes further adjustments. Right now I'm not touching anything in PlaneMaker and just flying what's working.

[gpb500 10]

Austin wrote in his blog about changes to the PT-6 engine modeling including electrical load, ITT, pressurization, etc.  It's an interesting read...and good stuff if he gets it right.  For those that may have missed it...

http://austinmeyer.com/2017/01/05/x-plane-11-flight-model-improvements/