New night screenshot

[Mountain Man 142]

That's not a problem and why are you concerned? Just let us know where we can reach you, and we'll let you know when it's stable, so you can come back and assess the software.

That's awfully sporting of you, my dear fellow. Pip pip and all of that.

[MikeT707 1,181]

We flesh out as many bugs as we can from the rather large internal beta testing...THEN we release it to the public in what we call the public beta run...to get all those last few trouble spots fixed. This is what is getting released, it is what has always gotten released. We need the community to help us stabilize it for everybody...and that means that there will be a measure of time after we release to get this done. Users who do not want to chance the instability should wait till version 10.1 or 10.2 -Tom Kyler

Just want to clarify, will this release candidate/public beta process take place prior to the Christmas release date that was stated, or is version 10.0 the public beta and 10.1 or 10.2 the refined product that will be ready for general consumption. Looking forward to whatever direction it takes. Sounds like a lot of fun to be part of the process. Thanks for all your hard work, by the way.

[tkyler 88]

You're very welcome. The "release of x-plane" is and always has referred to the release of the public beta....this is what gets burned to the DVDs. The DVDs are, primarily, a distribution mechanism for the immense volume of data that makes up the base terrain of the world and is currently too large to distribute via the web (this will change one day in the future). Almost everything else that sits on top of that terrain...aircraft, airports etc are well suited to update through the web. So while we want the content on the DVDs to be as complete as it can be, this really only satisfies less than 0.5% of the x-plane user base as most x-plane users are very used to the frequent web update process. We basically get a reasonably stabilized version going (stable to internal testers)...then we release that to the public to really get variety in testing.....and that is the release referred to in our "by Christmas" statement. This release generally marks the launch of the product and right away we all collectively begin working at improving it through bug fixes, additional features, etc and getting past the "beta" phase...and will go into the "release candidate" phase and finally the stable phase, which might occur around x-plane 10.1 or 10.2. I really couldn't say how long it takes to get there, but suffice to say that we at laminar work pretty aggressively after release to get stabilized. Nobody wants some long-term beta. I have fantastic confidence in the programming staff...we are a lot of years into x-plane and they have managed to accomplish whatever they put their minds to. -Tom Kyler

[Glynn 405]

You're very welcome. The "release of x-plane" is and always has referred to the release of the public beta....this is what gets burned to the DVDs. The DVDs are,-Tom Kyler

HelloSo when this Beta is burned to DVD's does it state on the DVD case that it is a Beta and that an internet connection is required in order to obtain a fully working product sometime in the future.Why not just run a proper Beta process and release at 10.2 or whatever is deemed stable.

[tkyler 88]

It does not to my knowledge....and in my opinion, doing such is probably more of just a marketing move as the software that will get burned to the DVD will be fully working as tested by the internal beta team and not require an internet connection...but the internal testing team is but a small sample of the population. As such, we could label it final.....saying that beta testing was done internally.....we have lots of beta testers; however, in reality, public release of software always brings out things the internal team doesn't catch. Any software that has ever had to have a patch issued for it illustrates this. At laminar, we simply choose to acknowledge the inevitability up front to the customer and so call the early release the "public" beta. This lets folks know there's some things we expect to find by the community. I guess we could call it final like other people do and then call our updates "patches"...but this would be semantics as the process is the same every time. Our method reflects our semantic preferences. Develop / test / retest / release to public / find new bugs / fix bugs / stabilize / release fix. This will happen no matter if we call it beta/final or final/patchedAs to the requiring an internet connection....old timers probably don't' like this, I certainly came from the pre-internet generation of computer usage myself; however, it is the way of the future and I myself will happily forsake 5 out of 100 users who don't want to have an internet connection...though if prodded, I myself would happily burn a "patch" to DVD and mail it to them....and saying that a "patch" is not fair to a customer when you told them the initial release is final...well that's just tantamount to software ignorance and I won't even address that.So to conclude, the DVD burn will be stable as we've tested it internally. You can call it final if you like. After you've received the DVDs and something comes up we didn't catch, then the best you can do is let us know and we'll get right onto fixing that and issue a "patch" asap! ;)

[dm123 19]

It was a i7 Apple MacBook Pro with 1GB ATI Radeon card. I'm not sure of the exact specs as its not my computer. I'll try and get those and post those back up here.

Wow! really? I thought it was going to be some high end gaming desktop. I might even be able to run it on high settings then. And this also means that those with the 4.8 ghz i7 supercomputers on this forum are going to have really high frame rates I imagine.

[airlinejets 709]

That's awfully sporting of you, my dear fellow. Pip pip and all of that.

Really happy you got the message! Root and toot to you too!

[airlinejets 709]

HelloSo when this Beta is burned to DVD's does it state on the DVD case that it is a Beta and that an internet connection is required in order to obtain a fully working product sometime in the future.Why not just run a proper Beta process and release at 10.2 or whatever is deemed stable.

You're the only one who will get this version. I tried talking Austin out of it, but he thinks you deserve it...you can always revert to FSX if you think you've been short-changed...

[strider1 575]

You're the only one who will get this version. I tried talking Austin out of it, but he thinks you deserve it...you can always revert to FSX if you think you've been short-changed...

LOL............

[alainneedle1 97]

It was a i7 Apple MacBook Pro with 1GB ATI Radeon card. I'm not sure of the exact specs as its not my computer. I'll try and get those and post those back up here.

OK I'll be waiting for the specs.

[Glynn 405]

You're the only one who will get this version. I tried talking Austin out of it, but he thinks you deserve it...you can always revert to FSX if you think you've been short-changed...

HelloDo you work for Laminar ?

[Janov 2,383]

HelloDo you work for Laminar ?

He owns the garage that Laminar has set up shop in .Jan

[PebbleBeach 120]

or some have rw experience.I have no loyalty but to the best sim at the best moment-my disclaimer.

Then you of all people know how horrible night is in FSX.