Stephan Manzek
26.02.2012, 20:11
X-Plane 10.04 Beta 5
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!
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!