X-Pilot

Aerosoft publishing has released their rendition of Keflavik, Iceland's international airport! The scenery is developed exclusively for X-Plane 10 and utilizes the enhanced scenery design features X-Plane 10 has to offer. Hop on over to the Aerosoft Keflavik product page to learn more.

Shade Tree Micro Aviation has released their North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco. The aircraft has many features, among which are a fully 3D modeled aircraft, a high visibility cockpit, and weapons functions. More information can be found on the product product page.

X-Aviation has released an update to the Take Command! CRJ-200. This update brings the product to version 1.4.5 and contains some very important bug fixes and enhancements from the last update! See more info about this update by viewing the update thread in the forum.

X-Aviation has released a few more previews for the Douglas DC-3 project by Leading Edge Simulations. These are must-see, so check them out here in the forums!

In the event you missed this over the last couple of days, Laminar has released version 10.05 Release Candidate 1. 10.05 is a minor patch from 10.04 to fix a few key bugs. 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.

X-Aviation has released an update to the Take Command! CRJ-200. This update brings the product to version 1.4.4 and contains some very important bug fixes and enhancements from the last update! See more info about this update by viewing the update thread in the forum.

JRollon Planes has released some more preview shots for their upcoming Jetsream 31/32 product! Check out the new shots throughout the topic right here in the forums!

Mr. 3D has released his rendition of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. This simulation boasts an all 3D interior and exterior, accurate and weathered textures, and utilizes the DreamEngine 3D Sound plug-in. Find out more or purchase the aircraft at the X-Plane.org store.

In case you missed it, Carenado has released their V35 Bonanza! The aircraft is available for $26.95 from Carenado's store, and includes four liveries, the option of tank tips, reportedly accurate flight model, and much more. Head on over to Carenado's website to check it out!

Beta 7 is out now. Note that to get it you need the new 3.1 installer. If you try to run the old installer, it will give you an error; if you simply update from the "about box", the new installer will be downloaded for you. With this new installer, the installer and updater are one program. See here for more info than you ever wanted to know. Lots 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.

Laminar has now released Beta 4 of the 10.04 series. A list of changes/fixes are below: ATC: 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.

K&A Sim Development have released their latest version of the T28-C Trojan. This version is considered the 'Carrier' Edition, and has been re-written from the ground up. Some of the previous features that were available in 1.0 are not present in 2.0, though K&A state these will be available as purchasable and free extensions, along with other features that were not part of any prior release. It has been stated that customers who had purchased version 1.0 are eligible for version 2.0, though the logistics of this matter have not been fully sorted out by K&A. If you are not a previous owner of the T28-C, hop on over and purchase your copy today at the X-Plane.org store.

X-Aviation has released an update to the Take Command! CRJ-200. This update brings the product to version 1.4.3 and contains some very important bug fixes from the last update! See more info about this update by viewing the update thread in the forum.

Only a few days after Beta 2's release, Beta 3 is hot off the press! 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.

Well, Captains, it's that time again! Laminar has released yet another update with a laundry list of improvements. Check it out below and get your updaters going! 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 facades A 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.

Precision Manuals Development Group (PMDG) has announced their entry into the X-Plane 10 market. A developer from the X-Plane community has been brought on to assist in the transition. Robert Randazzao, Owner and Operator of PMDG, stated: "I have seen/read a bunch of hyperbole on this topic of late- so I wanted to make very clear that yes, PMDG is going to develop a product for Xplane10. It is going to be a conversion of either the BAe JS4100, the NGX or the [secret project: censored]." You can read the full announcement in this post on their support forums . Additionally, some X-Pilot community members have chimed in on this subject and you can too! Check out this thread here in the forums.

X-Aviation and Leading Edge Simulations (LES) have posted previews of the upcoming Douglas DC-3 aircraft for X-Plane 9 and 10! Previews can be seen by going to the official preview thread located in the Leading Edge Simulations section of the forums.

X-Aviation has released an update to the Take Command! CRJ-200. This update brings the product to version 1.4.2 and contains some very important bug fixes from the last update! See more info about this update by viewing the update thread in the forum.

X-Aviation is pleased to announce they are the main sponsor of the ZLA ARTCC 2012 Poker Run! X-Aviation will be giving away over $700 in prizes to those that secure one of the top positions in the competition! Details about this competition and how to win can be found on the ZLA ARTCC 2012 Poker Run page. The event takes place January, 28, 2012 @ 2100Z, so check it out!

Laminar Research has released a new version of X-Plane 10, so get those updaters going! The list of fixes/additions includes: ATC: 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

Carenado has released their Cessna 185F Skywagon for X-Plane. The aircraft is said to have similar behaviors compared to the real aircraft, as well as a detailed 3D exterior and interior model. This package includes high quality sounds, various types of eye candy, four liveries, and more. For a full list of features or to purchase the aircraft, head on over to Carenado's C185F Skywagon page.

X-Aviation has released an update to the Take Command! CRJ-200. This update brings the product to version 1.4.1 brings the CRJ simulation to a whole new level with all-new holding pattern logic, support for STAR transitions, and much more! See more info about this update by viewing the update thread in the forum.

Shade Tree Micro Aviation (STMA) has released their latest project: the Kaman K-1200 K-MAX. They state that the "K-MAX is a unique helicopter used for lifting operations. Thanks to its two rotors turning in opposite directions it is extremely stable in all conditions." More information can be found by visiting their product page at the org store.

Laminar Research has just released Beta 6 for X-Plane 10.03! Start up those updaters and get the ball rollin'! A list of changes are as follows: ATC: 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.