New Features & Improvements
New U.S. city autogen.
Improved Baron & King Air.
Global winds aloft files.
Better AI airplane flight… they now fly a bit more realistically.
When you enable a net connections usage, we now auto-select a beacon to use if possible (rather than giving you the default, raw IP).
Added support for autoconfig of Control Pad and Xavion.
Stratus clouds look better from above.
Better randomization of AI parking spots.
Added “engine” notifications, so that sim components have access to all the same hooks as the plugin system via XPLMEventHook().
We can now separate Steam from non-Steam users in our analytics data.
Particle emitters now take rulers. This makes it unnecessary to put static animations around most emitters. This also fixes a bug where particle physics on the airplane OBJs was run at 2x speed.
New prompts to complete installation and/or scenery with authorized sim.
New meta-data key/value pair code. It also provides a new meta-data key to force flattening on a per-airport basis.
Updated credits & improved layout.
Swapped the order of the aircraft in A/B testing & added sample size analysis.
Auto-tuning when using Nearby ATC box can now be turned on and off.
Much better real weather diagnostics, and also we now scan through the TIME of the MDEG metar report, as should always have been there.
Much faster (about 1000x faster) sorting on the commands list in the key-to-command screen, which takes the UI from annoying to smooth.
Settings screen is no longer deleted on hide (makes for faster re-opens).
On-screen notification if download of real weather fails.
We can also steer tv-guided bombs and missiles with a joystick axis, cool!
Airfoil maker allowed to have smaller linear range, as needed to simulate iced or damaged foils, for example.
For Carrier Ops, LSO calls are a little more accurate, with phraseology that is now official standard, and based on angles of attack that are appropriate for the airplane (but be sure to set the stall warning angle of attack in Plane-Maker in the viewpoint screen!)
Strobe lites in the clouds set now to only happen when totally IN the clouds, so it does NOT affect scenery at nite when turned on like is used to. Break-out to visual at the cloud bases, as we needed all along.
Now we don’t delete the global wind and turb files, and we have then named in a way that makes sense for others to write to them as desired.
We load the afl every time we load the acf because the afl might have changed along with the acf!
Safe save – keeps old ACF around.
Removed ground targets on the HUD.
Limit thrust to 0, not below 0, to keep things from getting crazy when we fly jet engines into orbit.
Labels for movies and other warnings are now much easier to read, the movie messages are centered, the pulsing text easier to read.
Crash limit set from 20 g to 10 g.
No-op manips can take dateref and tooltip for training purposes.
When planes blow up they go to wrek… for ALL planes! This lets you blow up other planes in flight rather fantastically.
New command to download all weather files.
Trimming out actual elevator deflection in pitch, not just the autopilot deflection. This will give slightly more accurate pitch trim, which will not fight with the elevator deflection in planes with art stability.
Joystick not applied to flight controls if user not flying cause ai is flying! Joystick calls not needed in that case.
Effects like prop disc now behave as expected in replay mode.
We now load the mouse cursor bitmaps all at once and cache them for future use (XPD-6181).
Slightly more data logging for net-tracking.
Plotting aircraft now in the slightly tilted attitude needed by the nearby coord-system origin.
Now the glideslope info for the profile view on the IOS as sent across the net by nav ID, not index! This allows us to have the profile work across the net with different apt databases!
When calculating string tiles, the LAST slop gets skipped since we can’t actually overlaps the tile.
Changed the way prop discs are loaded. They are now on the aircraft’s veh_prop_class so that they are accurate PER ENGINE. This also means that texture’s can be shared in memory if 2+ engines have the same prop. Lastly, it allows for goofy configurations like a gyrocopter that has a rotor and a propeller.
Stall warnings a little more accurate: do not depend on avionics switch, and reed switches do not depend on battery.
Planes now go around if a crash is imminent, and are also better about not kicking in rudder at low altitudes, which will crash an airliner.
Updated beacon port to 49707 by default, split the receiving sockets, clarified the error messages and updated the documentation.
New hint messages during loading screen.
Minor serial-port PFC hardware improvements.
FDR (Flight Data Recorder) window tracks monitor res to let you see a lot more on larger monitors.
Various bis of frame-rate improvement here and there, to increase frame-rate overall and also reduce pauses!
Fixes for Airplane Authors & Developers
New datarefs:
airport_lites_on_priv_override; // override: -1 is off. 1 is on. 0 is override not set!
current_plugin_dust_rat
Datarefs now available to control volume of each radio… You can now use a generic rheostat assigned to the dataref to set the volume of any radio!
X-Plane will provide the current world model-view, projection, and aircraft model-view matrices to plugins via datarefs.
We resize the property table in the lower left when an animation model is changed on a group.
Fixed instrument selection and list change in Plane Maker.
Fix memory scribble when deselecting generics in Plane Maker.
False alarm in debug code for instrument save: instrument save code would alert if a non-custom unused drag radius was saved on a non-draggable needle or pointer (XPD-6056).
Fixed bugs tabbing between instruments in Plane Maker.
We were not showing fuel on the right side of the plane in the load0out screen! Now we are!
Panel animation IO code permanent and not conditional. This way if you save a group-animated panel in regular X-Plane you DO NOT LOSE your data!!
Better alert messages for demo users–can use digital download, installer or buy DVDs to get scenery.
Wrek works about as well as one might expect in replay without having to work backwards or use more ram.
USB key is re-checked at start before demo warning.
Added autopilot basic mode to hold a rate of turn.
Global plugin tropopause values are now read/writeable to plugins. Tropopause variables allows to squeeze or stretch the stratosphere depending on where the the troposphere actually begins. Tropopause altitude and troposphere temperature allow a much better weather depiction in non-mid latitudes (polar and tropical regions).
New autopilot axis options: default to pitch or roll or none at all!
Added wreck flag to Plane Maker.
Engine screen in Plane-Maker: New field for thrust reverse area, for more accurate thrust reverser drag!
Airfoils are now loaded whenever you load an aircraft, even if it is the same aircraft you already had open.
This is in case you changed any airfoils in the background while X-Plane was still flying.
Weapon systems improvements
Weapons systems improved quite a bit, with some passable precision-guided weapons delivery now possible!

WEAPON-SELECTION: Choose individual weapons or weapon type. The display is much better now, and clearly shows the selected weapon as flashing.
CAMERA: There can be up to ONE camera on the airplane, which may be steered with a joystick! Simply get a SECOND joystick, and assign the axis to camera steering and zoom to steer and zoom the on-board camera! On-board camera is one of the instruments you can drop in the plane in Plane-Maker.
GUN: Aircraft can have one gun. It MAY be steered, if desired, by joystick. Simply get a SECOND (or THIRD!) joystick, and assign the axis to gun/bomb steering to steer the gun!
AIR TO AIR MISSILES: The [ and ] key target other airplanes for missile guidance. Up to 24 total weapons may be carried (some or all of which may be missiles) and a dataref will be provided to re-load the craft in flight if you ever want to re-stock in flight.
UNGUIDED ROCKETS: For the unguided rockets, they live in a pod, invisible until fired, and up to 99,999 rockets may be stored in the pod. A dataref will be provided to re-load the craft in flight if you ever want to re-stock in flight.
UNGUIDED BOMBS: Up to 24 total weapons may be carried (some or all of which may be bombs) and a dataref will be provided to re-load the craft in flight if you ever want to re-stock in flight.
TV-GUIDED AIR TO GROUND GUIDED BOMBS AND MISSILES: TV-guided missiles require constant steering by the pilot with the mouse by dragging around the + icon on the camera… very very tricky to do… nearly impossible when flying an airplane or helo. AND I added something REALLY COOL: The GUN/BOMB STEERING ALSO steers the TV-guided bombs and rockets! If you have a joystick axis assigned to the gun/bomb steering, then it will steer the TV-guided bombs as well!
LASER-GUIDED AIR TO GROUND BOMB: There will be a targeting reticle in the middle of the camera. Any laser-guided bomb will go for that target!
GPS-GUIDED AIR TO GROUND GUIDED BOMBS AND MISSILES: There will be a targeting reticle in the middle of the camera. When a joystick button is pressed (joystick buttons screen, around the middle, labeled Target camera pointer in GPS) or command is sent in (sim/weapons/GPS_lock_here), whatever the targeting reticle was looking at at the moment is LOCKED IN as the GPS destination for future bombs and missiles! When desired, let them fly!
Bug Fixes
Fixed for Beta 1

We no longer nag the user about single engine planes pulling left if they aren’t in the C172 (XPD-6354).
Fixing dout_line com radio problems. This refactors the way read-only and empty dout lines are handled to fix com radios and make things more readable (XPD-6268).
Fix for hitting dev assert when you open-close-reopen the interaction recorder window.
Disabled the floating windows’ popout button (XPD-6342).
Changed layer order to prevent non-flush approach lights at KSAN 27 (XPD-6346).
Instancing state could get borked if an obj’s LODs were not all the same instance-able.
Stop inet listening on ALL modals. This fixes a bug where snap recall is called re-entrantly when the missing scenery modal is up due to a snap recall. Fixes bug where IOS hangs if no scenery at location of master machine.
Collector takes object param – fixes broken PAPIs.
Fix for infinite wait in crash reporter due to attempting to write to debug log.
Fixed shading of local maps.
Turned off auto-initialializing a flight once again.
Fixed crash when showing non-instance light-only OBJs with collector.
Fixed overlap in GPS (XPD-6179).
Track previous state so assertions are valid. Fixes load of Carenado C90.
After a custom light, ATTR_lit_level change need to be deferred, not immediate, because we don’t have a shader changed.
Fixes crash in Carenado C90, and is faster too.
Weather downloading not turned on when you only hit the button to SCAN weather.
Fix for the way we jump straight into the sim (old way could give us a null texture).
Restored functionality of “external visual tracks view” check box.
Fixed uninited var that could cause seg fault on OS X.
Do not let FM run before the plane is loaded – but DO let it run when the IOS is up.
No more crash when you hit the scan real weather lots of times really fast.
obj plot callback was ignoring model view changes, and thus obj culling wouldn’t work when transform was applied.
Ground lights moved into collector to fix bug with black quads at LOWI in non-HDR mode
Fix clipped generic instrument preview in PLN (XPD-6290).
Fixed messed up wire frame in plane-maker (XPD-6287).
If you’re running an authenticated demo download, we *always* pop up the nag to complete your install (XPD-6285).
Fix for missing break, resulting in wrong error message when checking sim version.
Fixed internet-output-disabled warning messages on the data output system when not called for.
road bug fixes:
Interpolation of Y when rebuilding roads is linear in world space,
not parameter space. This prevents us from making S curves when we
didn’t mean to.
Clusters of ramps connected to other ramps on the ground are
treated as draped – this makes ramp clusters look less silly.
Fixed pointers to transient locals in dout, fixing a crash when we attempted to write to invalidated pointers (XPD-6271).
Fix for crash caused by no-machine-ID alerts at an inopportune time (XPD-6277).
We now go straight to the sim after the XDD grace period message, instead of showing a confusing “Authorization Successful” message (XPD-6264).
A command received over network acted differently than a command received from a joystick. This fix solves the asymmetry and makes sure commands work the same regardless their origin being joystick or network.
We no longer disable ATC when there is no FP and no AI planes.
CMND packet handles third party commands and aliases too.
Lat and long corrected in data output.
Fix for global USB key not exiting the startup-time DRM modal dialog (XPD-6274).
Uninitialized variable used (XPD-6302).
Bug fixed where fuel flow on multi-engine planes was too low.make clicking in buy button for proj key work (XPD-6263).
Fixed illegal access to geoid in threaded park proc.
DRM visibly doesn’t request re-auth after 11 days when in grace period (XPD-6264).
Modal windows aren’t visible (XPD-6260).
Fixed broken lower right corner of round rect (XPD-6233).
Click on the map to place an airplane on the IOS and it works properly.
The glide-slope profile plot on the ios works for p==0 even if there are other planes as well.
Fixed regional DRM.
No more cockpit window coming up on IOS when a new airplane is loaded due to a situation file being chosen.
Fail at speed, alt, and time all work when controlled by IOS.
Now we see the word PAUSE on the master when paused on the IOS!
Road bug fixes (XPD-6132, XPD-5313, XPD-5945).
Fixed screwed up airplane starting.
Fix for “can’t get MID” messages appearing on setups where the MID isn’t essential (XPD-6245).
Fix for dev_assert caused by attempting to use the log system before it’s been initialized (XPD-6244).
Arrows work immediately to control the camera after closing the map window with the return key (XPD-5145).
Don’t dev assert on bind from worker thread -this is legal now (XPD-6236).
We now use overcast clouds in our QFL storms (XPD-6175).
Fix for self-tests that crash when you have custom commands defined (XPD-6162).
ATC will not vector a go-around aircraft until it clears 400 feet AGL…this prevents it from encouraging the AI to make dangerous steep low turns (XPD-6115).
Ramp starts had uninitialized data if we hit the “there are no ramp starts at all case.”