Public Beta of New Installer

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We now have a public beta of the installer available for testing.  If you are happy testing pre-release software, please download this version and give it a try.

The headline new features are:

  1. The Mac installer now provides support for the default Steam location.  A new button allows you to select the Steam folder if it exists.
  2. The installer now includes the Backup Library that chris k originally built and einstein continues to expand and maintain.  This means that if you have OpenSceneryX installed, you no longer need the Backup Library.  The installer allows you to choose whether the placeholders used are visible or invisible – the visible ones should be bright red.
  3. The Mac version is now a full Cocoa application.
  4. There are three Linux versions: x86-32 bit, x86-64 bit and ARM 32 bit.
  5. The installer should be a bit more robust if your network connection is interrupted.
  6. The Mac version supports Retina displays at high resolution.

The latest public beta downloads are available from the Support page.

If you have any problems, please either reply to this post (you’ll need to register as a user of the site if you haven’t already) or get in touch using the contact form.

Beta Release of Installer and Library

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A beta version of the installer and library are now ready for testing. This beta includes two new features, as well as one other significant change behind the scenes:

  1. The Mac installer now provides support for the default Steam location.  A new button allows you to select the Steam folder if it exists.
  2. The installer now includes the Backup Library that chris k originally built and einstein continues to expand and maintain.  This means that if you have OpenSceneryX installed, you no longer need the Backup Library.  The installer allows you to choose whether the placeholders used are visible or invisible – the visible ones should be bright red.
  3. The installer has been rebuilt using the latest version of the Xojo development environment. This means that the Mac version is now a full Cocoa application.

We need some testers to try out this beta and test the new features, as well as ensuring that no bugs have crept in.  Although the third item above sounds innocuous, a lot of things have changed under the covers so it needs a good test.

WARNING: If you are not happy testing betas, which may have bugs, please skip this and wait for the full release version.

However, if you would like to help out, please either reply to this post (you’ll need to register as a user of the site if you haven’t already) or simply get in touch using the contact form.

Backup Library soon to be included

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Some of you may be aware of the excellent Backup Library that chris k originally built and now einstein maintains over at the .org.  Having this library installed removes a lot of errors you get in X-Plane if you use a scenery package that needs a library, but haven’t got the library installed.

It basically supplies fake invisible objects, lines, polygons etc. that are used instead of the real ones, so that X-Plane has something to load rather than complain about.

After some discussions with einstein, we have decided to join forces so that OpenSceneryX automatically installs the Backup Library too.  This means that you won’t need to download and install it separately if you have OpenSceneryX installed.  The installer will also give you a choice whether to show visible or invisible placeholders for the Backup Library, so that you can choose to know whether you’ve got libraries missing or not.  The visible ones will be bright red, so easy to spot!

Note that einstein will still be maintaining the Backup Library and the full version will still be available from the .org but it will be slightly different as the full version still needs to include a backup for OpenSceneryX itself in case you don’t want to install it.

This feature will be included in the next version of the library and installer.

Steam

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Several users have raised an issue with the Steam version of X-Plane on the Mac. Because the default Steam install location is inside your ‘Library’ folder, and this folder is invisible, you cannot select anything below it in the OpenSceneryX installer.

To solve this, the next version of the installer will have a ‘Use Steam’ button on the Mac – this will automatically check whether the X-Plane Steam folder exists and if so, sets it to be used by the installer.

This work is done, but there is another feature being worked on at the moment (watch for the next blog post!), so a beta version will be released at some point once both new features are ready for testing.

OpenSceneryX 2.1.1 Released

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A new version of the library has been released today. This is a tiny release for the library with only one new object and one modified object. However, the big change this time is the website – it has been completely revamped and re-structured, with the whole thing being served by WordPress. The separate blog is no more, this has been integrated as ‘news’ into the new website. Hopefully this all makes the site easier to navigate and understand, and information is closer to hand.

Obviously with a major site rebuild like this, there are bound to be bugs and issues so please reply to this post if you spot anything a bit odd.

OpenSceneryX 2.1.0 Released

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It’s been a long time coming, but there is finally a new release of OpenSceneryX out!

This release is mainly about adding new objects, lines and polygons, but it also includes the second phase of the X-Plane® 10 texture audit – this time removing all textures that contain any kind of night glow.  This should improve the look of scenery packages that use OpenSceneryX objects at night.

Other changes include some improvements to the developer documentation and a few tweaks and bug fixes.

Take a look at the release notes for the full list of new items and changes.

Boo! We’re back

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After an embarrassingly extended absence, the OpenSceneryX maintainer is ‘back in the building’ and he will try not to leave it again for quite such a long time in future!

I’ve caught up on all the submissions to the library, done a lot of housekeeping (including moving all the repositories to GitHub), as well as catching up on blog comments.  So, although I can’t promise an OpenSceneryX update every 5 minutes (did that ever happen?) I will try very hard to at least keep regular releases and not disappear for years.

Sorry 🙁

Night Lighting in X-Plane 10

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Just reading one of the latest posts on the absolutely excellent XPlane10’s Blog, they mention ‘glowing buildings’ at night on one of their scenery package reviews.

So, just a quick note about glowing buildings in OpenSceneryX – now that we’re firmly in X-Plane 10 world, more OpenSceneryX QA time is being spent ensuring our LIT textures look good with the new lighting model. A lot of older objects have slightly ‘glowing’ night textures, which were used in X-Plane 9 and earlier to try to simulate spill lighting from floodlights. These are now outlawed, and a further audit of all night textures will be done to remove any night textures that glow. Unfortunately, sometimes this means that legitimate lighting effects (e.g. illuminated window panes) may have to be removed, but for an overall improvement in the look of our objects at night.