X-Plane 10.40 is a major feature release that includes changes to how DSFs are loaded, anonymous usage data tracking, and new ATC functionality.

Digital Download

X-Plane 10 is now available for digital download; X-Plane 10.40 may periodically prompt you for a product key.

If you have DVDs, insert DVD 1 to dismiss this dialog box and run the sim.

If you have a product key, enter it to re-authorize X-Plane 10.40.

If you just want to run in demo mode, click “run demo” to proceed.

New Features & Improvements

New “regenerate weather now” command is assignable to a keyboard key or joystick button.

“sim/operation/regen_weather” is now avail to re-generate all weather!

More complete weather to Xavion, when driving Xavion with X-Plane, as you can now do freely. Now Xavion will display all 3 cloud layers on the airport weather reports in the main moving map.

OK we now get winds aloft from the net! It is is annoying that I put this off for YEARS, and then did it in one EARLY afternoon. But, it is here now.

We now read wind shear at the surface from the METARS as well when real-weather is turned on.

Library art assets can be swapped based on datarefs. This can be used to make seasonal texture add-ons.

New DSF loader – more multi-core, less waiting.

Optionally load 4×3 DSFs for less blurry long distance viewing from airliners.

New multi-core AVI-based movie record – replaces QuickTime, runs on all platforms, 32 or 64-bit.

Presets in the rendering options make it easier to tune the sim’s performance.

The size of night light billboards is now proportional to the screen. This makes night viewing less dim on large monitors.

The visual ATC taxi guide arrows can be turned off in the Operations and Warnings Screen.

X-Plane now can use a non-transparent HTTP proxy – enter the proxy IP:port in the Operations and Warnings Screen. This helps make real weather work behind a corporate firewall.

X-Plane will disable the screen saver while flying, even if you only fly with a joystick. This is currently Mac/Win only.

X-Plane’s response to missing art assets has been softened (slightly): when facades and other critical art assets are missing, rather than quit the sim, only the offending DSF tile is skipped. Note that the entire DSF is skipped, not just the missing facade; it is still not okay to ship DSFs with missing art assets!

New checkbox in the Settings menu / Operations and Warnings window, that will allow you to disable X-Plane’s flag to reset to default rendering options after a crash. So, if you crash, you do not need X-Plane offering to go back to previous options.

Operations and Warnings window, that will allow you to disable X-Plane’s flag to reset to default rendering options after a crash. So, if you crash, you do not need X-Plane offering to go back to previous options. All of the special flight start options such as glider tow, etc, are now available as commands in sim/operation. So, you can assign any joystick button or key or internet command to get any of those going.

The PT-6 Beta model is now correct! We pull the throttle back to idle, then pull back further back into beta (prop pitch decreasing, engine still at idle) then pull back even FURTHER to get into REVERSE (prop pitch decreasing more, engine power increasing). This applies to any prop plane with beta and/or reverse. So, here is how you use it in planes with reverse thrust (like the King-Air, for example):With joystick:Throttle to idle for idle./ key to go into Beta: The more you pull back on the throttle, the more the prop pitch goes from “fine” back to the (lower) “beta”.SHIFT-/ key to go into REVERSE! The more you ADVANCE the throttle, the more the prop pitch goes from “beta” back to the (lower) “reverse”.With keyboard, the same thing, but use F1 and F2 for throttle, since you have no joystick axis.(In beta, you will simply go right to beta pitch when you hit the / key)And, in Plane-Maker, ENGINES window, FIRST tab, LEFT column, you can even set manual stop points for idle and beta if you want!

Now, the flap INDICATOR in the COCKPIT tracks the FLAP POSITION on the wings in replay, as it should! This is an improvement over the PREVIOUS version, where the INDICATOR tracked the HANDLE, which is really not the same, since the flaps on the wings move slower than the handle!

Bus voltages are ignited properly at flight start, as they should have been all along. This is needed to keep systems from reporting no-volt for the first frame, which was always sort of wrong.

To the aircraft-specific prefs files, I added HOBBS TIME! Cool! Now, the hobbs time is tracked for each airplane! So, you can see the hobbs time as you fly for any plane with a hobbs meter, and the time on that hobbs meter really is time that you flew!

As long as you are opening the same TYPE of file (airfoil, aircraft, etc) as the last time you did a file-open, the path AND SERIES OF FOLDERS OPEN TO THAT PATH is left in place. This means that if you are selecting 50 afl files for your airplane, you do NOT have to navigate in our UI all the way down to the same folder each time! This is NIIIICE!

as the last time you did a file-open, the path AND SERIES OF FOLDERS OPEN TO THAT PATH is left in place. This means that if you are selecting 50 afl files for your airplane, you do NOT have to navigate in our UI all the way down to the same folder each time! This is NIIIICE! New feature: 2-d windshield effects disable! In the rendering options screen, checking this box causes all 2-d window effects, like rain and bird-strikes, to be bypassed. For people with projector screens, collumated displays or whatever… any displays for which the 2-d effects are annoying, they can be turned off.

Now, the backup manual throttle control does not over-ride the governor. Oops! This is the way it SHOULD have been all along, I just missed it about 20 years ago when I first coded it!

Thermometer and fuel indicator failure now functional! These failures were initially designed for the g1000 only, but now I have them working for all instruments just to make the feature is complete and work as a normal customer would expect!

Better compressor-stall modeling. This is based on observation of compressor stall dynamics in a level-D sim.

“Quick Start” command added. This resets us to engines running so we do not have to start them manually.

The glider-tow code has been re-organized internally, though you should notice no effect from that. The slung load code had a bug in it where any cable length less than 1 meter did not compute the loads properly, due to a /0 protection… I have lowered that now to 1-centimeter minimum cable length.

The glider tow had a bug in it where the forces for the first frame of the glider tow were wrong, due to the towplane location not being ready. I have fixed that.

The tow cable was black, making it almost impossible to see. I have made it gray to make it easier to see.

So this is cool: Now we now know which failures are allowed to fail RANDOMLY! (No, wings do not just fall off, and control locks do not just fall into place in flight!) So, the random failures option will fail stuff like engines and electrical systems and controls surfaces: Things that might actually fail in flight for no known reason… but the wings will not just fall off.

ANY App can now send in the string (by UDP, to port 49,000) “RREF” plus a dataref, and X-Plane will then send that dataref string, and its value, BACK TO THAT IP ADDRESS EVERY FRAME! So, we can get unlimited datarefs from X-Plane with no UI needed!So, just write your own map or external visual or other app and have it send the dataref requests to X-Plane, and X-Plane will send those datarefs right back to you with their values! Now, you can write an App to get any data you like from X-Plane, easily, with no configuration needed from the user!THIS lets you write any App you can imagine, that can EASILY interact with X-Plane by UDP!

And, send in the string “RPOS” (by UDP, to port 49,000) to get X-Plane to send you the data to run external visuals or moving map! So, anyone that wants to make a moving map or external visuals simply sends in the commands RPOS to get that data sent back to him, per-frame! Easiest way EVAR to get all the data from X-Plane to drive your own moving map or external visuals!

Full new “Sending Data to X-Plane” document found in your X-Plane directory/Instructions folder.

Nearby ATC controllers window. Open the special menu and click Toggle Nearby Air Traffic Controllers Window. This pops up a window (which you can drag around the screen to wherever is convenient) that displays the various ATC controllers around you, along with their COM radio frequency. You can auto-tune your COM1 radio to the proper frequency by clicking on one of the rows in that list.

Collection of anonymous X-Plane usage information. New checkbox in Operations & Warnings window to allow Laminar Research to collect anonymous usage data on your system configuration and X-Plane usage patterns. Additional information in the Knowledge Base article or X-Plane Developer article.

Long airport identifiers: Not all local aviation authorities use 4-character identifiers (we found up to seven characters in some places!), so we now support those codes.

We now support fictitious ICAO identifiers. In some places (Germany is the most prominent), the local aviation authority does not assign airport identifiers at all. We’re moving to prefixing these fictitious identifiers with an X. So, German civil airports that have real ICAO identifiers follow the pattern EDxx, while German airports with only made-up identifiers follow the pattern XEDxx.

GPS Fixes & Improvements

The X-Plane 430/530 now allows disabling the automatic ILS CDI switching:

By default, the CDI will blend in the ILS signal smoothly beginning 2nm downwind of the final approach fix when the cross track error is 1.2nm or less. When the ILS signal gain is maximal, the CDI indication will change to VLOC.

The smooth changeover can always be overriden by manually selecting the CDI to VLOC.

The automated changeover can be configured off for training operations in the NAV menu, along with the map options.

The setting is remembered in the per-airplane settings file, like the map settings.

Fixes for Airplane Authors & Developers

datarefs for 1040: – new failures (below) – sim/graphics/view_is_external always 1 on AI planes – wing ice on the right wing added – new array-based nav radio access

The OpenAL listener orientation has been fixed; if you use OpenAL you no longer have to hack the listener to get 3-d spatial sound effects.

The lua allocation API has a new option to lock down Lua memory. If your Lua-based add-on is crashing in Lua, you can turn on the lock while Lua is not running to catch memory corruption. See this for details: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/LuaJIT

Attached objects on an aircraft can now be in a sub-folder of Objects/. This can help with organization on very complex aircaft.

Prop pitch degrees per second, from Plane-Maker ENGINE page, tab 4, now applies in all prop-governed cases to the final used pitch. Before 10.40, the flite-control-induced prop pitch with aircraft pitch, heading, and roll input bypassed this limit, but never should have!

Aircraft classification: New in Plane Maker for X-Plane 10.40: in the Standard > Author window, we offer a handful of new fields for classifying your aircraft. These fields are not in use currently in the X-Plane user interface, but we plan to use them in the future. We need as many aircraft authors on board as possible so add this classification information to the aircraft you develop!

New Failures

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With these, the gear unsafe light will come on, and touching down on any gear will collapse it!

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Further failure UI refinement.

Bug Fixes

Fixed for release candidate 3:

Fixed auto-update on Windows 10. Note that when X-Plane 10.36 attempts to auto-update to X-Plane 10.40 on Windows 10, you may get a “permission denied” error. With the fix in 10.40, the update to patches after 10.40 should work correctly.

Removed warnings about unneeded .glsl files.

Fixed for release candidate 2:

Improved clarity of city lights at very low resolutions.

Fixed various out-of-bounds array accesses, including one in autogen engine. (1487)

Fixed reading of very long floating point numbers in text. Fixes some key frame tables. (1840)

Fixed shader compile fail on Linux NVidia drivers.

Tweaked Xavion network output.

Fixed for release candidate 1:

Fixed incorrect warnings and missing scenery when flying around the international date line. (1831)

Added animated feet to the birds. (1818)

X-Plane runs on the Mesa driver stack on Linux without command line work-arounds. (1656)

Fixed wording of error messages when bad apt.dat is loaded.

Fixed rudder not animating on Cessna 172 (1822)

Added back missing G1000 nav, com, and transponder failures. (1823)

Fixed transponder command description text. (1799)

Fixed aurora borealis in both hemispheres.

Fixed fuel consumption on turbo-props at high altitude.

Fixed engine shut-down on JAR A330. (1817)

Fixed user interface for picking plugin-based commands for joystick and keyboard setup. (1819)

Fixed overly sensitive rudder and nose-wheel steering commands (1820).

X-Plane shows loading status when used via Control Pad.

We now zero out both the various metadata strings and our classification bools when resetting a plane. (1723)

Fixed for Beta 11:

The new “automagic” rudder code has been removed. This code tried to manage the rudder for you if (and only if) you don’t have a rudder axis installed. Austin didn’t like how the planes flew with the code in place and we had reports of problems with third party aircraft, so rudder management without a rudder axis now works like 10.36.

Instead: Austin has tightened up the ground steering of the Cessna 172. The original purpose of the rudder management code was to allow us to use the Cessna 172 as the default plane even if users are flying with the mouse. With the tightened up ground handling it should be easier to take off with less rudder input.

Screenshots and movies now live in the Output folder, along with all other output from X-Plane. This avoids clutter in the main X-Plane folder.

Fixed high/low idle panel button.

Fixed bug where inserting the DVD at the product key prompt would not take us out of demo mode.

Fixed bug that prevented sim startup on Windows XP. (1812). If you are using Windows XP, please upgrade – Microsoft has EOL’d Windows XP and isn’t going to provide security patches!

Requesting a water start now prefers seaports to sea lanes to avoid mixed land/water airports where X-Plane’s water data may be out of sync with the airport data. Sealanes are now drawn differently from airports on the local map to make it clear how an airport is built.

Fixed opening a second replay with the same aircraft as the current replay (1762).

Fixed ISE6 UDP packet.

Fixed labeling in date/time window.

Aurora Borealis drawn to the south in Southern Hemisphere.

We now render the correct missing flap in a flap-fail.

Arrow keys in the ATC window no longer move camera (1811).

Scrolling fixed in advanced joystick screen (1721).

Transponder fail message visible in the IOS.

Improved diagnostics for UDP in the operations and warnings menu – the preference to log UDP traffic is also saved with the sim.

CALI statement in FDR files is now wired up.

Fixed for Beta 10:

Fuel consumption matches 10.36 for old planes not saved in 10.40. This fixes the JAR Designs A330 and FlightFactor 757.

Billboard lights for legacy planes match X-Plane 10,36. (Bug 1731.)

Transponder commands fixed. (Fixes Carenado planes and Saitek plugin.)

Range selector knob fixed. (Bug 1802.)

Glider winch remembers last picked runway. (Fixes bug 1803.)

Mouse wheel works in planet map.

Fixed cursor not tracking properly on Windows 8 with 4K monitors and large fonts.

ATC taxi guidance arrows disappear when flight plan is canceled. (Bug 1744.)

Safe mode only comes up when the shift key is held down (Bug 1793.)

AVI recording always records in slow lock-step when recording replays. This means replays will always have correct timing no matter what record speed and sim framerate. (Bug 1726.)

Fixed DVD-detection on Linux Debian 8 (and any Linux where /etc/mtab is a symlink to /proc/mounts).

Fixed DSF loader getting stuck for a few minutes when flying in a decaying orbit.

Fixed ATC Frequencies at LPFR.

Aurora Borealis visible in southern latitudes too. (Bug 1784.)

Fixed text outside box in joystick and equipment page. (Bug 1682.)

RREF UDP packet allows access to binary datarefs – access them as arrays; the return value will be 0..255 for each byte.

Fixes for Beta 9

Re-Scan button no longer covers up fields (bug 1659).

Fixed white line in scenery in scattering + HDR modes.

Fixed PAPT networking packets to work properly.

Plane Maker no longer crashes if you zero-out wing chord multipliers.

Ultralight classification saves between edits (bug 1797).

Fixed Windows start up failure due to no machine ID.

Fixed crash from too many adapters (bug 1794).

X-Plane log.txt logs the correct version of Windows, even version 10.0.

Fixed missing scenery around NLWF & QRKE airports (bugs 1729 & 1792).

Fixes for Beta 8

Fixed DRM for Windows users that were asked for their product key repeatedly. File a bug if this is not fixed for you.

Fixed scenery clipping at 300,000 feet.

QPAC A320 now resets correctly.

Fixed EHLE tower frequency in default apt.dat.

AI controls small planes better.

Extended DSFs now load at sim start up.

Demo region now uses extended DSFs.

Livery options are back in Plane Maker.

Re-scan button added when choosing a plane.

Text-to-speech ATIS works with all frequencies.

Windows text-to-speech ATIS uses US-English regardless of system language.

Panel instruments are back to correct locations.

Using METAR weather works again.

Better warning messages when using old situations files.

Aurora borealis option only displays between 45 & 60 degrees north.

Black line removed in air refueling scenarios.

Using arrow keys in local map scrolls as in planet map.

Flight Factor CDU/autopilot works again.

Fixes for Beta 7

Metar wind headings now interpreted as true degrees

Recorded AVI movies can now be opened on OS X

References to QuickTime movies in UI changed to AVIs.

Fixed crash on start with old Intel GPU drivers on Windows.

Fixed sim going into demo mode after a valid product key is entered.

Worked around rendering artifacts on Nvidia GPUs in HDR mode with clouds and shadows.

OS X anti-aliasing was running at 1/2 the selected setting when 4x or higher anti-aliasing was selected. If you liked how your sim looked and don’t want to lose frame-rate, cut your AA setting down.

Grass runways blend with terrain better.

Fixed longitude tracking and clicking on the planet map.

On startup, QuickFlight screen does not have ICAO pre-typed into airport list, so the entire airport list is visible.

ILS and VOR visible on carrier in local map.

Fixed erroneous 99 in middle of default apt.dat file

Fixed authenticating product keys on Windows when user’s login name has non-ASCII characters

Fixed hard crash when loading seriously damaged OBJ8 files – errors are now safely logged.

Data output range and distance now reflect ground speed – if you use these for theoretical airplane performance measurements, set calm winds.

ATC Who’s Online window always show a name next to a frequency – no more blanks

ATC Who’s Online window: If a single controller can be contacted on multiple freqs, we only “recommend” (with an asterisk) the first freq.

ATC Who’s Online window updates now occur once/second (not once every 10 seconds)

Fixed LSND UDP message

Fixed handling of flooding VEH1 UDP messages

Fixed French translations

Ordnance menu removed for aircraft that do not have ordnance

Replays include slats. Note that this means you cannot mix and match X-Plane 10.40b7 with X-Plane 10.36 for situations or multiplayer.

Ridge lift lowered to about 1,000 ft or so, as it apparently is in reality

Fixed crash taxiway has blank name with no trailing space in apt.dat

Time of day tracks properly in replays

METAR sets clear layers lower when the weather is all-clear. This improves upper level visibility when using real weather.

Fixed text outside box in Plane-Maker

Fixed lightning strikes shooting between cirrus cloud layers

Engine air density effects now applied to after-burners, which were too powerful before at high altitude.

Pressure altitude offset changed from 1,000 feet per inch HG, which it has been wrongly set to for 20 years, to 915 ft per inch hg, which it should have been all along

X-Plane no longer uses port 49003

Fixed zoom on ACF in local map

Cloud puff types seeded so visuals match master machine

Glider beeping noise no longer persists when other airplanes loaded

Fixes for Beta 6

Screen saver disabled on Linux – user contributed code.

Restored exporting parts as objects one-at-a-time in Plane-Maker.

Improved time to load Quick Flight dialog box.

Removed bogus OpenGL driver warnings on OS X that were scaring users.

Fixes for Beta 5

Fixed divergent texture fetches in HDR shader. There are artifacts on the horizon on Nvidia hardware before and after this change; we are still working on a complete fix.

Fixed missing code signature on OS X – this could cause the firewall warning to come up over and over.

Fixed mouse wheel zoom

Fixed for Beta 4

Restored sorting and first character of apt.dat. This fixes the QPAC plugin. (bug 1673)

Fixed crash in Plane-Maker on deeply animated aircraft like the Jar A330

Fixed rendering presets to have no roads in lowest setting (bug 1672).

Fixed winds-aloft parser to read lat/lon stations

Added ultralight classification to Plane Maker

Fixed tail number bugs in Plane-Maker: empty tail numbers are allowed, 6 digit tail numbers are allowed, and existing tail numbers are not erased. (Bugs 1665,1666,1679)

Disabled glideslope on AP when back course is selected (bug 1680)

Better ATIS report – we now correctly report variable wind directions, and issue wind shear alerts the same time a real windshear alert system would

Fixed dewpoint reporting in the ATIS

ATIS now reports few clouds instead of scattered if the METAR reads ‘few’.

Commands alphabetized for easier location.

Default to 3-d cockpit rendering option only shows 3-d cockpit if the airplane has a 3-d cockpit (bug 1677)

Nosewheel steering with tiller interpolates with rudder correctly (bug 1676)

Fix for engine flooding when boost pumps are on (bug 1675)

Pro-key option to not get update notifications fixed.

Command interface scrolls to show all commands.

Fixed for Beta 3

Fixed performance loss with spinning props on NVidia Windows.

Fixed crash on startup for some Macs.

Fixed legacy GPS/FMC not detecting KTPA and other airport codes.

Fixed real weather not assigning METARs to the right locations.

Fixed crash in scenery engine when objects have incorrect ordering of animations. This fixes EHLE. Scenery that -started- crashing in 1030 may start working again, but should still be fixed by their authors.

Updated Magnetic Variation

Fixed R22 Clutch

Fixed replay of sliders

Fixed bogus log messages for empty apt.dat files

Fixed typos in German menus in Airfoil-Maker

Fixed hobbs time to properly be saved between uses of the aircraft.

Fixed new nav radio 3-10 datarefs to function properly.

Fixed UI error in “operations and warnings” when USB pro key is in use

Startup sequence less dark and gloomy

Fixed for Beta 2

Fixed crash on startup on Linux

Fixed crash on startup on Windows with AMD processors

Fixed for Beta 1

Fixes to the fog line to avoid white artifact in the mid-range view – makes airliner flight look better.

PDF manuals included: Italian and latest English manual for 1025.

Tuned down max CPU hit of reflections.

Fix of a fix – only cap ‘none’ markings if the OTHER end is not none. This way a precision+none runway is capped; none+none is not.

Added a second comma based on single , so that signs outside {} work.

Added night vision to lit texture – handles deferred render by writing manipulated emissive to g-buffer layer.

Turned off scattering when night vision is on – they’re not compatible – cheap fix for missing night vision. Also added night vision mode to dome shader to fix blue sky.

Real mouse sphere click test for planet map.

Enter and return short-cuts on QFL window.

HUD hoops not reflected in water.

ATC radios are affected by esys and failures.

New UI to show users why they can’t tune in the radios.

We do not erase the blank gray texture.

Added tile caps to unmarked runways.

Fixed truncated generic instrument column and header clipping in general.

User aircraft tx/rx enables reference esys and failures.

Removing incorrect DVD error message.

Spot light moves with commands when HDR is off.

Fixed scroll wheel units for intellimouse on mac.

Made dataref slider wider when window is wider in PLN.

OGLE won’t crash on right-delete at end of string, new proc for disabled button.

Fixed FAC annotation on AGx to use height properly. This fixes facs for XHT autogen

Include the usage/page in the synthetic path for a HID device. This lets us differentiate multiple interfaces for a single HID device get the right one on open-by-path. This is needed to find the non-private interface of the Saitek X-55 Rhino.

Fixed crash when fwd deleting off the end of a field.

Normalize user defined normal vectors on spills.

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