Public Beta of New Installer

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

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

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.