DEVELOPMENT NEWS
	APR 19 2024 : UPDATE 1.33
APR 19 2024 : UPDATE 1.33 xEnviro version 1.33 has been released. Essential bug fixes.
	APR 14 2024 : UPDATE 1.32
APR 14 2024 : UPDATE 1.32 xEnviro version 1.32 has been released. This update covers cloud formations, light scattering, rendering and performance improvements.
	FEB 11 2024 : UPDATE 1.31
FEB 11 2024 : UPDATE 1.31 xEnviro version 1.30 has been released. This update mostly contains hot fixes for the few recent issues discovered. Our team continue to work towards cloud quality and performance improvements for the next update.
	JAN 03 2024 : UPDATE 1.30
JAN 03 2024 : UPDATE 1.30 xEnviro version 1.30 has been released.
	OCT 07 2023 : UPDATE 1.29
OCT 07 2023 : UPDATE 1.29 xEnviro version 1.29 has been released.
	SEP 28 2023 : UPDATE 1.28
SEP 28 2023 : UPDATE 1.28 xEnviro version 1.28 has been released.
	SEP 16 2023 : UPDATE 1.27
SEP 16 2023 : UPDATE 1.27 xEnviro version 1.27 has been released.
	AUG 29 2023 : UPDATE 1.26
AUG 29 2023 : UPDATE 1.26 xEnviro version 1.26 has been released.
	JUL 25 2023 : UPDATE 1.25
JUL 25 2023 : UPDATE 1.25 xEnviro version 1.25 has been released.
	MAY 30 2023 : UPDATE 1.24
MAY 30 2023 : UPDATE 1.24 xEnviro version 1.24 has been released.
	MAY 13 2023 : UPDATE 1.23
MAY 13 2023 : UPDATE 1.23 xEnviro version 1.23 has been released.
	APR 28 2023 : UPDATE 1.22
APR 28 2023 : UPDATE 1.22 xEnviro version 1.22 has been released.
	APR 24 2023 : UPDATE 1.21
APR 24 2023 : UPDATE 1.21 xEnviro version 1.21 has been released.
	APR 22 2023 : UPDATE 1.20
APR 22 2023 : UPDATE 1.20 xEnviro version 1.20 has been released.
	JAN 21 2023 : UPDATE 1.18
JAN 21 2023 : UPDATE 1.18 xEnviro version 1.18 has been released.
	OCT 08 2022 : UPDATE 1.17
OCT 08 2022 : UPDATE 1.17 xEnviro version 1.17 has been released.
	JAN 02 2021 : UPDATE 1.16
JAN 02 2021 : UPDATE 1.16 xEnviro is now on version 1.16 This is a tiny update to make xEnviro compatible with new X-Plave version 11.51.
	DEC 24 2020 : UPDATE 1.15
DEC 24 2020 : UPDATE 1.15 xEnviro is now on version 1.15 This is the "Vulkan update" to make xEnviro compatible with the Vulkan version of X-Plane 11.
	NOV 24 2020 : UPDATE 1.14
NOV 24 2020 : UPDATE 1.14 1.14 Release Announcement 1.14 goal #1.0 - Performance boost for the general user: done 1.14 goal #1.1 - Performance boost for lower end system users: done 1.14 goal #1.2 - Performance boost for 4k users: done We're here! Let me start off by saying that 1.14 took a hell of a lot of time! I have updated, both here at the forum and on the Facebook group along the way and our trusted followers have known what has happened all along the way. This was supposed to be just a performance update. Which it is! But we met some restraints early in 2020 that we did not expect and took the chance of rewriting the core of xEnviro. We did not know when Vulkan would be released at the time. Some might say we took the wrong path but I assure you the only sensible thing was to develop for a stable platform and not develop xE on top of a X-Plane11 beta run. So here we are with 1.14 for X-Plane11.5x OpenGL even when Vulkan came with XP11.50. If you want to know more about Vulkan, read on. It's explained further down. Performance As part of the performance update we have added three sliders that directly affect quality/performance. These can be adjusted live while flying! This way you can adjust the quality/performance for any given situation. NOTE! ULTRA IS CONSIDERED SCREENSHOT SETTING AND NOT FOR FLYING! PLEASE READ THE MANUAL! http://xenviro.net/manual.php Known issues 1.14 is released with some known issues which will likely be the case for every release. Though, I'm announcing this now since some issues might seem like something that should have been fixed before release. Luckily, many of these issues will likely be gone once we released the update to 1.15 (Vulkan). We're done fighting X-Plane in OpenGL so we're drawing the line here and moving on. But - by going over to semi full scale rendering in our core code rewrite we have unlocked a plethora of possibilities. Which we will be exploring in the versions to come. What's next Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan After Vulkan we'll probably have a look at multi screen support, VR compatibility as soon as it's reasonable to do so. Under which version these fall, we're not sure yet but soon after Vulkan release for sure. With Vulkan we will probably see another headroom for fps but do NOT expect too much here! xEnviro is a GPU eater so if you're GPU limited you will probably see 80fps default and come back to roughly 1.14 level of performance in 1.15. So if you're at 40fps in 1.14, you could see up to 40fps drop in 1.15 from default. That feedback will be fun. Going forward we will concentrate on one item at the time. The past updates have been way too broad and complicated and thus took so much time. Which they had to be given the challenges we faced. But that should be mostly behind us. So Vulkan (xE1.15) will NOT take another freaking year. Rough idea outline for the road map is as follows: 1.15 Vulkan 1.16 Spherical buffer 1.17 Low level fog 1.19 Precipitation volume | Atmosphere shadows 1.20 Thunderstorms 1.21 Night environment Again, we're sorry for the abyss of no updates between 1.13 and 1.14. The next update will NOT take that long. Our current code should not be too difficult to port over. But as per usual there will be no ETA but I will update you all on progress! We're not done. Back to work!
	SEP 14 2020 : BETA TESTING PHASE 1.14
SEP 14 2020 : BETA TESTING PHASE 1.14 Beta testing phase for 1.14 begins.
	NOV 11 2019 : UPDATE 1.13
NOV 11 2019 : UPDATE 1.13 Just a very small hotfix for the atmosphere and haze calculations. Next update will be huge, targeting both performance and visual quality. Happy flying!
	JUL 24 2019 : UPDATE 1.11
JUL 24 2019 : UPDATE 1.11 1.11 update is ready. The development of the clouds (a necessity to get other planned features and corrections done down the road) will give clouds better definition and more "lively" forms. But it comes at the cost of more pronounced grain. The grain is what defuses the under laying mechanics and making it less visible without blur can only be done with higher resolutions. This will however demand a huge impact on performance. So we are "tolerating" the grain at this point but are working hard on performance. It is however a longer run for the performance paths we have in mind. We will dedicate even more time on that going forward but are uncertain if we will see the results in 1.12.
	JUL 02 2019 : NEXT UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS
JUL 02 2019 : NEXT UPDATE HIGHLIGHTS In parallel with our ongoing server upgrade the next 1.11 update is planned to address several key items including general performance, cloud base forms and cross form development, cloud layering and optimization. Our special attention will be given to users running X-Plane in 4k resolution.
	MAY 30 2019 : BETA TESTING CLOSED
MAY 30 2019 : BETA TESTING CLOSED Beta testing stage has been closed.
	JAN 29 2019 : BETA TESTING UPDATE
JAN 29 2019 : BETA TESTING UPDATE We are somewhere in the second half of the beta stage still with 8 open and 22 fixed items in our bug list. The biggest challenge now is to make volume rendered clouds running on a low spec computer with somehow acceptable performance, unfortunately some trade offs will be required.
	JAN 11 2019 : BETA TESTING STAGE
JAN 11 2019 : BETA TESTING STAGE We have moved over to the beta testing stage where we hope to catch and clean up all the tiny issues that may arise at various software and hardware combinations, document plugin incompatibilities, determine the average performance.
	DEC 23 2018 : SERVERS UPDATE
DEC 23 2018 : SERVERS UPDATE While the team is working hard to get the beta running our servers are receiving another big core update. This time ALOFT wind, temperature and turbulence data will be processed at higher resolution and will be available for all the xEnviro versions and with even better resolution for 1.10 version. Additionally, for the areas where no weather stations exist and no weather reports available, our servers can now calculate predictive weather conditions based on Global Forecast System data.
	DEC 12 2018 : HOUSEKEEPING
DEC 12 2018 : HOUSEKEEPING Getting everything ready to start the beta run. Cleaning up the code, fine tuning of the components, closing pending tasks. You may find that our change log gets updated almost daily.
	NOV 21 2018 : GETTING CLOSER
NOV 21 2018 : GETTING CLOSER We are closing items much faster while still keeping performance at our target level balancing between the quality and the speed. Almost all the base components have been finalized with the fine tuning left pending.
	NOV 13 2018 : BETA TESTING
NOV 13 2018 : BETA TESTING Registration for the beta testing is open via the Threshold forum. Hurry up, we only accept limited amount of applications.
	OCT 29 2018 : PERFORMANCE UPDATE
OCT 29 2018 : PERFORMANCE UPDATE Real time ray tracing is very demanding and sometimes it can hit your GPU performance badly. So far we have been happy with the current performance except of one issue which needs to be carefully corrected with no visual degradation. This week will be dedicated to the performance tuning and missing visual features.
	OCT 23 2018 : LET THE TESTING BEGIN
OCT 23 2018 : LET THE TESTING BEGIN Basic haze procedures have been set and we are moving to the testing stage where we must ensure the haze looks natural and inline with x-plane environment, lighting and terrain in as many weather situations as possible. We still have a decent list of items ahead of us, mostly visual effects and artificial adjustments to increase the overall quality of the environment and we are going to address all of them in parallel with the testing.
	OCT 16 2018 : THE BEST OF HAZE
OCT 16 2018 : THE BEST OF HAZE xEnviro calculates haze scattering using large particle size producing various visual effects. Separate calculation for the haze layer allows us to recreate haze for different types of pollutants.
	OCT 09 2018 : CLOUD FORMS
OCT 09 2018 : CLOUD FORMS After all the unsuccessful attempts to apply ray traced lighting to the X-Plane world we have decided to use simplified light model, although not physically correct this provides far better visual results when applied within X-Plane rendering frame. While we keep fine tuning the light model we do adjustment of the cloud forming rules in parallel trying to keep the best balance between performance and visual quality.
	OCT 02 2018 : THE GLORIOUS SUN
OCT 02 2018 : THE GLORIOUS SUN This week we are adjusting xEnviro's sun illumination model to better match X-Plane internal illumination. Not a trivial task, with somehow limited control over X-Plane light, we are to find a good balance between two worlds.
	SEP 25 2018 : SHADOWS
SEP 25 2018 : SHADOWS We got clouds so we need shadows. We need shadows to be fast. Also to be realistic and fast. We need shadows to cover ground objects and other clouds and yet to be fast. After running some experiments we have found a very fast way to draw cloud shadows still maintaining an acceptable level of detail. Unfortunately, this requires us to reformat cloud rendering procedures so our clouds can drop nice shadows and still be fast.
	SEP 17 2018 : ATMOSPHERE AND CLOUDS
SEP 17 2018 : ATMOSPHERE AND CLOUDS For the entire week we have been working on the aerial perspective applied to the terrain and our new clouds as well as direct sunlight that needs to be matched with the native x-plane light levels. As in all the previous versions xEnviro still keeps the ability to change the atmosphere parameters and the resulting visual representation by using scattering and phase equations producing various effects like glory, fogbow and even rainbow.
	SEP 09 2018 : DYNAMIC SNOW
SEP 09 2018 : DYNAMIC SNOW Discovered by mistake, turned out to be easy to implement, dynamic snow for the mountain areas will be featured in the 1.10 xEnviro release. Mountain dynamic snow is based on the regional average snow line altitudes and works on ortho, custom textures and custom sceneries. This feature is to be expanded to display seasonal changes in X-Plane based on the server seasonal data in the subsequent xEnviro updates.
	SEP 03 2018 : NEXT STEP FORWARD
SEP 03 2018 : NEXT STEP FORWARD Today we have closed two most important items in our roadmap, both related to the cockpit camera and both responsible for numerous visual artifacts. Finally we are moving over to our new cloud system, volume rendering, final atmosphere tuning and testing.
	AUG 25 2018 : NEW WEATHER SERVERS
AUG 25 2018 : NEW WEATHER SERVERS Three new xEnviro weather servers are currently online. We have tested and published updated plugin versions named 1.06s, 1.07s and 1.09s in the update section. Please note these are the only versions that work with new servers and the old server will be put offline in the nearest time.
	AUG 14 2018 : SERVERS ON TEST
AUG 14 2018 : SERVERS ON TEST We have just entered the testing phase for our new server network which will take a couple of days before we can declare them operational. Apparently we need to issue additional updates for some of the previous versions of xEnviro in order to make them able to connect to our new servers. We have also received a very important information from the Laminar Research team that will help xEnviro to become fully compatible with 3D cockpit views in the next update.
	AUG 06 2018 : SERVER OFFLINE
AUG 06 2018 : SERVER OFFLINE ISP is currently experiencing severe power outage. Having very limited backup power generator capability our old server will be offline for some time. Our new server network is not operational as we require to run quite a few tests yet before we can start using our new servers. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.
	JUL 30 2018 : SERVER UPDATE
JUL 30 2018 : SERVER UPDATE The first stage of the server update takes a bit longer than planned. A couple of simple items still pending but we will soon move to the second stage where we address and improve worldwide ALOFT data which has been previously adjusted only for Europe and United States.
	JUL 22 2018 : FASTER HIGHER STRONGER
JUL 22 2018 : FASTER HIGHER STRONGER Server code is undergoing a deep revision. New procedures for the ALOFT data processing are still not ready for the test run but we are getting closer.
	JUL 13 2018 : SERVER UPDATE
JUL 13 2018 : SERVER UPDATE We are getting ready for the next major server update. This update will contain important items targeting server stability, performance and security and will also further improve overall accuracy for the ALOFT data calculation. We also have plans for additional code revision affecting our seasonal data generation in the preparation for the upcoming winter season.
	JUL 07 2018 : NOISE TO THE RESCUE
JUL 07 2018 : NOISE TO THE RESCUE One of the challenges that we are constantly facing is how to make our weather representation to be exactly the same on two different computers running xEnviro at the same time but to look differently over the time even if the weather report is still the same. In order to achieve this we need to minimize random number generation on the user machine. We have been working on the idea of pre-generated noise maps applied over the voxel arrays for quite a long time but only last week this has been implemented into the working code of xEnviro. Volume rendering together with voxel arrays and noise maps allows us to finally get the same visual representation of the weather across all the systems hugely minimize random number generation. During upcoming weeks we are going to upgrade our server code in order to accommodate the necessary procedural changes as well as implement several pending code changes mostly affecting upper level data.
	JUN 29 2018 : HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
JUN 29 2018 : HEAD IN THE CLOUDS Our simple light calculations appeared to look below our standards therefore we went back to the heavy procedure which provides much better visuals. Performance is still good but the final impact is yet to be evaluated after we finalize all the shader optimizations. A couple of small changes have been made to the other parts of the code mostly addressing light levels for the low sun angles so the X-Plane world object light levels will be more inline with the atmosphere ambient light levels during twilight, sunset and sunrise. Server code is also undergoing minor revision to better suit our new cloud model.
	JUN 22 2018 : PERFORMANCE BATTLE
JUN 22 2018 : PERFORMANCE BATTLE We are fighting for the best performance trying to keep acceptable visual results for the atmosphere rendering and cloud formation mixing. Our secondary task is to ensure smooth transition between cloud forms during weather condition change. We have no plans to change our global weather representation therefore we will keep current weather systems and frontal formations intact. Noise based rendering allows us to create almost unlimited variety of cloud forms, mix and combine them together to further enhance xEnviro weather representation.
	JUN 15 2018 : STEP INTO THE NEW ERA
JUN 15 2018 : STEP INTO THE NEW ERA Say hello to the volume rendered clouds. They have been waiting for a year to make their way through to the production cycle and today we are very much excited to announce that our new cloud rendering system will be introduced in the next update. Surprisingly our volume rendering seems to be faster than the conventional billboard approach which suffers from excessive noise sampling and huge overdraw. Initially clouds will be rendered using simplified light scattering calculations to ensure smooth performance and evaluate the possibility for further improvement.
	JUN 08 2018 : ATMOSPHERE, CLOUDS, STABILITY
JUN 08 2018 : ATMOSPHERE, CLOUDS, STABILITY All-in-one atmosphere shader is now divided into three separate, low resolution, performance light but still physically correct calculations. Although the final blending is more complicated, but it is much faster and can be done in full resolution, means no more objects that appear as non-antialiased. Clouds still remain in the temporary transitional state, anyway we plan to do some amendments to the noise sampling procedures to get a better performance. Additionally a couple of changes has been applied to the base code in order to improve stability in X-Plane 11.21.
	JUN 04 2018 : DEVELOPMENT NEWS
JUN 04 2018 : DEVELOPMENT NEWS We have decided to start posting regular development news on the main web site. From now on this will be one way communication channel that will keep all xEnviro users informed of the ongoing changes and future plans within the project. xEnviro Facebook group will remain active with the exception that we will withdraw our presence from the group and it will serve mostly as a fan base maintained by our partners from the Threshold team. xEnviro Support Center will remain the main source for the technical support and issue reporting facility. Additionally we will continue to provide very limited technical advisory via x-plane.org forum. Thank you for your support.

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