After a long period of betas and more recently release candidates, Laminar Research has released X-Plane 11.50, which was first unveiled to the public in early April.

Writing to the X-Plane developer blog, Ben Supnik said the following - “Third time’s a charm? I hope so. We cut a new release candidate this week.”

“The main reason for the new RC: the very latest AMD drivers (2020.8.3) crash X-Plane in Vulkan. We are working with AMD on this; in the meantime you can run the 2020.8.2 drivers. We wanted to get an error message into the app guiding users – hard crashes were spiking in our auto reporting.”

Supnik predicted that release candidate three would be the version to go final, which is indeed what has happened today.

“We have a few more fixes we are sitting on for an 11.51 bug fix patch to avoid introducing last minute changes in RC.”

Here’s the full list of changes throughout the 17 beta versions and 3 release candidates:

Release Candidate 3

• Work around AMD driver update 20.8.3 crashing with Vulkan.
• XPD-10758 Fixed C172 trim wheel manipulator on Vulkan.
• XPD-11009 Windows clipping in OpenGL.

Release Candidate 2

• Updated Honeycomb .joy file.
• Updated Italian translation.
• XPD-10804 Hopefully fixed crashing in paging plan.
• XPD-10805 This fixes 3 race conditions in the location task.
• XPD-10990 Probing terrain might be skewed.
• XPD-10995 Fixed shadows cut off on GL.

Release Candidate 1

• XPD-10231 Crash to desktop after closing Oculus app.
• XPD-10601 Turned off pref saving of NMEA since use affects perf.
• XPD-10805 Crash with deleted DSF in background work
• XPD-10883, XPD-10884 Metal driver crash.
• XPD-10909 Thrustmaster A320 joystick configs.
• XPD-10925 Video Record Crash – Linux+Nvidia.
• XPD-10954 Updated airport EGLL – London Heathrow.
• XPD-10963 Fixed V-Sync on macOS.
• XPD-10970 V-sync causing drop in performance on Vulkan.
• XPD-10976 Fix missing pipelines on 2-d generic instrument panels with legacy lighting.
• XPD-10977 Fix flickering terrain by using double precision culling.
• XPD-10978 Out of order video frame record.
• XPD-10979 Fix pauses due to Steam DRM check.
• XPD-10980 Lock re-entrancy with memory pressure warning.
• XPD-10983 Fixed broken earth_astro.dat files leading to terrible performance on Vulkan/Metal.
• XPD-10984 Fixed cutoff near shadows in Metal. Again.
• XPD-10985 Hang when recording video from replay.
• XPD-10986 Dataref for MSAA for plugins.
• XPD-10987 Missing pipeline with non-OBJ based chute and weather.
• XPD-10988 Fix race condition with settings load and SAM.xpl.
• XPD-10994 Don’t mess with cloud shadows from reflection renders.
• XPD-10996 Command line option to hand-pick IP.
• XPD-10997 Work around Mesa not having instance ID.
• XPD-10999 Sync debug DRM lock failure causes hard crash.

Beta 17

• XPD-9677 Water reflection flickering issue in VR.
• XPD-10231 Fix crash on quit with Nvidia and Rift.
• XPD-10895 ACF shadow cut off when progressing time.
• XPD-10898 Panning delay/stutter.
• XPD-10899 Increase shadow/csm/far_limit_interior limit.
• XPD-10920 Fixed XPLMReloadScenery() hanging under Vulkan.
• XPD-10929, XPD-10962 Fixed missing shader after changing FX settings.
• XPD-10937 Fixed vanishing point being calculated incorrectly when using multiple monitors with different resolutions.
• XPD-10945, XPD-10932, XPD-10928, XPD-10919 Fixes for FPS complaints.
• XPD-10949 Reflections in VR only render correctly in center of view.
• XPD-10950 DRM crashes on Icelake CPUs.
• XPD-10951 Take Nav fixes.
• XPD-10952 Fixed dead lock in Metal memory controller caused by notifying about memory changes under lock.
• XPD-10953 GPU Performance Regression with NV from turning off depth clamping.
• XPD-10955 Paging material crawler doesn’t finish on time.
• XPD-10957 Don’t use main render for plugins in non-HDR on Metal.
• XPD-10962, XPD-10966 Null pipeline crashes in Vulkan due to an internal GFX error.
• XPD-10965 Fixed NaN when FMOD aircraft is removed by TCAS lock.
• XPD-10969 Fix VR head sensor not working on WMR.
• XPD-10971 Fixed grind on Nimitz and Perry.

Beta 16

• More logging to track down remaining missing pipeline crashes.
• XPD-10926 Blurry textures in cockpits fixed.
• XPD-10938 Use layer groups for instanced objects.
• XPD-10940 Force reload of texture on livery.
• XPD-10941 Fix livery leak.
• XPD-10942 Gained depth buffer for plugin drawing phases that never had one before.
• XPD-10943 Shows clouds inside cockpit and various artifacts in views.
• XPD-10944 Fix crash in paging plan.

Beta 15

• XPD-8413 Updated art with compressed textures for some assets.
• XPD-10804 Crash in paging plan.
• XPD-10927 Shared framebuffers now have a default D24S8 depth/stencil buffer attachment that is used when we don’t share depth/stencil natively.
• XPD-10930 Fixed viewport area fails after window resize.
• XPD-10933 Fixed crash if holding a plugin VR window when it goes away.
• XPD-10934 Assert that view area is fubar.

Beta 14

• Cloud offscreen ratio would be wrong under particular rare rendering situations with multiple monitors.
• XPD-10486, XDP-10902 Added Metal GPU timer calibration. Also enabled GPU timers for 10.15.5+.
• XPD-10619 On macOS we now always pick the system default device.
• XPD-10725 Fix crash by removing Micoprofile OpenGL GPU timers.
• XPD-10827 Fixed VR load screen.
• XPD-10838 Fixed map clipping with Metal.
• XPD-10861 Fixes plugin widget translucency.
• XPD-10876 Fixed crash if plugin makes a null obj-based instance.
• XPD-10906 Fix gray boxes around icons.
• XPD-10916 Fixed stutters with image requests when we haven’t finished rendering the first one yet.
• XPD-10918, XPD-10923 Issues with Nvidia driver 451.48.
• XPD-10921 Freezing / hang in 11.50 beta 13.

Beta 13

• Fixing bad plugin blaming and race conditions.
• XPD-10911 Crashes at startup in OGL due to missing shaders.
• XPD-10914 Fixed missing pipeline with Thranda PC-6.

Beta 12

• XPD-10267 Fixed typo in data output screen.
• XPD-10705 Fixed Vulkan pipeline always using depth clamp instead of depth clip like we do on OpenGL and Metal.
• XPD-10747 AVI Video recording unplayable under Windows/Vulkan.
• XPD-10790 Fix crash if user has junk prefs for joysticks.
• XPD-10842 Fixed grid in ocean.
• XPD-10871 Analytics for custom navdata is broken.
• XPD-10873, XPD-10577 Crash with video recording.
• XPD-10879 Fix for “freezing.”
• XPD-10884, XPD-10883 Crash in Metal with lots of trees.
• XPD-10897 Fix for another missing shader.
• XPD-10900 Tuning TACAN through map inspector doesn’t work.
• XPD-10903 Fixed paging crawler trying to read obj kill datarefs from a backgrounds thread.
• XPD-10904 Fixed missing shaders when DXT alpha can go both ways.

Beta 11

• XPD-9329 Fixed distant mountains looking crappy due to low res planet textures.
• XPD-10704 Low shadow fade distance in cockpit view.
• XPD-10717 Made more objects pageable to help with VRAM usage.
• XPD-10741, XPD-10842 Fixed decals being allowed to modulate the alpha channel even if there is no alpha.
• XPD-10780 Scenery shadows not seen from cockpit view, shadows seen from exterior view.
• XPD-10796 Flashing colors in OpenGL.
• XPD-10820 Crash with 3-d artificial horizon and legacy panel lighting.
• XPD-10828 VR scenery shadow issues determined by two art controls.
• XPD-10840 Experimental FM can be selected in Plane Maker.
• XPD-10845 Crash inside drawing hook.
• XPD-10851 Make GPU info easier to identify in log.txt.
• XPD-10854 Fixed paging plan background crash with SAM.xpl.
• XPD-10874 GL shadows broken when scenery shadows are off.
• XPD-10875 Fixed missing pipeline with HDR + 2-d panels.
• XPD-10876 Fixed pager paging instances while plugins delete them.
• XPD-10877 Fixed shadow lines on scenery.
• XPD-10878 Preparing World takes forever to complete.
• XPD-10882 Added anisotropic filtering slider.

Beta 10

• XPD-10458 Need control of eGPU selection for Vulkan.
• XPD-10543 Crash with AviTab.
• XPD-10639 Wrong Graphics card used when multiple available.
• XPD-10645, XPD-10682, XPD-10635 Fixed V-Sync on Vulkan.
• XPD-10668 Doesn’t launch when display is connected to different than rendering GPU.
• XPD-10713 Vulkan disabled on startup.
• XPD-10726, XPD-10796 Removed the validation layer callback unless we explicitly enable validation.
• XPD-10733 Disable Vulkan checkbox for Win Intel users.
• XPD-10757 Nav, Com, ADF, Transponder Radios draw current when turned off.
• XPD-10765 Reduce the OpenGL overhead caused by XPLMDrawString.
• XPD-10800 The modern 3d drawing callback has the wrong blend mode applied.
• XPD-10801 Fixed crash with touch up of 4k textures.
• XPD-10807 Fixed normalization of null vectors becoming NaNs.
• XPD-10811 Map AI aircraft icons don’t update when dragged if paused.
• XPD-10815 New tools that can be popped out in 2d are not showing in VR.
• XPD-10820 Fixed missing pipelines for 3-d panels.
• XPD-10821 Fix crash when plugin makes VR surface that does not exist.
• XPD-10823 Fix crash in dumping ATC state to log when controller is half-built.
• XPD-10824 Fix crash in shut down if a plugin loads airplanes during XPluginQuit.
• XPD-10825 Fixed stale projection being passed to SDK map layer when it is created while map is shifting.
• XPD-10829 Loosened severity of squawking with validation rules a little.
• XPD-10831 Outright ban writing to art controls that ALWAYS crash the sim.
• XPD-10832 Camera entitlement for TrackerXP.
• XPD-10833 Hang when capturing video in replay mode.
• XPD-10841 Improvements made based on blurry texture reports from 11.50b9.
• XPD-10843 Correctly indicate that runway wetness at temps below 0 Celsius are modeled as icy, not wet.
• XPD-10849 Fall back to opengl every 3rd launch.
• XPD-10852 Camera next-plane code inop with TCAS override.
• XPD-10859 Take small systems code fixes: A/T TOGA and REF, LNAV toggle not working for some autopilots.
• XPD-10860 Log and cmd line override of IPD for SteamVR.
• XPD-10865 XPLMFindNavaid not finding airport ICAO code on some gateway airports.

Beta 9

• XPD-10617 Regenerate icon crash fixes again and again and again.
• XPD-10766, XPD-10721 Vulkan Not Loading – failed to initialize.
• XPD-10769 Multi color flashing aircraft.
• XPD-10798 TKS surface dataref is wrong in readout, but works when writing.
• XPD-10802 TCAS datarefs added.
• XPD-10806 Crash opening VRAM profiler.
• XPD-10808 Fixed deleting and rebuilding plugin layers at async reload.
• XPD-10809 No longer drawing AI acf on map.

Beta 8

• XPD-10794 Blurry acf in 11.50b7.
• XPD-10799 Blurry textures on 737 AP.

Beta 7

• Updated plugin SDK for TCAS changes.
• More obj validation and error checking.
• Fixes for some blurry objects.
• Improved texture pager again.
• Updated VRAM profiler.
• XPD-8112 Override TCAS datarefs for our own and third-party TIS.
• XPD-8162 Ocean tiles loading slowly & appear to be missing entirely in scenery.
• XPD-10538 ADS-B Track Data wrong when plugin is controlling multi-player datarefs.
• XPD-10617 Take two on CTD when using “regenerate icons for current aircraft (and livery).
• XPD-10649 Too many inflight command buffers.
• XPD-10654 Took King Air to get fuel pump start script.
• XPD-10740 Fixed Orbx obj crashing.
• XPD-10755, XPD-10767 Fixed race condition in map with plugins.
• XPD-10756 Added map callbacks for vk/metal.
• XPD-10764 Fix crash if modal is deleted before VR system can pop it up.
• XPD-10773 Fixed SDK version numbers.
• XPD-10774 Fixed crash with legacy CRJ700.
• XPD-10775 Missing pipeline with instrument planet_globe.
• XPD-10777, XPD-10776 Fixed hangs/crashes in PM any time we get a warning box while opening things.
• XPD-10779 Fixed crash deleting ALL objects from G1000 C172.
• XPD-10791 Fixed wasted VRAM when dome warp is not in use.

Beta 6

• Fixed reflection slider labels.
• Made aftermath opt in from the CLI only.
• XPD-10693 Fixed crash when re-opening VR.
• XPD-10760 Fixed typo in –allow_reshade CLI flag.
• XPD-10761 Crash in ATC if no suitable destination found for aircraft.
• XPD-10762 Fix crash in AI spawner when user’s plan is bad.

Beta 5

• Updated Gateway airports.
• Support for new Control Pad.
• Fixed default key bindings for trim.
• XPD-10617 Generate preview icon works on Vulkan/Metal.
• XPD-10623 Fixed panel screenshots with OpenGL.
• XPD-10633 Crash when returning to sim after enabling VR mode.
• XPD-10637, XPD-10644 Vulkan Error Device Lost.
• XPD-10646 Took art fix to facades to fight log spam.
• XPD-10649 Too many inflight command buffers.
• XPD-10693 Vulkan device lost SECOND time VR is started.
• XPD-10707 Fixed issues with multiple monitors that have different resolutions.
• XPD-10714 Vulkan disabled when auto-update runs.
• XPD-10719 Stars reflected in the water.
• XPD-10722 Fixed detection of 1Gb cards.
• XPD-10723 Nvidia device STILL screwed up with Metal and MSAA.
• XPD-10727 XPLMSetAircraftModel leads to crash under OpenGL.
• XPD-10728 Fixed wireframe rendering in Plane Maker.
• XPD-10729 Fixed crashes in ATC system (null segment & waypoint).
• XPD-10731 Zero size window blows up OpenGL.
• XPD-10732 Fixed minimizing OpenGL windows.
• XPD-10742 Fixed MSAA being reset to 2x on restart.
• XPD-10744 Update error message to only request auto crash report.
• XPD-10749 Plane maker problem with OpenGL.
• XPD-10751 Wrong callback dispatched for panels.

Beta 4

• XPD-10643 ATC crash when entering approach mode.
• XPD-10648 London Bridge road fix.
• XPD-10670 Fixed misaligned 2-d panel click regions.
• XPD-10672 Add the Paris-Orly Aerosoft hybrid airport.
• XPD-10677 Gate Lines not appearing with Airport environment HD in OGL.
• XPD-10681 Fixed missing text with airport navigator.
• XPD-10684 Fixed missing scenery with markings+5 as its group.
• XPD-10686 Fix reloading sky colors.
• XPD-10687 Fixed null pipeline in vulkan/metal deploying cirrus chute.
• XPD-10688 Fix null pipeline editing weapon load out in VR.
• XPD-10689 Fixed null pipeline on vulkan in texture browser.
• XPD-10691 Fix crash in G1000 map screen when no airports.
• XPD-10692 Fix crash clicking popped out g430 with click regions visible.
• XPD-10694 Fixed crash when thrashing whacking replay slider.
• XPD-10701 Mouse cursor in VR mispositioned.
• XPD-10702 Fixed VR mouse with HDR and Vulkan.
• XPD-10706 Fixed error handling of missing point pool.

Beta 3

• Fixed crash at launch with Linux + Vulkan.
• Fixed null pipeline with third party aircraft using custom lights.

Beta 2

• Fixed show traffic path pipeline nullptr error.
• Fix crash when AG item has bogus forest ref.
• XPD-10422 Plane Maker >Expert>Build Weapons>Geometry UI Overlap.
• XPD-10438 Update King Air beta angle.
• XPD-10442 Incorrect leg-deduplication with DF-HA, losing turn restriction.
• XPD-10569 VR Right eye not working with Vulkan.
• XPD-10607 Fixed skycolors nullptr pipeline on Vulkan.
• XPD-10621 Fixed FOV and all screen pref param dataref being broken.
• XPD-10624 Fixed null pipeline on right click of hierarchy in Plane Maker with Vulkan.
• XPD-10625 Fix for un-inited turbulence.
• XPD-10629 Fixed black screen on GF 6,7,8 series.
• XPD-10632 Removed extra comma in loading screen.
• XPD-10636 Failed to create Vulkan window, no surface formats found.
• XPD-10638 Metal out of memory.
• XPD-10641 C172 panel all black with OGL.
• XPD-10642 Crashes when starting flight on Nvidia Mac.
• XPD-10647 Can’t use Vulkan with multiple GPUS + SLI.
• XPD-10656 Fixed Vulkan error handling for better crash reporting.
• XPD-10657 Fixed missing pipeline on Vulkan with night vision mode.
• XPD-10662 Fixed aircraft being in wrong place in Plane Maker wing view.
• XPD-10668 Doesn’t launch when display is connected to different than rendering GPU.
• XPD-10669 Muted ATC log spam.
• XPD-10671 Fixed crash going from setting FX 1 to 2 with Metal.
• XPD-10674 Fixed sound spaces not rendering correctly.

Beta 1

• Latest manuals added.
• Fixed missing VRAM use Text in UI.
• XPD-10626 Hacked around crash on AMD in Catalina 10.15.4.
  

The update is now available from the X-Plane Updater and can be downloaded regardless of whether the ‘check for betas’ box is ticked.

It’s unclear whether 11.50 is available on Steam as yet, though we will update this article once it is confirmed.