I have released the latest version of the installer which now included the following new libraries FF Library (latest version) FF Library Extended LOD (latest version) Sea Life Library 1.0 European Vehicles Library 1.01 Flags of the World: Real Flag II for 9 & 10 (latest version) Flags of the USA States: Real Flag II for 9 & 10 (latest version) Flyby Planes Library 4.0 You can find the download page here Thank you to Michael Klotz uwespeed Chris Noe For their permission to included these excellent libraries!! Tom, have you though about updating the installer to use something similar to rsync (e.g.
If you have all the libraries in one place on a server, then the installer can just download/update the files it needs. Whenever somebody updates their library, the installer will just download the changes rather than needing to redownload a huge file. Yes, problem is the githubs file size restrictions.
X Plane Installer Updater
Second you need to make every library developer upload to this server or any other server. Which means more permission. Most library installer do not want to have their library hosted anywhere other than x-plane.org, and that would make it difficult. Even worse, most library do not update them self, there is even library now dated back to 2012. So in an sense, the small issue of tracking each library is no problem at all. And lets face it, a 2GB file size is half a DVD to download and even with a 3Mbit subscriber line it does not take forever. I try to update ever month and a shorter update frame than that will only be annoying for most end users.
Contents. Using Linux versus Windows or Mac OS The X-Plane discs sold from are compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Installing the software on either Mac OS or Windows is pretty straightforward; in most cases, so long as one has the proper drivers, the steps to install will be nearly identical between computers. There are multiple versions of these operating systems (for instance, Mac OS 10.4 versus 10.5, or Windows XP versus Windows Vista), but for the purpose of installing X-Plane, each version functions about the same.
On the other hand, “Linux” is a very broad category of operating systems. Each distribution (or “flavor”) of Linux is unique. In some cases, the only thing that differentiates one distribution from another is the programs (also called software packages) that are included by default—for example, Ubuntu Studio simply adds tools for working with multimedia to the standard Ubuntu distribution. In other cases, distributions may be differentiated by their user interface—for example, Xubuntu changes the desktop environment from Gnome (as in the standard Ubuntu distribution) to XFCE.
In yet other cases, distributions may vary in many more ways—for example, users of Gentoo (a highly configurable, highly involved distribution) choose to use it over something like Ubuntu largely due to the fact that the kernel (the “bones” of the operating system) is tailored to each system individually. On the other hand, Ubuntu users choose to use it largely for the fact that they don’t have to custom-tailor anything.
None of these differences prevent X-Plane from being installed. However, the wide variations in software packages (as well as differences in the user interface and how packages are installed) make a step-by-step guide for each particular Linux distribution impossible.
Overview of this guide We will discuss the installation of X-Plane on three of the most popular distributions: Fedora, openSuse, and Ubuntu. A helpful (though subjective) comparison of these three distributions can be found here. Reading through the installation guide below will be helpful to users of other distributions, too, as the process is largely the same—copy the installer to the hard drive, gather the required libraries, and run the installer. For users new to Linux, this installation may seem daunting. Don’t give up, though!
The installation will work, and the experience gained in installing X-Plane will be helpful when installing other software later. X-Plane customer support is top notch, and the X-Plane community—especially the Linux side of the community—is exceptionally helpful. Please note that this guide is written for users new to Linux. Some information may seem annoyingly basic to Linux veterans, but it is necessary in order to make Linux a viable option for all our users. This guide assumes that the computer X-Plane is being installed on is capable of running the simulator with its default rendering options. Note that the minimum system requirements to run X-Plane are a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 128 MB VRAM on an independent (non-integrated) video card.
However, the recommended specifications are a 2 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 256 MB of VRAM. Of course, X-Plane can take advantage of even faster systems, too. 32-bit versus 64-bit versions For users trying to decide between the 32-bit version of their distribution of choice and the 64-bit version, know that X-Plane will run on both. The 32-bit version has the benefit of requiring fewer new software libraries compared to the 64-bit version. The downside to using a 32-bit operating system is that the system can only address 4 GB of memory; however, since X-Plane fits comfortably within 2 GB of memory, a system built strictly for X-Plane will be fine with a 32-bit operating system.
Getting help For help, please email customer support at [email protected], or get community support from the. Installation General Installation Guide Before we begin, let’s discuss the general steps that we’ll be following in each distribution’s specific installation instructions.
Getting the installer to the desktop First, we’ll copy the X-Plane Linux installer to the desktop. This is necessary because we will need to remove Disc 1 in the course of installing the scenery. Linux doesn’t like having the installer present only in memory (as would be the case in a Windows or Mac installation), so we’ll pacify it by moving it to the hard drive. In the past, there were issues with the mounting of the Linux discs; in the distributions described here, this is no longer the case. The installation discs mount correctly and are usable without any extra input.
More information can be found on the. Please note that the installation steps presented here are for the 9.00 set of gray-colored discs. When using a different set of discs (such as the older beta discs or the discs purchased in a retail store) it may be necessary to download the Linux installer from the. Gathering the required libraries After getting the installer on the desktop, we will download any software libraries needed by X-Plane but not present on the system. On a 64-bit system, this usually means downloading the 32-bit versions of Mesa (a free implementation of the OpenGL graphics library) and OpenAL (an audio library). Some 32-bit systems will already have these installed. To find out what libraries the installer will need, open the terminal (also called the command line) and navigate to where the installer was saved.
Assuming that the installer is on the desktop, and that the terminal opens in the user name folder, this is done by typing: cd Desktop and pressing Enter. The “cd” stands for “change directory,” after which we tell the terminal where to go. Once in the Desktop folder, we can check the dependencies of the Linux installer by typing: ldd./“Linux Installer” and pressing Enter. The libraries listed there can be searched for either in the distribution’s package installer or on Google. For the Linux distributions in this guide, we won’t go through this step because we already know which packages are needed. Running the installer Once the proper libraries are installed, running the installer is as simple as opening a terminal, navigating to the desktop (via “cd Desktop” in most cases), and executing the file by typing:./“Linux Installer” and pressing Enter.
From there, the installer itself can walk the user through the setup. By default, the installation will be placed in the directory /home/user name/X-Plane 9. In Ubuntu (32-bit) The 32-bit version (that is, the i386 installation disc, downloadable ) of Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” will be used in the following instructions.
Additionally, the X-Plane Wiki has guides for installing on versions 8.04 and 8.10, and further discussion of the libraries necessary for the 64-bit version of 8.10 can be found on the. Getting the installer to the desktop Some Ubuntu users report having issues with the file permissions of the installer found on the X-Plane DVDs. In order to avoid this entirely, we will simply download the latest installer from the web by clicking.
When Firefox prompts, select to open the file with the Archive Manager, noting that may take a few minutes for the download to complete. When it does, drag the X-Plane DVD Installer Linux file to the desktop. Gathering the required libraries With the installer downloaded, we need to gather the required package libraries. Open the Synaptic Package Manager by clicking the System menu (in the upper left of the screen), going to Administration, and clicking Synaptic Package Manager, as shown in the image below. When Synaptic opens, search (in the top center of the window) for OpenAL. Find the line that reads “libopenal1” and click it (as shown in the screenshot below), then click Mark for Installation.
With libopenal1 marked, press Apply (found at the top of the window, to the left of the search bar). Click Apply once again in the Summary window that appears to install the package. Due to an idiosyncrasy in Ubuntu 9.04, we will now need to link another library file (libopenal0) to the file we just downloaded (libopenal1). To do this, first open the terminal by clicking the Applications menu (found at the top left of the screen), going to Accessories, then clicking Terminal, as shown in the following image.
In the terminal window that opens, type the following command: sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libopenal.so.1 /usr/lib/libopenal.so.0 Press Enter and enter the root password to create the link. Note that, in the 64-bit version of Ubuntu, users will need to replace the “lib” portion of the two directories above with “lib32”.
In the previous command, the “sudo” told the terminal to “do” what we told it as a super user (su). The “ln” told it that we wanted to create a link, and the “–s” modifier told it to make it a symbolic link rather than a hard link. Next, we told it which original file to use, then where to place the link. Running the installer With the link created, it’s time to run the installer. In a terminal window, type cd Desktop to move to the desktop, then type./”X-Plane DVD Installer Linux” to launch the installer.
In the installer window that appears, click Continue. By default, X-Plane will install to the /home/user name/ directory. If this is acceptable, click Continue, as in the image below. Accept the license agreement, the click Continue. Select the area of the world for which scenery should be installed.
With the newest installer, none of the world will be selected by default. Areas which are not selected will be gray and white, while areas which are selected will have their full color. For example, in the image below, only North America is selected. Large areas can easily be selected by clicking and dragging the mouse cursor.
Also, note that for areas with no scenery installed, airports will appear to be “floating” above an ocean. Installing that area’s scenery later (done using this same installer) will correct this issue. When the desired scenery has been selected, click Continue, as shown in the image below. Installation will now begin. Note that installation may take anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes per disc.
Installing the complete scenery package will consume about 75GB of hard drive space and will take between five and six and a half hours to install. When the installer prompts, remove Disc 1 from the drive and insert Disc 2. Note that this must be placed in the same DVD-ROM as the first disc for X-Plane to recognize it. Wait for the second disc’s icon to appear on the desktop (indicating that it is mounted and ready to use), then click Continue. Repeat this for all the required discs. When the installer finishes, the simulator is ready to go. Scenery can be added or removed at any point in the future by inserting Disc 1 and re-running the installer.
When the X-System installer comes up saying “You already have X-Plane 9 installed on this computer,” click the Add or Remove Scenery button and proceed as before. A Note on Lock-Ups and Loss of Audio Some users of Ubuntu 9.10 have reported that, after flying in X-Plane for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, the sim will suddenly stop putting out sound, although it will still take input from the joystick, the menus will still work, etc. After this happens, the sim will lock up when the user tries to close it. This is caused by a conflict between X-Plane and PulseAudio which, curiously, seems to be limited to Ubuntu 9.10. This can be fixed either by removing PulseAudio entirely (as described ) or by upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04.
In OpenSUSE (64-bit) This guide will use the openSUSE 11.1 x86-64 GNOME distribution, downloadable. The software packages included with other versions may differ slightly, but the steps to install should be similar. Let’s get started. Getting the installer to the desktop First, insert X-Plane 9 Disc 1 into the computer’s DVD drive. If the File Browser does not appear automatically, double click on the XPLANE9 icon on the desktop. In that window, click the Installer Linux icon (as highlighted in the screenshot below) and drag it to the desktop. This is necessary so that we can switch discs during the installation.
Gathering the required libraries With that done, we need to gather the necessary software libraries. Remember that these some of these libraries will only need to be downloaded when running the 64-bit version of openSUSE—the 32-bit version will likely have Mesa installed already. Click on the Computer button in the bottom left of the screen.
In the menu that appears, click Install Software. Type the root password when prompted.
When the YaST Software Manager appears, type “openal” in the search bar in the upper right, as highlighted in the image below. Click on “openal” in the package list, then click Install (as highlighted below). Do the same for “openal-32bit.” The OpenAL packages will be necessary for audio output in X-Plane.
Next, search for “freealut.” Select it and click Install just like with the previous package. This too will be responsible for audio output in X-Plane. Finally, search for Mesa. Click on “Mesa-32bit” and click Install, as shown in the image below. Mesa is a free implementation of OpenGL that will handle the video output in X-Plane. Click the Apply button to install all of the selected packages.
Running the Installer All the required software libraries are now installed. To launch the installer, we’ll need to open a terminal window. Click Computer (found in the bottom left of the screen), then click More Applications. There, double click on the Terminal icon. As an aside, new users might want to drag this icon and place it on the task bar, as it will likely be used often.
The terminal window that appears will be located (by default) in the /home/user name/ directory. To get to the X-Plane installer from here, we need to direct it to the desktop. Do this with the command “cd Desktop” as shown in the image below. Once there, launch in the installer by typing ‘./”Installer Linux”‘ and pressing enter, as in the image below.
The X-Plane Installer will appear. Click Continue. By default, X-Plane will install to the /home/user name/ directory. If this is acceptable, click Continue. Accept the agreement, then click Continue.
Select the area of the world for which scenery should be installed. Depending on the version of the discs, either all or none of the world will be selected. Areas which are not selected will look washed out, while areas which are selected will have their full color. For example, in the image below, only North America is selected.
Large areas can easily be selected by clicking and dragging the mouse cursor. Also, note that for areas with no scenery installed, airports will appear to be “floating” above an ocean. Installing that area’s scenery later (done using this same installer) will correct this issue. When the desired scenery has been selected, click Continue, as shown in the image below. The installation will begin.
When prompted to do so, remove Disc 1 and insert Disc 2. Note that this must be placed in the same DVD-ROM drive as the first disc; if it is placed in another drive, the installer may not recognize it. Wait for the disc to spin up, or for its File Browser window to appear, then click Continue. When the installation finishes, the computer is ready to fly. Note that scenery can be added or removed at any point in the future by inserting Disc 1 and re-running the installer. When the X-System installer comes up saying “You already have X-Plane 9 installed on this computer,” click the Add or Remove Scenery button and proceed as before. In Fedora (64-bit) This guide will use the x86-64 distribution of Fedora Core 10.
Since this writing, Core 10 has been replaced by Fedora 13 (downloadable ), though this should not change anything for our purposes here. The 32-bit distribution will likely not need the Mesa package. Getting the installer to the desktop To begin, insert the first of the X-Plane installation discs into the DVD-ROM drive.
When it spins up, double click on the XPLANE9 icon on the desktop, as shown in the image below. Click on the Installer Linux icon and drag it to the desktop. This is necessary so that we can switch discs during the installation. Gathering the required libraries Next, we need to gather the software libraries that X-Plane will require. Click on System (found in the upper left of the screen), go to Administration, then click Add or Remove Software. In the window that appears, search for OpenAL, then click on the Open Audio Library that notes on the second line that it is the i386 version (that is, the 32-bit version, as shown in the image below), as opposed to the one which notes that it is the x8664 version (the 64-bit version). After selecting the correct version of OpenAL, click Apply.
X-plane 11
Next, search for Mesa. Click on the version of the “Mesa libGL runtime libraries and DRI drivers” that notes on the second line that it is the i386 version (as shown in the screenshot below), not the x8664 version. Then, click Apply. After clicking Apply, a dialog box will appear (shown below) saying that a number of other packages must be installed in order to install Mesa.
Click Install. Next, while still having searched for Mesa, scroll down and click on the i386 version of “Mesa libGLU runtime library” (as shown in the screenshot below), then click Apply.
Running the installer With all the required software packages installed, it’s time to run the installer. Open the Applications menu, go to System Tools, and click on the Terminal icon (as shown in the image at the top of the following page). The terminal window that opens will, by default, be set in the /home/user name/ directory. First, move to the desktop by typing cd Desktop and pressing Enter. Next, launch the installer by typing./”Installer Linux” and pressing Enter.
From there, using the X-Plane installer is identical to the steps detailed in the openSUSE guide above. Troubleshooting If, when trying to run the installer from the command line, an error about a missing library (for instance, libopenal) appears, try searching the operating system’s package manager for the missing file. If that fails, search Google with the library name and the name of the Linux distribution. To quickly determine what libraries will be needed to run the installer, use the ldd./installer name command in a terminal (after moving to that directory with the “cd” command). For further help, please email customer support at [email protected], or get community support from the.
I just posted new versions of the installers with a few bug fixes. Let me try to clarify the situation. The X-Plane installer and updater have been merged. The installer is now capable of updating. One app does it all now. Therefore:.
If you bought a copy of X-Plane, use the X-Plane installer to update your copy of X-Plane. It will require a DVD or USB key, just like X-Plane does. If you are just trying the demo of X-Plane, re-run the demo installer – it will update your demo. Or, easiest of all: just go to the “About Box” in X-Plane and let X-Plane check for updates and run the entire process. The newest installer is; if you haven’t bought X-Plane 10, the demo installer is. Why does the full product require a DVD or USB key to update? The answer is that it will download files that are only part of the full installation, not just files that are part of the demo.
This is part of our migration toward being able to update scenery and other full-sim features online. Sir, I am deployed to Afghanistan, and have very low bandwidth in my hooch.
I recently ordered X-Plane 10. I had X-plane 9 loaded and it never really worked properly. The problem is not my computer, I have a brand new Alienware 17r3 with NVIDIA graphics card. I learned how to use the NVIDIA card to target the use of the graphics card with specific programs, but X-Plane 10 doesn’t show up. Also how, specifically do we upload the update 10.03? I keep getting the unzip error on updates.
I ran the update yesterday and it did not work with my v10 USB key. Is that one of the bug fixes you refer to? Also, can you date stamp the installer on the web page so we know what is the latest version? Right now I have to download and unzip the installer to determine the date. I did get an outdated installer from one of your links yesterday.
Perhaps just the date of the installer next to the download link would be sufficient. Or even better, maybe a version number embedded in the name would work. If the Installer and Updater are one and the same file, why are there two download links x-plane.com?
Yeah, they both point to the same location: iIf you are installing your X-Plane 10 DVDs, do not use the installer that comes on Disc 1; instead, download and run the installer/updater to install the DVDs. If you already have the full version of X-Plane installed and want to update it, you can download the installer/updater. It should say something like, If you are installing your X-Plane 10 DVDs or updating an already installed version of X-Plane, download and run the new combined installer/updater, which should used instead of all previous installer or updater files. Will the new “installer” update older versions? If so, why is the old “updater” still available on the website? When updating my Windows copy, I was current with 10.03RC2. It wouldn’t let me update and change my mind so I could try the latest release candidate.
The OLD updater is still provided on the website, which is linked to by.the old updater!! The nomenclature change is confusing. I would have called the same application the updater.and. the installer.
And updated the Laminar website. Change is not always fun, eh? Sometimes the flow is the place to be. Just to recap: I could not update to the latest RC or beta since I was current with the latest stable release from within X-Plane.
At least that was the case with 10.03RC2. When I launched the old.updater,. it gripes and suggests I go to the main X-Plane site to download a new updater. I followed it’s link to the X-Plane.com site to see if the new installer/updater would work. That was here: The good news is that this page is now different from what I saw yesterday.
I verified this using my browser history. Like others, I agree that the new application works well.
I think that the new terminology I’m seeing – “Installer/Updater” will catch all the old dogs resistant to change. Comments are closed.
Installing and Upgrading - V8.16 and Later Installing and Upgrading - V8.16 and Later Where do I get versions of X-Plane?? The current version of X-Plane is available via the. What you actually download is a small installer program So how do I install X-Plane? It depends on whether you've bought the DVD or you want to install a demo version over the network.
It also depends on which DVD kit you have. There are four basic types of DVD kits:. Single DVD sold. This package has been discontinued but some are still available. and sold through retail stores, including internet retailers.This package is now pretty old, but it still being sold. (Then again, some retailers are still selling the 6 year old V5.54 Xicat package! These things just won't go away.).
Set of 7 DVDs containing X-Plane V8.21 and global scenery, sold. This kit is also offered as a. Set of 8 DVDs containing X-Plane V8.40 and global scenery, sold. This kit is identical in content to the 7 DVD kit, except for the X-Plane version and that the 7 DVD kit has the base sim and US scenery on the same DVD where the 8 DVD kit has them on separate DVDs. Laminar also sells 2 DVD subset kits consisting of the base sim DVD and one scenery DVD of your choice. To install:.
If you've bought the DVD, run the installer on the DVD first. That installs the version on the DVD, which will be a whole lot faster than pulling the whole thing over the net. Once you've done that, run the installer you downloaded from X-Plane.com to update to the current version via the net. If you don't have the DVD, run the installer you downloaded. It will download all X-Plane components over the network.
This is some 500MB total, so expect it to take a while. Either way, you'll need upwards of 1GB of HD space for the demo download or just the base install from the single DVD. Plan on several gigs if you want to install the optional scenery from the single DVD kit. The 7/8 DVD kit is huge - installing just X-Plane and the US scenery takes about 10 GB; installing the entire set takes about 60 GB. For details on how to use the installer in the V8.21 and V8.40 kits, see. Most 'where is my scenery?'
Type problems come from not specifying the install destination correctly; read the description carefully. How do I install it on Linux?
Not all DVD kits include a Linux installer or Linux applications. However, you can install the scenery from the DVD(s), and then install the linux apps over the network. The DVD still works as a full version key. You get the Linux installers from the.
The precise URLs for the installers change as the installers are updated. From this page, click the link for the latest installer version to get to the current installer set. There are three different installers listed here. First, use X-Plane-DVD-Install.gz to install the US scenery from the first DVD. Then use X-Plane-Scenery-Install.gz to install the remaining scenery DVDs. Finally, use X-Plane-Net-Install.gz to install the current Linux applications over the network. I've been running the X-Plane demo and liked it so much I just bought the DVD.
How do I install the full version? This depends on which DVD kit you've bought. If you've bought the single DVD (like the ), you already have the full version! The same download acts as a demo or as the full version, depending on whether or not you have the DVD loaded. The DVD acts as the full version key. Additional scenery is on the DVD in compressed archives and must be installed on your HD. See the for details.
There is a version of X-Plane on the CD, but it's usually way out of date. If you've bought the 7 or 8 DVD kit, you need to install X-Plane over again. The reason is that, in addition to the basic global scenery, the 7/8 DVD kit contains scenery resource files that are not part of the demo download. You need to install the DVD kit over the top of your existing demo install. This works even if your current demo install is a later version than what's on the DVD, but if you take some care you can minimize the overall effort:.
Run the installer on each DVD, starting with the main X-Plane 8 disc. Specify your current X-Plane folder as the destination.
You will get a bunch of warnings about files having been modified. Select the option to keep the modified files - these are files that are new for your current X-Plane version. Run the network installer to verify and repair any files from the current version that might have been modified by the scenery installation process. In theory, there shouldn't be any if the installer has respected your request to leave modified files alone, but the installer sometimes has a mind of its own. For more details on installing and upgrading, read on.