A Better Camera (ABC) plugin for X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12 (2024)

• Unzip the download.
• Drag the resulting folder, "A-Better-Camera", into your X-Plane plugins folder (e.g., ".../X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins"), replacing any previous files with the new version(s). Be sure the folder name is "A-Better-Camera" without any other spaces, numbers, or letters after it! If your unzip renamed the folder, please rename it back to "A-Better-Camera" and/or delete the old one in your downloads folder first. Then drag the folder "A-Better-Camera" as instructed.
• If you already have a previous version of A-Better-Camera installed, you can instead just drag the actual plugin file itself ("A-Better-Camera.xpl") from the appropriate platform folder ("mac_x64", "lin_x64", or "win_x64") into the same folder inside your current A-Better-Camera plugin installation. This plugin only requires one file per platform (the plugin itself, "A-Better-Camera.xpl") -- there are no other dependencies!
  • M1/M2 Mac users: This release runs on both macOS platforms (Apple Silicon M1/M2 and Intel) in X-Plane 12! (XP11 doesn't run on ARM, so only x86/Intel-based Macs will run on XP11. But since this is a Universal Binary, you don't need to do anything -- it will just work on whatever platform you're able to run X-Plane on, with a single .xpl file for A-Better-Camera.)
  • Legacy macOS 10.11 users: This release is a universal binary that will also support older versions of X-Plane up to 11.10, which means it will also work correctly for earlier versions of macOS X, starting with macOS version 10.11 or later. (Of course, macOS 10.11 is not supported on X-Plane 12; only on X-Plane 11. ABC doesn't discriminate, though -- it'll run on all combinations that X-Plane supports!)
• User settings are in the standard X-Plane "Output" directory, not in the plugin folder! This makes it easier to manage upgrading/downgrading without losing your settings. Your ABC settings are stored in a single file in the X-Plane "Output/preferences" directory: abc-plugin-prefs.txt. ABC's settings are forwards- and backwards-compatible, so no worries about upgrading/downgrading. (Though any new setting changes you make in any newer versions will be reverted when downgrading and re-upgrading later. It isn't magic, after all!)
• Linux users should no longer need to install any third-party libraries (especially not "libcurl4.so" as previously instructed), and this build should work on Steam Linux as well, without any hassles. Please let the author know if you find any issues with loading A-Better-Camera.xpl for Linux, and please be sure to include whether it's on Steam or not, and which "flavor" of Linux you're on.

For the best user experience, please leave the settings file where it is (.../Output/preferences/abc-plugin-prefs.txt), so A-Better-Camera can detect version changes and upgrade automatically while preserving any relevant settings you changed for previous releases. (Note that some settings are automatically reset to new defaults, but this happens only when the feature they pertain to has changed enough for the developer to want users to try the new default before opting out again. Please watch for this type of thing in release notes. In these cases, the dataref path associated with the specific setting may change to reflect a new version, and oftentimes, ABC will preserve the original setting for your reference and in case you downgrade again.)

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Note: thanks as usual to @durian and @Cat on a PC© for help with testing and giving invaluable feedback over the last year leading up to this and the previous releases!

LATEST RELEASE NOTES:

Changes in v1.7rc1:

• New feature: Allow users to completely remove the "> ABC Aircraft Tracking >" menu hierarchy from X-Plane's Plugin menus.

  • This was originally intended to be a way for users to improve overall X-Plane performance when using ABC, by removing a regular background task of constantly updating the (potentially quite large) tracking menus from the Plugins menu hierarchy.

    • However, it turns out X-Plane is so efficient, that removing these calls to add, remove, and update these menus quite regularly does not put a perceptible load on X-Plane! At least, not enough to be observed in, for example, FPS improvements.

    • As a result, while this feature doesn't help with performance, it does give users a much simpler user experience (by not doubling the number of rows ABC takes up in the Plugins menu, at a minimum -- thus reducing cognitive and visual overhead).

    • It turns out, all the same information as is shown in these menus, is now also available in two other places:

      1. the dedicated ABC Tracking Window, and
      2. the pop-up tracking menu that appears if you click on the current target in the ABC Status Bar (unless you've disabled "active" status).

  • New Setting: "Build X-Plane menu hierarchy for 'ABC Aircraft Tracking'".

    • This setting (like all settings) is persistent, so you just have to opt out by unchecking this (it's checked by default for all users initially).

    • When you uncheck this the very first time, ABC will not immediately remove the top-level container menu -- this is in case you change your mind and click to re-enable it (or revert to the default enabled state). However, after you restart X-Plane (at your leisure), from then on, the top-level menu will no longer be present. Either way, all the submenus that form the "hierarchy" are removed as soon as you uncheck this option in Settings. (And they come back as soon as you click it on again.)

    • Of course, if you re-enable it much later, after you've restarted at least once while it was disabled, it will be added at the very bottom of the Plugins menu until you restart again later, at which point (unless you uncheck it again before then), it will re-build the full tracking menu hierarchy in its "usual" place, just below the main ABC plugin menu (or -- if you'd changed your settings to build that menu inline, then of course that's where it would place the new menu instead).

  • Personally, I realized after I added this feature (again, originally thinking it was a performance tuning "knob") that I never use those X-Plane menu-based tracking list menus -- because, among other things, they don't allow real formatting (so they were never aligned properly in the pseudo-tabular format I'd tried to create for them). So, I'm pretty relieved as a user of my own plugin to no longer have to even think about those menus -- I don't miss them at all! I'd love to get feedback from users (PM is fine) as to how you feel about this hopeful reduction in perceived "weight" of the plugin, and if this actually does help you, or if you really prefer to use those menus. (Thanks.)

• Fix initial camera position for Linear Spot views when animation is enabled:

  • Fix bugs that caused the camera to start out in the wrong place for linear spot views with "+anim" (animations enabled), which is on by default. The problem was that, because animations can take some time to complete -- especially when changing between targets that are very far apart, which is common with random traversal in Screensaver mode -- and when the animation completes, the target may well have changed heading, speed, altitude, etc. So, this version re-runs the camera-placement algorithm a second time just as the animation is completed, to ensure that the camera is where it really should be.

  • Note: these bugs only affected linear-spot placement for the starting camera position, and only when camera animations were enabled in ABC. It is especially important for the quality of the lean-back "Screensaver" experience. Now that it is resolved, users should enjoy this feature even more, since Linear Spot is now the default ABC view used for Screensaver (whereas it was Still Spot up until recently). You can of course always change it back to Still Spot in the settings, but give this a try now that it works right with animations enabled! 🙂

• Improve usability of "Zoom-Lock" control when showing hidden status bar:

  • Visually disambiguate the dual feature that is present with the ABC "MODIFIER (z)" command, which does two things if you have the status bar disabled in the co*ckpit (which is not happening by default):

    1. Hold MODIFIER to show the status bar when it is otherwise hidden in the co*ckpit.

    2. Hold MODIFIER to release the blocked mouse-wheel input used for zooming the co*ckpit camera in/out (temporarily disabling Zoom-Lock, when it's in fact enabled). Otherwise, if Zoom-Lock is not on, then this effect is irrelevant and the UI is less ambiguous..

  • Do this by changing the "+zoomlock" indicator on the status bar (when it's visible because you're holding down the MODIFIER key to show it when otherwise hidden because you've specifically disabled it in co*ckpit views) to be "(+zoomlock)" to indicate that it's temporarily disabled while you're holding down the MODIFIER key command you have assigned, i.e. to the "z" key on US keyboards.

    • Previously, the indicator would actually change to "-zoomlock" for the duration of the user holding the MODIFIER key down; this still happens in the "normal" use-case, i.e. when the user has not disabled the status bar in the co*ckpit in Settings. (It's only ambiguous and thus confusing if you're using the MODIFIER key to see the status bar, not necessarily intending to use the scroll-wheel too zoom.)

  • Improve the notifications (alerts) that appear when you click this Zoom-Lock button on the status bar while holding MODIFIER key, to inform users that the scroll-wheel zoom feature will be disabled after they release the assigned MODIFIER key (if it's being held down, i.e. in the case described above).

  • Note: these are very minor UI improvements, but they release a large weight of cognitive dissonance and confusion to less experience users, hopefully making the feature feel more natural and easier to learn and use.

• Fix ABC Status Bar bugs and layout issues, making it even more usable:

  • Fix "track next" (>> button) to actually be clickable! (It was clickable, in theory; however, it was actually offset and thus hidden behind another element on the status bar! This was a regression brought about by other changes to the status bar over the last few betas. But it's now fixed.)

    • This also fixes the "tooltip" for the "track next" >> button, which for the same reasons was not working in the last few beta releases.

  • Fix vertical alignment so the status bar appears to have consistent top and bottom margins when rendered on different screen resolutions, etc. This includes text, buttons, menus, and most importantly, the extra symbols that were vertically "all over the place" 🙂 due to the intricacies of ImGui layout. 🙂

  • Fix the new "fat finger" mode (in Settings) to actually expand the padding inside the buttons and menus on the status bar, to actually aid in usability for users who require that, for whatever reason. (Not just because of fat fingers!)

  • Also fix several minor interaction and/or placement bugs with the many clickable controls on the status bar, when in various combinations of modes, since there were several places where things were either inconsistent, or incorrectly formatted as a result of the many variables.

    • This includes things like removing inconsistent and arbitrary color changes between some buttons (on hover, click, and/or when in the "+" or "-" indicated state), better lining things up when they may not be showing in exactly the right place, and even one or two cases of "double-images" in the text displayed inside buttons.

• Normalize heading values before writing them back to the XPLMCamera API:

  • When users of older versions of LiveTraffic pre-v3.6 who are actively using ABC's camera views prior to this release, they will likely see frequent "re-initializations" from LiveTraffic, where it shuts down and restarts all traffic as you move the ABC camera around. This problem became untenable after the most recent feature launches in LiveTraffic (starting with v3.5.1) that happened to hit this issue more often. It is now resolved both in LiveTraffic 3.6+ (for users on older versions of ABC), and as of this release, i.e. in ABC v1.7rc1+.

    • This bug has been around since the very beginning of both plugins, and is finally solved in both as well. (Thanks, @TwinFan!)

PREVIOUS RELEASES:

Previous release notes for earlier v1.7 betas (b1-b9):

Changes in v1.7b9:

• Add new setting, "Status Bar: Accommodate 'fat fingers'".

  • If you check this setting on, it will make the status bar a little bit taller, so it won't be quite as narrow, making it a little easier to view tooltips and to hover over elements inside it to show them, etc. (Note: this doesn't actually make any of the buttons or text bigger; it's just a matter of user preference whether you want it to take up as little vertical space as possible, or not. Of course, you can revert to the default width any time if you enable this.

• Make the setting, "Screensaver: restrict targets by distance" (also know as a "culling distance") available for non-expert users, as it was previously for experts only.

  • In addition, add a non-expert setting offering six presets for the Screensaver culling distance (for use when the restrict setting is enabled, which is checked by default), to make it easier for users to select the maximum allowable distance for Screensaver targets that are chosen automatically while Screensaver mode is on.

  • Note: the original implementation of this setting was expert-only, with the user being required to type the value for the distance cutoff in meters. (That setting still exists if you're so inclined to use it; but now you have a much simpler way to change the distance, by choosing one of the preset limits.)

• Respect Screensaver and overall "culling" by distance (from User aircraft) when handling user-requested take-off/go-around and/or landing alerts, both in the context of auto-selection in Screensaver mode, and when displaying alerts for users to take explicit action to view aircraft taking off or landing based on the relevant user settings.

  • Note: previous versions of ABC (since the introduction of Screensaver target filtering by distance aka "culling" in v1.6) could take a user to an aircraft that was very far from the User aircraft in Screensaver if it happened to be taking off or landing, despite the obvious distance issues. This just ensures the culling distance configuration is honored by these alerts going forward. (Note: there are still some bugs to work out in this feature, but it will definitely be better now -- or at least, no worse than it was before.) 🙂

• Continue to improve Status Bar user interface by fine-tuning placement of icons, padding, and other subtle design tweaks.

  • Fix minor vertical alignment and font size issues relating to the extra buttons (such as reset and track-User), continuing to fine-tune some of the changes made in the status bar in the last couple of betas.

• Improve xPilot plugin compatibility (for tracking and viewing VATSIM traffic in ABC), and fix some longstanding bugs in that integration.

  • Fix tracking menu in Status Bar to correctly display xPilot traffic, since that menu (which just became available in ABC 1.6 final) actually never worked for xPilot. (The aircraft name and information normally displayed for each target in the tracking pull-down menu on the status bar was blank for all xPilot targets until now!)

  • Fix vertical camera offsets for certain xPilot-based aircraft when viewed in ABC's exterior tracking camera views. (The vertical offset was wrong when xPilot -- really XPMP2 -- would assign CSL models in particular to given aircraft. The result for these aircraft was that the camera was far too high above the aircraft, instead of roughly centered.)

    • Note that this issue was not happening when the same aircraft models were rendered via the TCAS override function of xPilot. So, this fix only applies to targets tracked using ABC's direct integration with the xPilot plugin (for aircraft that are rendered using CSL models).

  • Remove the "#0000" from the front of every xPilot-provided aircraft's name in all ABC tracking lists (the tracking menu, the tracking list window, and the above-mentioned tracking pull-down menu in the status bar). This was originally intended to show users the transponder ID associated with each aircraft in VATSIM; however, it appears the "plumbing" was either never added to carry that transponder ID into the xPilot API, or else the vast majority of users have transponder IDs of "0000". (Note: if there is a valid transponder ID for any xPilot aircraft, the ID will now be displayed after the rest of the aircraft's description, e.g., "... <#4214>".)

Changes in v1.7b8:

• Fix longstanding bug in camera roll for ABC "spot" views:

  • Thanks in huge part to a reproducible test case bug report by friend of A-Better-Camera, @CatonaPC, fix a longstanding bug in many ABC "spot" views resulting in incorrect camera roll in certain scenarios. (I.e. when taking over the exterior camera view directly or indirectly from within an interior X-Plane view.)

    • At first, this looked like a case of the "auto-roll" feature misbehaving (especially obvious when the camera was rolled while auto-roll was off, which should never happen; but this also manifested in incorrect camera roll angles when auto-roll was enabled). However, it turns out it was not a bug with auto-roll, but rather a bigger bug that affected ALL spot views in these scenarios, that just manifested differently if auto-roll was on than off!

    • Finally, as of this release, spot views no longer have this bug. In other words, it no longer appears as if ABC's spot views are auto-rolling the camera even though auto-roll is disabled. In fact, whether auto-roll is on or off, now the resulting spot view roll angles are what they should have been based on intended spot-view semantics in ABC. (Note that the "auto-roll" feature is a custom ABC innovation!)

    • Thanks again, Rick!

• Improve usability of the ABC Status Bar:

  • Add a new |< button to the status bar, in the "Tracking:" section, to track the User aircraft with a single click.

  • Make the "reset view" icon smaller, so it's not bigger than everything else on the status bar.

  • Simplify the text in some tooltips on the status bar, and improve layout (but more changes in future releases, so not that important).

• Improve usability of the ABC notification widget (aka "alerts"):

  • Add a formatted "X" button on the left inside edge of all standard ABC alerts, so users can get a clear visual indication that they may click it to dismiss and clear the alert away.

  • Add a tooltip to the new "X" button so users know this will "silence" the alert (i.e., hide it from recurring within a certain period, e.g. "zombie" notifications that repeat for at least a full minute).

  • Finally, eliminate artifacts that occur when the alerts widget is being closed (dismissed) via a user click in common cases.

• New setting: Show User aircraft Tailnum instead of Flight ID:

  • Add a new standard setting, "Tracking Lists: Show User aircraft TailNum instead of Flight ID", to allow at least a slight chance of getting consistent behavior between ABC and other plugins for the tail number of the User aircraft. (This is just for users who know they have good data in the "acf_tailnum" dataref for the User aircraft's registration number, and prefer not to use the "flight ID" which may be something the user has typed in the FMS, for example, as the flight number, or may be a different tail number than the preferred one.

  • This just gives users a chance to switch, when flight ID doesn't already correctly reflect (e.g.) G/A flight "tailnum" registration IDs when no flight number is available.

  • This may be important for several reasons, including that some aircraft providers set the "acf_tailnum" dataref in X-Plane to reflect the actual registration number associated with the livery the user has chosen, while the "flight ID" dataref tends to be incorrectly left to be the old/static tail number (and is really unreliable).

    • Note: This is really to address a huge shortcoming in (lack of standard support for) synchronizing the tail number in X-Plane's datarefs to the actual registration number built into a given livery ("skin") for the User aircraft. If users want, they can always set the Flight ID and/or Tail Number manually (via a dataref editor such as DRT, or a FlyWithLua script). But generally speaking, certain providers may always save the actual tail number into the "acf_tailnum" dataref and/or "flight_id" dataref, as appropriate. Either way, note that the "flight_id" dataref (which ABC shows by default) will always change in Laminar aircraft to the flight number you type into the FMS, when such a feature is available (such as in the Laminar Airbus 330). This makes the most sense, since it's the callsign used as the primary identifier in TCAS.

• Reimplement last remaining OpenGL graphics into ImGui (started in v1.6).

  • In particular, reimplement the ABC "ghost" status bar, which appears when users hover over the region where the status bar would be if it were visible -- but only when an ABC camera view is active. In this scenario, clicking the ghost image that appears will lock the status bar on.

  • Completely remove legacy ABC "graphics" library that was built on OpenGL. (This will slightly reduce the binary size and remove any issues that may arise in "Fink" integration for XP with ABC; but not much else.)

Changes in v1.7b7:

• Scout/Slew improvements:

  • Restore "toggle" behavior to Scout and/or Slew mode commands, so users can get out of Scout or Slew mode (as in v1.6), by toggling the current mode off.

  • Re-enable the setting from v1.6 (which was still visible in the previous v1.7 betas, but didn't do anything in v1.7b1-b6, until now) to instruct ABC to use the "RESTORE USER" semantics (default) when ABC Scout or Slew mode is auto-canceled (e.g., using the toggle above), vs. always using the alternative semantics of "DROP-HERE" when canceling either mode instead.

  • Change Scout and Slew mode default behavior (i.e., assuming you don't opt out using Scout in "tracking" views altogether, as mentioned above), to auto-cancel if you switch ABC's camera control off (either using the overall ABC toggle command, or switching to any other non-ABC camera view, including interior (co*ckpit) views).

• Status Bar usability improvements via new visual LOCK indicator:

  • Finally make it easier to understand whether the status bar is locked or unlocked, while making it much easier to unlock it (and/or explicitly clear it away), by use of very simple controls.

    • Add a visual LOCK indicator (graphic button) to the status bar on the far left side (just inside the main status bar content region), with a tooltip that appears (on hover) to help users understand what this does:

      • Show as LOCKED to indicate the status bar will not go away normally.

      • Show as UNLOCKED to indicate that it will disappear after a timeout.

    • Reminder: you can show the status bar any time, anywhere, by holding down the ABC "MODIFIER (z)" key command (recommended to be the "z" key on U.S. English keyboards, due to its proximity to the Shift key, since this command can also be used to "chord" various features and/or to modify other commands).

• Re-implement notification countdown timer graphic that appears for certain alerts in ABC (such as the start-up notification, actionable target take-off/landing notifications, and error alerts), using ImGui.

  • This replaces the old OpenGL-based countdown timer graphic, and solves several bugs with it (including actually counting down via a counter-clockwise rotation, whereas the old version was clockwise). This completes the migration starting in v1.6 from the original ABC notifications code. The countdown timer is actually part of the alert widget, instead of being drawn separately by a different code base, which led to several issues that have now been resolved.

• Re-implement the notice when a new version of the plugin is available for download, to work the same way as all the other UI elements in ABC (such as alerts and the status bar).

  • In other words, replace the older OpenGL-based code that always rendered the notification of a new ABC release available in a fixed location on the screen, with the newer ImGui-based "widget" framework used heavily through ABC as of v1.6 final.

  • Because this is now a "widget" just like the alerts and status bar widgets (released in v1.6), users can now drag (or better yet, right-drag) the new-version notification message around on the screen.

  • Add an explicit "x" button on the left side of the notification to allow users to explicitly cancel (remove) this new-version notice at any time.

• Address other usability and very minor performance issues. More on these may be added here later, so please check back or read our discussion thread (see link below).

Other release notes from earlier betas are below...

Changes in v1.7b6:

• Status Bar "Target:" menu improvements:
  • By default, open the menu for the current target's bank instead of the list of all banks, when the user clicks on the current target.
  • Add a button to the header at the top of the target menu to view the currently displayed target bank (tracking list) in the tear-out ABC "Tracking List" window.
• Fix inconsistency in how ABC handles switching between targets using X-Plane's track-next/-previous commands (as opposed to ABC's equivalent commands) while an ABC camera view is active. This way, it works exactly the same as ABC's track-next/-previous target commands in the same context.
  • In particular, the previous handlers for X-Plane's target-change commands while ABC was controlling the camera failed to respect the user's "preserve view" setting, thus forcing a reset of the view each time the user changed targets using the X-Plane commands. Now, the camera view is preserved, unless the user has opted out of the default "preserve view on target or view change" setting. (Details removed to get this list to fit; see full details in earlier release notes you hopefully downloaded, or PM me.)
• Work around an X-Plane (11 and 12!) bug that crashes X-Plane in certain scenarios when changing back to showing AI aircraft after a third-party traffic plugin has ended TCAS ovveride. Please PM me if you are curious what I determined was causing this; I think I understand it, and have proven it by partially working around it in ABC.
• Improve tuning of delays for various ABC alerts in ABC, as well as the way the status bar automatic time-out is handled, so it's more consistent between X-Plane 11 and X-Plane 12, and to work well across both light and heavy simulator loads.
  • Find and fix a bug that may have caused at least one user to see a CTD at startup because of this issue (sort of). It's unlikely this caused it, but after the rework, it's not reproducible, so at least that's something. 🙂
• Improve, tune, and adjust the camera-placement algorithm for the new ABC "Linear Spot" camera view. [Redacted as out of date, since this was all fixed in v1.7rc1 and for later releases!]
  • Also: Fix a minor bug in ABC linear spot where the camera zoom would animate when switching targets, capturing X-Plane camera views, or resetting the view, whenever ABC animations are enabled. This was inconsistent with how other similar views worked, so Linear Spot now works the same way as, say, Drop Spot, when acquiring a new view in-place with auto-zoom and animation enabled (for example).
• Improve Scout/Slew modes to better detect and handle when the user tries to use these modes in X-Plane Replay mode.
  • Scout and Slew do work in these modes, but there was one ABC bug which is now fixed.
• Change default view mode for Screensaver to use Linear Spot by default, instead of Still Spot.
  • If users feel strongly and really want to have Screenaver use Still Spot instead, they can simply choose the other view in Settings.
• Fix bug "capturing" any non-ABC camera view into ABC tracking views while the camera is very close to the target aircraft (or object) could result in the camera pointing away from the newly-acquired target/camera view in ABC.
  • This was because of the "feature" where ABC's re-aim command is context-sensitive, and thus aims the camera to look forward and level when it thinks the camera is "inside" (or immediately adjacent to) the target aircraft.
  • But in this case doing a view "capture" into ABC (when ABC wasn't in control of the camera before the user asked for e.g. the ABC "re-aim" command to acquire and then re-aim to the target), it didn't make sense for ABC to apply this context-sensitivity since the user didn't have any indication the camera was "close enough" to trigger the forward/level version of re-aim.

Changes in v1.7b5:

• Implement new, fully functional "Linear Spot" view based on X-Plane's version.
  • Users can take over from X-Plane's linear spot view at any point, which affords the use of ABC's features, such as auto-zoom, reset view, re-aim, quick-skip, jump, quick-zoom, etc.
• Support the new "Linear Spot" view in ABC's "Screensaver" mode, in place of the original still-spot version (which is no longer the default as of v1.7b6!).
  • New Setting: Choose between Linear Spot or Still Spot for Screensaver mode.
• Add two new custom commands for Linear Spot:
  • "abc: LINEAR SPOT view toggle" to start a new linear spot with the current target; and
  • "abc: LINEAR DROP SPOT" to switch in-place to a linear spot view, i.e. from wherever the camera and target happen to be. (This is very similar to the ABC command, "abc: DROP SPOT", except instead of the camera staying at the camera position when you invoke the command, it starts moving along the same trajectory as the current ABC target aircraft, although slower than the target. When you do this, you are not guaranteed that the target will ever pass by the camera, but of course after this you can always hit "abc: RESET VIEW" to ask for a new camera position that is much more likely to intercept the target within a few seconds or so.
• Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Changes in v1.7b4:

• Improve status bar rendering in interior (co*ckpit) views, so it no longer "jiggers" in-place (up and back down 2-3 pixels) every time you switch to an interior view (or every time you cause the status bar to appear while in the co*ckpit).

• Increase the intensity of the gold border that appears around the ABC status bar when the user clicks to lock it in-place, when ABC is not currently controlling the camera view. (In other words, previously, if the status bar was appearing briefly in an X-Plane or co*ckpit/interior view, when the user clicked on it to "lock" it on, there was almost no feedback showing that it was locked. This turns up the brightness on the gold outline, so it's much clearer in these two cases.)

• Improve consistency with X-Plane 11 and 12, especially with respect to the Chase view changes in X-Plane 12. Among other minor changes:

  • Rename the "abc: CONTROL view" command description, as it appears in the X-Plane 12 keyboard shortcuts panel, to reflect the "swap & rename" version (unless opted-out in settings) of "abc: RIDE-ALONG". (Note that the actual path of the command doesn't change, but this avoids users needing to change keyboard or joystick assignments between their XP11 and XP12 installations of ABC.)

  • Update the main plugin menu for ABC to correctly reflect the newly swapped & renamed meanings of the commands as they were changed in v1.7b3 (correcting at least one bug in the initial implementation).

• Add experimental "linear spot" implementation to emulate X-Plane's linear spot view. Please understand: this is not ready to be used until v1.7b5 -- but the feature can be accessed if you would like to play with it in v1.7b4. NOTE: This item is superceded by the full release of Linear Spot in v1.7b5 -- in other words, ABC v1.7b5 now fully supports Linear Spot (see above).

• Other changes, will be updated in the release notes on the download page; for now, to get this release put up for general access, the release notes here will have to do. (Note that there are also release notes from the previous releases -- all of which reflect features in this release as well, of course.)

Changes in v1.7b3:

• Support X-Plane 12 "Chase" view changes, by renaming ABC's "Control" view to be "Chase" (but to still work like ABC Control view), and renaming ABC's original "Chase" view implementation to be called "Ride-Along", in keeping with the X-Plane view with the same logical semantics.

  • Allow users to opt out of this special renaming, and restoring the exact same camera modes and meanings as with X-Plane 11, using a new Expert setting.
  • This only matters in X-Plane 12; when running this build on X-Plane 11, the existing Chase and Control camera views stay as before, with no name changes or behavior swaps. 🙂

• Combine all ABC default view starting position settings for "AI" targets (any and all non-User aircraft) with the existing User aircraft starting position settings -- thereby only having one set of starting position settings, instead of twice as many.

• Change how ABC Circle view rotations work so that the heading of the camera is preserved across views (when switching between targets while viewing them in ABC Circle view) -- to match the way X-Plane Circle view has always worked.

  • Similarly, change the default starting "rotation" settings for ABC Circle view to use compass headings instead of target-relative rotations.
  • Allow users to opt-out of this new Circle treatment in Settings.

Changes in v1.7b2:

• Continued improvement of Scout/Slew handling of tracking views, including bug fixes and other improvements.

• New settings to allow users to independently invert the x-axis and/or the y-axis when using ABC right-drag gestures to pan (rotate) or move the camera (in other words, this setting allows you to swap up/down or left/right -- or both -- in right-drag pans & moves, if desired, since some users may prefer inverted right-drag gestures along either axis from the default provided by both X-Plane and ABC).

  • Note: These settings are for all ABC views that support right-dragging, as well as interior views when "Camera Controls: Mouse-Look override" is enabled in ABC Settings. In addition, if you uncheck "Mouse-Look Override: Limit to co*ckPIT ONLY (or hold down any ABC special modifier command key while right-dragging), this will apply any right-dragging axis inversion you have requested to the X-Plane exterior camera as well! (This means that ABC will actually override right-drag handling in X-Plane's exterior views in that case. However, X-Plane doesn't support moving the camera in all exterior views, though it always supports panning (rotating) within those views.)

• Allow users to treat the special "diamond <> mode" (formerly overloaded to also toggle "walk-around" mode on or off) as a way to avoid having to hold down the "abc: MODIFIER KEY (Z)" command to swap between panning and moving the camera in any right-drag gestures that are controlled by ABC (see above bullet). So, you can swap from panning to moving, for example, by simply right-dragging while "<>" is displayed on the status bar. In fact, you can even re-swap back by also holding down the modifier key within diamond mode, to get back to rotate (in this example).

• Add option that changes how ABC handles Circle View! (This is the first major change to this view since the inception of A-Better-Camera né A-Better-Circle!)

  • New Setting: "Circle View: Use compass-based rotations"

    When checked on, ABC Circle View will use the user preference for the starting camera rotation around the target in terms of compass headings, not headings that are (as before) relative to the target! This is a big change, and is done to preserve consistency with how X-Plane handles the same rotation.

    • Note: this also applies to changing targets (unless you disable the "preserve view" feature which is on by default). So, for example, if you have the ABC Circle view camera facing West (such as away from the rising sun in the morning) while circling any target, when you switch to a different target (by default), ABC will rotate the camera around that target so that you'll still be facing West on the new target. Of course, you can change it any to a new heading as you like using ABC's and X-Plane's standard camera controls -- and the hope is that, unless you opt out (see below), this be more natural and much more useful as you switch between targets in ABC Circle view.

  • Leaving this setting unchecked will keep things as they were before. However, this is now an "opt-out" as of v1.7b3, meaning that it will be checked ON by default, and users will need to explicitly un-check it if they don't want the new behavior. But for this release (v1.7b2), it was opt-in so users could test it out at their leisure before it was verified enough to make the new default. (Now you can assume it's on by default in newer releases.)

• Fix several bugs and improve performance slightly, especially when syncing metadata from providers such as LiveTraffic and Traffic Global.

• Fix possible display bugs resulting from how LiveTraffic (esp. when using RealTraffic) formats the flight information embedded in the aircraft descriptions shown in ABC. (Instead of using these directly from LiveTraffic as before, because of erroneous labels such as "null (null-null)", ABC now builds these labels itself, ensuring they always make much more sense, pending LiveTraffic and/or RealTraffic resolving their bugs that lead to the "null" display errors.

• Further improve format, consistency, and detail provided in ABC's logging to X-Plane's Log.txt file, continuing from initial improvements in v1.7b1. Remove additional redundant and/or unimportant notices, and clean up the formatting to make it easier to find relevant log entries, and generally improve the utility of this information.

Changes in v1.7b1:

• Usability improvements:

  • Correctly detect alternative AI aircraft target when not User aircraft, if continuing after "reload plugins" action (not something most users will care about, however).

  • Other minor usability changes throughout, including things like shortened default alert time-outs, improved settings descriptions for some settings, clearer notification text in some cases, etc.

• New feature: Scout/Slew for "tracking" views.

  • This release expands on the Scout and Slew features of the previous release by allowing other views aside from only ABC Free-Camera view. (Previously, the instant you changed to a tracking view such as Chase or Circle view, ABC would automatically cancel Scout or Slew mode. With this release, the Scout and Slew features can continue to work while you're tracking any aircraft aside from the User aircraft; if you're tracking the User aircraft, ABC will now punt you back into ABC Free-Camera view, but will stay in Scout or Slew mode.)

  • To get the previous behavior and disable Scout/Slew in ABC tracking views, thus requiring ABC Free-Camera view only for Scout or Slew mode to stay engaged, you can uncheck the new setting, "Allow tracking views in Scout or Slew".

• New feature: in Scout mode, allow user to choose positioning method for User aircraft (relative to camera).

  • This is similar to the positioning method offered for Slew mode (i.e., for positioning the User aircraft "above" or "below" the camera), but offers four options specifically for Scout mode: hide below the ground (old default), hide just behind the camera (new default), hide just above and slightly behind the camera (so you can actually see it if you look straight up in most cases), and hide "far below" the camera, ignoring the ground level so it will work in many situations where the old "below-ground" hide would not actually work because the ground level was not yet known (i.e., in the context of asynchronous scenery loading).

• Improve chances of supporting "Zink" in X-Plane 12 (where available).

  • In this release, ABC has been reworked to fully defer the initialization of any UI elements (especially where they might reference any OpenGL interfaces) until ALL plugins have been loaded, and X-Plane has FULLY initialized Zink and related dependencies, and X-Plane's plugin manager has explicitly asked ABC to start its main user-facing functionality. This may not be necessary, but the change is actually straightforward, and there's no reason these UI elements with OpenGL references needed to be initialized as early as they were before. So, the hope is that this will make ABC much less likely to interfere at all with Zink, which may well avoid CTDs relating to Zink, if all other plugins are as well-behaved. (Note that ABC does not use direct calls to OpenGL APIs since the migration to ImGui in v1.5, but ImGui's X-Plane bindings certainly use it heavily, especially for things like ImGui font handling, which is core to making ImGui-based UIs perform well and look good in X-Plane.)

• Other improvements and bugfixes, including:

  • Improved logging (e.g., to reduce redundant log entries and to clean up the formatting to be more internally consistent) to Log.txt.
  • Several other bugfixes or improvements throughout.

If you have ideas for new features, or have any areas you see that could be improved, please feel free to post comments to the dedicated A-Better-Camera users' discussion thread, or PM the author (@slgoldberg) if you prefer not to post such publicly.