XEarthLayer News
News
Release notes, development updates, and news from the XEarthLayer project.
Release notes, behind-the-scenes development notes, and news from the XEarthLayer project. Subscribe to the RSS feed to follow along.
September 2026 Update
XEarthLayer 0.5.0 in active development while the entire globe is currently being rebuilt, all powered by the Sun.
XEarthLayer 0.4.8 released
Prebuilt packages install again on Ubuntu, Debian and RHEL. Building from source now says what it actually needs. Nothing in the running program changed.
XEarthLayer 0.4.7 released
The memory release. Long flights memory usage no longer grows until the system kills it. Plus faster texture serving, cleaner distant terrain, and a round of polish driven largely by community bug reports.
Regional scenery update: Asia ships, and what comes next
Asia parts 1–4 are live, the older regional packages are about to enter a ZL16 remaster phase with updated XP12 bathymetry, and a short note on the road to 0.5.0.
XEarthLayer 0.4.6 released
A friendlier setup wizard, hardened package installs, and an under-the-hood SSOT consolidation of GPU enumeration.
XEarthLayer and X-Plane's Raster Scenery Future
Laminar are rebuilding X-Plane's scenery around Raster Data Tiles. Here is what is coming, and why XEarthLayer is well-placed for the transition.
Regional scenery update: EU-2 ships, and what is next
EU-2 reaches into eastern Europe and European Russia, the rest of Asia and Antarctica are in production, and a roadmap toward smaller packages, new zoom-level tiers, and SimHeaven X-World Pro support.
XEarthLayer 0.4.5 released
A small patch release that stops failed chunk downloads from poisoning the tile cache with magenta-filled DDS tiles.
XEarthLayer 0.4.4 released
A rewrite of prefetch, clearer cache metrics in the TUI, and a long-haul flight fix that took a nine-hour flight log to chase down.
Upstream patch to Rust fuse3 crate
How a kernel default crushed XEarthLayer's throughput, what was patched, and why it was pushed upstream.