Release Candidates and Betas

I just added this article on version numbers and betas to the X-Plane Wiki.  A few notes:

• You can select to update to new betas using a check-box in the X-Plane Web Updater. Previously there was a special updater for betas - now it is a preference, to cut down on the number of applications we have floating around.
• Release candidates do not get re-released or renamed when they go final!  A release candidate means "we think this is totally done and can be released".  It is declared "final" when, after letting people use it for a while, we decide that there probably aren't any bugs left that we will fix in this release.  So 900r3 is the final version of X-Plane 900.  

It took us three tries (900r1, 900r2, 900r3) to get the final version of 900 right.  So we will not rebuild the sim just to remove "r3" from the app version...900r3 is the latest - if you have it, there is nothing to update.

And of course, my usual rant about betas: betas aren't free candy, they're an attempt to work the bugs out of buggy software!  If your goal is to enjoy your X-Plane experience, the safest bet is almost always to not download the beta.  (An exception would be if there is a work-around for a driver bug that affects your hardware, available in a new beta.)

If you are a third party developer/author, please do download the betas, early and often!  It is much easier for us to fix bugs early in beta.