And here I refer to Laminar’s recent X-Plane 12 Q&A which states it unequivocally. Let’s be very clear, X-Plane 12 is the next generation product and you will be paying money to Laminar to buy this sim. There was also a confusing comment made at the FSExpo presentation that caused people to make some assumptions about the upgrade. X-Plane 12 is the confirmed name, and although a stream back in the summer from Oshkosh was vague, it’s now very clear that Laminar has been working for years to develop content, systems and features that will take X-Plane 12 into the next generation. There has been a fair bit of misinformation going around the X-Plane community and that starts right with the name. There’s been some hype around X-Plane 12 and there’s no question that I and many of us who were watching the reveal at FSExpo 2021 just a few weeks ago were glued to the stream wanting to see what Laminar were planning to do. So, X-Plane 11 is finished but it is going out on a relatively strong note thanks to both first and third party efforts. Vulkan has taken my X-Plane experience from a disappointing 15-20fps to 35-60fps depending on the scenery and aircraft module. X-Plane has finally shed OpenGL, a now old and slow graphics API, in favour of the new Vulkan and Metal (on MacOS) API. Laminar Research, for their part, released X-Plane 11.5 in the last year and it has been one of the most consequential updates in the recent history of the series. We’ve seen many other excellent aircraft released as well with many of my favourites coming from developers like Thranda, Aerobask, and Torquesim to mention just a few.

Types like the HotStart TBM 850, the Airfoil Labs King Air 350, and the freeware Zibo 737 are held up in the flight sim community as the aircraft to beat. There are still new aircraft coming from third party developers all the time and the ones that have already been released are among some of the best that have ever been created for a flight sim. That all said, like a finely aged wine, X-Plane 11 is entering a period in its twilight where it is still reaching a peak that it has never been at before.

X-Plane 12 is on the way and that is where new development, features and capabilities are all going to happen in the future. X-Plane 11 is finished.Īlthough there may be some small patches to come, for the most part, X-Plane 11 is done and it’s time in the limelight is numbered. A lot is happening and new information has come out so let’s check in on what’s going on with both sims.

At the same time, X-Plane 12 is now waiting in the wings with development now proceeding in a more open fashion following its reveal at FSEXpo 2021.

In a lot of ways, that age is showing in all kinds of places. By comparison, X-Plane 11 even with the latest updates is now coming up on 5-years in age. When Microsoft Flight Simulator came out, I spent less time with X-Plane 11.

Buy x plane 11