Is it me, or are Laminar Research's update releases getting very Microsoft FlightSim! Here is the latest in the "Caribbean Update"... I mean that is an almost direct ripoff of MSFS "World Updates". it is on how Laminar tends to go on, it will be a copy store next!
At least the updates as promised are regular, instead of waiting months (sometimes months on months), the release timetable is now significantly faster, this is the second installment of X-Plane12.1.2 after the seven betas of v12.1.0 and the single release of X-Plane v12.1.1. This release is noted as a beta, so the tick box on the X-Plane installer app needs to be ticked to get the new version. Download size is a hefty 1.2Gb
Ships! Yes I'm using a lot of exclamation marks here... but don't get carried away. These ships were due along with ports way back with the initial release of X-Plane 12 two years ago, so they were always in the works... so what do you get? a LNG Carrier, Oil Tanker, Bulk Carrier, Container Carrier, Luxury Yacht, Sail Boats, Speed Boat and a Whaler. All of a sudden your lakes and coastline are full of boats and yachts (like the exploding number of Golf Courses). The number of boats shown depends on the "World Objects" Density setting within your Graphics Settings.
Notable is that Austin Meyer is surrounded by several sharks in a boat, certainly you can interpret that scenario anyway you want to.
Caribbean means several things. One it is all about the water. In the initial release the water was very translucent, showing the colours of various depths, very nice, but also shown was the translucent hulls of the ships and aircraft floats. That was corrected in v12.1.0, but too far in that you now lost the colours in tropical zones. In v12.1.2 that aspect has been again corrected with the right thick density in say the Northern waters, and the correct translucent in the tropical climates.
This aspect can be seen here at Sint Maarten... coral shallow water on the left, but the deeper fuller on the right in the lagoon.
There are three new sceneries also provided in the release, again to highlight the Caribbean release.
Princess Juliana International Airport (TNCM)
Sint Maarten (is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean region of North America. With a population of 41,486 as of January 2019 on an area of 34 km2 (13 sq mi), it encompasses the southern 44% of the divided island of Saint Martin, while the northern 56% of the island constitutes the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin. Sint Maarten's capital is Philipsburg.[8] Collectively, Sint Maarten and the other Dutch islands in the Caribbean are often called the Dutch Caribbean.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (TNCS)
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is an airport on the island of Saba. It is famous for having one of the shortest commercial runways in the world with a length of just 1,312 ft (400 m). Our artists added a variety of custom buildings around the entire island as well as an orthographic overlay.
Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ)
Gustaf II Airport is located on the island of Saint Barthélemy, or St. Barth’s if you’re in the know. Due to TFFJ's short steep runway and a variety of obstacles, a special license is required to land at the airport. St. Barth’s lists as one of the most dangerous airports in the world.
Notable here is that you get to see the Bulk Carrier and the various small sail and whaler craft.
Gateway Airports
X-Plane 12.1.2 has reached a major milestone for Scenery Gateway. it now ships with 20,000 3D Airports thanks to the stunning work of the X-Plane community of designers. (but can someone do Bahrain OBBI, please)
Dual Jetways
What good are two boarding doors if your jetway only attaches to one?! By popular demand, now Laminar have added support for dual jetways. Aircraft/airport authors now also have the ability to update their products for this feature (to work)
New Library Objects
Newly added objects are now also available and have been added to the general airport library, such as some passenger stairs, airport buses and a Ground Power Unit.
Additional Camera Commands
With our General Aviation pilots especially in mind, Laminar have added in four new camera commands that will help you to look around quickly, especially when flying an approach. All can be set with custom commands.
The first two commands allow you to tilt the cockpit view by 45 degrees to the left and right. Executing the command again will tilt the view by another 45 degrees. We also added some commands to look up and down. Instead of 45 degrees, the camera will tilt 30 degrees and just as the other commands, you can execute the command again to look 60 or 90 degrees up and down.
Command
Description
sim/view/rot_cockpit_left_45
Rotate cockpit view: tilt 45 degrees left.
sim/view/rot_cockpit_right_45
Rotate cockpit view: tilt 45 degrees right.
sim/view/rot_cockpit_up_30
Rotate cockpit view: tilt 30 degrees up.
sim/view/rot_cockpit_down_30
Rotate cockpit view: tilt 30 degrees down.
Support for VirtualFly Hardware
There is now support for VirtualFly Hardware with 12.1.2, as it supports of four of the additional products VirtualFly have in X-Plane:
Switcho Engines Ignition
Switcho Engines Electrical
Switcho Lights
Switcho Trims
Fixes and Enhancements
There has been a few extra fixes as well with the X-Plane 12.1.2 update..
- Replay System
We have focused effort on improving the stability of our replay system for this release. Yes and Laminar needed to! as the replay system was very cranky and created a lot of CTD (Crash to Desktop), but the worse issue is the consistent nasty shudders while in playback... hope it is fixed?
- Local Web API
When the WebServer cannot bind to port 8086 a warning will be shown to the user, but X-Plane will continue to start normally.
- Scenery
Laminar updated the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. Not related to this release is the addition of the Las Vegas MSG Sphere, looks brilliant!
Aircraft
- General
We fixed a problem regarding rain drops on windshields (XPD-15751).
- Cirrus Vision SF50
We fixed an engine behavior bug in the Cirrus VisionJet. Previously, if you started the engine, shut it down and then immediately tried to start it again, nothing happened.
- Beta ALIA VTOL
The ALIA 250 now has gauges for all four batteries on its display.
So there you go, the "Caribbean Update" or X-Plane 12.1.2. The update is an excellent one, but noted currently as a "Beta". It comes with some major additions to the Simulator, and fixes to the Water (tones) and Replay. With highly detailed default scenery for Princess Juliana International Airport (TNCM), Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (TNCS) and Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ) (St Barts). Added also were Duel airport airbridges and more Library Objects (Buses, Passenger Stairs, GPU), and the highlight in the highly detailed Ships, Boats, Yachts and Austin Meyer being chased by Sharks!
____________________
X-Plane 12 Minimum Requirements
CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, i7, or i9 CPU with 4 or more cores, or AMD Ryzen 3, 5, 7 or 9. (Those with other CPUs should try the demo before purchasing.)
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: a Vulkan 1.3-capable video card from NVIDIA or AMD with at least 2 GB VRAM
If your system is borderline, we encourage you to try the demo first. The full version of the simulator will perform exactly the same as the demo—neither better nor worse.
X-Plane 12 Recommended Requirements
CPU: Intel Core i5 8600k or Ryzen 5 3500 or better, or Apple Silicon
Memory: 16-24 GB RAM or more
Video Card: a DirectX 12-capable video card from NVIDIA or AMD with at least 4 GB VRAM (GeForce GTX 1070 or better, or similar from AMD)
Supported Video Cards:
NVIDIA: NVIDIA GeForce 900 or newer, driver version 510 or newer
AMD: AMD Radeon RX 500 or newer, driver version Adrenaline 22.2.1or newer
Supported Operating Systems:
OS X: OS X 10.15 or newer (e.g. Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey)
Windows: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
Linux: Varies
If you want to run on Linux, you will need to try X-Plane on your distribution to see if it is compatible. We have developers using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and newer successfully, however we don’t provide support for specific distributions.
We require the proprietary driver from NVIDIA to run X-Plane. We require the Mesa drivers, version 22.0 or newer, for AMD to run X-Plane.
(Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Rights Reserved
comment_24185NEWS! - Laminar Research releases v12.1.2 beta 1
Is it me, or are Laminar Research's update releases getting very Microsoft FlightSim! Here is the latest in the "Caribbean Update"... I mean that is an almost direct ripoff of MSFS "World Updates". it is on how Laminar tends to go on, it will be a copy store next!
At least the updates as promised are regular, instead of waiting months (sometimes months on months), the release timetable is now significantly faster, this is the second installment of X-Plane12.1.2 after the seven betas of v12.1.0 and the single release of X-Plane v12.1.1. This release is noted as a beta, so the tick box on the X-Plane installer app needs to be ticked to get the new version. Download size is a hefty 1.2Gb
Ships! Yes I'm using a lot of exclamation marks here... but don't get carried away. These ships were due along with ports way back with the initial release of X-Plane 12 two years ago, so they were always in the works... so what do you get? a LNG Carrier, Oil Tanker, Bulk Carrier, Container Carrier, Luxury Yacht, Sail Boats, Speed Boat and a Whaler. All of a sudden your lakes and coastline are full of boats and yachts (like the exploding number of Golf Courses). The number of boats shown depends on the "World Objects" Density setting within your Graphics Settings.
Notable is that Austin Meyer is surrounded by several sharks in a boat, certainly you can interpret that scenario anyway you want to.
Caribbean means several things. One it is all about the water. In the initial release the water was very translucent, showing the colours of various depths, very nice, but also shown was the translucent hulls of the ships and aircraft floats. That was corrected in v12.1.0, but too far in that you now lost the colours in tropical zones. In v12.1.2 that aspect has been again corrected with the right thick density in say the Northern waters, and the correct translucent in the tropical climates.
This aspect can be seen here at Sint Maarten... coral shallow water on the left, but the deeper fuller on the right in the lagoon.
There are three new sceneries also provided in the release, again to highlight the Caribbean release.
Princess Juliana International Airport (TNCM)
Sint Maarten (is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean region of North America. With a population of 41,486 as of January 2019 on an area of 34 km2 (13 sq mi), it encompasses the southern 44% of the divided island of Saint Martin, while the northern 56% of the island constitutes the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin. Sint Maarten's capital is Philipsburg.[8] Collectively, Sint Maarten and the other Dutch islands in the Caribbean are often called the Dutch Caribbean.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (TNCS)
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is an airport on the island of Saba. It is famous for having one of the shortest commercial runways in the world with a length of just 1,312 ft (400 m). Our artists added a variety of custom buildings around the entire island as well as an orthographic overlay.
Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ)
Gustaf II Airport is located on the island of Saint Barthélemy, or St. Barth’s if you’re in the know. Due to TFFJ's short steep runway and a variety of obstacles, a special license is required to land at the airport. St. Barth’s lists as one of the most dangerous airports in the world.
Notable here is that you get to see the Bulk Carrier and the various small sail and whaler craft.
Gateway Airports
X-Plane 12.1.2 has reached a major milestone for Scenery Gateway. it now ships with 20,000 3D Airports thanks to the stunning work of the X-Plane community of designers. (but can someone do Bahrain OBBI, please)
Dual Jetways
What good are two boarding doors if your jetway only attaches to one?! By popular demand, now Laminar have added support for dual jetways. Aircraft/airport authors now also have the ability to update their products for this feature (to work)
New Library Objects
Newly added objects are now also available and have been added to the general airport library, such as some passenger stairs, airport buses and a Ground Power Unit.
Additional Camera Commands
With our General Aviation pilots especially in mind, Laminar have added in four new camera commands that will help you to look around quickly, especially when flying an approach. All can be set with custom commands.
The first two commands allow you to tilt the cockpit view by 45 degrees to the left and right. Executing the command again will tilt the view by another 45 degrees. We also added some commands to look up and down. Instead of 45 degrees, the camera will tilt 30 degrees and just as the other commands, you can execute the command again to look 60 or 90 degrees up and down.
Support for VirtualFly Hardware
There is now support for VirtualFly Hardware with 12.1.2, as it supports of four of the additional products VirtualFly have in X-Plane:
Fixes and Enhancements
There has been a few extra fixes as well with the X-Plane 12.1.2 update..
- Replay System
We have focused effort on improving the stability of our replay system for this release. Yes and Laminar needed to! as the replay system was very cranky and created a lot of CTD (Crash to Desktop), but the worse issue is the consistent nasty shudders while in playback... hope it is fixed?
- Local Web API
When the WebServer cannot bind to port 8086 a warning will be shown to the user, but X-Plane will continue to start normally.
- Scenery
Laminar updated the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. Not related to this release is the addition of the Las Vegas MSG Sphere, looks brilliant!
Aircraft
- General
We fixed a problem regarding rain drops on windshields (XPD-15751).
- Cirrus Vision SF50
We fixed an engine behavior bug in the Cirrus VisionJet. Previously, if you started the engine, shut it down and then immediately tried to start it again, nothing happened.
- Beta ALIA VTOL
The ALIA 250 now has gauges for all four batteries on its display.
So there you go, the "Caribbean Update" or X-Plane 12.1.2. The update is an excellent one, but noted currently as a "Beta". It comes with some major additions to the Simulator, and fixes to the Water (tones) and Replay. With highly detailed default scenery for Princess Juliana International Airport (TNCM), Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (TNCS) and Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ) (St Barts). Added also were Duel airport airbridges and more Library Objects (Buses, Passenger Stairs, GPU), and the highlight in the highly detailed Ships, Boats, Yachts and Austin Meyer being chased by Sharks!
____________________
X-Plane 12 Minimum Requirements
X-Plane 12 Recommended Requirements
Supported Video Cards:
Supported Operating Systems:
Release announcement is here: What’s new in X-Plane 12.1.2? (Beta)
Download the free demo of X-Plane 12 and experience all of these improvements for yourself.
_____________________
X-Plane 12 is purchased directly from Laminar Research for currently US$79.99 and the download file size is 85 GB
X-Plane 12
Price is US$79.99
_____________________
NEWS! by Stephen Dutton
15th August 2024
Copyright©2024: X-Plane Reviews
Images are courtesy of Laminar Research
(Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Rights Reserved