gkkes

Having been around desktop sims since wireframe I have personal knowledge of the "Oliver Twist Syndrome". To be fair to Laminar, I believe they knew they would need to make some drastic changes for this new version, not least to begin steps to replace the decades old OpenGL which has served from the initial X-Plane 1. Vulkan and now Zink is their chosen path for us Windows users. We're now used to buying partially complete simulators, think Asobo. The Laminar "Early Access" option was taken up by many, who immediately copied all their favourite XP11 aircraft, sceneries and utilities across and then wondered why the thing was failing. The bug reporter was swamped with problems which had everything to do with compatibility. Bona fide bugs hard to find amongst all the flack. X-Plane 12 went Gold on the 17th December, a little over 2 months ago. In that time there have been 8 updates and fixes. Each, in my mind has improved the sim in some way. The Global default scenery is modified Gateway submissions originally designed for XP11. Many will be re-drawn to take advantage of the new layering and effects available in XP12. The Laminar scenery library has been updated to exploit these new elements and we can look forward to independent libraries to be similarly updated to encompass these new features. Ortho awaits a specific tool to maximise coastlines and 3d wave behaviour, bathymetry. Animated Jetways now default. Users should not be fooled by the similarities to past versions, as the groundwork for serious expansion has been laid. All it needs is it's community.