Medellinexpat

Normally I would buy this as Chudoba generally produce reasonable sceneries, plus a the article says its in a good location. But it uses SAM and if you thought SAM in XP11 had issues, just wait until you try SAM in XP12. Developers really need to rethink using SAM because it provides no options. No SAM and you’ll be taxiing through a field of spring daisies. With the ground handling and moving jetways in XP12 SAM serves little or no purpose. And Stairport have been unreasonably quiet about their plans. 

I looked at the price and gasped. I sulked that there was no discount but by the end of the day decided to buy it. Wow. Absolutely the new benchmark in XP12 civil aircraft and excellent FPS. Be interesting to see if any Youtuber is up to flying this in competition against the best of MSFS. You may not see your house in XP12 but this might move the dial significantly about which is the better flying simulator.

Towards the end of last year I bought a couple of the Aerosphere releases as they said (and still say in the Org store) ‘Support for XP12 when available’

Those planes still have no XP12 versions. Yet here we have a new XP12 release from the developer. So surely ‘Support for XP12’ is ‘available’?

For me the 700 is a much better plane to fly in XP12 than in 11 since the last update. It still does have issues, the other day trying the EICAS selector lost me all of the screens, but now it does fly better including resolving capturing altitude and the ability to add passenger count. I am a little less overwhelmed by ‘three aircraft released in just over one year’ as I think that there is a huge amount of commonality between the three, even down to the included liveries being similar across the range. The 30% discount is useful (although when I tried it last week my org store discount code from the 700 for the 900 seemed to be expired) but again how much code is being repurchased? Yes the fuselage model needs extra plugs, the underlying data on the aircraft and the engines needs revision but is it 70% different. Don’t get me wrong the CRJ is a promising XP12 aircraft (although again a basic FMS) and adding one to your fleet makes sense. Its the cost proposition of having two or three of the variants that bothers me more. While we want developers to do well variant pricing is a murky area. With a 30% discount the 900 or the 1000 cost around $35 each. So, if you want the three that’s a rather eye catching $120.

And Xplane has always had community. I would not have been alone in expecting the early releases of 12 to be bumpy (quite literally with the weather as it turned out). Five minutes of watching any video with Austin in it would have convinced you of that. Tinkering, experimentation, new ideas popping up. Xplane is a journey, not a destination like MSFS. 

I thought it was a good month for the Sim. The weather is moving towards resolution and its a big improvement on 11. Several aircraft are now updated to 12 and even the Deltawing CRJ700 is now quite good, a huge improvement over their initial 12 attempt. What is noticeable is that several developers are providing multiple updates, Toliss, Thranda, Flight Factor take a bow.

Less progress on the scenery side. I used to buy a lot of scenery in 11 but now I’m finding that many of the stock airports in 12 are pretty good and no doubt the community will make them even better. Some of the smaller airports need some work but perhaps that where the market will be in the future. 
Two months ago my mouse was hovering over the ‘buy’ button for MSFS. Now 12 seems to be very much headed in the right direction.

Shout out to Navigraph and Simbrief as well. When Simbrief was ‘taken over’ there was justified concern. But that new Simbrief interface? Very nice and combined with Navigraph charts an excellent end to end solution.

One issue, SAM. Some scenery developers need SAM for their work to show, but why do we need SAM in 12? Any idea what Stairpoint is up to because at the moment SAM feels like legacy software that life would be better without.

Really?  Not everyone takes their flight simulation as seriously as you or I might do. Not everyone pours over every forum. Not everyone notices every small glitch or focuses on the next micro stutter. Like all those people who bought MSFS when it came out, suffered all the issues of downloading it and getting it to work and still being enthusiastic because they saw their house. All users, all paying the same amount as we do to Laminar. There will be further updates after it is released, just as there always have been, maybe in January.

It may well be that Laminar intended the Beta to be better sorted by the holiday season but video sales in November and December are each generally around three times higher than any month in the year. It makes sense for Laminar to give up that potential revenue for another year? Plus MSFS 40th Anniversary Edition is due for release tomorrow. Many people when they select as Flight Simulator stay with it. Should Laminar give MS a free run at this years holiday market?

Releasing in January would mean missing the important ‘Xmas market. Another month of Beta would have been nice but Laminar also need to be commercially realistic. Lots of money, particularly with younger users around the holidays - think Steam vouchers. 

I am not sure that Inibuilds have suddenly seen the light.

To quote Inibuilds  ‘To manage expectations there is no ETA for this (we are targeting some point in 2023), and will ensure items such as the new FM are addressed accordingly. At this time, it is only the intention to update the A300V2. ‘

Some point in 2023 is not much of a commitment and at the same time the A310 and Beluga are being walked away from. No ETA doesn’t sound much of a plan.

It is charitable to suggest they are now listening to their customers. What is more likely is that they have seen that XP12 has some level of success and that XP11, at least in terms of new sales, is not going to bring many new purchases going forward. So a lick of XP12 paint and stick it in the store for future sales. Updating it to be compatible with XP12 sometime in 2023 is not the same as other developers like Flight Factor and Toliss are doing, updating for XP12 compatibility and then having a development path going forward. 

Lots of reports on the forum about the installer triggering a significant Windows Defender security alert. Not the first time Xplane users would have encountered that but a response from the developer might not go amiss. Like others I’ll wait for some feedback before installing.

Many of the XP12 upgrades are free and some of the sceneries look better in 12 than 11. My point was why are people releasing new XP11 content? While I understand existing xEnviro users will welcome the XP11 update are there still new buyers for that at $70 a pop? Basically that’s the price of XP12.  Some developers seem to be halting releases until they have XP12 versions that they can release alongside developed, but unreleased, XP11 versions. Boundless has both Inverness and Lands End effectively ready for XP11 but now being amended for XP12 before any release. To me, if you want sales that seems backwards. Why not develop from scratch for XP12 now? Maybe I am missing it and there’s going to be a strong XP11 market for a while?

I was reading another article on this today and there was the quote ‘Laminar Research have turned down the idea of bringing xEnviro into their newly released simulator’ which seemed odd to me. As far as I am aware Laminar does not stop any developer from producing any add on (and without any reimbursement for riding on the coat tails of Xplane) although of course they might not have included them in the group of developers getting early access. Whether this product has a future, with XP12s focus on the new weather engine is questionable. Continuing to develop for XP11 is an interesting strategy, with apologies to everyone who isn’t planning to upgrade, but it does seem to me that XP12 is already well on the way to demonstrating that it is going to be a big step up from XP11. When I see developers releasing new XP11 sceneries it seems an odd move to me. There’s very little new XP12 content available why not focus on that market? No doubt Thandra with the Stationair have been making hay with the only GA payware aircraft for XP12 at least until the recent Aerobask Diamond update.

Seems like a great update and my first flight was fine. I do notice quite a lot of wing flex in some of these XP12 updates. Is it XP12 weather or the aircraft modeling? The wing flex would not make any nervous flyer happy.

The Org store is doing a great job in making these XP12 versions available quickly but is not including them in the updates tab on the store. All the more reason to watch this site, and Xplane Forum to be aware of XP12 updates as they become available but something for the Org.store to fix?

@olderndirtI too have a lot of payware scenery. My guess is that much of it is not going to be updated and in many cases a new scenery, at best with a discount, will be released. Those scenery providers who are still active may provide updates but that a lot of older material won’t be. From those developers reporting on their XP11 products most seem to have one or more glitches in the packages. Some issues might get resolved by Xplane12 updates, say poor performance at night, but others like levitating buildings will be up to the developers. Boundless are a pretty good example listing discovered issues for their sceneries on the boundlessdirect site, through a link on their home page. One other issue is where you bought your sceneries from if you then need XP12 updates. The Orgstore is making them available pretty quickly but others, like the Inibuilds store aren’t built to have more than one version so purchasers from there are on wait until they change, if ever, their store.

Interesting review, I have been waiting to see what your thoughts would be. Personally I started the month saying that I would wait buying XP12. There just seemed too many reported issues, but then it is a beta. As the month went on I came to the conclusion that it was time to have a look for myself. When simulators change staying behind also has issues - for example was there any point in buying anymore XP11 content? The download from Steam was easy and (praying while it booted up) like you the performance was good. Getting my Thrustmaster controls working was painful, but that was issues around pedals and joysticks fighting with each other. For me the stock airports, at least during the day, seemed a big improvement in some cases better than some of the payware XP11 I had bought, but then a lot of XP11 content wasn’t great or by now very dated. The weather was a huge improvement, perhaps a little too choppy (is there calm air anywhere in XP12?) but a first flight from my local airport Medellin (SKRG) to Cartagena (SKCG) felt very like a real flight I had taken a week before. There is generally a change between the weather on departure, high in the Andes and arrival on the Caribbean coast and it was all there.

Like you I found there were things I no longer needed. I have liked you Activesky but it felt good not to have to deal with it anymore. A flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco made me wonder whether I really needed Orbx anymore. From height the default scenery, while not ‘see your own house’ seemed a big improvement. The Taimodels Paris you mention I have and downloaded the XP12 version from the store. Impressive. But even better was Verticalsims XP12 version of Syracuse (KSYR). X-CODRs KDEN XP12 version worked right out of the box as well. I bought X-CODRs scenery enhancement package and those stock airports looked even better.

On payware aircraft the Toliss fleet seemed good upgrades and for me stable. Flight Factors 757 and 767 seemed better in XP12 and are old friends. I have yet to fly their upgraded A350. AD Simulations CRJ700 seemed nervy, that may be joystick set up. Zibo for me better in XP12 but perhaps a new fresh install rather than update over update in XP11 helped? SSG’s 747 was the first aircraft that looked a little heavy on the frame rates in XP12 but then again it was no lightweight in XP11. Just about everyday there is some XP12 version release. There is always something to try. I feared all these updates might be a chore. It is not.

Traffic Global had a messy release (there are posts on how to fix it) and it spawns so much ground traffic and annoyingly over your parked aircraft. But it does work and for me seems more stable than the XP11 version (perhaps it is happier without other plugs ins like Activesky)? Simbrief runs, Navigraph updates work but how I miss the moving map. The base XP map is still pretty sad. Avitab works without issues, Better Pushback mostly. X-Organizer is up and running to help with scenery ordering and useful with helping manage the transition.

Bottom line, yes it is a beta. Yes there is some weird stuff. Late evening at KORD had some very strange lighting, cartoon sunset quickly fading to a grey murk. But for me a pretty basic XP12 is better than my heavily loaded XP11. I think it is going to be rather good….

Small error there CRJ-400. I am using 12 and have been impressed with how quickly the commercial aircraft developers, like in this instance, are providing beta packages. GA developers have been quiet, have any provided a 12 beta version? Scenery developers deserve less credit as well with few releases and thats not because there aren’t issues with 11 packages in 12. The utilities group is more varied. XOrganizer has a nice working package for example, allowing you to link to content you want to bring in to 12 easily whereas Navigraph in some posts indicated they had 12 beta compliant packages but then stated that it had not been released because they did not support betas. Groan.

Good that the org store is making this 12 beta content available so quickly. At some point I think the store is going to need to separate out 12 content (or at least working beta) from that for 11. I would have thought that 11 content is selling slowly how and any help pointing people towards developers actually reacting to the release of the 12 beta would be useful for both buyers and the store

Actually Steam pricing is often country dependent. I live in Colombia and bought XP12 today. The cost was COP 82,500, which is around $19. The download, of the base package and the geographic sceneries was very good. I have seen posts on other forums suggesting that buying from Steam makes no sense, but in certain geographic regions Steam is much cheaper. 

On Taimodels’ LFPG worth noting that it is a free upgrade for existing XP11 users on the Org.store. I also notice that a couple of their Japanese sceneries I have also now how free XP12 versions. I guess they are working through their existing content.

When we talk about releases for XP12 of existing sceneries there is an interesting an important point. Does the release for XP12 have any real changes or is it perhaps a corrected or just ‘certified’ as not having issues in XP12? Kudos to Taimodels anyway.

Thank you Stephen for a detailed, focused review of 12 together with some useful pictures. For me moving from 11 to 12 was a no brainer. However, and more will be known about this later, backward compatibility seems to be less that I was expecting. I did understand that some aircraft would likely be impacted but it almost seems universal with reports of issues, such as landing gear problems, with many add ons. Even more frustrating are the reports of issues with Payware scenery, Boundless for example responsibly reporting on different issues with several of their packages. Now Boundless will fix the issues, but other developers? Having 12 be an incremental upgrade from 11 is fine, and was advertised as such, but if backward compatibility is to a large degree lost that breaks that concept.

At some point I need to make a decision, not yet, but at some point. If much of what I have bought is going to be flawed in 12 what ‘investment’ (an odd word I know) do I have left in Xplane? That opens up the question about whether my next simulator should be 12 or is it time to consider MSFS as a better bet for future use? Many developers are not going to fix their old 11 packages and my guess is that future updates of 12 are not going to fix many of the glitches that are now appearing.

Time to watch and see what happens but my automatic decision to move to 12 is now one of watch and wait. Any chance of a more detailed article on how airports now look in 12 vs. 11? 

SFO Definitive was interesting is that it demonstrated, at the very end of XP11,  exactly what could be done with pay ware scenery. It will be interesting seeing some examples of how the new standard XP12 airports look. Equally, given that in XP11 there was a lot of free content, one wonders what XP12 means for freeware development. 

XP12 doesn’t overwrite XP11 so provided you have enough disk space there is no reason you cannot have both. Then, leaving your XP11 unchanged and then add things to XP12 as they are updated or demonstrated to work. At some point you will decide that XP12 is good enough to replace your XP11 usage and then consider deleting the XP11 instance.

You are not going to lose everything. Equally some things are not going to be updated and will have issues in XP12. 
 

One of the things that is surprising me is how much payware does seem to require changes. The aircraft packages I was expecting but scenery seems to be impacted as well. Boundless have posted an update on their site about known issues with their sceneries in XP12 which they are fixing. If they are representative, and many of their sceneries are pretty new, making the transition if you have a reasonable amount of payware is going to quite an involved process

Beta early access, no need to run at this point. Interesting watching all the forums with peoples experiences and issues. At this point I’ve yet to work out my transition strategy. What to keep, what not to try to move. Try and keep 11 alongside 12? Thinking about what may be positives - for example is the overhead of Activesky still needed? Bracing for the negatives, what might not work or get updated.

Moving over will be something of a hassle but there are positives to a clean sheet of paper. Interesting questions as well, which payware airports will still be worth keeping and which may be destined for that virtual dustbin. Does Orbx still make sense or still work with decent performance? 

Performance will of course be key, but generally those new tidy set ups generally do not perform badly against the huge old version on your disk with multiple plugs ins, sound sets you really did not need, or the 43 liveries you for installed for your 767.

And of course the knowledge when you find that it runs fine on you rig the little thought planted in the back of your mind about how much better it might be if you upgraded your video card, CPU etc. You might not spend the money today, or tomorrow, but the fuse is lit.

Bought this today. It should almost be mandatory for other scenery developers to study this to see what can be achieved. Truly excellent.

I bought this recently. A very pleasant aircraft for casual flights. Would strongly recommend it and can only envy the now lower price.

Agree completely with your comments on SAM. One positive it seems pretty stable these days - gone of the days when the farewell wave on the crash log would be some reference to SAM. Its intentions were always good, but the idea of rolling everything into one App, and with that huge intrusive control screen it always made it seem clumsy. Let’s move the jetway - and then have to quickly get out of the control screen to see the jetway now half way back to the terminal. Commercially it was quite clever with the sale of the add on modules but out of interest how often do you see follow me cars at airports these days?
SAM is of course threatened by XP12. Are there going to be moving jetways in base XP12? Will new shiny wet pavements kill off seasons files (not that they were ever a big thing). But then of course many developers now have made their sceneries dependent on SAM. No latest copy of SAM and your new payware international airport is reduced to Boeings and Airbuses grazing in a rather large field. So if developers don’t remove that dependency SAM for better or worse is going to be with us way into the future.