Medellinexpat

Thanks to you and the team for all the content this year. Well written reviews of new product are an oasis in the desert of endless, lengthy, biased and just generally tedious Youtube reviews. Why spend three and a half hours riding along with Captain Crunch when you can learn far more in five minutes on here.

Not many expected MS to reenter the Flight Simulator market. When they did, that changed the whole Flight Simulator landscape and for me Laminar have been playing catch up ever since. Imagine a world where MS had not gone down that route and where that would have put X-Plane now. In reality Laminar’s biggest problem is trying to figure out what the MS plan is in the longer term. Will they lose interest again? Is the MSFS community large enough that the product can live without MS?
Laminar in supporting multiple platforms and operating systems made their lives difficult, and its a model that hardly points to fast development. Almost the kind of strategy that leads to failure. But what happens now if Apple does become a more viable gaming platform, perhaps even the platform of choice? In that case the questionable strategy might look like genius. 

Given Laminar’s size wasn’t it always obvious that getting XP12 sorted out was going to a journey? A lost year? Personally I cannot think of a single area where XP12 is not better than XP11. I will admit to upgrading my hardware as I could see that the coming winter weather would eat into my FPS reserve. Not cheap, but then flight simulation rarely is if you take it seriously.

Then there is the alternative. All of us will admit to having had a peek online at MSFS. After all those lengthy Youtube ‘review’ videos must have some purpose in the Universe. In a couple of minutes you will be wondering how MS hide the rails the aircraft seem to be flying on. You can see your house but as a Flight Simulator but is MSFS more immersive?
Now, for developers this year must have been a nightmare as Laminar tweaked (sometimes one suspects with a digital chainsaw) the flight model. But several of them have ended up with some quite impressive add ons. Compare X-Crafts E-Jets in XP11 and now in XP12 as just one example.

Presumably the worst of the changes are behind us and upcoming releases will eliminate issues like the Minecraft clouds. Or as a MSFS user I could be anticipating the release of landmarks of Antartica or preparing the digital rescue of the digital crew of a digital oil rig.

The development of XP12 has been very Laminar. Austin is the Elon Musk of the Flight Simulation world - without the questionable tweets and the large numbers of children. Sometimes the rockets blow up and the gaps between the panels look suspiciously wide.

The problem with Toliss, at least in XP12, is that they have worked so hard on continuous improvement of their Airbus range that its sometimes difficult to fly anything else!

I haven’t bought much scenery for XP12 because in most cases SAM3 is needed to make the scenery work. While SAM3 is free, whether it really works in XP12 is questionable. What the ongoing development plan for SAM3 is also unclear. As the store listing  and this review did not suggest that this scenery needed SAM3 I bought it.

it does require SAM3 and I do not think it unreasonable that this be included in the requirements.

There is no Traffic Global activity at this airport for some reason

There is documentation but it is very poorly written

Generally it looks promising, a big 5 gb download mind, but the SAM3 issue rankles.

MSFS is such a small part of Microsofts business they can just use it as a promotional tool which is why Xplane should not try to go head to head with it. Xplane can survive as a niche product potentially becoming, say, a move up product for those who having experienced Flight Simulation in MSFS want something beyond the eye candy. MSFS development also seems to be moving more towards a game and Laminar needs to exploit that.

I have just upgraded my system from a 2080 base to a 4080, not a cheap or easy thing to do, particularly where I live. I thought XP12 was good on the 2080, on the 4080 and the ability to move sliders to the right you really get an idea of just how good the product is. And there for me is part of the story. If you want fly complex aircraft add ons then you are going to need a decent rig (or spend your days posting on the forums about how poor your FPS is with your latest addition) and the cost of those add ons is tiny compared with the cost of the rig. Developer costs aren’t the issues but video card manufacturers might be.

On scenery developers, the base XP12 airports, at least with the sliders up seem pretty good to me. The number of really good add on sceneries that have been produced for XP12 can probably be counted on fingers and perhaps a couple of toes but the reality is there’s an awful lot of rubbish out there hardly better than the stock. Scenery developers want to make more money, want the ability to charge higher prices. Go look at SFDs SFO. Do that and it will sell.

On upgrade costs it always seems to me what was important was when the software was developed. Lots of developers released last year for XP11 and committed at the time that they would support XP12  in the future - some even saying XP12 would be supported ‘when available’. Now I bought those products as I saw them as part of my XP12 preparation. Not all of those commitments have been met and in my opinion when those commitments were met, unless an upgrade fee was mentioned, the upgrade should come gratis. However for much older add ons it is only reasonable to ask for an upgrade fee and in some cases sell the product as completely new.

Good developers Like Toliss, Thandra, MisterX will always get supported by the community. Why? Because they provide excellent product. I don’t need every Thandra product in my virtual hangar or every variety of the Toliss Airbus A320 family but I buy them. And hopefully others do too.

Very impressive in 12. Some of the colors seemed a little washed at the airport boundaries but a stunning achievement.  

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.