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This was initially a concern of mine as well, but the more I fly XP12 the more I wonder how many of these payware sceneries I would even want back, as in many areas XP12 looks (and performs) significantly better out of the box (lack of orthos aside). I think developers have a much bigger task than just making their products compatible with XP12 - they will also need bring the visual quality up to match the current bar set by XP12 (like SFD has more than done with SFO Definitive), in order to not be left behind.

You called this one right, Stephen, it is truly spectacular. And I'm happy to report that even with my trusty old 1080ti I'm managing ~24-30 frames even with all graphics settings maxed out and lots of clouds, in XP12!

The good news is that XP12 includes a version of SF City which, IMO, is the best yet. That is, until SFD release their "SF City Definitive"!

Yeah good point, but I wonder exactly what it is that MSFS will make mainstream, though? As Stephen has mentioned, at the moment it is more of a game than a sim, and it will be a long time before it becomes anything approaching "study-level". And how far will they take that? My guess is that most gamers won't go along for that ride - thus no more mass market. And MS is all about the mass market. I just think the number of people interested in real aviation will always be small, and the number of those willing to go through a lot of tedious study to become better virtual pilots even smaller. I personally don't begrudge the more vertical pricing (as long as the product is good), because I know it's simply unavoidable with such a smaller market. Maybe not as much for the bigger multiplatform publishers like Aerosoft and Orbx, but a lot of our vendors are tiny shops or even one-man-shows, who do it mainly for the love of XP. I can't imagine a lot of them are making any real money in our market.

I think the real barrier is serious flight simulation itself - it will never have mass appeal so niche market pricing seems like a natural result (not the cause) to me.

MSFS is just a fling–who could resist her sexy charms? But at the end of the day I always come back to my first love 😁

Good to know. Looking forward to what's to come, but in the meantime will continue to enjoy what we have now, which is still nothing short of incredible.

Excellent and thorough analysis, Stephen. I would add one more critical area XP needs to play "catch-up" on: performance, especially if they have any aspirations of converging toward MSFS visually. My feeling, for example, is that my system which has no problem getting a solid 30-40+ FPS in MSFS with Ultra-everything, will simply choke on XP12 if it manages to achieve anything resembling visual parity with MSFS. I don't pretend to be an expert on why this is, but I CAN see that while MSFS makes 99% use of my GPU (1080ti), XP utilizes around 50% at most. Similarly with CPU in that MSFS seems to use all my cores efficiently, while XP does not. I was actually quite shocked by how well MSFS performs on my system, which was high spec maybe 3 years ago, but much more moderately so by today's standards. Vulcan has made a big difference for sure, but I think XP still has a long way to go in this regard.

While the 3D models look great, they seem very mismatched with the "vintage" (to put it charitably) looking areas they are tacked onto.

I know this isn't intended as a complete traffic solution shootout but you missed an excellent (and free) alternative from your list: Live Traffic by TwinFan on the Org. It's great for people like me who have struggled with WT3 and find it to be way too much work. I'd rather spend my time flying! Plus I love the fact that all the flights represented are real world flights happening in real time. Thank you for this honest review of Traffic Global. I have been tempted to try it, but at this point it doesn't seem far enough along to justify the $53 asking price.

Will be interesting to see how it compares to the Imaginesim version just released today

While you're calling up your inner Sonny Crockett...I'll call up my inner Dexter Morgan!

I think their innovative approach has potential but at the end of the day the clouds look like bubble-bath suds to me. And like everyone else has seen, it kills the frame rate on my high-end PC. So for now it's still UWXP + ASXP for me.

I am very excited about this release as now I will be able to do the KMRY - KDEN run in the exact aircraft and livery (E145, United Express) that I do regularly in real life (as a passenger)! So cool! BTW, yes the cabin is tight, but I love the fact that the left side is single-seat as I get the whole row to myself!

Are you considering an update to report if the developer's several updates have addressed the issues satisfactorily? Thanks once again for another incredibly thorough review!