FSA hosts X-Plane 12 live stream with Laminar Research

The folks at Flight Simulation Association gathered together the folks at Laminar Research to talk about… you guessed it, X-Plane 12! The chat is focused on both the present and the near future of the product. If you’re an X-Plane fan, you may want to listen in on this live stream.

Live update

I always listen in when Evan from Flight Simulation Association hosts a live stream. Prior streams have included talks by authors, content creators, and industry people including Aerosoft and Laminar Research. This time around, Evan hosted Austin, Thomson, and Philipp from Laminar to talk all about the latest work being done on X-Plane 12.

Here are some of the key points:

X-Plane 12 release is coming mid December 2022 – in just a few weeks.
There was talk about the Alia 250, the eVTOL prototype that is now part of X-Plane 12 and how the aircraft was prototyped in X-Plane and now prototypes exist in the real world.
OpenXR support coming to support more headsets and OSes.
Airbus FMC is still coming and was shown off during the video.
The team at Laminar is being expanded with positions opening for avionics, marketing, support, networking scenery, content creation and website operations.
Laminar is looking into streaming real world 3D scenery. Austin says he has elected not to make it the first item on the list but that it is bubbling to the top of the list.
Weather system has been a big part of the update. METAR updates are now 30 minutes delayed rather than a few hours delayed. Turbulence was previously too strong but has been corrected. Weather is limited up to 39,000 feet and then above that it is extrapolated. Precipitation rendering from a distance is going to be done. Same with low altitude fog. Third party weather plugins are coming with some limits to what is exposed.
Philipp Ringler (Aircraft and Systems) is going to be working on a G3x as soon as he gets some real world experience with the panel. Currently expecting a couple to be delivered.
Working with a member of the FlyJSim team for visual updates to avionics.
The next focus is on fixing graphics artifacts and weather issues. Medium term focus will be on professional users. Long term is not something that Austin wants to talk about yet but there are ideas.