We’re getting close to the end of 2023 and as I wrap up my looking back series it’s time to talk a bit about X-Plane and where it has been and where it looks to be going in the new year. Let’s recap!

Progress and challenges

Back in 2019 I got into X-Plane 11 as the first “new” civil aviation sim that I had gotten into in quite some time. At the time it was P3D and X-Plane with X-Plane 11 having a slightly more compelling collection of third party developers and companies like Orbx and OrthoXP had begun to offer satellite imagery at quality levels that were taking the sim’s very basic scenery to the next level. Then Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 came along and the whole sim world was upended.

Almost four years later and things look very different for X-Plane. At the very end of 2022 we saw X-Plane 12 emerge into a 12.0 release after months of early access/beta. The sim emerged into a market that had changed quite a bit and I think the story of X-Plane in 2023 is a sim that is still trying to find its feet in a shifting landscape.

The core of the sim has continued to improve with updated clouds, improved VRAM usage, ATC improvements, and added simulator fidelity. The occasional developer blogs have detailed many of the details and efforts that the team have gone through to make these happen such as this one talking about 12.0.5 and 12.06 or this one detailing the work going into 12.0.8.

All of that sounds pretty good, however, X-Plane’s biggest challenge remains its ability to challenge its closest competitor on all fronts and there Microsoft has managed to offer up a massive marketplace, attracted huge numbers of developers, and made ortho imagery the standard for civil aviation sims. X-Plane’s community has responded with tools like AutoOrtho but it hasn’t quite caught on yet for everyone and technical challenges remain.

Laminar themselves have graphical updates on their roadmap for the coming year and landscape updates have long been talked about but so far have yet to emerge. Is X-Plane finished? Not very likely as the software has a strong engineering and flight school component that appears to ensure the stability of Laminar Research as a developer but in the consumer market it has certainly taken a back seat.

The sim has also seen its price rise. Although sales have kept the price at its traditional level, X-Plane 12 will go up from $59.99 USD to $79.99 USD at some point.

Third party efforts

The year has seen some high profile releases and major updates. Although I’ve not followed the news in X-Plane as closely as I have in past years, we have seen some impressive releases and some downright interesting examples of X-Plane’s flexibility in flight modeling to produce unique experiences.

I’m thinking of projects like NHAdrian’s NASA Lunar Lander Training Vehicle or LLTV which is reportedly notoriously difficult to fly.

Or VSkyLabs recently released SR-71 Blackbird which has just released into an early access test phase. Both projects really push what the sim’s flight model is capable of doing but from all accounts X-Plane’s model is well positioned to handle it.

This year we’ve also finally heard from Orbx that they are indeed starting to bring over their TrueEarth series to X-Plane 12. They are starting with TrueEarth Great Britain South and then expanding their project from there. New features include support for multiple seasons.

Back in April I reviewed the recently released Aerobask DA42. The developer has long been developing a licensed Dassault Falcon 8X project for X-Plane but the project has taken longer than expected leading the developer to offer up some projects in the meantime. The DA42 was one of those projects and it lived up to the standards set by other projects.

Their DA42 was followed by the Shark UL and preceded by the ViperJet eX which was their first full X-Plane project. The developer has also been generously freely updating older projects like their popular Phenom 300, DA62 and DA50 RG to X-Plane 12 standards as well.

Other developers like Thranda have also been updating their aircraft lineup albeit with paid upgrades for some of their older types. The same group is now partnered with Just Flight to help them develop some of their older X-Plane 11 types into X-Plane 12 variants.

For airliner fans, there were a bunch of high profile releases. X-Craft’s E-Jets series were launched in May and have seen several version updates since then bringing the aircraft up to version 1.04 available on the X-Plane.org Store.

Another set of high profile releases were the updates made by ToLiss to their Airbus line-up. That included updates for their A319, A321, and A340-600 with X-Plane 12 feature support as well as the launch of their new A320neo for both X-Plane 11 and 12.

Into 2024

I don’t know exactly where X-Plane 12 is headed in 2024. While I don’t buy into some of the hyperbolic statements that the sim is “dead and finished,” I do think it will continue to struggle for marketshare in the new year.

Still, it has its dedicated developers and they are churning out a slew of high quality products that are worth the time and money in most cases. The core of the sim continues to improve too with new graphical features like volumetric lightning effects now available as an option and widely expected to be improved in the new year. Some of the talked about avionics upgrades I think will be valuable to see as well.

What I do hope to see is X-Plane’s default landscape system making some sort of strides in 2024. Improved clouds, lighting, runway effects and weather system improvements help but at the core of it the sim needs to find a way to improve the overall visuals that remove some of the jagged edges to shorelines, roadways, mountains and other terrain elements. This is the area that the sim is weakest and needs the most improvements.

I still have high hopes that this sim and its third parties continue to do well into the new year and beyond. The industry needs competition and ongoing revitalization the likes that we’ve seen will hopefully come to X-Plane too as it continues to improve its version 12 offering.

What were your X-Plane highlights this year? What are you looking forward to next year? Let me know in the comments!