It’s been quite a good year for X-Plane. The sim has seen a steady selection of improvements to its core features and its picked up some new tricks along the way too. Laminar Research, the developer behind the sim, has done a review of the year behind and given us a taste of what we can expect in 2026. Let’s have a look!

A good year

We’re getting into that time of the year where everyone looks back at what’s happened in the last 12-months and then started to focus on what is ahead.

X-Plane 12 has seen quite a few changes in the last year. There was the ATC update with an overhaul of the sim’s ATC adding tons of new features and capabilities. It can now do IFR and VFR procedures including SIDs and STARs with options to divert and more.

The Flight Lessons update added a new selection of training missions updating the old outdated ones. The same update added custom scenery for Salzburg (LOWS) and Barra (EGPR) airports.

The graphics update brought in new cloud rendering, lighting and other visual updates.

The Gateway Assets update was another interesting addition adding more high resolution assets to the sim covering airport vehicles and more. They also added the Zermatt Helipad (LSEZ).

Finally, the Weather Update made some big changes matching the updated cloud technology with the weather systems and added a bunch of new features to the sim at the same time. Some of the default aircraft, like the Airbus A330, saw some big updates too.

Coming up next

In the last couple if days, X-Plane 12 has had a few minor updates including some initial offerings of the new marketplace feature for X-Plane 12. That’s already arrived but more is indeed planned.

The next update as the roadmap details is called the C-Check (named after periodic aircraft inspections) and is more of a systems and features look over. The A330 is getting some more attention adding features like the ACARS system for Vatsim users. There are improvements to the GNS430/530 as well with WXR and TCAS overlays. A new enhanced airport is coming and they say surprises are also on the way.

Further afield, we know that other changes are also coming to the platform. The X-Plane storefront will be coming in a more serious way in the future along with multi-threading, flight model improvements, better anti-aliasing, and next gen scenery.

And of course… we hear you on scenery! Next-gen scenery is our top priority, however, this is no walk in the park. With our current DSF scenery system being roughly around 20 years old, there is a significant amount of work needed for a more modern system. Every single update so far has had something either openly or quietly added in the background to get us closer towards this. Rest assured, we have plans for this…

New scenery is very much needed for X-Plane with the sim’s autogen world looking quite dated compared to other sims. There are spots where you can see the future shining through (golf courses for example) but this should be a big thing. Will it come in 2026? Maybe!

X-Plane could not do another flight model update for a year and it’d still be doing extremely well on that front. I’m very pleased to see that other items are seeing the attention that’s been needed. The sim has made strides and these look to be more good ones.

Looking forward to all of it. Read the official roadmap update here!