Directly from Laminar:

"Hello there!

X-Plane 11.02 is out with the first round of performance improvements, with even more to come in 11.10 and beyond. We're gearing up to add native VR support to X-Plane 11. The X-Plane 11.05 beta is all about Gateway airports, and below we have a preview of major airports that are included, such as KLAS with new landmarks.

New & Upcoming Performance Improvements

Laminar Research has a lot of performance improvements on our short term road map. Our goal for X-Plane 11 is to consistently hit 60 frames per second with no stutters. We know it's an issue you're concerned with, and we also need this because native virtual reality will be coming in X-Plane 11!

Each update we release is an intermediate step in that direction to make X-Plane better and faster. X-Plane 11.02 included performance improvements such as:

8 bit water so the amount of data transferred is 4x smaller and the path is better for drivers

Faster car bucketing so the amount of cars at even the highest density setting has no frame rate impact

Better core scheduling means the computations to get your flight loaded stay out of each other's way

You'll see even more performance improvements when X-Plane 11.10 comes out. We're adopting the Vulkan and Metal next generation graphics APIs, which are new ways for X-Plane to talk to the graphics card more efficiently. Vulkan and Metal have low CPU use, are multicore friendly and are very predictable, which means no surprise pauses. This is a huge undertaking that we have already started, but it could take a year or more before this change is complete. Rest assured the Laminar Research team will get incremental improvements out to you as fast as we can get them coded, tested and released!"

Excellent news, these are some of the reasons why I decided to stick with XP and dump all the rest.

XP's future is bright indeed!

They also mentioned on the dev blog that they hope to have an 11.10 beta out soon after 11.05 goes final, which should be pretty soon. They also said they'll have a more detailed write up about the performance improvements soon.

anyone know if the Vulkan improvements will be incremental or will be switched on in a major release? 

As Ben said Vulkan will be switched on in a year or so, but with those code restructurings we see OpenGL performance improvements before that.

I will get a Linux compatible VR once this is done.

My understanding is that vulkan will be adopted on increments, 11.10 will have a bit of it already, but the complete migration process may take a year.

Native VR? Sounds great.

I'm amazed how well XPlane 11 runs on my less then stellar system. I run an old i5 2500k though oced at 4.6gz along my new NVidia 1070. I have 8 gigs of RAM with 16 gigs still in new package waiting to be installed. I run the settings pretty high except for reflections. I flew the Carenado 1900D in busy KPDX with the free updated airport with tons of statics and still have smooth frames. I was flying the new Aerosoft CRJ in FSXSE yesterday from KBNA to KMDW and never got the smoothness like XP11.  I know Chicago is a challenge with scenery especially with all the orbx stuff but flying with ortho tiles anywhere in the world on XP is no comparison.  Night enviroment has no match either. When you sit at a gate at night in XP the reflections from the airport lighting on the surrounding AC is true to life. The ZIBO mod 737 is awesome. I have been using. XP for just 2 months and I believe it will be my soul flightsim after I rebuild new system this Fall. Glad to have a sim that runs 64 bit and utilizes the GPU more. Thanks Laminar Research for great work.

Read a post on Helisimmer today - it seems that in 11.10 they've solved the ground texture 'juddering' that's been around forever. It seems the issue became quite urgent with their focus on getting 'VR ready'.

This news alone has absolutely made my day.

Can you say "Wow". I know you can 

 

18 hours ago, Jimmy RFR said:

Read a post on Helisimmer today - it seems that in 11.10 they've solved the ground texture 'juddering' that's been around forever. It seems the issue became quite urgent with their focus on getting 'VR ready'.

This news alone has absolutely made my day.

Great to hear!  The flickering/moving textures are driving me crazy.