This is from a few hours of testing so far, we are all smart enough so i don't have to repeat that obviously this is at the current state of vanilla XP12, which is what my money gave me access to. Certainly there will be things which will improve in the future, things that addon will improve, but also things that will improve in the same way they did in XP11 without a real step up. The focus will obviously be on the visual part of it, which is what the community asked the most for XP12 (for a reason..).

What i always do, in basically any sim now, is takeoff from the airport close to my city (LIRP) to check the territory i know enough and, since i live in Tuscany, has a great variability having islands, rivers, lakes, mountains, plains etc in just few km.

 

The good:

- new airport textures

- new clouds and lighting

- new planes and old known reliable flight dynamics

- new shore textures

- new trees (at close distance)

- new water, finally

 

The bad:

- new trees (few hundred meters away and they either turn back to the old model and their shadow disappears, leaving you with a horrible transition)

- new clouds: like in other sims that used the noise generated technique, the struggle is between performance and detail of the clouds. Right now they are extremely (too much) soft. We saw this improve in other sims, so hopefully the same will happen with them

 

The ugly:

- still the same autogen in Europe from what i saw, except for minor things like train standing still in some stations (, with german like houses, and houses on roads that shoudn't have them at all for example on highways)

- Alps 10 miles away looking extremely round and just awful and not pointy at all

- having to rely on orthos still to get decent ground textures outside of airport grounds

 

How about you? What are your good, bad and ugly?

 

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by Pastaiolo

8 minutes ago, Pastaiolo said:

The good:

- new airport textures

- new clouds and lighting

- new planes and old known reliable flight dynamics

- new shore textures

- new trees (at close distance)

- new water, finally

Seasons was missing from this list 👍

@steve310002 There are seasons, but as Austin put it, snow falls when the weather  is suitable not just because its winter ,As for trees, 3d trees have an issue, which is known  so you can use the improved 2d trees. Buildings and ground textures im sure come alter once they get the bugs ironed out, They only promised updated water and airport runway taxiway textures and that we have. Still lots of optimization to come but its a really good start.

Is it possible to set date as per Year - Month - Day ?

Show me the Moon phase please !

How's the gusting wind effect on aircraft, particularly the airliners ? 

Has turbulence gotten better or do the aircraft still woooble around frenetically in turn of a single point ?

Visibility ... Show me a foggy approach 🙂

Can gals in bikini be seen on beaches ?

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by jcomm

Only had like 10 minutes to try the demo before leaving for work .

What I feel is the day light is the same as Xp11 (could be wrong )

Purchased it when in Office , so tonight some fun with the R22. Will get a better impression to what is good and what is bad.

And @Pastaiolo   PSG Vs Juventus tonight (Viva PSG)

Though one thing I noticed was the cloud flickering.

 

my purchase is on hold for a few months/years until XP12 reaches Beta.  My XP11, MSFS, P3D4 and P3D5 are enough for now.  I watched alot of videos and i just can't accept XP12 in its current form.

4 hours ago, Pastaiolo said:

This is from a few hours of testing so far, we are all smart enough so i don't have to repeat that obviously this is at the current state of vanilla XP12, which is what my money gave me access to. Certainly there will be things which will improve in the future, things that addon will improve, but also things that will improve in the same way they did in XP11 without a real step up. The focus will obviously be on the visual part of it, which is what the community asked the most for XP12 (for a reason..).

What i always do, in basically any sim now, is takeoff from the airport close to my city (LIRP) to check the territory i know enough and, since i live in Tuscany, has a great variability having islands, rivers, lakes, mountains, plains etc in just few km.

 

The good:

- new airport textures

- new clouds and lighting

- new planes and old known reliable flight dynamics

- new shore textures

- new trees (at close distance)

- new water, finally

 

The bad:

- new trees (few hundred meters away and they either turn back to the old model and their shadow disappears, leaving you with a horrible transition)

- new clouds: like in other sims that used the noise generated technique, the struggle is between performance and detail of the clouds. Right now they are extremely (too much) soft. We saw this improve in other sims, so hopefully the same will happen with them

 

The ugly:

- still the same autogen in Europe from what i saw, except for minor things like train standing still in some stations (, with german like houses, and houses on roads that shoudn't have them at all for example on highways)

- Alps 10 miles away looking extremely round and just awful and not pointy at all

- having to rely on orthos still to get decent ground textures outside of airport grounds

 

How about you? What are your good, bad and ugly?

 

For me:

The good:
- Better trees 
- Better water
- Better lighting
- Cement textures at airport look pretty good
(overall, the better trees, better water, and better lighting make XP 12 look much better than XP 11, but XP 12 still falls short graphically than MSFS) 

The neutral:
- FPS looks about so so. Not terrible for a flight simulator, but not exceptional either.

The bad:
- Clouds are awful. They are not crisp and they are very blurry. The cloud shapes are also very weird.  LR needs to do a lot more work on the clouds, like a lot.
- Autogen.  It gets repetitive and boring, and it's not regionalized, especially given that LR doesn't want to go down the satellite/photogrammetry route. I think a streamer was streaming over Cairo but the streamer and the chat remarked they could have been flying over Phoeni, Arizona. 
- Ground textures in general need more work (except for the cement textures at airports, which I stated above, look pretty good)
- Nothing like the Vulkan version of DLSS implemented, which can allow users to boost framerates by rendering frames at a lower resolution than displayed and using deep learning, a type of AI, to upscale the frames so that they look as sharp as expected at the native resolution.
- I saw a stream where it looked like some autogen buildings at night had very, very weird lighting at night. It really detracted from the rest of the night view because those autogen buildings really stuck out like a sore thumb.
- Rain looks pretty bad, needs more work.
- Boeing FMC being used in an A330 (this one is unforgivable and an indication that LR probably rushed this out the door, even for an early access release)
 

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

24 minutes ago, Beerz said:

my purchase is on hold for a few months/years until XP12 reaches Beta

Hey you lucked out! It is in beta right now. 

1 hour ago, Pastaiolo said:

 

How about you? What are your good, bad and ugly?

 

Adding to your list:

The very good:
Incredibly with my several years old pc (i5 6600, GTX1070) I can get decent frame rates with all sliders to the right and MSAA set to 4x. 

The bad: 
- No way to have the environment sound coming from the speakers and ATC in the headset (unless I missed something)
- Airport vehicles occasionally still going through buildings and aircrafts, this is at the default location KPDX

 

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by peroni

30 minutes ago, peroni said:

Hey you lucked out! It is in beta right now. 

r u sure? it's EA, not beta yet👍X-Plane 12 Early Access | X-Plane

X-Plane 12 Early Access

Welcome, Early Adopter.

In X-Plane 12, every major aspect of how we simulate the world and its effects on aviation has been rewritten based on first-principles physics and real-world data with tireless pursuit of realism. We are happy to share that with you now via X-Plane 12 Early Access.

This purchase gives you access to the X-Plane 12 Early Access program. This product is still in active development. You will be able to download and install X-Plane 12 right away and receive free updates for the life of v12. We also include access to X-Plane 11 in case any of your add-ons are not yet compatible with X-Plane 12.

What’s New

• Photometric, HDR Lighting Engine
• The 4D Weather Engine
• Seven New Aircraft – A330, Citation X, SR22, RV-10, PA-18, R-22, Lancair Evolution
• Volumetric 3D Clouds
• Seasonal/Weather-Specific Visual Effects – Snow, Variable Vegetation, Ice and Rain
• New 3D Forests, Water, Vegetation

This Early Access digital edition is ideal for people who:

• Want to get started using X-Plane 12 immediately
• Have a reliable internet connection
• Have a computer that meets these minimum requirements
• Plan to use X-Plane only in their own home (see X-Plane for Professional Use for commercial use)

X-Plane 12 Early Access includes:

• Universal platform support (Windows, Mac with Native ARM Support and Linux)
• Global scenery
• 19 high-quality aircraft with immersive 3-D cockpits
• Access to X-Plane 12 and 11
• Free internet updates for all versions of 12.xx

When you purchase the digital download edition, you will receive an email confirmation with your product key. This key will allow you to download, install, and use X-Plane 12 – no DVD, etc. needed!

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by Beerz

It is XP12 alpha 38 = beta 1 = Early access  

The point is you can buy it now and you wont need to pay anything extra once it goes final and until version 13 is released in a few years time.

1 hour ago, Beerz said:

my purchase is on hold for a few months/years until XP12 reaches Beta.  My XP11, MSFS, P3D4 and P3D5 are enough for now.  I watched alot of videos and i just can't accept XP12 in its current form.

Youll be waiting a long time for your perfect sim

33 minutes ago, peroni said:

 Airport vehicles occasionally still going through buildings and aircrafts, this is at the default location KPDX

Thats a hard one as you would have to make all the buidling solid objects I believe than have a way for the vehicles to detect them Id hate to see the FPS hit that would have in a large airport, than there is the cost of all the AI driving all the vehicles some what real. Its not that important. Though they shouldnt drive through your plane. Still minor issue

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

Is it possible to set date as per Year - Month - Day ?

Show me the Moon phase please !

How's the gusting wind effect on aircraft, particularly the airliners ? 

Has turbulence gotten better or do the aircraft still woooble around frenetically in turn of a single point ?

Visibility ... Show me a foggy approach 🙂

Can gals in bikini be seen on beaches ?

The moon is there, and is in the right place. The stars are a little too dark for my taste though... You can set the exact date and hour.

Edited September 6, 20223 yr by torfih

26 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

Youll be waiting a long time for your perfect sim

theres no such thing, only pay to beta. on all platforms.