New to XPlane and only XP!2. Been through a couple of updates for the Beta - each iteration gets better and better. Some Observations - the default terrain and landclass and general layout seems very good to me. Apart from a few more accurate airports yet to see a need for a lot of airport addons (yet). Put in a few though for out of the way places just to tidy them up a little.  The latest update released today refined the cockpit lighting issues (to an extent - same as P3D dark cockpits but at least none of that glare outside) so not to bad now not perfect. Cloud and weather remains spot on if you use the real weather download facility. Now what has really caught my eye so far and this is only abn appearance thing but what a revolution in sim graphics, that is water. This is the first time I have ever seen water at the seashore or lakeshore be clear and moving so much so that you can see the ground surface (sand or rocks) underneath the water at the waters edge - now how did they do that. The rain on the windscreen is very realistic too and speeds up or down dependant on speed or prop wash if your on the ground. So on a trial flight today at Wewak in PNG it was raining, so totally realistic puddles of water on the surfaces everywhere and now this stunned me, rain drops hitting those puddles created little circular ripple splashes just like real rain does! All I can say is amazing! There is a mod that lets you add it to models that do not have it - I will leave that to others who have more experience with the way XP works. 

Oh yes undulating runways and sloping runways - done to perfection never seen that before either in a sim. Lighting on the ground and airport is first class realistic and nicely distributed and this is the  first time I have seen very nicely modelled airport vehicles moving about with rotating beacons and other lights working - again superb. 

So basic ground handling is available as stock or standard to call up the basics, fuel loaders and pushback but a little cheap addon lets you hand craft that for the aeroplane and a few more interesting touches (like leads from the ground cart to the connection point or the refuelling truck to the wing point, timed to go out and come back as well! Forget GSX its history now! Yes and you have to respond on the IC to their demands for doors or brakes or whatever!

ATC seems quite realistic - already been chided for not following the correct taxy way as per my taxy clearance. 

Still sorting out the relationship between flight controls and the way my Logitech stick works (that is not so simple alas). Lots of neat little make you life easier addons about - namely the IPAD in the cockpit which accesses either or all the Navigraph stuff (charts maps etc you plans or whatever) that is very good! And a new little addon that lets you tweak the lighting or clouds yourself (still to try that one out) 

I may not have all the oldies and goldies in terms of aeroplanes that I had in P3DV5 but I can live without it for the time being - I am sure they will turn up eventually! As a bonus it seems I have found a few that never made into FSX or ported up to P3D (Like the Boeing 747-200, the Boeing 707, the Boeing 727 and a few others. There is a freeware Beaver that is as good as anything Milviz ever did and I at last have a very nice Ted Smith Aerostar. There are two DC-3s both are superb in XP12 and so it goes! 

XP12 is indeed a fantastic simulator - worse part - no more fudging you have to fly the aeroplane like you would have to fly the aeroplane for real - use all the controls do it properly etc etc. Performance and realism is outstanding actually. 

P3D is now well and truly parked for me (unless I suddenly get the need to fly something like a Super Constellation) but after this experience of XP12. 

Converted me - excellent simulator program. Not so easy in parts but hey you want realism you have to work at it. No way I will go to MSFS or back to P3D now - done I am converted. 

Edited December 14, 20223 yr by coastaldriver

Exactly my thoughts. With the latest RC4, Xplane 12 just looks surreal at times. There is not a single dull moment. I am extremely happy with what I am seeing and this is just the beginning with many more updates to come. The team at Laminar have out done themselves with this one.

Yep agree! I also should say I have absolutely no performance issues with this running on my hardware (Intel I7 6 core with 16GB RAM SSD and the NVIDIA RTX2070 Super GPU) not a single lag stutter or other indication of choke points. My on screen visualisation is smooth and fluid at all times! No OOMs or CTD's (oh except when I asked it to try and fly a model that lacked the requisite model data - my installation mistake) then it just quit. You can certainly see the benefits of not being reliant on the dread Microsoft programming tools and its non DOS/Windows origins and design! The file systems and structures are of course not foreign but I had forgotten about (long time since I learnt and used Unix style code).

Robustly elegant is the only way I can describe it all! 

Every day is a new and surprisingly good experience. Not sure one can add more to that. Oh yes there are some backward compatibility issues with X11 stuff (mainly the aircraft) thats about all!

13 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

yet to see a need for a lot of airport addons (yet)

Default airport quality in XP12 is superb!