https://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-12-2-0-release-notes/

Release Date: May 9, 2025

Fixes and Enhancements

Aircraft

Piper PA-18 Super Cub

Liveries now load correctly again (XPD-16826)

Transponder knobs function properly again (XPD-16825)

ATC

Voice packs updated to AIRAC 2504

General

G-Load camera effects are now disabled for external views in VR (XPD-16806)

Left and right eye views in VR are now correctly aligned (XPD-16784)

Balloons will no longer spawn in Class B airspace (XPD-16844)

Graphics Core Engine

Improved texture paging and memory handling (XPD-16855)

Added additional output when using the –aftermath command-line parameter

Graphics

Fixed an issue where magenta light appeared on the right side of the screen when using a widescreen monitor (XPD-16796)

Fixed a cloud shadow issue that caused patterns on the ground (XPD-16787)

Improved brightness of clouds, especially overcast conditions (XPD-16722)

Improved rendering when flying through clouds (XPD-16749)

Aviation flashlight now works as expected (XPD-16829)

Improved rendering of nearby clouds in VR at night

The sun, moon, and stars are no longer visible through thick fog or cloud layers

Improved rendering of the sun and moon (XPD-16843)

Metal bars on radio towers no longer turn blue when viewed against clouds (XPD-16745)

General improvements to cloud rendering (XPD-16295)

Improved performance of the cloud compute shader

SDK

XPLMDestroyAvionics no longer causes X-Plane to crash (XPD-16895)

Clouds are flickering in VR, completely unusable. Can anyone else confirm?

They look weird to me too in 2d as if they were shiny.

VR flickering clouds in the right eye have been reported. Many folks (including me) have filed bug reports.

Yes I agree, there is a problem with clouds and flickering.

1 minute ago, Franz007 said:

Yes I agree, there is a problem with clouds and flickering.

Ugh... Bummer!

Well, that's what Betas are for, but we had been getting so lucky so far 🤙

(And this is why I keep 2 XP installs running 😎).

Yeah the clouds seems definitely worse in this beta.

7 hours ago, BobFS88 said:

Improved rendering of the sun and moon (XPD-16843)

I thought they corrected the angular diameter of the sun and moon, but it's still wrong.

Anyway, no big issue, it can be easily corrected by changing the relevant datarefs.

Edited May 9, 20251 yr by Murmur

59 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

(And this is why I keep 2 XP installs running 😎).

Me too. Only that my other copy is beta 3 lol...

57 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Anyway, no big issue, it can be easily corrected by changing the relevant datarefs.

Which ones?

40 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

Which ones?

Art controls: "moon/angular_diameter" and "sun/angular_diameter".

Halve the default value to get the correct visual dimensions.

Be advised that if LR corrects the bug/feature in a future release, this tweak will give you wrong results then.

Here's the result for the moon:

Yeah, I know the default on the left seems the more accurate of the two, but the visually correct one is actually the one on the right. That may also be the reason why LR decided to do it that way.

 

Edited May 9, 20251 yr by Murmur

5 hours ago, Murmur said:

Art controls: "moon/angular_diameter" and "sun/angular_diameter".

Halve the default value to get the correct visual dimensions.

Be advised that if LR corrects the bug/feature in a future release, this tweak will give you wrong results then.

Here's the result for the moon:

...

Yeah, I know the default on the left seems the more accurate of the two, but the visually correct one is actually the one on the right. That may also be the reason why LR decided to do it that way.

 

Maybe one can have both with a script, with "sim/graphics/scenery/moon_pitch_degrees" driving the diameter. Same for the sun.

@Murmur

Just curious: How are you able to tell about the size of the moon? I would be completely unable to see that; the original size seems fine and realistic to me (compared to what I see in the real skies...). Are you sure your values are more realistic? If yes, did you send a bug-report?

There is more to the correct "appearance" than the pure diameter (as an apparent angle from the users vantage point. There is also the apparent brightness and the well-known problem of limited brightness for computer monitors (non-HDR).

So a sun of the correct diameter will appear "too dim", even if all pixels within it´s diameter are at maximum brightness.

For the moon there is a similar effect in that most people run a field-of-view on their monitors that is not realistic. Imagine you sit in a cockpit and hold a picture-frame the size of your monitor in front of your face at the same distance that you sit from it at your computer desk. You would likely only see a small portion of the cockpit...but since people want to see the whole instrument panel, they "shrink" the apparent world by choosing a high-degree "field of view". So everything appears at a smaller opening-angle measured from the user´s eye, and items that are ingrained in your brain as ALWAYS having a certain size (you will not see the moon smaller or bigger, like a car or a house, for example, because it is ALWAYS ca. 300.000 km away), will appear "too small" to the human brain on a computer screen with a field-of-view that is too large. 

That is why it feels better to have it "too big", physically.

 

Don't think that would work for me as I use a realistic field of view. I have to pan around the cockpit. Artificially enlarging the sun and moon would be most annoying. 

Edited May 10, 20251 yr by Falconjet112

4 hours ago, Franz007 said:

@Murmur

Just curious: How are you able to tell about the size of the moon? I would be completely unable to see that; the original size seems fine and realistic to me (compared to what I see in the real skies...). Are you sure your values are more realistic? If yes, did you send a bug-report?

I measured the diameter as the ratio of horizontal screen space occupied, times the FOV setting.

I reported this bug some time ago, when the diameters of sun and moon in X-Plane were actually even bigger than now (and different from each other). At the time they said that it was intentional because if real values were used, users would find them too small.

But afterwards they changed the diameters, and now the default datarefs use the correct values (but the actual shown diameter is still too high).

So I don't know if currently this is still intentional, or if it's a bug in the code.