Beta 4 available now. Release notes posted at https://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-12-4-0-release-notes/

Public Beta 12.4.0-B4
⚠️ Notes: Plugin authors are advised to privately contact us now regarding any outstanding issues.

Aircraft

• Fixed a crash when starting a flight using the Grumman F-14 Tomcat with AI - Aircraft in place

Avionics & Radio

• There will be no longer a huge FPS penalty when popping out an avionics instrument (XPD-16890)
• Fixed ATIS Frequencies (XPD-17705)

Graphics

• Fixed scenery flicking when using popped out windows (XPD-17621)

User Interface & Controls

• Show ramps and runways correctly when returning from the special starts view back to the airport view (XPD-17706)

SDK

• Improved error logging and handling
• Fixed function XPLMIsCursorOverAvionics
• Fixed 3d mouse cursor callbacks of custom devices
• Fixed a crash when right-click dragging out of a custom device manipulator
• XPluginReceiveMessage will be called with the correct plugin id now, when a plugin requests TCAS/AI control (XPD-17713) 

Haven't had a chance to check it out fully but definitely nice to see a reported fix for FPS loss when popping out avionics.

Is great to see LR coming out with frequent updates with details of changes. Once they manage to get NextGen graphics integrated, I'll get my wallet to agree on the purchase.

Edited January 23Jan 23 by CarlosF

Update works fine here.

No probs updating to this 12.4 beta build for me on my M4 Mac mini and Lenovo Legion 5 PC.

Maybe I missed it but no fix to the large fps drop at night at busy airports when AA is on?

Edited January 29Jan 29 by VeryBumpy

On 1/29/2026 at 8:22 PM, VeryBumpy said:

Maybe I missed it but no fix to the large fps drop at night at busy airports when AA is on?

This is due to pixel-shaders calculating the lighting effect of airport (and other) light sources.

Every single pixel will need to be calculated by the GPU - so more pixels, more calculation.

So whenever  you increase the pixel count - by raising the resolution maybe, or using multiple monitors, or forcing your card to calculate a picture twice (for MSAA), this will increase the load on your GPU. 

Four things can be done about that, three by yourself, one by Laminar:

1.) Reduce your pixel count (see above)
2.) Increase your GPU´s computational capacity
3.) Wait for Laminar to implement new AA technology, like TAA, for example.
4.) Manually reduce the number of light sources in your scenery (remove lights with WED).

So as long as you don´t read anything about a new AA tech being used in the release notes - nothing will have changed in this regard.

I use:

XP12 : regain FPS at night (simplified apron light) - Scenery Packages XP12 - X-Plane.Org Forum

to optimize night lighting, even if I can't really complain these days because running Xp12 with

-lock_fr=30

gives me smooth and stable 30 fps in my 60Hz monitor.