mSparks

I just want to throw into the ring that I think the new flight lessons by Austin are a great leap forward in this respect. really do a very good job of showing how good even default XP can look now, while also being suitable for a wide audience from novice to pro.

If you tweak it a bit, you can get them to seamlessly fade in at close distance so you still get the benefit of close up. example of what that looks like in my mach round the mach loop video. LOD of about 5000meters seems to work well. see also the "endless tweeking" thread. XP12 almost has enough good stuff now to justify recording that again with some clouds.

The missed "may ruin any plans you had for doing something else"

I'd say XP12 currently benefits from being suitable for "just the right amount of tweaks". Things that are not suitable for everyone, and may require specific hardware or only look right in certain circumstances. I do not miss the days of having to tweak every hidden setting to get reasonable framerates, and install cloud and lighting art to fix stupid bugs that languished around for decades.

good stuff. I keep several bash scripts in my home directly for starting xplane and VR stuff in different configurations. Also what power mode is set can make a big difference to performance.

https://www.x-plane.com/kb/multiple-monitors-linux-x-plane-11 works fine with 12 as well

cockpit view has a load of extra "internal" shadowing and lighting that gets turned off when you switch to external view

We are 7 months in to I'm 100% sure even more great things are coming. But I am also mostly at the point that I am enjoying what we have so much that I'm happy to get it when its ready. this is just me guessing, but I suspect that maybe they end up pushing really big new scenery changes into the next major version of xplane. It would be awesome for it to come sooner, but LR have for the last few major releases run on a 5 year cycle (XP11 overran because vulkan was so hard), we are just about 3 years into XP12 already, I dont think there is time left now for it to come this major version, and if it does it will have to be like vulkan in XP11 - they get it mostly working under the hood, then use that to break everything for the next major release. Just me doing gap analysis, high chance that is all wrong.

https://www.usgs.gov/landsat-missions Is public domain, the way I understood it from the developer day back when is they will be basically constructing the world from that or similar, using the same tech concepts they use for snow. "should" be better than photos. But given the absolute silence on the topic that followed and how crazy hard all that is, we really just have to wait and see.

TAF: EGLL 231053Z 2312/2418 24010KT 9999 SCT045 TEMPO 2400/2410 7000 RA BKN010 PROB30 TEMPO 2402/2408 3000 +RA RADZ BKN004 PROB40 TEMPO 2410/2418 6000 SHRA So visibility between 3 and 7km that isnt excessive enough for 3km, 6 to 10km is MVFR: https://www.thinkaviation.net/levels-of-vfr-ifr-explained/ you can measure it in flight by looking for a point in front of you that is just on the edge of visibility then timing how long it takes to get there. you should also be able to improve it by climbing higher

Two things. 1. It is entirely logical to come to this conclusion. But 2. it really isn't what happened. About the only thing in XP12 I can think of that wasn't planned, mentioned previously and well into development prior to msfs even being announced is the trees, and the story behind that is something along the lines of one of the developers going out of his way to prove Ben Supnik wrong about it now being possible with the vulkan stuff they had just got working in XP11, and that tech is nothing like MS is doing. Everything else you see in XP12 now has been planned and worked on since at least vulkan chapter @32.30 that was 07/2017 That really is how long it takes to get this stuff ready, very, very very few people realise how much effort it takes, all they see is the instant gratification of being bored at 1pm on a thursday, and 12.2.0B6 being delivered a few minutes later.

what you should expect to see in XP12 flying round the UK: I'd say others have covered it reasonably well, but its also better to go against real source material rather than "what other sims do" imho.

very possible this might have been the source of my VR perf issues in XP12. Just threw b6 through my quick "this stuff must work" tests and for the first time in a while didn't have any immediate issues.

Me, hmm bored, wonder if B6 is out yet. Laminar: Release Date: May 22, 2025 !!! Known Issues !!! Graphics Cloud flickering may still occur in some situations Cloud shadows can appear too dark under certain conditions Cloud artifacts may still be visible in same cases Note: These issues are known and currently being worked on. There is no need to report them again. Fixes and Enhancements General Fixed cloud flickering in the right eye display when using VR (XPD-16905) Fixed a crash when setting the weather using the IOS (XPD-16910) Fixed texture in Artificial Horizon instrument (XPD-16924) Fixed an error that caused navigation data alerts when using Navigraph data Graphics Core Engine Fixed performance issues when using orthophotos (XPD-16850) Fixed a device loss issue when switching screens while using X-Plane (XPD-16921) Fixed several other device loss errors Graphics Improved cloud visualisation Improved volumetric fog near the aircraft (XPD-16906) Fixed a device loss when zooming into clouds (XPD-16908) Improved exposure in VR

Don't get to confident, it's not that easy: It does a much better job at guessing than most of the X-Plane community.