X-Plane v8 "lasted" 3 years (before the release of v9), while v9 lasted 4 years.

 

But if we compare the release timeline of v9 versus v10, we see that v9.30 was released after 14 months; on the other hand, v10.30 has still to be released, after 24 months.

 

Now, updates for a specific X-Plane version usually run until release x.60-x.70 before the next major version.

 

So, hints are that we haven't still reached the mid life of this version, and since the last major versions (v8, v9, v10) were out around November, looks like there are at least another 3 years before X-Plane 11 will be out.

 

 

EDIT: the word "life" was put in quotation marks simply because, of course, everyone can continue to use X-Plane 10 even after X-Plane 11 will be released. :smile:

After this I refuse to rejoin the Matrix. No more Betas. Commit to XPX and finally bridge the gap between the two sims. It might even bring more 3PDs onboard knowing they will have some stability.

I've been thinking about it too Murmur, although I didn't follow xp9's cycle until it's end. Actually I left flight simulation altogether before it reached 9.30

 

I believe version 10 differs from the others for the huge step that migrating to 64 bit represented.

 

But I've read posts where some devs already talk about things that are being worked on for v11, so...

 

I believe there isn't much to be done for the rendering engine itself, unless LR decides to move into DirectX ( not a good idea because it would kill one of the major advantages I find in X-Plane  - being multi-platform...)

 

There could be some major changes in terms of the World Coordinate system though, and that would require a deep rewrite of the code for that part of the simulator, but would, IMO, be a very important investment in the future. The present approach brings problems for areas near the Poles, and a tile-based approach has also other limitations... 

 

Investing on a powerful SDK would also be a nice improvement for X-Plane 11. Introducing all of the required primitives for allowing a much easier creation of weather injectors, AI traffic tools, etc, would be great!

 

For the time being, Austin has a lot of work to do still on v 10, specially on that torque stuff, then some requirements that were probably stated by important 3pds, and maybe a few more code optimizations and scenery / mesh / autogen "recuts".

There could be some major changes in terms of the World Coordinate system though, and that would require a deep rewrite of the code for that part of the simulator, but would, IMO, be a very important investment in the future. The present approach brings problems for areas near the Poles, and a tile-based approach has also other limitations... 

 

Ditto!

So, hints are that we haven't still reached the mid life of this version, and since the last major versions (v8, v9, v10) were out around November, looks like there are at least another 3 years before X-Plane 11 will be out.

I don't think that you can really say it  X-Plane 10 had several pretty severe changes in its life cycle till now.

In fact they changed t6he whole development process in the beginning of X-Plane 10 to make the process better organized for 3rd party developers. And in a way they really changed everything. They reorganized the whole process how surfaces are organized, they made several imprortant fixes in the weather and flight dynamic and then thex decided to t6ake the main problems head on with the 64 bit version (a switch that they wanted to delay till X-Plane 11.

While this made it clear to developers that X-Plane is their to stay for a long time, it made also a lot of developers a bit mad. So they will try to kimit API changes as low as possibel, and there are alredy several requests for changes in the APIs.

We now that they are in fact already developing for X-Plane 11, but I don't think that even Laminar knows exactly when they will switch to X-Plane 11. The difference won't be as big between the two versions. While they changed the complete rendering engine for X-Plane 10 future changes won't be as dramatical, although they will change the complete shader model (they are still in Open GL 1.x/2.x and they will go to OpenGL 3.x/4.x but a lot of these changes will happen in the background without any need for the developers to constantly update their planes and sceneries.

You could say: In x-plane 9 there were few people they had to look out for, but this changed, so they now tried to fix the basic things first, so that the developers get a more stable perspective.

In a way X-Plane just now really starts to lookj interesting for developers, while everything till 10.20 was happening in a kind of panic mode.