coastaldriver

Good 12.4.1 is stable release it seems. Little bit of model adjustments here n there varies. Find this iteration very smooth, high FPS, lights and lighting good. Sticking with default scenery for foreseeable future. I can have maybe 24 airliners of varying complexity and some 100 plus general aviation aircraft. Load time is quick (acf dependant) - license activation applications continue to be problematic all developers - on Linux platform. You know every time I start and run this simulator - I think - WOW! Hard to believe a PC based simulation could be so impressive! Whats there to addon?

I think this is a stranded mod - Good intentions - especially the EFB other than that nothing better than Laminars default A330. Few minor texture mods. Tried it - engine mods are well shall we say style only and carry no underlyings acf data for the selection. Liked what they did but think actually the Laminar Default is at a very high standard - why bother?

MikeVI - I rebuilt to Linux - from WIN. Default scenery (Gateway etc) and texture all the way now. No Sim Heaven or Global Forests. Out of 30000 poss airports the scenery addons I have put in amount to 211 thats it. Performance has got better and better - real time weather is real and lighting is as well. Details - depends what you want. What you like to fly - again completely catered for bar a few - but there is stuff in the pipeline as the model ecosytem picks up. You can get excited about study level this or that but there are some superb light aeroplanes covering almost the history of aviation - spoilt for choice really. Peripherals - all will be good. Try the demo see whats what they get to work - few hours of download and setup and your off - whole new experience.

Simulated session yesterday pm real weather, Dash 8 100 Tindal for Darwin about 1600 local. This section of Northern Australia is coming under the influence of the leading edge of a Cyclone - Narelle. The sim depicted cloud, bases, groups along with atmospheric moisture. The wipers really did wipe a windscreen. The weather radar portrayed a detailed picture consistent with a Cyclonic formation, turbulence and sheer predominated, very rough and wet in flight. Now the post above shows the Dash taxying at Tindal for departure - note that the moisture slip stream particles are flowing in helical pattern rearward around the tail section and after, Spoilers deploying accurately. Arrival Darwin via ILS in heavy rain showers and turb -night lighting balanced and dynamically believable - the default airport lighting system was outstandingly replicated. So Day - Night and the online weather delivering a cyclone. Tindal was down at 995 hpa for departure. So weather, model, display, lights effects and in summary - totally accurate rendition of flight based on real time weather anaylsis and a highly accurate simulator model. The Dash 8 a public project made possible by Manky. Accurate systems, controls, switches, electrics, alarms, automated flight, navigation systems, lighting. Prop and engine controls including autofeather test and all fire tests. APU or External or both. Autoflight system has all the quirky or basic de Havilland Canada 1st Generation logic. Central to it all is a flight model that is accurate aerodynamically and power! So thanks to the base simulator architecture - you can simulate the real aeroplane - so what you see is accurate - This is how a Dash 8 responds and performs - and the instrument indications are accurate! May not have some flash cabin textures but it is pure gold in every other aspect - it is an accurate flight simulator model and environment. Level 4 yesterday! Gentleman and Ladies - your Simulator is now here!

https://forums.x-plane.org/forums/topic/341880-what-plane-did-you-fly-today-maximum-2-shots-per-post-one-post-per-day-please-part-2/?page=57#comment-3016962

One thing is for sure as a Shensee - it will be to gold standard. I am glad his passion is older jet airliners. Makes you wonder where he may go next! The 720B is 5 stars - with 3 nav sytems options weather radar and all non commercial - amazing.

Ah the Maltby BAC111 - remember that one well authentically British engineering at its best! Still for the late 1950s a T Tail twin turbine med range liner - thirsty Rollers though!

Shensee who did the masterful and brilliant Boeing 720 had let us all know what he has been up to - the British Aerospace or BAC 111 -400. Here is a taste it is just about done. Given the standard of Shensees B720 - little doubt this will be a cracker as well! Wow. https://forums.x-plane.org/forums/topic/344804-bac-1-11-for-x-plane12/#comment-3015813

Sorry spoke to soon - Balloons are still there a few less but at least they are not operating in Thunderstorms and non vmc weather. Alas.

I noticed that the Balloons seem to have disappeared. Yay!

Quick input here - just my experience after the update loaded the sim and used the Skylabs C-47. That all worked until I selected the radio tuners then it froze or hung and CTD. The issue there is reported elsewhere the Laminar crash report dialogue box that could not complete and did not report. Second load went to default Laminar C172 - no issues, no CTD and completed short flight sucessfully. Third attempt just for interest Toliss A319. Loaded fine no issues no problems but some weird stuff happening with the FMS did not seem to respond. Other than that all fine. Note check all graphic settings no OOM issues and stable FPS in fact has gone up again all over. So looks like a few developers may have some scripting issues they will need to look at - as I said not widespread and otherwise this Beta is stable and even Live Traffic was behaving itself. FWIW.

Well said was going to say that myself. Keeps the perspective on this. 38,000 airports is not something you can assign to a batch process. I agree completely the changes are happening continuously - I see them all the time but then I tend to do a lot of out of the way sim aviating. The improvement is significant and impressive. I might be a bit different to some sim users who have their favourite patch or area, I am all over the globe from Africa to Asia and the Pacific etc etc. Recently as an example was in Western Africa environs (Angola, Namibia and South Africa) I was impressed by how good the default airports and scenery was - sure in some places may not have had the rubbish or oil stains but you did have to stand back and say - well why get an addon for here - nothing to change from a sim point of view. I guess the real addons I look at and use (less than a 100 in 38000) are because the scenery builder has done the hard yards creating the 3D objects of extravagant terminal architecture that is about in the RW, That takes time and dedication but even then the default in most cases in word not allowed close. Gateway and the community involved - amazing and appreciated. Some scenery releases stress that this is a Gateway airport updated and released until such time as this stuff gets incorporated - others well they have done the work to build it so and probably the models and libraries used are not easily incorporated into the general gateway and WED process (for instance the size of the data files supporting the airport complex) The vehicles running into you on the ground thing - yes saw that a lot once but as they get the airport environs cleaned up (taxyways etc) and corrected, do not see that at some but now and then at others - not a biggy for me. Few thoughts anyway

Gateway airports are updated in the sim as far as I am aware on a 3 monthly cycle. Laminar advise of any new additions that are shall we say new or major changes. The gateway updates are generally so small in file size that you just don't notice them when the XP updater does its thing. Lot of changes small and incremental and you only notice them now and then. Like the balloons (hate em myself)- starting to see a lot more of them for some reason!

2026 XP12 and Scenery revisit. This thread came up when I was on a Windows OS and XPlane. Changed over to a Linux OS and Linux XP. By this stage we are at XP12.4. Decided to leave default scenery as is first up. Came to the conclusion that Laminar had been subtely adding to scenery and airports (Lot of changes to objects) Marine traffic has been boosted significantly as well. Traffic on roads is orderly and believable with complete field of view coverage. Real weather depiction is significantly better and light management is being handled well as it is seems anti-aliasing, Only scenery addons i have added are the Grand Artic/Antartica And Northern Russian packages (Payware) to give me the North and South Polar regions which are not provided currently in XPlane. Added in a Pacific Package for Tahiti and Society Islands - that also gives excellent reef rendition and quite a few Pacific Islands and airports that do the same thing and are more authentic than the Gateway. Few quirky places with nice airports (Alas Greenland and Iceland) and by the way only XP12 versions with few libraries, some off course are almost works of art like Cami De Bellis airport scenery - outstanding. I find the current default airports all over the world to be very very well done now. There are of course what I call the mega-airports that are about which are down to the tins and rubbish level of airport authenticity only put in one Sydney Australia (Tampa Sydney) simply because the Gateway rendition is dated and needs work and the container bay on Botany Bay is missing in the default scenery which is odd. No SimHeaven, waiting for the Pro version to come. I am sure there are lots of areas where there are non default airport or small area geographical packages available like Alaska and Northern Canada and some parts of South America that would spruce it up but as I rarely go there the default does fine looks good to me! Default textures, trees and forest and water. Change nothing is very respectable.

Just a comment on Linux generally -Nothing to do with Sim stuff at all but for years I have battled with printers/scanner issues with Windows and HP Printers. Today wheeled out the old HP printer scanner. No need for special software it picked up the printer and then scanned for me all within a minute of trying it out and none of the other rubbish that was eternal on Windows of advertisements disguised as help updates etc need new drivers etc etc. It just did it with minimal interfaces. As somebody who has battled with printers for years and years on Windows - it was amazing - made my day! As to why HP well I still have a 18 year old HP PC - back from the time when HP made very good PCs and peripherals, it runs with a WIN 7 system for some other old legacy programs I still want and use - LOTUS, because 20 years later nobody has come up with anything remotely as good in terms of software as a couple of those old Lotus programs and they are still as good now as they were then -anybody remember them!

Once upon a time did the same comparison CRJ or ERJ - ERJ won out for me now with Version 2 and improved for XP12.4 a really nice model, lovely detail, great texture quality and so far pretty good system fidelity. Need them to update the manual for it now so we can really see what is what. 2 short flights - no issues at all. As aeroplane go bit of a runway hog (not a short strip beasty at all) initial climb not bad but drops off with altitude, cruise not that fast and can be a bit slipper on descent. Going to spend some time in this one now! Got some RW numbers for fuel, power and speeds from a current ERJ driver this morning - seems fairly close but different atmospherics make the difference (ISA or ISA +).

Was unaware that this oldie had been upgraded for XP12 - nicely done - that said I am with Bjoern - need a virtual pilot to assist - complicated little bugger is it not!

Well I appreciate (but not quite understand) XCrafts dedication to upgrading the ERJ line of Embraers for XP12 as the real aeroplane itself is now over twenty years old and long gone out of production replaced by the E Jets Line. A curious endeavour by XCrafts. I guess they have cornered the Embraer line - interesting to see where they go next! I had the old version and the discount was applied automatically at the Org Store - so the new version only cost me an additional $35. Happy with that and same applies to other XP11 stuff languishing around the sim world - happy to pay for an upgrade. I also have the E170 but not really a fan of the bigger E Jets simply because they just never got a toe hold in Oz. Virgin had a few but have ditched everything now but Boeings. Few regional or FIFO operators but that is all. So the E170 does me.

Waited for this one to replace the clunky early XP12 version. Much improved in the visuals area in and out, lot more systems depth. Yet to go flying again. (Manual time). X-Craft were good to their word so I got the discount on the purchase for having the earlier version. Glad to see it drop after months of teasers. The ERJ is a fascinating short haul light people mover.

Yes I had recreated the world for the 1960s courtesy of CalClassic and its devotion to piston liners. Then I got the seaplane bug and redid the world for every seaplane port or base I could find from the 1930s to the 1960s. Alas it required a peculiar library sorter to do scenery. The downloads of it are all still about on the net and the impressive JBK Short S23 was a blast. Really had the KBT Lockheed Electra L188 re-done beautifully Nothing like that comparable in XPlane - has the potential but alas no decent seaplanes except the Boeing 314 and the Hydroz PBY all the rest are just lighties. No big pistons like the DC-4 or DC-6 or the Constellation. DC-3s C-47s are splendidly done - choose your flavour. Linux is fast, robust, trouble free and XP performance is stable and double what it would do on Windows. Simple really. Do not need another sim at all.

JComm - my other threads sort of cover it. Step 1 is go and burn a couple of Linux sytems on a stick boot them up and have a look at them and Linux more generally. There may be quite a few Linux Distros but at the end they are still Linux and the core of that is kept clean and functional by Mr Torvalds himself. Some hardware may be problematic - Cinnamon Mint had the required NVIDIA drivers I required and lots of other programs I was already familiar with having been using the Windows open source versions anyway. Lots of people for various reasons go with dual boot so they can retain Windows and all those programs that are Windows hard wired. You can sort of do it with Wine but as for the sim programs - you either do that or bid them goodbye. After all I don't wistfully think about reinstalling FSX on my computer - its history along with P3D etc. My very important consideration for being able to go to a pure Linux system was simple as well - I had to have basically standalone programs except Internet- the world of cloud and streaming is not possible for me simply because the Telco's in my country do not provide the capacity outside of major city clusters of optic fibre networks. So I cannot say oh no no more MSFS because I never had it. Laminars XP12 runs faultlessly on my Linux box all on its own drive. I have had not bugs at all - so nothing more to say except I look at the aircraft models I have accumulated and think well that is pretty representative of everything about in the real world of aviation - so there. I kept a lot of stuff I did for FSX/P3D days (Model rebuilds, documents data etc) just in case. Then again I still have boxes in the shed with MS98 and ATPL on disks (No disk ready though LOL). I think there are issues with some peripherals - but as I only have a Logitech 3D Pro and no VR and I am happy with XP as it is so do not want Map Organiser. Streaming Ortho or whatever. I actually found a default installation more than acceptable visually - 90% or airports are payware quality by default. I have litterally double my performance in terms of FPS now and every time I run XP (I tinker a lot with different aeroplane models) I am constantly pleasantly informed about just how good this simulator is and it just gets better and better. So what else does one want? Real life stuff is handly securely and speedily by Linux as well. Cannot think of a single Windows program I could remotely require for a home user.

Anyway - same old same old mines better or bigger than yours - very tiresome. If its not MS v XP its MS v Linux or Mac or whatever. So why do Laminar bother with creating, developing and producing a sophisticated software product for 3 operating systems? and have done so since the beginning? Back on topic - nothing wrong with X-Crafts stuff at all, really like the EJets they all work for me and are a high quality sim model just waiting for the promised and previewed ERJs to arrive so I can get back to playing with the 145 in XP again!

While primarily of interest for Linux users a skillful programmer (StarTuxia) has produced a very clever little program called OXIDE to replace X-Organiser. My reading of it is that will work for Mac and Windows systems as well but primarily it was aimed at providing a program to do what X-Organiser did with Windows systems. Manage, advise and rectify ordering issues etc with you sim additions, aircraft, plugins and scenery! https://forums.x-plane.org/forums/topic/342202-x-addon-oxide-new-release-time-for-people-to-see-how-it-works-for-them-beta/#comment-3001347 The download is actually held on GITHUB, its freeware. Works well for me and sure is a welcome addition to this tricky area of sim oversight and management of addons not just scenery particularly for those with Linux or Mac OS's.. I think it is basically in an advanced Beta stage and not sure what final changes will be made to it. Has a modern and clean GUI and works well. HIghly recommended!

I was an old Linux user and Unix trained but left Linux alone for a long time because of the usual thing - employers and even my home users being wedded to Microsoft systems etc. Going back and starting afresh with Linux has been a little fraught at times (my ignorance and bad MS habits) but not really. I ignored the dual boot process and opted to format all the drives and only have a Linux OS installed. Part of that choice was helped very much by the fact that I had gone to XPlane when XP12 first arrived and I gave up on FSX and P3D and opted to only use XP and I knew that XP12 was Linux capable. That is a decision I have not regretted. One convieniantly chooses to ignore the mountains of garbage that is the MS Windows world and the constant problems and I particularly detested the way they basically treated you the user who owned the computer and paid for a copy of the OS as merely an easy mark to modify change update and non stop marketing and forcing the OS to work to what they wanted to market to you next. Life is now very peaceful and private, the system works beautifully, XP works flawlessly with great graphics and superior FPS etc and I have integrated all the PC peripherals nicely - what more can one want. There is not a single software program I used to use in MS world (and paid for sometimes lots) that I have not found a Linux replacement for and has not been free- so it does the job. Going to linux only cost me time and the pain of re downloading everything for XP - but it was worth it - weeded out the duds as well. Now Oxide has been produced and made available to manage your scenery etc, X-Organiser is history as well so I do not even contemplate using a windows emulation program like WINE. Best of all - I have a very good and relatively new PC and hardware and I know it will run on for years and years and years. As for Linux and XP - the only issues I have are not Laminars fault but developers who do not consider Linux in the software - one I paid good money for basically said not for Linux but if anybody knows how to do it feel free but too hard for me - they abandoned the product altogether and then did a dump onto the web as a freeware offering. Know about the updates etc been getting customer emails from X-Crafts for ages but still nothing about when I can actually obtain the updated version. The previous version requires a fudge and changes in Planemaker to get it serviceable in XP12. Nice model like the ERJ a lot by the way. Be nice to just get the product.

The rebuild and delivery of the updated ERJs has been marketed now for months and months - now into February 2026 and still nothing. I am even happy to pay for an updated version but in the meantime the ERJ's remain in my broken hangar and unuseable in XP12. I see a lot of PR and marketing but nothing else! Seems to be a common pattern with some private or payware - release a nicely presented but unfinished product, big flurry of activity then they go to ground or go away never to be heard from again! Of course there is the usual jump in from all and sundry saying do this or do that or what about which no doubt is a cause of upset - but hang on a minute - what is the point of releasing something basically flawed because it was not finished. I can think of 4 really nice private models all released and hugely accepted to discover that simple things like doors (there are none or the engine start logic is busted etc etc) Makes you wonder why go to all the effort to get a model for the sim to that state then just give it away. I can add at least another 10 or so to that list. The list of developers that got as far as XP11 did some great stuff but basically walked away from them in XP12 is not insignificant. Yet the sim itself has got better and better. So as for X-Craft I only committed to the E170 that still has issues and the ERJs remain in the virtual hangar. You want to sell me more then fix whats been done first! Not to single out X-Craft by the way I moved to a Linux system only to discover that X-Aviation's products - none of them are Linux compatible, so I had 4 really nice XP12 models for the sim (windows based then) that are now useless and had to be discarded. So the Challenger 650 will never grace my collection either. And why oh why developers can not standardise their installers (like using outdated and flawed stuff like Gizmo or Java) is beyond me - I have a few that will not work because the installer fails under Linux and I can get no response from the developer and doing hours of research on the internet does not come up with a workable solution Still - got a really nice collection of other stuff and just as well but those developers will always get my support and money - they have stood by their stuff and made them better and better as well. I guess that's my 2 cents worth!