Weather Wonders of X-Plane 12

A recent update brings new lighting and weather experiences to users of one of the top aviation simulation games.

Peter James

Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 12:34 PM ET

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Flying the Toliss A319 from New York to southern New England, in X-Plane 12. [Image courtesy of Peter James]

Key Takeaways:

The author, initially a proponent of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), experienced significant frustration with early versions of X-Plane 12 (XP12) due to graphical glitches, performance issues, and add-on incompatibility.
A recent beta update to XP12 transformed the experience, addressing performance problems, improving visuals, and enabling compatibility for previously purchased aircraft.
X-Plane 12 now offers an exceptionally accurate and graphically stunning depiction of live weather, particularly for convection, rain, and atmospheric phenomena, which the author rates as superior to MSFS2020, though MSFS2020 still leads in thermal simulation on sunny days.

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Since writing about the world of home flight simulators for FLYING, I have largely focused on the “new” Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020). There are many reasons for this as this latest entry into the most famous flight sim of all time looks and feels incredible. The visuals are certainly the stuff imaginations are made of, especially for those of us over 40 who began our sim careers flying a Cessna 182RG where advanced scenery was a few sticks and lines to look like Chicago.

Now that we have become accustomed to the visuals and feel of MSFS2020 and comfortable with all the available add-ons and updates to improve the experience, it could be easy to forget the “other” sim, X-Plane.