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 found X-Plane 12 (XP12) frustrating due to graphical glitches, performance issues, and add-on incompatibility, preferring the older X-Plane 11.
A recent beta update dramatically improved XP12, resolving performance issues, updating sky coloring, lighting, and cloudscapes, and making XP11 add-ons compatible.
The updated XP12 excels in its highly realistic and graphically stunning weather modeling, accurately depicting live weather, storm formations, and detailed rain effects, which the author considers superior to MSFS2020 in many aspects.
While XP12's convection-related weather is exceptional, its thermal simulation on sunny days is still considered inferior to MSFS2020's model.

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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.