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X-Plane 12 flight sim is officially out now

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X-Plane 12 from Laminar Research is a realistic and powerful flight simulator with real-world physics, accurate aircraft systems / behaviour and an immersive simulation of the world.

It was previously in Early Access but the release is out now proper. Seems it still has a little way to go with winning people over, as it has a Mostly Positive rating on Steam so far with many noting it's not quite at the level of X-Plane 11 yet but no doubt in time it will become nicely polished so people can properly appreciate all the fancy new bits.

Some of what's new in X-Plane 12 includes:

New Engine Features in X-Plane 12

  • Volumetric 3D Clouds
  • Physics-Based Photometric Lighting Model
  • Worldwide 3D Water
  • Rewritten AI-Air Traffic Control System
  • Global 3D Forests
  • Seasonal Textures and Weather Effects
  • Revamped Real Weather Data

New Aircraft in X-Plane 12

  • Airbus A330
  • Cessna Citation X
  • Lancair Evolution
  • Cirrus SR22
  • Piper PA-18 Super Cub
  • Van's RV-10
  • F-14 Tomcat
  • Robinson R22 (plus a floats version)

Trailer of the new version is below:

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From the press release:

“We’re thrilled to share X-Plane 12 with the world after years of hard work to take our flight simulator to the next level. Preparing this release has involved re-writing almost every aspect of the application to implement first-principles physics and rendering in the tireless pursuit of ultimate realism“ said Thomson Meeks – Director of Operations.

You can buy it on Steam or directly on their website.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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5 comments

JRayLamb Dec 23, 2022
The game looked great, right up to the point where I saw "Requires proprietary graphics drivers"

What the ... the kernel AMD drivers are better than the proprietary drivers, so why do I need those? Nvidia, yeah, you'll need them as nouveau isn't nouveau nor performant really.

I've got a couple of other games on my wishlist and maybe once I get to it, I'll pick this one up *if* I don't need the amdgpu-pro drivers for it.
tfk Dec 23, 2022
The game looked great, right up to the point where I saw "Requires proprietary graphics drivers"

What the ... the kernel AMD drivers are better than the proprietary drivers, so why do I need those? Nvidia, yeah, you'll need them as nouveau isn't nouveau nor performant really.

I've got a couple of other games on my wishlist and maybe once I get to it, I'll pick this one up *if* I don't need the amdgpu-pro drivers for it.

You don't need the pro drivers. The sim works perfectly fine with the regular AMD kernel driver.

For NVIDIA the proprietary are needed.
whizse Dec 23, 2022
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I've got a couple of other games on my wishlist and maybe once I get to it, I'll pick this one up *if* I don't need the amdgpu-pro drivers for it.
They used to require the proprietary drivers for the older version of the game. It looks like the Steam page haven't been updated.

Their own webpage have the correct information:
"We require the Mesa drivers, version 22.0 or newer, for AMD to run X-Plane."
JRayLamb Dec 23, 2022
I've got a couple of other games on my wishlist and maybe once I get to it, I'll pick this one up *if* I don't need the amdgpu-pro drivers for it.
They used to require the proprietary drivers for the older version of the game. It looks like the Steam page haven't been updated.

Their own webpage have the correct information:
"We require the Mesa drivers, version 22.0 or newer, for AMD to run X-Plane."

Woohoo! Added to my wishlist. Here's hoping Father Yule brings me some cold hard cash!
Mountain Man Dec 26, 2022
Another amazing flight simulator from Laminar Research. They are somehow able to repeatedly raise the bar with every release. Microsoft Flight Simulator might arguably have prettier ground textures, but X-Plane is vastly superior in literally every other way, especially the physics and flight modeling, which is by far the most important part in a flight simulator.
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