X-Plane 12, the main competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator, is out

A newer version of the flight simulator X-Plane from Laminar Research, the main competitor of Microsoft Flight Simulator, has been released from early access. X-Plane 12 is now available on both Steam and official game site.

The current price of the Steam version of the game for Ukrainians is UAH 699, at the recent sale in November it could be purchased for only UAH 468. On the official website, the game is much more expensive – $59.99, but there you can download a demo version.

The Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane 12 series have been developing almost in parallel since the mid-90s of the last century. But by the time Microsoft dropped its series in the mid-2000s, X-Plane was definitely dominating the segment. Moreover, the US Federal Aviation Administration even used a simulator based on this game to train pilots. But with the appearance of Microsoft Flight Simulator‘s game from Laminar Research found itself playing catch-up.

X-Plane 12 offers players a new VR-enabled game engine, volumetric clouds, photometric lighting, global weather, 3D water, new traffic AI, changing seasons, and more. Among the new aircraft are the Airbus A330, Cessna Citation X, Lancair Evolution, Cirrus SR22, Piper PA-18 Super Cub, Van’s RV-10, F-14 Tomcat jet fighter and Robinson R22 helicopter.

All detailed textures and objects for all continents, as in the case of MSFS, are available for free download. There are no paid DLCs with planes and airports for the new game yet. At that time, the full set of DLC for X-Plane 11 (2017) costs almost UAH 65,000 on Steam.