Laminar Research recently posted development news for X-Plane 12 and announced the next milestone, the early access release of X-Plane 12.
We are part of the X-Plane developers workspace and thanks to the access, all of the packages (X-EUROPE, X-AMERICA, X-AFRICA, X-ASIA, X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA, X-ANTARCTICA) are already adapted for XP12 and actually in the final generation, including the new vegetation and with (besides the current OSM data) much more (exactly 788,235,841) Microsoft global building footprints to complete the landscapes all over the world.
Here’s an overview what’s coming next to illustrate the versions you’ll soon be able to download and fly:
| X-Plane 11 | X-Plane 12 | tiles per layer |
| X-EUROPE 5.11 | X-WORLD Europe | 1,667 |
| X-AFRICA 4.0 | X-WORLD Africa | 2,711 |
| X-AMERICA 4.0 | X-WORLD America | 4,577 |
| X-ANTARCTICA 4.0 | X-WORLD Antarctica | 102 |
| X-ASIA 4.0 | X-WORLD Asia | 6,231 |
| X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA 4.0 | X-WORLD Australia-Oceania | 1,405 |
200 gigabytes of data are processed to create over 116,000 tiles. The versions for XP11 and XP12 are almost identical, for XP12 there will be some changes to use the new vegetation, so a new vegetation library is required. The overlap of adjacent packages will be optimised to ensure an impressive flight without gaps between continents. X-A packages will then have the latest developments from X-EUROPE. All new versions for XP11 and XP12 and the new vegetation library will be released at the start of the public beta of XP12 (when it is not on my holiday😊).