XP12 is an improvement but not much more than XP11 + cloudscapes or Xenviro.The night lighting is the same except that runway lighting, which is really very good now. From altitufe the night lighting detail goes south in a short distance, which is a shame. Also for all the hype about the flight model, you can fly the A330 with the reverse thrust engaged and break the nosewheel on the 737 yet it still maintains control like nothing happened…? Oh boy, I prefer this ‘xbox sim’ really. But one good thing is that XP is a modders dream so if mods help improve it then there is hope.
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If MSFS 2020 and XP12 would just have a baby👶 . I would pay child support for it.
lol🍼
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As a former Xplane 11 user I will pick it up because to me it is not a competitor. Used them all with extensive add-ons (FSX,P3D Xplane), never thought that MSFS competes with Xplane. The visuals in terms of landscape and realistic buildings/scenery can not be compared.
Xplane for me has always been about practicing systems. In MSFS I enjoy the scenery for most of the time because the engine does not simulate props or Beta-range throttle. It is just flying around for me seeing the cities and landmarks. I have all the high end aircraft from xplane and look forward to hitting the TBM and King Air again.
Xplane and MSFS will continue to attract different types of simmers.
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I tried the XP-12 demo, but i can say it is very disappointing.
I stay with MSFS2020 and XP11.
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The cloud system is really limited as it is now, it look like they used the old plugins, not newer generation up to date tech, there is loop all the time and cloud repeat, you can see it here Ten Hours of Flight in X-Plane 12 – Timelapse - YouTube clearly check the sky, it is really bad, not sure why they release this as beta. They are rushing things, I would never done that from company who don’t have much exposer and niche crowd.
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MSFS won’t compete because it doesn’t need to.
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In my opinion - the launch of XP12 will be good for MSFS and the flight community.
It will hopefully push both platforms to improve and develop.
I personally won’t get XP12 - because I have always used MSFS since Flight Sim 3 or 4 (I can’t remember the exact one I had) and this MSFS has been a joy (despite the occasional hiccups).
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XP 12 has been pretty disappointing so far. In a lot of streams, and even the forums, people are being very critical of it. I think this is also because MSFS has raised the bar for XP.
While XP 12 is better than XP 11, I think it could be too little, too late, for XP. This is like Blackberry making a better phone after the IPhone came out. Yeah, Blackberry did make a better phone after the IPhone came out, but it didn’t stop the ultimate fate of Blackberry and consumers mostly shrugged and moved on with the IPhone (and also moved on to Android when the Android phones came out).
If MSFS were never released, XP 12 would have been a pretty good release. But because MSFS is part of the equation now, it makes the XP 12 release that much more disappointing.
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I’ve just had a few short demo flights with it.
As predicted, graphically its an upgrade to XP11.5, but more like XP11.6.
Clouds are better, but have this No Mans Sky look about them. Better up close, but in the distance look kind of blurry, which is how the NMS engine appears to look. When flying in clouds, they are very uniform, and don’t have any “wispiness” to them as density changes inside. Nicely done though.
Ground handling seems far superior. Takes offs, and landings in crosswind conditions are easy, and predictable. The plane doesn’t feel like its skating about on the surface of the runway, and the wheels have actual grip to them. Though the on/off squeal from the wheels when braking sounds just like I remember from 11.5.
I flew around the demo area for a bit, and as I flew over the hills I didn’t feel like I was getting much in the way of mechanical turbulence. Might try higher winds after lunch.
Spins don’t auto-recover like they do in MSFS. You can hold the yoke back, and a full spin will develop, and it will stay there till you recover.
Performance was fantastic. Default graphical settings pushed to maximum, other than draw distance, and I was getting 70fps on the ground, and over 100fps while in the air. Plenty of scope to push out the draw distance here.
Overall I think XP fans will be pleased by this. Graphically its like MSFS running in offline mode.
If Asobo can nail the ground physics, and other aspects of the flight model, that will be one of the last nails in the coffin. But they have a lot of work to do.
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I think there is a good chance that MSFS may make XP obsolete in the home consumer PC market (that’s not to say XP doesn’t have room to survive because XP also serves the commercial market).
Even if MSFS becomes dominant in the home consumer PC market, I think we still need to continue push Asobo/Microsoft to keep improving MSFS.
If XP won’t be a competitor to MSFS (and with XP 12’s release, it doesn’t look like a very good competitor at this point), we need to keep the pressure on Asobo/Microsoft to keep improving MSFS, as though there were a true competitor to MSFS.
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They are already dominant and always have been whenever they have had a sim in their product range. They have never killed off XP though and never will because there will always be an objective group of simmers who can see merits in both platforms.
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I bought it impulsively yesterday night after testing some old addons i had with XP11. The Airfoillabs King Air looks really nice and it was developed for XP11 originally.
At first glance, there are improvements with the clouds (there are artifacts they need to fix), lights and autogen. I find the colors less saturated than with MSFS (and maybe even better?).
Photogrammetry is nice but I rely more on good autogen tbh (which MSFS can do well)
The competition will be tough because MSFS is very good. For people who have XP11 and lots of addons, XP12 might be a worthy upgrade. Laminar enhanced many things its community asked for.
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Well at this moment in time, it’s Laminar that have to fight back, not Asobo. Asobo already have the edge, in the sense that their product has had a two year headstart. But I don’t disagree with the OP. As time progresses, there is no doubt that Laminar will poach a lot of Asobo customers. Assuming XP12 is a stable platform and does exactly what it’s supposed to do, customers that are experiencing difficulty with MSFS are going to jump ship. From what I’m seeing so far, Laminar have concentrated on the flight model a lot more than Asobo have. Asobo’s strengths lie with the visuals, which will suit the GA fliers.
One thing is absolutely certain. Competition in the flight sim market can only be a good thing, and I can only hope that it pushes both developers to make their respective products as good as they possibly can.
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That is theoretical physics. In experimental physics, there are always error margins and approximations 
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Yeah but there hasn’t been such a leap forward in a flight sim like MSFS has done now. I mean look at XP. There wasn’t that much of a difference it terms of visual from 10-11. And now 11-12 doesn’t seem any different either. Some streamers are stating 11 looks even better than 12. I for one, never intend to go back to XP. Just too tired of all the modding with orthos and ini files. I’ve probably wasted the same amount of time working with orthos and flying time. And I’ve spent many hours on it.
MSFS is just too beautiful and although has its flaws, it is improving quickly.
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I’ve had another few flights. The rain effects are really nice, very well done.
One big difference I had forgotten about was fuel mixture. In MSFS, leaning the mixture has a very gradual effect on engine performance. In XP12 lean it too far, and the engine just dies, and it’s not too lean off peak to do that.
I also looked for mechanical turbulence, and didn’t get any that I could see. The irony of XP users stating that MSFS is like flying on rails is not lost on me. I set up manual 15kt winds, and flew close to the peaks of hills, and ridges, and watched my VSI. I saw no real change there.
The users stating that 11 looks better than 12 likely have heavily customised 11.5 installs, with custom sceneries.
The sceneries in default XP12 are pretty decent, if you don’t compare them to MSFS. They are more than serviceable, but in comparison don’t really measure up, and will still require either the download of large amounts of Ortho data to local disk, or cranking them out by hand with existing tools.
The downside to that is you lose that spontaneity that MSFS gives you. I can fly anywhere in the world, and have streamed Ortho for that region. In XP I would have to search for, and download the data or create it myself. A part of my decision making process has already been made for me based on what data I already have to hand.
As someone who flies mainly VFR, or at least low altitude IFR, that alone means I wouldn’t go back to XP.
What I am genuinely thankful for though is the mere existence of XP12, as it gives us a competitor sim to hold Asobo’s feet to the fire, as it were.
I really hope they all at least try out the demo, and see what the other camp are doing, and take on board the things they do better.
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I pulled up XP12 and ran a couple test VFR flights; it’s a very nice incremental improvement over XP11, and I’m going to enjoy playing with some of the different planes and systems.
For VFR, though, you just can’t beat actually having ortho textures and photogrammetry built in like in MSFS 2020. Knowing that an old military base with huge blimp hangars is on the way to line up to KSNA isn’t the same as being able to see actual scans of those hangars as you fly instead of a big empty field*. 
I wish XP the best of luck, and may all sims reach and support their simmers.
*Note that you can add some of these things in with mods, but it’s a lot more work to get to a lower level of immersion than MSFS, still without general photogrammetry of misc buildings.
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How is VR Performance compared to msfs2020?
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Just watched a couple of Youtube videos of X-Plane 12 and wow! The cockpits look so good! It really puts MSFS to shame in that regard. I don’t know what Asobo has done but they can’t really model photorealistic cockpits.
The gauges have a sense of depth to them and the shadows look amazing. I don’t know why MSFS looks worse inside the aircraft when everything else looks better than X-Plane.
I’m a MSFS fanboy and I would never switch to X-Plane but the lighting in MSFS is really flat sometimes.
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I realize it’s the talking point that Meyer and his followers like to keep pushing, especially about flight dynamics being supposedly superior in XP, and how MSFS is just about visuals and is a game while XP is all about flight simulation (lol). And understandable I suppose… but it’s useful to educate yourself on what actual non-biased experts have said, especially those who have developed for both sim platforms like iniBuilds who consider the flight model for their upcoming A310 for MSFS to be equally capable and on part with XP’s, and others who understand how the core flight dynamics engines work in both sims: MSFS flight models, aerodynamics, etc
The differences in world visualization/simulation between XP12 and MSFS are way greater than the differences in the core aerodynamics engines… In fact, with the all the upcoming improvements in core flight dynamics as part of SU11 (helicopter physics, CFD driven atmospheric airflow simulation within a 20km cocoon around aircraft, etc) and as ground physics/handling is reworked/fixed, I’d even venture to say MSFS will surpass XP in that area too… as aircraft developers get more familiar with the MSFS platform, it’s only going to get better (but with the initial batch of high fidelity aircraft like the Milviz C310, Fenix A320, PMDG 737, etc with great flight dynamics and systems, the “Simulator” part in MSFS is already delivering in spades.
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