After three iterations of Open Beta testing, Laminar Research has published a stable build for X-Plane in version 12.1.2 which brings boats, dual jetways, custom airports in the Caribbean area and library objects plus over 20,000 updates to airports via the scenery gateway from user generated developments.
X-Plane 12.1 brought many scenery changes to the platform but by far the largest of which was based in the area surrounding St Maarten in the Caribbean. The instantly recognisable airport where large aircraft land over the fence next to Maho beach just feet above spectator’s heads has received an overhaul, along with a revamped Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ), commonly known as St. Bart’s where aircraft land over a steep hill on one side of the short runway and on the other, a small beach that meets the sea making for a very challenging approach. Finally, the team’s attention was also spent on developing a custom airport for Juancho E. Yrausquin airport (TNCS), known as Saba which is home to the world’s shortest commercial runway in the world.
The majority of the updates on the latest two releases are mainly fixes to the beta builds, which include a review of the issues associated with the replay function where the team have fixed a memory leak, crashes in replay mode after a long flight and some display issues with the water effects and helicopters not showing making the replay mode more stable.
Dual docking systems were added to the initial beta and scenery developers will now be able to utilise the feature when building custom airports but Laminar has also included the feature in key base airports such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo Haneda, Munich and more.
Users of 12.1 Betas have also experienced issues when flying seaplanes, this was related to wake parameters which have now been adjusted, making flying from water more manageable. Seaplanes in the past were slowed down when brakes were pressed on water, this is obviously not true to life so Laminar has added an anchor functionality to prevent your seaplane from drifting with the tide. Other fixes to aircraft include relative altitudes of local aircraft displayed on the G1000 will now be displayed more accurately, allowing virtual pilots to be able to navigate traffic with more precision.
For a full explanation as to what version 12.1 has to offer, head to our recap of X-Plane’s announcement here, or head over to the X-Plane 12.1.2 release notes page on the X-Plane website.
Changelog
RC1&2
- Fixed random crashes on Microsoft Windows for NVIDIA GPUs
- Improved performance for boat wake rendering
- Fixed device loss errors when using Ortho4XP tiles
- Visuals of connected slave stations are stuck while waiting for the master when reloading the flight from the instructor station (XPD-15963)
- General improvements around the replay system in terms of stability
- Fixed a memory leak in the replay system
- Water effects will been shown during replay (XPD-15952)
- Fixed crash in replay after a long flight (XPD-15772)
- The rotors of the Robinson R22 helicopter will turn now correctly during replay (XPD-15935)
- Relative altitudes of local traffic will be displayed correctly again on the G1000
- Sending invalid data will no longer crash X-Plane (XPD-15820)
- Updated translations and fixed some German spelling mistakes (XPD-14153)
- Further improvements around the replay system to avoid crashes
- Enhanced logging around the replay system and dual jetways, which will hopefully help to triage and fix issues
- Adjusted wake parameters to make seaplanes flyable again, because those wakes had quite an impact on the planes
- Added sailboat races and schools to the scenery
