Early last month, Laminar Research completed work on version 12.1 of the simulator, marking the end of an extensive beta period. Version 12.1 was officially declared final, adding many features to the stable release channels. The team at Laminar has not slowed down however, now releasing the 12.1.2 beta version. This version adds a number of new features, aimed at increasing immersion and fixing bugs.
Boats
The update statement released by Laminar Research, found here, features a “Caribbean” theme. This hints at some of the new features in this update. Aside from the, perhaps infamous, aircraft carriers that already existed in the sim, a variety of new boats and vessels have been added. The boats range from large oil tankers to leisure yachts and fishing boats and should appear with “region-specific accuracy”. This aims to increase the immersion when flying around islands, oceans and coastlines. One of the screenshots includes a dolphin and features a person with a striking resemblance to X-Plane creator Austin Meyer.
Carribbean Airports
The 3D airports in X-Plane are “community sourced” through the Scenery Gateway platform. Users and designers all over the world have added and updated over 20,000 airports to X-Plane using the built in textures and libraries for which Laminar expresses their grattitude. In this new release however, Laminar states to have added three custom airports. Opting to use custom buildings and ground textures for three Caribbean airports. These islands should serve as a useful starting point for spotting the newly added boats!
One of the airports that received a custom touch is Princess Juliana International Airport (TNCM). An airport on the Dutch side of Saint Martin, famous for its low approaches over Maho Beach.
Additionally Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (TNCS) was updated with custom buildings and received a custom orthographic overlay as well. This challenging airport on the island of Saba features the shortest commercial runway in the world at only 400 meters.
Finally Gustaf III Airport (TFFJ) at St. Barth’s is also known in aviation to be rather challenging, featuring a very steep approach, seemingly only several feet above the terrain.
Features
Moving on from the Caribbean theme, this update adds a few “regular” changes as well. Laminar has added a few new “commands” to the sim, allowing a pilot in the Virtual Cockpit to quickly move the camera view by steps of 45 degrees left and right and 30 degrees up and down. This can come in handy when doing visual approaches or circuit training for example.
Another feature that has been requested often is the ability to connect dual jetways to your widebody airliner. Developers of aircraft and scenery will now have the ability to update their products to take advantage of this new feature and we should start seeing this in action soon.
To give the airside part of the airport a fresh look, this update also includes some new “Library Objects”. This means the addition of new ground service equipment like ground power units, stairs and buses.
Finally, new hardware support is added for VirtualFly products such as Switcho Engines, Lights and Trims.
Bugfixes and enhancements
The replay tool is a valuable and perhaps mostly fun utility in any sim. The feature however has sometimes been prone to crashes. Laminar has now made changes in this update to improve the stability.
Additionally the update contains the following:
- Local Web API bugfix
- Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas was updated
- Fixed problem with rain drops on windshields
- Fixed engine behavior bug in the Cirrus VisionJet.
- Added gauges for all batteries on the ALIA 250 display
Finally as a note: This update is a Beta release and is, per definition, less stable but does allow the community to take a look and new features and test the stability of them. Detailed instructions by Laminar Research on how to use beta versions can be found here.
