Linux-Friendly X-Plane 11 Flight Simulator Shipping Later This Year

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux-Friendly X-Plane 11 Flight Simulator Shipping Later This Year

X-Plane, one of the most realistic flight simulators that continues to be cross-platform, will be released "this holiday season" and it offers more flying improvements and much better visuals...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=X-Plane-11-This-Holiday

[M@GOid]

Rope they can build a modern engine that can really take advantage from a modern multi CPU processor. All major commercial flight simulators are using old engines, from Windows XP times, that cannot fully tax a modern quad or octa core CPU. Is pathetic when you read the lame excuses from developers that are asking a lot of money for a old piece of software.

Too bad nobody is using Unreal or Cry Engine as a base for a modern flight simulator.

[AdamOne]

and ive never heard of it...

[Michael]

and ive never heard of it...

X-Plane has been available (and supported under Linux) for a long time.... Since the 90s IIRC for the original X-Plane. I talk with one of their developers often about Linux matters.

[Michael]

Rope they can build a modern engine that can really take advantage from a modern multi CPU processor. All major commercial flight simulators are using old engines, from Windows XP times, that cannot fully tax a modern quad or octa core CPU. Is pathetic when you read the lame excuses from developers that are asking a lot of money for a old piece of software.

Too bad nobody is using Unreal or Cry Engine as a base for a modern flight simulator.

A Unigine 2 flight simulator was announced yesterday, but sadly already checked with Unigine Corp and they think the licensee is making it Windows-only.

[Amarildo]

Rope they can build a modern engine that can really take advantage from a modern multi CPU processor. All major commercial flight simulators are using old engines, from Windows XP times, that cannot fully tax a modern quad or octa core CPU. Is pathetic when you read the lame excuses from developers that are asking a lot of money for a old piece of software.

Too bad nobody is using Unreal or Cry Engine as a base for a modern flight simulator.

To be fair, Laminar has even less developers than, say, PMDG. Last I checked, PMDG had 8 employees and Laminar had around 5. So yeah, it IS difficult to implement Vulkan on such short staff, but they're working on it.

And "Unreal" or "Cry Engine" for flight simulation? Are you nuts? X-Plane's physics are already VERY good (they're the best in helicopter FlightModel), and switching to these engines would do them no good.

If you're saying they should change to these engines just because they look pretty, then go look for another Sim because it's not happening. There are other sims that bring eye-candy.

[Amarildo]

X-Plane has been available (and supported under Linux) for a long time.... Since the 90s IIRC for the original X-Plane. I talk with one of their developers often about Linux matters.

Any words about official support for OSS drivers?

[Kemosabe]

Rope they can build a modern engine that can really take advantage from a modern multi CPU processor. All major commercial flight simulators are using old engines, from Windows XP times, that cannot fully tax a modern quad or octa core CPU. Is pathetic when you read the lame excuses from developers that are asking a lot of money for a old piece of software.

Too bad nobody is using Unreal or Cry Engine as a base for a modern flight simulator.

I doubt that these short distance bling bling engines are capable of rendering hundreds of square km much more fancier than X-Plane 11 will do.

[Ehvis]

The thing with X-Plane development is that it is more like an operating system than a game. Continuous incremental updates to make it better and every once in a while a few major features for a major version. It's the only way they can sustain themselves in a market as small as that.

As said, switching to a different engine is almost impossible because of that. However, Vulkan support will come. The engine dev who does most of the blog post has already said that Vulkan is what is needed to make X-Plane development easier and more future proof. It's likely that it will come in a future update for XP11. Which will probably be in continuous development for the next five years.

[Zoll]

Nobody expected XPlane 11 to be shipping so soon! Everyone thought it was at least 2 years away! This is a pleasant surprise indeed! I just hope it doesn't break the hundreds of dollars I spent on addons and hardware. I'll buy it on the 1st day out!!