Laminar Research, the developer who stands behind X-Plane 11, today published a post regarding X-Plane 11 11.40 beta 8 and roadmap update. If you want to check out the full article, you can do so here.
Version 11.40
First let’s talk about new, upcoming version 11.40 of X-Plane 11. Version 11.40 is going to come with a totally reworked physics engine, which Austin, the founder of Laminar Research, has been working on for the last six months. This is the first time when behind the update is just one developer, and the main reason behind this is, that it’s much easier to debug a work from one developer, that from multiple developers. The current beta, beta 8, still includes two known major bugs, from which one is already fixed, and the second should be fixed in beta 9 or 10.
If you’re not sure how can Laminar Research change their physics engine, from version 11.40, the game (or simulator, however you call it) will count the time it takes the air to get from the propeller to the tail of the aircraft, which is very nice feature, but it can also cause problems with 3rd party aircraft addons. That’s why Laminar Research is going to add a special feature for developers called “experimental flight model” which will basically enable the new physics engine in-game. In some time, the experimental flight model will become the flight model, but Laminar Research is not planning to do that in 11.40.
Vulcan
Vulcan is probably the most discussed feature which will be added to X-Plane 11. For those who don’t know, it’s a game engine, which will improve mainly performance, but also a few other important things. Sadly, at least for someone, the Vulcan is going to be featured with Metal support in version 11.50, which has no release date yet.
It’s too soon to discuss what will come after Vulcan, but we know, that Laminar Research is now for almost two years rewriting the rendering engine, so that is the next main thing coming to X-Plane 11 in future 🙂
