X-Plane Roadmap Update – April 2026

Hello everyone! Now that 12.4.0 and 12.4.1 are wrapped up, let’s talk a bit more about what to expect. Our latest roadmap looks a bit like multiple aircraft on final, all eager to land! The next few updates are currently scheduled to be minor releases.

12.4.2 – Minor Bugfix Update

We have a few minor updates that we’re tracking at the moment, so we are planning a provisional hotfix update. This will be a very quick stop. More details TBA

12.4.3 – The VR Update

The next named update will be the VR Update. Following our earlier announcement this month, we are happy to confirm that X-Plane will be coming to Apple Vision Pro via CloudXR.

This is an exciting new development, not just for Apple Vision Pro owners, but the entire VR community, which will really take X-Plane further into Spatial computing. This is a complete rewrite of the VR system, which promises to deliver some exciting improvements (including some long-standing feature requests)

We know you still have a lot of questions. So we will plan a more detailed blog post about VR next week, with some additional reveals. In the meantime, read our announcement post!

12.4.4 – Minor Bugfix Update

This will be another bugfix update. We may have additional features to put in this release, but this is also provisional and TBA

12.5.0 – The Flight Model Update

The next major update will be the Flight Model update. We are a flight simulator after all, and our flight model is extremely important to us!

Austin has been cooking this up for a while, and the changes are impressive. We’ll have some major improvements to the helicopter flight model and some long-awaited gusting wind changes. In addition, developers will get access to ImGUI for UI development and will no longer be restrained by our current UI SDK.

We’ll also have a new, enhanced airport. But which one? Perhaps somewhere in the Western part of the world?

If you are a commercial aircraft developer, please get in contact with us. We want to make sure you are well accommodated for 12.5.0 and that your feedback is heard!

Roadmap Overview & Longterm Developments

Overall, the next few updates are going to be a lot more hardcore than what we’ve done up to now, which a sweeping array of improvements for everyone.

In the background, there’s a lot of buzz going on at Laminar lately! Our team is locked in right now towards next-gen scenery, and the observant ones amongst you have noticed that our recent updates are geared towards optimizing the simulator. New engine-level changes are constantly being made to help prepare us for future development. Obviously, this will take a long time, but we think it will be worth it!

In the meanwhile we still have quite a lot of updates planned (including updates not mentioned so far!) There will be quite a few surprises to come. But until then, catch you at the next roadmap.

Questions

Q. Why is Multi-Threading “partially deployed”?

12.4.0/12.4.1 only included multi-threading changes for scenery. We still have more plans to introduce more multi-threading over time. See Sidney’s latest blog post!

Q. Why is the X-Plane Store “partially deployed”? I don’t see it in 12.4.1?

The X-Plane Store system is currently active in X-Plane right now, but only for users looking to make a purchase from the demo version of X-Plane.

Q. Why is the X-Plane Store taking so long?

The store system works on a phased release system whilst we develop the MASSIVE amount of changes in the background. The next planned phase will see users start to see the store more “visually.”

Rest assured, if it were ready, we would release it! We’re not going to give additional dates on this subject.

Q. Why not tell us the version number for the upcoming changes?

Developing a simulator is a flexible environment. Sometimes we may need to allocate a release for something urgent, OR we might decide to bring things out more quickly. 12.3.3 is a good example of this!

Q. How is Motion Vectors coming along?

Being Hot-Potatoed between Ben, Sidney, and Maya right now. For those who don’t know what they are, motion vectors are basically a colored depiction of the direction and velocity of a pixel on the screen frame. This is important for dealing with features that require temporal data.

Rest assured, it’s just as important to us as dark cockpits or multi-threading was!

Q. Will there be any more plugin disruptions?

We don’t plan any additional disruptions. They are just as painful for us as they may be for you. Because we’ve now moved into a multi-threaded present, we now have to start enforcing the SDK (which many plugins had violated) to ensure the simulator’s stability. Plugin authors are always free to contact us, and we will gladly assist them with their queries!