UPDATE – The ugly cockpit shadows can be fixed by changing five values inside settings.txt file found under Resources folder. Active Sky XP 12 is available now and offering more stable real-world weather conditions, making X-Plane 12 very flyable on VATSIM with it. The official X-Plane 12 is receiving public Beta updates all the time, mostly fixing bugs. Report bugs and issues to the developers as the development continues.
X-Plane 12 has officially landed as a full-release version on December 17. As a real-world pilot, I still see too much bugs to get myself switching from XP11 to XP12 for good. Main issues for me are the overexposure effect in cockpit view, real-weather and cloud base altitudes doesn’t match the latest data, and missing snow conditions after the flight has loaded. It is a long road for Laminar Research to wrap all together, even though it’s a full-release now, it’s not final for sure. The hardware I run X-Plane 12 is Intel Core i7-9750, RTX 2060 6GB, and 16GB RAM. I’m using the Full HD resolution 1920×1080, but if you have 4K monitor, you can try resolution 2560×1440 for sharper picture affecting frame-rate though.
Before running X-Plane 12, note that you have both the Background Application Max Frame Rate and Max Frame Rate values at 30 FPS as well as Triple Buffering at ON, and Vertical Sync at ON for x-plane.exe under the Nvidia Control Panel. It’s up to you if deciding to limit frame-rate, but some users report smoother flying with it. Also, note that all aircraft failures are enabled by default, so you need to disable them by unchecking the Set mean time between failures option under Failures settings, or you start losing an engine at some point. Below are the recommended graphics settings for the Graphics options screen under the X-Plane 12 Settings.
Texture Quality: High
Ambient Occlusion Quality: High
Rendering Resolution: OFF
Antialiasing: 2X MSAA or with 1440p/4K resolution use FXAA
Anisotropic Filtering: 16X
Cloud Quality: Maximum
Shadow Quality: Aircraft Only
Rendering Distance: High
World Objects Density: High
Vegetation Density: High
Draw Parked Aircraft: OFF
Enable 3D Vegetation: ON
Allow Windshield Effects: ON
