The development plans for versions 12.1.0 and 12.2.0 have been disclosed on the official website. Below is the translation. Blog Post Walk of Shame

Two Quick Store Notes:

We announced the X-Plane store plan in Montreal; Dellanie has a great FAQ there, but for developers, I want to highlight two points:

1. We will not wall off X-Plane. I fully understand why people might think we would, since the iPhone App Store is (1) a very prominent way to do in-app purchases, and (2) the iPhone is a walled garden. But we won’t do that. Your way of importing everything into X-Plane will still work, including addon installers, dragging folders, etc. Purchasing through the store is not mandatory, and all existing ways of working will continue to function. You won’t have to pay for free software or re-buy anything.

2. You won’t have to be online all the time. Our current policy is that if you have an online license (“XDD key”), you must log in every two weeks (or longer) to update it. We are not switching to an “always-online” model - we know that is impossible for many of our users, and we think keeping this “update the key every now and then” policy is necessary.

Coming Next: 12.1.0 and 12.2.0

We currently have plans for two “major updates”:

12.1.0 will be the next version and is primarily a graphics update. RCAS, bloom, depth of field, shadow softening, cloud shadow fixes, new decals, you name it. This update will also fix some real weather bugs and move to new real weather servers.

12.2.0 will be released after 12.1.0 and is primarily a flight model update. Including all of Austin’s progress on propeller blade dynamics, Stall, and Turbulence.

Both versions will have a lot of other content; they are both large patches. I am pointing out the graphics/flight model distinction intentionally, to control the testing scope.

We are aiming to get version 12.1.0 into private testing this month.

How about Documentation Updates? Probably only three people on Earth care about this, but after a decade (or a walk of shame), I have been forced to update the .net file format specification. So if this interests you, I apologize for the delay and the impending pain. The road scenery file format in X-Plane is extremely complex, and I don’t actually recommend anyone try to hack it, but it’s not a secret.

Scenery, Now and Future

I am working on water bodies and orthophoto issues, hoping to finish them for 12.1.0. We will also re-cut the DSFs (hopefully for 12.1.0, but maybe for 12.2.0) to fix Gateway airport boundaries and Runway undulations.

In Montreal, I talked a bit about the future of the X-Plane scenery system, but that is complex enough to require another blog post to explain.