X-Plane 12 Demo is released

[quatermass]

What is everyone using for a yoke and throttles?

I have the Thrustmaster Airbus Sidestick, plus the Airbus throttle quadrants and flap/speedbrake side addons, and the TFRP rudder pedals. I mostly fly GA, so for single engine I have one throttle for throttle, and one for mixture, which works really well. The pedals can be a bit oversensitive, but adjusting the response curve can help.

 

[diamond.g]

So now that X-Plane is out and updates on game performance on Apple Silicon Macs?

 

[MacsRgr8]

I have been using X-Plane 12 since the first early access version on my Mac Studio Max | 32 Core GPU | 64 GB RAM.
I use a 49" 3840 x 1080 UW monitor, all settings high, clouds to the max.

At the beginning not many 3rd party plugins were Apple Silicon native, but now most are. I use stuff like Traffic Global, FSWidgets, Better Pushback, HaversineAir, X-ATC chatter.... all work great natively!
First couple of betas had some performance issues with the new volumetric clouds and sunset-colours, but these are ironed out for some time now.

I make use of many scenery add-one like orthophotos, SIMHeaven X-Europe, pay-ware airports and other sceneries (lots of Orbx TrueEarth stuff for instance) and the performance is stunning!

Settings as described above and easily over 30 FPS, that is flying low over London approaching Heathrow, or over Manhattan, or L.A, only sometimes dropping towards 20 - 25 when approaching Amsterdam airport (for whatever reason....?). All other "heavy scenery" work great.

I must note that this Mac uses c.a. 40 GB of RAM total when flying low over heavily populated areas.
GPU between 75% and 99%
CPU between 140% and 175%
Only during loading does X-Plane use all cores.

 

[dimme]

I run Xplane on a M1 iMac with 16GB of ram, I not seeing the performance as noted above, but with Ortho scenery & SIMHeaven I am averaging in the high 20's for my FPS. My graphics settings are conservative buy the experience is fine for my needs. In the beginning performance was poor but with each beta and now the final things are looking good.

 

[MacLawyer]

I’m finding that some of my add-on aircraft aren’t functioning in X-Plane 12 unless I’m running in Rosetta and some aren’t functioning no matter what. Studio Pro, 32 gigs RAM.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I’m finding that some of my add-on aircraft aren’t functioning in X-Plane 12 unless I’m running in Rosetta and some aren’t functioning no matter what. Studio Pro, 32 gigs RAM.

That's probably due to these aircraft making use of the SASL plugin.
Good news is that SASL is currently in preview for Apple Silicon, but you still need to wait for the aircraft devs to update it to make use of the newer SASL plugin.
I have the same issue for the 3rd party TwinOtter as an example.

Some sceneries are also not playing nice with Apple Silicon native. The sceneries using SAM for animations (like the jetways) will load fine, but the animations won't work. FlyTampa's Amsterdam loads fine, but the jetways are not pointing towards the direct direction.

I use X-Plane 12 native only, and fly around Netherlands / UK / USA mostly either in an the standard Cessna or B738.
I use Orbx's TrueEarth (UK & USA), my own Orthorphtos for Europe with Simheaven's X-Europe etc.
It looks tremendous!

But, sometimes I will go back to X-Plane 11 to fly with the TwinOtter at SXM and Saba for example.

Both perform extremely well on my Mac Studio Max 32 Core GPU 64 GB RAM with 3840 x 1080 UW monitor.