On September 25, 2021, X-Plane 12 was announced at Flight Sim Expo 2021. Although initially available for free, only five initial locations are available without purchase of a monthly subscription. On December 9, 2019, X-Plane Mobile Global, a major update for the mobile port, was released. Update 11.50 in September 2020 introduced Vulkan and Metal support. The official release of X-Plane 11 was on March 30, 2017. A second public beta was released on December 6, 2016, which fixed some major bugs. On November 25, 2016, Laminar Research released the public beta of the simulator's latest version, X-Plane 11, to the general public. This is further enhanced by the X-Plane forums, where users can share aircraft, scenery, plugins, and the Scenery Gateway website, which allows users to share airports with other users, which can be eventually integrated into the base product. X-Plane also has a plugin architecture that allows users to create their own modules, extending the functionality of the software by letting users create their own worlds or replicas of places on Earth. X-Plane is pre-packaged with several commercial and military aircraft, as well as global scenery, which covers most of the Earth. A mobile version is available for Android, iOS, and webOS since 2009 as well.

In addition, Laminar Research also distributes FAA-certified versions for professional use. X-Plane is the only flight simulator suitable for both Windows and macOS with commercial desktop versions available sold for macOS, Windows, and Linux. X-Plane is a flight simulation engine series developed and published by Laminar Research since 1995.

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