X Plane 11 Scenery Addons Amazing Realism at Your Fingertips.
Improving your visual experience quickly and easily with some X Plane 11 scenery addons is a lot of fun. Choosing the best addons can improve both visual quality as well as performance in some occasions can be difficult so here are some great options. By no means comprehensive these addons will bring increased realism, visual fidelity and in some cases performance. These often quite small programs make a huge difference in the realism and quality X Plane 11. They bring updated versions of already included items like clouds. They can also add features not included yet included in X Plane 11. Installing many new addons or plugins is mostly an easy task. There are some that you may wish to avoid if they look to complicated. All the ones in this LetsflyVFR.com post are pretty straight forward.
What Are Scenery Addons?
Passionate community developers take on the challenge of adding new features or improving current ones in all flight simulators. The time and effort can be extensive and yet they are mostly offered to the community for free. X Plane 11 is certainly no different and these industrious people create addons for us all. They also regularly update and bug fix as necessary. Listening to the many users out there they get feedback through forums. The variety off effects is broad and can include adding rain effects, high resolution textures for runways, buildings and replacement trees. There is even a plugin to add seasons to X Plane 11 and improve the cloud textures. So how are these effects created.
Lua & Python
Lua and Python are both very popular programing languages used to create the many addons or plugins we enjoy. The languages are found in all the flight simulation communities plugins across the board. Flight sim developers make it easy for would be third party developers to create scripts by making their SDK or Software Development Kits freely available. The Lua and Python scripts are open source so you can freely create use the resulting scripts without any copywrite issues.
What is Lua Script?
Lua is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language. It is designed primarily for embedded use in applications ie. modifying an existing program like X Plane 11. Lua is cross-platform as well Lua has a relatively simple C API to embed it into applications. Wikipedia
What is Python Script?
Python script is a collection of commands that can be used together to create a new program. It is able to call on other commands like a library then integrate the commands and modules together and run it all by using one command. It’s a popular programing language and for programmers easy to implement their ideas.
The Best Sceney Addons
The ideal place to find many plugins is X Plane.org. This is the focus of the X Plane community but there are other websites that also offer addons.
The Top Scenery Addons You Need!
- Ortho4XP – by Oscar Pilote
- OverlayEditor – by Marginal
- World Editor – By Laminar Research
- Plugin Caution – Important Information
- Librain by Skiselkov
- Four Seasons by Nicotum-xp
- Y Clouds 4 – by Y Pilot
- XRAAS – Runway Awareness & Advisary System by Skiselkov
- Conclusion
Ortho4XP by Oscor Pilot Photo Scenery
Ortho4XP is a program created by Oscar Pilot some years back. It has been maintained by him with the latest version being 1.30. This scenery editor is still a very capable program and an essential X Plane 11 scenery addon. This great scenery editor allows anyone to create photorealistic scenery in just a few clicks for X Plane. Creating scenery is easy to do, even the beginner can make amazing sim using the easy user interface (UI) with a few clicks.
The photo scenery is not like the MSFS 2020 photogrammetry that creates 3D models unfortunately. This means as you fly lower the buildings are flat. This may sound less than perfect but flying across the country side it does look incredible as well as credible at altitude.
The default setting is zoom level 16 which is more than adequate when your at altitudes above 2000ft and creating a larger area of scenery. The resolution can be turned up to Zoom level 18 with a substantial quality improvement and exponentially grow in size. The time to produce higher quality tiles is much longer per tile as well the file sizes grow very large. Creating these times makes your X Plane 11 look incredible for sure but you have to be aware a single tile could take up about 1Gb at zoom level 16 and possibly up to 8Gb at zoom 18. Flying over cities and town that have buildings in default scenery will still remain. The autho scenery is placed in the X Plane 11 config file so it is under them. It is important to ensure you install the program correctly.
Overlay Editor by Marginal
Airport and suburb scenery is quickly and easily created with Overlay Editor. Downloading Overlay Editor is done by finding Oscor-Pilots signature on X Plane.org. The program is capable of adding buildings as well as textures and forests to your scenery to improve its realism. It is only limited by the libraries you have available in X Plane’s custom scenery folder.
Scenery Libraries.
Scenery libraries can be found by simply googling X Plane Scenery Libraries to find a lot of them. There are a lot of prolific scenery creators in the X Plane community that create b airports for you to download as well as libraries to use. One such creator is MrX. You can find some amazing airports created by him for X Plane.
Essential Libraries.
- Opens Scenery X – Very good
- 3D People – Some animated
- Flags of the World – Animated
- Fly By Aircraft – Flying and Animated
- FAIB Aircraft Library.
- Ground Textures Library
- Mr X Library
World Editor WED
World Editor (WED) is another X Plane 11 scenery addon option to create airports, towns and cities. This option is created by Laminar Research and does angriest job creating new scenery. If you have a local airport that does not have 3D scenery or is incorrect then you can quickly create/update it in WED to your satisfaction.
WED exports new scenery directly into the X Plane 11 custom scenery folder for you. It importantly can validate your addon scenery, checking its construction for errors. These errors are often ground textures that are placed over themselves when creating a complicated area like a parking area. This is a great feature and one of the small features that makes WED a better option in my opinion having used both.
WED also requires libraries and you can choose from the Laminar Research included Libraries or again use libraries downloaded from the Web. It is important should you wish to share your libraries that you tell who you are sharing with what additional libraries you used. They must have them in their own X Plane custom scenery folder.
Plugin Caution – Imprtant Information
Note: Many plugins require you to overwrite an existing folders. ALWAYS BACKUP your original files. Change their name to .backup or something. Copy them to a backup folder. Note you can also so an update and the update process will see the non original files and replace them. NOTE also it may happen if there are any more updates to XP-11.
Librain by Skiselkov (Now included with X Plane 12)
Librain is a rain effects plugin created by Skiselkov. It’s a fantastic x plane 11 scenery addon bringing even more realism to the sim. Rain effects on the windscreen and aircraft in general are visible. The water runs or remains in droplets which interact with the prop blast and airflow over the aircraft. Librain does appear to have some limitations in X Plane 11 but it has been announced that it is included in the upcoming X Plane 12 natively. This is excellent news when the new version arrives. The download for librain is searchable on the Web and installing the files in X atlases plugin folder as well as individual aircraft plugin folders is required to make it work.
It is reported to not work with X Plane 11 default aircraft but works with Payware aircraft. I don’t know if this is still the case. If your looking to create even more realism then Librain will certainly be a plugin you want to have in your X Plane 11 install.
The install process is not necessarily straightforward so please read the instructions carefully. The best suggestion many have is to download the Zibo 737 mod. , very worthwhile if you want an excellent 737. To get Librain effects find the Librain plugin in the plugins file this mod and copy it into any aircraft you want to have rain effects.
Four Seasons by Nicotum-XP
Four Seasons is a plugin that does as the name suggests. Installing the plugin will allow you to have all the seasons within X Plane 11. This is something coming to X Plane 12 but It is not know how they are implementing it.
The plugin once downloaded and installed is operated by going to the plugins menu and selecting the season variation you desire. It then needs to load so be patient. There is a lot of new textures to load in and could take between 1-2 minutes. On launching your flight would be the best time to select your weather option. Note there is no automatic weather choice by X Plane 11 when choosing a take off airport due to time of year or local weather. X Plane 12 is implementing this feature. Thanks to Virtual Pilot for use of video pictures. Visit his channel here.
Y Clouds 4 by Y Pilot.
Y Clouds 4 is another example of X Plane 11 Scenery Addons you can’t do without. Clouds in simulators make simulator pilots froth at the mouth. The representation in X Plane for the longest time has been numbers of flat polygons. This never really cut in but more recently Laminar Research updated the X Plane 11 clouds to be a lot more realistic for sure.
Y Clouds 4 Offers
- New skycolors
- New sun texture
- New cirrus clouds
- Cloud colours refined
- Cloud contrast tweaked
- Cloud shape and layers optimized
- Improved atmospheric behavior
- Better FPS performance
One of the best part of this addon other than the visuals is the improved performance in FPS. Clouds really tax graphics cards with the amount of calculations required to render them. The improved performance this plugin offers will be very welcome to most. The new sky colours and how they transition especially at sunrise and sunset combined with the new sun. This looks amazingly realistic. The new clouds also offer amazing layering so you can fly the gap between them and get some feeling of speed normally lost at altitude.
The installation requires over writing original X Plane 11 folders so back them up in case you don’t like the effects. The overall package really makes X Plane 11 pop and I would recommend giving this X Plane 11 addon a try. The Performance improvement with Y Clouds 4 is also evident when in heavy cloud conditions on an average machine maintaining around 40 FPS as shown in Y Pilots own video.
XRAAS – Runway Awareness & Advisory System by Skiselkov.
XRAAS is a really great plugin to bring some audio realism into the cockpit of your favorite aircraft. We often hear callouts on videos of “Entering Runway 12” or the count down in feet to touchdown and much more in real world cockpits. X RAAS brings this system brings audio warnings and guidance to most of your own X Plane 11 aircraft. It has previously had a few minor limitations with smaller aircraft that are light in weight but this is a new release and this may have been rectified. The majority of aircraft work perfectly when installed.
Once selected in the plugins menu it will watch over your shoulder keep you safe, ensuring your on the right runway, keep you safe from aircraft collisions and a lot more. A quick and easy plugin designed to enhance realism especially pilots flying more complex aircraft. Pilots of any type will appreciate the second pair of eyes flying single pilot routes.
What X RAAS assists you with is approaches and making sure your approaches are correct. It will warn you if you are to high, to low as well as to fast or slow. This is something available to airliners and fortunately we don’t hear it very often. The XRAAS system will ensure you land on the correct runway when they are parallel ones as well as lining up on a taxiway. This has happened so it’s worthwhile in poor weather especially. It is a plugin that’s very worthwhile adding to your X Plane 11 addons or plugins file.
Conclusion.
The ability of adding X Plane 11 addons in the form of plugins is a real benefit to flight simmers. The added benefits in realism or additional features makes it a worthwhile exercise. I caution you to not go overboard with plugins as they can be the Bain of your simming existence. There has been many occasions when a plugin cased more trouble than it was worth.
Consider what your going to achieve with a chosen plugin and what’s required to reverse it. Remember the fastest and easiest way to resolve X Plane 11 addon issues where you have replaced textures especially is to RUN the X Plane 11 UPDATER found in your X Plane 11 directory. It will overwrite all textures that have been changed. Note this if you get an update because X Plane will ask you if you want to overwrite files. Normally you would select no but it’s your answer if things haven’t gone well.
The Author:
Brendon McAliece is a multi lingual expat who brings over three decades of flight simulator/PC building experience as well as over two decades of real world jet fighter experience as a weapons/egress technician. He holds a sport pilot certificate giving him real world flying experience. Hi travels have taken him from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and his home of Australia. He has a passion for travel, languages, flight simulation as well as guitaring and coffee. You can read more in his blogs below.
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