By Javier Rollon · 2024-12-01
Every December I go through the same ritual. I look at my X-Plane plugin folder, my aircraft hangar, my scenery library — and I try to figure out which addons actually made my year better. Not which ones got the most hype. Which ones I actually kept installed.
Here's my unfiltered list for 2024.
Zibo 737-800X remains the king of freeware. It shouldn't be this good for free. The systems depth rivals payware products that cost fifty dollars. I use it as a benchmark when I'm working on my own aircraft — if the Zibo does something better than my CRJ-200, I need to step up.
ToLiss A321 is probably the most polished airliner in X-Plane right now. The fly-by-wire implementation is excellent, and the performance impact is surprisingly low. If you fly Airbus, this is the one.
Hot Start TBM 900 — I know it's been around forever, but it still gets regular updates and it's still the best GA turboprop in any sim. Period. The engine modeling alone is worth the price. As someone who built the T-34C Mentor with its own turboprop engine model, I deeply appreciate what the Hot Start team accomplished here.
Better Pushback finally made ground ops enjoyable. You plan your pushback route on an overhead view, the tug executes it, and it feels like an actual procedure rather than pressing Shift+P and hoping. Simple concept, flawless execution.
FlyWithLua is the Swiss army knife of X-Plane customization. I've written maybe thirty small scripts for personal use — little tweaks that adjust cockpit lighting, override default behaviors, automate repetitive test procedures. If you can think it, FlyWithLua can probably do it.
X-Camera by Stick and Rudder Studios gives you cinematic external views that make screenshots look like aviation photography. I use it for promotional material for my own aircraft. Worth every penny.
Ortho4XP for custom orthoimagery is still the heavy lifting workaround for X-Plane's dated autogen. Yes, it eats hard drive space. Yes, the setup process is tedious. But flying into an airport surrounded by real satellite imagery versus the default generic textures? Night and day difference.
The ITC Light Mod deserves mention for fixing night lighting without needing ReShade or complex setups. Drop in the files, restart X-Plane, and suddenly night flying looks dramatically better. Simple, effective, no performance hit.
FlightFactor's 777 development has been going on for what feels like a geological epoch, but preview shots suggest it could be spectacular. The X-Plane 12 renderer improvements in the 12.2 update opened new possibilities for aircraft developers — better reflections, improved cloud rendering, and the new tonemapper make everything look more convincing.
Laminar's own A330 default aircraft keeps getting better with each update. The C-Check update added ACARS and the first Hoppie integration in a default X-Plane aircraft. That's a significant moment — it means Laminar is taking airliner systems seriously as a first-party feature.
On the hardware side, Tobii eye tracking support arrived in 12.4, and I'm genuinely curious how it'll affect the development workflow. Being able to look at a switch and have the sim know where you're looking could change cockpit interaction design fundamentally.
X-Plane's addon scene in 2024 is mature, diverse, and still growing. The aircraft quality ceiling keeps rising. The freeware scene remains unmatched by any other sim. And with X-Plane 12's continued improvements, developing for this platform still feels like the right call for someone like me who cares about flight dynamics above all else.
If you're just getting into X-Plane, start with the Zibo, add Better Pushback and the ITC Light Mod, and go fly. You can go deeper later. But those three will transform the base sim into something special.
Javier Rollon is the developer behind JRollon Planes, creating aircraft add-ons for X-Plane since 2010. Follow on Twitter.