By Javier Rollon · 2020-09-15
When Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 dropped in August, my inbox exploded. Friends, fellow developers, random forum users — everyone wanted to know the same thing: "Is X-Plane dead now?"
Short answer? No. Longer answer requires some context that only someone who builds aircraft for both ecosystems can give you.
Let me be honest. The first time I loaded MSFS 2020 and flew over my hometown in Spain, I got chills. The satellite imagery, the photogrammetry buildings, the volumetric clouds — it looked like nothing I'd ever seen in a desktop simulator. I spent twenty minutes just flying low over Madrid, recognizing streets I'd walked on. That's powerful stuff.
But then I tried to actually fly an approach. And that's where things got complicated.
The default Cessna 172 felt... approximated. Like someone had read a spec sheet and translated the numbers into a flight model without ever sitting in the actual cockpit. The elevator response was mushy. The stall behavior was too gentle. I'd been flying X-Plane's 172 for years — it bites you if you get lazy with airspeed on final. The MSFS version just sort of mushes through.
Flight dynamics. Full stop. X-Plane uses blade-element theory — it calculates lift and drag on individual sections of the wing, the tail, the fuselage, everything. When I build the CRJ-200 for X-Plane, the aircraft behaves differently in a crosswind than in calm air not because I programmed that difference, but because the physics engine figures it out from the geometry.
MSFS uses lookup tables. You tell it "at this angle of attack, produce this much lift." It works, but it's fundamentally less dynamic. An unusual attitude in X-Plane surprises you the way a real airplane would. In MSFS, it feels scripted.
This matters to me because I build aircraft for a living. When I'm testing the Jetstream 32's engine-out behavior, I need the sim to show me what the physics would do — not what a lookup table says should happen. That distinction is everything for development work.
Visuals. Done. Not even a contest in September 2020.
The weather system is genuinely stunning. Real-world weather injection that actually looks like weather. Clouds that have volume and react to light. Rain on the windshield that you can barely see through. X-Plane's weather at this point looks like a student project by comparison. (I say this with love. I've been in this community for a decade.)
And the world. Bing Maps data covering the entire planet means everywhere looks recognizable. X-Plane's autogen is functional but repetitive — the same generic buildings from Tokyo to Toronto. MSFS gives you actual Tokyo and actual Toronto.
This is what nobody talked about in September 2020 but it's the real story. X-Plane's third-party scene is mature. Developers like me, like Laminar, like ToLiss and FlightFactor — we've been building deep, systems-rich aircraft for years. The SIAI-Marchetti SF-260 I built has more accurately modeled fuel system behavior than any default aircraft in either sim.
MSFS launched with almost no third-party aircraft of that depth. The SDK was new, the documentation was sparse, and developers were still figuring out what was possible. That gap has closed significantly since then, but in September 2020, if you wanted to fly a properly simulated regional jet with a working FMS and accurate engine parameters, X-Plane was your only option.
They serve different audiences, and pretending otherwise is dishonest. MSFS 2020 is the best sightseeing platform ever created. It makes flying feel magical in a way that X-Plane sometimes forgets to do. But X-Plane is where you go when you want to understand the machine.
I still develop exclusively for X-Plane. Not because I think MSFS is bad — it's clearly extraordinary. But because X-Plane's flight model lets me build aircraft that teach you something about real airplanes. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. If Microsoft can match that flight model fidelity while keeping those incredible visuals? Then we're all in trouble. In the best possible way.
Competition makes everyone better. The X-Plane team knows this. Laminar Research has been pushing hard on visuals since MSFS launched, and X-Plane 12 shows it. The real winner here is us — the simmers who get to fly in both worlds.
Javier Rollon is the developer behind JRollon Planes, creating aircraft add-ons for X-Plane since 2010. Follow on Twitter.