Besides X-Plane being one of the most realistic PC-based flight simulators, this flight simulator from Laminar Research has long supported Linux. Out this weekend is X-Plane 11.40 as the latest update and the last major release before they roll-out their long-awaited Vulkan graphics API support.

X-Plane has long been using an OpenGL-based render while with the next major release, X-Plane 11.50, is where they will finally ship their big renderer rework where Apple's Metal API is used on macOS and Vulkan for other platforms.

The Vulkan'ized X-Plane has been making good progress and still on track for v11.50 marking this important debut that can yield better performance and future-proofing.

At this point Laminar shares their main blocker before launching the X-Plane 11.50 Beta is simply bug fixing. Among the areas they have been focusing on are better memory sharing and faster load times.

Those interested in the latest Vulkan work on X-Plane can see this X-Plane blog post regarding the 11.40 release and upcoming 11.50 beta cycle with support for these modern graphics APIs.