For those who don't know what this is about. World Editor is an oss scenery development tool for x-plane (not oss) and it's the main scenery editing tool for x-plane. It's also what powers the x-plane scenery gateway which contains user contributed 3d scenery for thousands of airports worldwide.
The scenery gateway has made a lot of difference to x-plane in recent years. It relies a lot on automatically generated scenery from open data sources and it used to be that the scenery was pretty bland and monotonous. Autogen scenery actually works quite well these days but it doesn't generate airport buildings. Since they introduced the scenery gateway essentially all major airports are now covered out of the box and many of the smaller ones as well. This means you get terminal buildings, signs, taxi ways, etc. for over 8K airports world wide (last number I heard, probably more by now).
V2. supposedly makes it a lot easier to add missing airports by integrating external maps and satellite imagery to make it easier to position objects correctly. So, it will likely result in even more and improved airports.
I've been a long time x-plane user (since v8) and it's a great ecosystem to be in these days. As of v11, they've ramped up development a lot and managed to attract a lot of commercial add on developers (essentially most of the big ones that also target FS X/p3d). Awesome product and it keeps on getting better with each release.
With this and some free add-ons from x-plane.org, you can get a really nice flight simulation experience for just the price of the base simulator. I have generated several hundreds of GB of photo textures (using ortho4xP) and I've also installed some scenery packages from e.g. simheaven.com to generate detailed 3d scenery from open streetmaps. Getting the same kind of experience on competing products is possible but will cost you an arm and a leg.
I've been following flightgear for years as well and I want to like it but it is just not in the same league.
The scenery gateway has made a lot of difference to x-plane in recent years. It relies a lot on automatically generated scenery from open data sources and it used to be that the scenery was pretty bland and monotonous. Autogen scenery actually works quite well these days but it doesn't generate airport buildings. Since they introduced the scenery gateway essentially all major airports are now covered out of the box and many of the smaller ones as well. This means you get terminal buildings, signs, taxi ways, etc. for over 8K airports world wide (last number I heard, probably more by now).
V2. supposedly makes it a lot easier to add missing airports by integrating external maps and satellite imagery to make it easier to position objects correctly. So, it will likely result in even more and improved airports.
I've been a long time x-plane user (since v8) and it's a great ecosystem to be in these days. As of v11, they've ramped up development a lot and managed to attract a lot of commercial add on developers (essentially most of the big ones that also target FS X/p3d). Awesome product and it keeps on getting better with each release.
With this and some free add-ons from x-plane.org, you can get a really nice flight simulation experience for just the price of the base simulator. I have generated several hundreds of GB of photo textures (using ortho4xP) and I've also installed some scenery packages from e.g. simheaven.com to generate detailed 3d scenery from open streetmaps. Getting the same kind of experience on competing products is possible but will cost you an arm and a leg.
I've been following flightgear for years as well and I want to like it but it is just not in the same league.