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X Plane 12 System Requirements

The follow up to X Plane 11 has departed from Laminar International and is currently inbound. But can you run it on your PC?
Paul McNally
Last Updated on

Reviewed By: Kevin Pocock

X Plane 12 System Requirements
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Table of Contents

We now know that X Plane 12 is on the horizon and we also know that if you wanted to run it’s predecessor well you needed a pretty decent specc’d PC.

So it’s time to have a look at what you might need in order to play the latest iteration of this great flight sim.

Let’s start at what you need to run X Plane 11 as that will give us a decent benchmark to go off.

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Current X Plane Minimum Specification

  • CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 CPU with 2 or more cores, or AMD equivalent.
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Video Card: a DirectX 11-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 1 GB VRAM
  • Dual-core CPUs slower than 3 GHz should try the demo before purchasing X-Plane 11.
  • CPU: 3+ GHz, quad-core or higher
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM or more
  • Video Card: a DirectX 12-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 4 GB VRAM
  • (GeForce GTX 1060 or better or similar from AMD)

X Plane 12 Minimum Specification

At his stage we are still waiting for the official minimum specs for X Plane 12 from Laminar. We expect them to be a little more taxing than the above given the new technology that has come out between releases, but with the recent switch to the Vulkan engine the resources are being better managed.

As above there are no firm details from the devs on what is recommended just yet. As soon as they are released, we will add them here. With new weather systems and better graphics though to get the most from X Plane 12, you are going to need a considerably beefy rig, and if you plan to start adding in photo-realistic scenery a la X Plane 11 you are going to need to check out some extra storage.

About the Author

Paul McNally

Paul is a contributor to PC Guide, having covered news coverage, Raspberry Pi, Windows releases and peripherals - among other things - across the site.