Just getting into the sim world with MSFS but looking to pick up X-Plane as well. I see this is about X-Plane 12, but it's not for sale yet. Anyone know how their release schedule works? Are there upgrade paths if I buy X-Plane 11 now?
However, something to keep in mind for someone newerish to siming in general - not just flight sims:
Whatever payware you purchase now (aircraft models, plugins, scenery, airports, etc) will almost certainly (with a few exceptions) not port over to the new sim version... meaning you'll have to buy them again unfortunately.
This is part of the reason you still see people flying older sims - they put a lot of money into it, and/or their favorite model isn't available yet or something.
So anything you bought today for X-Plane 11 might not port to X-Plane 12 when it comes out, depending on what engine changes have happened under the hood to X-Plane.
It's not a hard rule, but something to keep in mind.
Although I wouldn't necessarily classify having to purchase the same model again as a scam - depending what's changed in the engine, it may require a lot of work to update the model to fully take advantage of everything X-Plane 12 (for instance) offers. If there's a substantial update for the model, I would personally feel fine buying a new version.
However, really nice to see Austin and Laminar have thought of this - some of us have waaaay too much invested into models and plugins!
So if you wait for Early Access you will get both 12 and 11 for the price of one.
After that, all minor 12.x updates will be free (they always have been) which means free updates for years to come (XP 11 was out for about 5 years for example)