Available APIs
- XPLMCamera
- XPLMDataAccess
- XPLMDefs
- XPLMDisplay
- XPLMGraphics
- XPLMInstance
- XPLMMap
- XPLMMenus
- XPLMNavigation
- XPLMPlanes
- XPLMPlugin
- XPLMProcessing
- XPLMScenery
- XPLMSound
- XPLMUtilities
- XPLMWeather
- XPStandardWidgets
- XPUIGraphics
- XPWidgetDefs
- XPWidgets
- XPWidgetUtils
General Documentation
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Plugin compatibility guide for X-Plane 11.50 | 12 Oct 2021 | X-Plane 11.50 and newer contains to option to run in Vulkan, Metal or OpenGL. This guide explains what's compatible and what needs to update for plugin authors. |
| Plugin Guidance for OpenGL Drawing | 12 Oct 2021 | Guidelines for using OpenGL to draw from X-Plane plugins running inside X-Plane’s process. Plugin-drawing is supported only via OpenGL. |
| Testing in X-Plane | 16 Mar 2021 | This document outlines how to test X-Plane via CLI commands and telnet. It explains key commands, debugging, and provides a sample test script text file. |
| Building and Installing Plugins | 7 May 2019 | Discusses platform-specific considerations for compiling & distributing plugins on Windows, macOS, and Linux. |
| Developing Plugins | 13 Feb 2019 | An introduction to the plug-in system, including the basics of how to set up plugins. |
Tech Notes
Aircraft
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Helicopter governor and correlator configuration | 20 Nov 2023 | X-Plane 12 revises the interaction of collective and throttle control in helicopters. Existing helicopters retain the default behavior of X-Plane 11 until modified in Plane Maker 12 to opt into one of the new governor systems. The joystick control assignments for collective and throttle don't change, but there's a new joystick curve available for Robinson-style throttle control. |
| Moving the Plane | 12 Jul 2018 | This tech note describes how to position the user's aircraft or multiplayer aircraft in X-Plane. |
Data Access
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Datarefs for the CDU screen | 29 Jun 2022 | Datarefs to read the contents of the X-Plane default FMS Control and Display Unit (CDU) screen. |
| Plugin Traffic Wake Turbulence | 27 Feb 2022 | |
| Overriding TCAS and providing traffic information | 4 Jan 2022 | With X-Plane 11.50, plugins that display traffic in X-Plane, whether auto-generated or from an online multiplayer network, have to use the XPLMInstance API to draw these aircraft in X-Plane's world. |
| SDKRawData | 11 Jan 2018 | This guide contains some of the raw data used to generate the SDK. It is probably not of general interest, but may be useful to programmers working with lots of datarefs, or adapting plugins to other APIs. |
General
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| LuaJIT | 24 May 2021 | This tech note describes the integration issues between X-Plane 10.20 64-bit and LuaJIT. |
| Deferred Initialization | 12 Jul 2018 | This article explains limitations on plugins due to loading early in the X-Plane init sequence. |
Graphics
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Drawing Rules | 12 Jul 2018 | A tech note with guidelines on plugin drawing in X-Plane. |
| Screen Coordinates | 12 Jul 2018 | This tech-note describes the various coordinate systems in X-Plane. |
| Plugins and Objects | 12 Jul 2018 | This tech note describes how plugins can interact with objects. |
| OpenGL State | 12 Jul 2018 | This note covers the differences between the 3 OpenGL states and how to handle them in your plugin. |
Sound
| Title | Updated | Description |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAL | 11 Jan 2018 | This tech note explains how to use OpenAL in an X-Plane Plugin. |