X-Plane 12 weather, written into the sim.

One licence key for StrataWx for X-Plane 12, emailed as soon as you have paid. It is a finished build, not early access and not a beta: it released on 4 September 2026 and went on general sale a week later.

The two simulators do not expose weather the same way, and that difference decides what any weather engine can be on each one.

Microsoft Flight Simulator exposes no writable ambient-weather API. Weather has to be handed to it as a single uniform preset and eased in on the way, which is a limit of the platform rather than of any one product, and StrataWx lives inside that limit on MSFS like everything else that injects weather from outside the simulator.

X-Plane 12 does not work that way. It exposes the atmosphere as writable data. That one difference is why there are two builds instead of one binary with a checkbox in it, and it is why the X-Plane build costs more than the MSFS one: it costs more because it does more.

On MSFS, StrataWx models the entire column and then has to express it as one preset the simulator applies everywhere. The modelling is not the constraint there. The last step is.

X-Plane exposes the atmosphere as writable data, so this build writes a true 13-layer wind column, per-layer turbulence and real cloud decks instead of relaying one uniform preset. That is what it is designed to do, and it is deliberately the only capability claim on this page.

There is no feature list here, because a build you cannot download yet has no business publishing one. Everything else in StrataWx for X-Plane 12 is the product you can already read about, buy and run on MSFS today, which is the next section.

None of the weather modelling is new, and that is the point.

StrataWx for X-Plane 12 is built from the shipping MSFS app rather than written from scratch: the same aggregation of real-world observations and global model data, the same atmosphere built from them, and the same desktop app in the capture above. The layer that changes is the last one, where finished weather is handed to the simulator.

So the modes come across with it, live, historical and sandbox, and so does the part that takes the years to build: an atmosphere that is coherent from the surface to the top of the column, rather than a set of numbers that happen to be current. If you want to see what that looks like, the MSFS product is the same engine, and the Quick Start guide walks through it end to end.

Four things, here rather than in a support ticket. If you are shopping for a real-weather addon for X-Plane 12, this is the part of the page worth reading twice.

$40.99, one time, per product, with free updates forever. The key is emailed as soon as you have paid, and the build installs from the StrataSim Manager. The price list for the MSFS builds is in the pricing section on the home page.

The checkout asks you to acknowledge that your download starts as soon as you have paid and that the sale is final from that point. In the EU and the UK that acknowledgement is what ends the 14-day withdrawal right, and it is taken expressly rather than buried: the checkout does not continue without it, and we record it against your order. None of it affects your rights if the product is faulty.

Windows x64, instant download, secure checkout by Polar. Our refund policy applies.

Then this is a second purchase, and it is better said here than at the payment step.

The $6.99 MSFS cross-grade adds the other MSFS simulator to a licence you already own, in either direction, and one key then unlocks both. It is never a rebuy, and it covers MSFS 2024 and MSFS 2020 only. It does not cover X-Plane 12.

StrataWx for X-Plane 12 is a separate build on a separate licence. There is no bundle that reaches it and no upgrade path into it from an MSFS key, and that runs the other way too: buying this does not license the MSFS builds. Two simulators from two different companies, two products, two prices.