X-Plane movable landing pads

In a post on Facebook, Laminar Research teased us with the screenshot you can see below, saying it was “a glimpse at the next update”.

In that screenshot, we can see a small ship with a helipad. This doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary, except that the ship is moving.

Again, this is nothing out of the ordinary. But having a landable helipad on a moving ship is not something we have on X-Plane right now. In fact, no moving landable surfaces are possible without some major hacking.

And, yet Laminar Research is teasing us with the “glimpse at the next update”.

I had to ask, of course, and we got confirmation: “Yes, ships with helipads can exist in three different states. Moving, anchored at sea, and statically/manually placed. You will be able to land on all of them!”.

So, yes, ladies and gentlemen, rotorheads, X-Plane lovers, we are finally getting movable helipads in X-Plane!