June 5th, 2026
Today I am very happy to officially announce my next project: KTEX - Telluride Regional Airport V2.0 for X-Plane 12! Telluride Regional Airport is the highest commercial airport in the United States, at 9070 feet. Outdoor activities including hiking, biking, rock climbing, and of course, skiing at the nearby resort, attract thousands each year, both through commercial flights operated by Denver Air Connection, and private GA props and jets.
Telluride Regional Airport sits atop a plateau, with the San Miguel River just to the south sitting over 1000 feet below the airport, and to the north, snow capped mountains rising to nearly 14,000 feet. Once on the runway, pilots must contend with a nearly 40 foot change in elevation from the center of the runway to the end of 27. Combined, all these factors make for a gorgeous, and yet challenging arrival.
Weren't we just here?
Now, some of you may be asking yourself, "but didn't you already do KTEX?". Yes, in 2019 I released my first rendition of KTEX which many have enjoyed. However, since 2019, KTEX has actually changed a lot!
The terminal has received a large expansion with a new lobby, taxiways have been repaved and expanded, and something I just recently learned: A large new hangar has been built north of the terminal, and an entirely new apron has been built to the south of the runway! All these changes will be accurately reflected in this update
In addition to the reflecting real world changes, there's another motivation for this update: Quality. Flight simulators have changed drastically in the past few years: Better consumer hardware enables more geometry and higher resolution textures, and new sim features such as decals enable dramatically better quality while reducing rendering and memory load.
KTEX V2.0 aims to fully utilize these resources, and on-site photographs, to faithfully reproduce Telluride Regional Airport in the highest quality, with the smallest performance footprint possible.
What can you expect?
So what kind of improvements can you expect in V2.0? Well, pretty much everything! But one of the first things you might notice is the terrain.
The mesh has been meticulously rebuilt from scratch, using 1/3 Arc-Second (roughly 10 meter) resolution USGS DEM data, and a custom mesh patch that carefully follows the real terrain, including split-level hangars, complex slopes across the ramp, large retaining walls, and the iconic dip in the runway.
Additionally, the orthoimagery on the mesh uses the newest 1 foot resolution NAIP orthoimagery at the airport (roughly 3x the prior resolution), and ZL16/17 for the rest of the time, which has been color corrected for a vivid, realistic appearance.
Pavement textures have also been completely revamped with new detail textures, wear, and residual sand/salt residue in the snowy months.
And of course, all the airport buildings have been remodeled from scratch. In addition to drastically higher quality, there's quite a few new very exciting techniques used here which will be discussed in a future post.
In the meantime, here's a couple previews of the beautiful new terminal expansion!
There's many more exciting features to show in KTEX V2.0, that I can't wait to share, so stay tuned - including next Friday when we take a closer look at the mesh and environment!
And I should mention - as always, this will be a free update for all existing users :).