Anyhow, what is it with the 3 - 4 props windmilling in each video of an X-Plane aircraft? Is this a limitation of the sim or is it just the aircraft developers do not believe in clear spinning disks? Or is my version of the suspension of disbelief somewhat misplaced.

The windmilling friction of the prop (in terms of transmission losses) can be manually set inside Plane-Maker. So maybe the developers of those aircraft set it too low?In the case of a turboprop with free turbine instead, the prop can actually easily windmill since the friction is much less. I think that in some cases turboprops propellers must be tied when the a/c is on ground, to prevent them spinning due to wind.

I'm not arguing with you on that. But what would happen if Rob Young tried his hands on X-plane? Are you saying that Rob couldn't reproduce all of the above within X-plane, because of some intrinsic limitations of the blade model? Mind you, I recall very well that Rob during the heydays of Fly! wasn't at all pleased with the way FS handled flight modeling.

Nobody can't tell. As Larry correctly says, fact is that as of today there isn't any aircraft for X-Plane comparable to RealAir's in terms of the overall flight model.Marco

The windmilling friction of the prop (in terms of transmission losses) can be manually set inside Plane-Maker. So maybe the developers of those aircraft set it too low?In the case of a turboprop with free turbine instead, the prop can actually easily windmill since the friction is much less. I think that in some cases turboprops propellers must be tied when the a/c is on ground, to prevent them spinning due to wind.Nobody can't tell. As Larry correctly says, fact is that as of today there isn't any aircraft for X-Plane comparable to RealAir's in terms of the overall flight model.Marco

I'd add a lot more to that list than just the Real Air.Aside the fm issue-how about some basics. My monitor is 1920X1200. Running in this resolution everything is blurry including the text, gauges etc. Looks like a low res image that has been blown way up. Running in the default res it looks ok-but is a little window in the middle of my screen that is so small I can't use it.Seems like xplane is designed to only run in a few resolutions properly? Is there something I am missing here? The whole nav/comm stack in the 172 is based on what? Even the default 172 fs nav panel seems to have more functionality. Also-I had to program the hat switch on my Saitek yoke (again am I missing something-no hat switch ability?)-there is a 2-4 sec delay trying to pan between each view-way too slow. Talk about tweaking-it will take a great deal of time just to get my controls established! Fsx seems to work much better in this department.I notice there are all kinds of warnings about turning aa on, antiliasing, autogen, texture resolution up etc. Perhaps one of the mistakes FS made-not warning the user that turning sliders up will degrade performance? If I turn fsx down to where the demo resolution/visibility/ video card settings etc, I'd get a similar performance too. I don't think too many fs'ers would be happy with those settings though. If I set it up like I have fs and got an immediate video crash...Makes you appreciate a lot of the little things that are just there is fsx, -like different screen resolutions and ease of hardware setup.Autogen which I don't really like in fs/fsx does strike me in xplane as another poster in the review forum said-a bunch of toys scattered randomly on the surface.One thing I do like are the rivers-they look better than fsx. I do hope the profits made on the iphone and this product are poured back into development and catching up and possibly moving ahead sometime in the future. There is a huge area in all aspects of catching up imho. When I get my full copy (again) I'll check into the ease of using plane maker and doing more realistic cockpits. I just find myself wondering why they are not there now?My feeling is if there is to be a mass migration from fs to xplane an awful lot has to happen to the base product not even including the add in market.I'd like to see such a migration myself-but my feeling is most Fs'ers will be not impressed with the state of the product now.

My monitor is 1920X1200. Running in this resolution everything is blurry including the text, gauges etc. Looks like a low res image that has been blown way up. Running in the default res it looks ok-but is a little window in the middle of my screen with is so small I can't use it.Seems like xplane is designed to only run in a few resolutions properly? Is there something I am missing here?

Geof,I wonder this myself but the answer is easy: go to the X-Plane 9\Resources\bitmaps\cockpit\ folder and look at the stock bitmaps for the stock gauges. They are not big. However, the engine can support higher res bitmaps! it is just the stock is not so high res. The standard 6 pack is 90x90 pixels. In comparison, the Reality XP FLT/N is 400x400.Furthermore, one possible drawback of the graphics system for gauges in XPL is that it uses OpenGL, thus, it is limited in resampling with bilinear, whereas for example, with Reality XP Gauge XTreme, I'm using a high quality bi-cubic. However, being OpenGL and hardware accelerated, it is much much faster than software based renders like FS, and it also shines in using full ARGB in 32 bits, instead of the outdated, FS95 area technology 15 bits, that was never changed from FS95 up to FSX (although again, with Gauge XTreme, gauges can render in 32 bits ARGB with little visible artifacts... :-) )

Geof,I wonder this myself but the answer is easy: go to the X-Plane 9\Resources\bitmaps\cockpit\ folder and look at the stock bitmaps for the stock gauges. They are not big. However, the engine can support higher res bitmaps! it is just the stock is not so high res. The standard 6 pack is 90x90 pixels. In comparison, the Reality XP FLT/N is 400x400.Furthermore, one possible drawback of the graphics system for gauges in XPL is that it uses OpenGL, thus, it is limited in resampling with bilinear, whereas for example, with Reality XP Gauge XTreme, I'm using a high quality bi-cubic. However, being OpenGL and hardware accelerated, it is much much faster than software based renders like FS, and it also shines in using full ARGB in 32 bits, instead of the outdated, FS95 area technology 15 bits, that was never changed from FS95 up to FSX (although again, with Gauge XTreme, gauges can render in 32 bits ARGB with little visible artifacts... :-) )

Yes-I just took a look-very low. Also-something like this will be a show stopper-how it runs in my monitors' resolution (and the blurry look is not jpg compression:Seems like a "tweakers" paradise-just to get up and running. :(

Yes-I just took a look-very low. Also-something like this will be a show stopper-how it runs in my monitors' resolution (and the blurry look is not jpg compression:Seems like a "tweakers" paradise-just to get up and running. :(

Look Geofa,If you need help with your first steps in X-plane you can either do that in the X-Plane forum here (difficult to find and not wel read) or you register on www.x-plane.org. Post in a few threads there, read a few FAQ's and eventualy post the questions you still have in a new thread. I suggest you do a little work on phrasing your questions a little bit better because your current posts seem to be mainly intended to belittle or ridicule X-Plane. Your current questions also show a lack of interest to learn something new. If you're not ready thats fine with me but don't use it as an argument against X-Plane.Now personly I have been gravely dissappointed with the improvements in FS-X when it was released. This was followed by a gradual growing interest in X-Plane 8. After learning how X-Plane works I dropped FS-X and now I mostly use FS-9 and X-Plane 9. After all the bad news surrounding FS-X I reinstalled it (again!) on my current machine. With the new machine and current drivers I actualy got arorund 30 FPS (a first). After this succes I installed a few freeware add-ons and was greeted with the already familiar 8-12 FPS that FS-X likes to give me. Not a nice idea that the FS world is now totaly dependant on add-ons for the foreseeable future.I don't believe MS will return to the FS franchise and they already stated to the ACES team that at the moment they will not sell the IP. That leaves FS static (not dead we still hev 3rd party developments). How long a static core platform continiues to live is anybvody guess but there is a large chance that in the future X-Plane or Flightgear will be the sim of choice. Its not the smartest thing to ridicule something you might end up using yourself....

Look Geofa,If you need help with your first steps in X-plane you can either do that in the X-Plane forum here (difficult to find and not wel read) or you register on www.x-plane.org. Post in a few threads there, read a few FAQ's and eventualy post the questions you still have in a new thread. I suggest you do a little work on phrasing your questions a little bit better because your current posts seem to be mainly intended to belittle or ridicule X-Plane. Your current questions also show a lack of interest to learn something new. If you're not ready thats fine with me but don't use it as an argument against X-Plane.Now personly I have been gravely dissappointed with the improvements in FS-X when it was released. This was followed by a gradual growing interest in X-Plane 8. After learning how X-Plane works I dropped FS-X and now I mostly use FS-9 and X-Plane 9. After all the bad news surrounding FS-X I reinstalled it (again!) on my current machine. With the new machine and current drivers I actualy got arorund 30 FPS (a first). After this succes I installed a few freeware add-ons and was greeted with the already familiar 8-12 FPS that FS-X likes to give me. Not a nice idea that the FS world is now totaly dependant on add-ons for the foreseeable future.I don't believe MS will return to the FS franchise and they already stated to the ACES team that at the moment they will not sell the IP. That leaves FS static (not dead we still hev 3rd party developments). How long a static core platform continiues to live is anybvody guess but there is a large chance that in the future X-Plane or Flightgear will be the sim of choice. Its not the smartest thing to ridicule something you might end up using yourself....

Yes- I recall your baggage on fsx-it seems to be showing thru here. I am and have been an Xplane owner since almost the beginning and there seem to be quite a few other Xplane owners posting here also with similar critics-not just me. I have done both scenery and aircraft for it in the past-just check the avsim file section. I have owned almost every version including 9.0 which I just reordered.This thread is about converting fs users to Xplane via the Op's post.All the points mentioned here are valid. There will be considerable problems converting users from fs for some if not all the reasons that are stated in this thread. I think it might be useful information to know these if there is truly to be a migration. Not paying heed to the problems may backfire in a big way. Perhaps if the goal is to push fs'ers that direction, a little opinion is warranted.

Look Geofa,If you need help with your first steps in X-plane you can either do that in the X-Plane forum here (difficult to find and not wel read) or you register on www.x-plane.org. Post in a few threads there, read a few FAQ's and eventualy post the questions you still have in a new thread. I suggest you do a little work on phrasing your questions a little bit better because your current posts seem to be mainly intended to belittle or ridicule X-Plane. Your current questions also show a lack of interest to learn something new. If you're not ready thats fine with me but don't use it as an argument against X-Plane.Now personly I have been gravely dissappointed with the improvements in FS-X when it was released. This was followed by a gradual growing interest in X-Plane 8. After learning how X-Plane works I dropped FS-X and now I mostly use FS-9 and X-Plane 9. After all the bad news surrounding FS-X I reinstalled it (again!) on my current machine. With the new machine and current drivers I actualy got arorund 30 FPS (a first). After this succes I installed a few freeware add-ons and was greeted with the already familiar 8-12 FPS that FS-X likes to give me. Not a nice idea that the FS world is now totaly dependant on add-ons for the foreseeable future.I don't believe MS will return to the FS franchise and they already stated to the ACES team that at the moment they will not sell the IP. That leaves FS static (not dead we still hev 3rd party developments). How long a static core platform continiues to live is anybvody guess but there is a large chance that in the future X-Plane or Flightgear will be the sim of choice. Its not the smartest thing to ridicule something you might end up using yourself....

Listen the man is a real pilot, as is Larry, they are more qualified then 90% of the people postings to make an informed opinion on how X-Plane and FSX/FS2004 performs vs Real Life! Right now in their opinion X-Plane just doesn't cut it!! I don't see anything condescending in any of his or Larry's post. I asked in a post earlier of the X-Plane supporters posting here, how many are real pilots? So far I haven't seen that answered. This is important, because to us simmers, we may think one seems better than the other, but only a pilot can truly tell you which one comes closer to reality.

I do hope the profits made on the iphone and this product are poured back into development and catching up and possibly moving ahead sometime in the future. There is a huge area in all aspects of catching up imho. When I get my full copy (again) I'll check into the ease of using plane maker and doing more realistic cockpits. I just find myself wondering why they are not there now?My feeling is if there is to be a mass migration from fs to xplane an awful lot has to happen to the base product not even including the add in market.I'd like to see such a migration myself-but my feeling is most Fs'ers will be not impressed with the state of the product now.

Basically I agree with you on all these points! :)For now, I'm moderately optimistic for the near future.Marco

Listen the man is a real pilot, as is Larry, they are more qualified then 90% of the people postings to make an informed opinion on how X-Plane and FSX/FS2004 performs vs Real Life! Right now in their opinion X-Plane just doesn't cut it!! I don't see anything condescending in any of his or Larry's post. I asked in a post earlier of the X-Plane supporters posting here, how many are real pilots? So far I haven't seen that answered. This is important, because to us simmers, we may think one seems better than the other, but only a pilot can truly tell you which one comes closer to reality.

I don't know about others, but with regard to me: in this thread I never said X-Plane is superior to MSFS, I always said there are advantages and disadvantages for each of the two. Rather, I also said that overall, considering global features, X-Plane still lags behind MSFS.As well, I never said X-Plane flight model is better, again I just noted its pros and cons, and tried to explain why it may feel less realistic to some (and I agree it should be a priority that Austin should tackle).At the end of the day, there are pilots who prefer X-Plane and others who prefer MSFS.Marco

Some of the comments on this board in defense of Microsoft are laughable. Microsoft, a company that got to be who they are by buying up smaller competitive companies, laying off their employees and eliminating competition. Yeah, people are crying tears for that same anti-competitive company. I just don't understand that.As to the comments made by Austin on his own site, good for him and more power to him, the small guy eating into Microsoft's market share. Capitalism at its best. Microsoft made a bold statement by firing it's Aces team. That statement was that they don't care much for their flight sim customers. We just aren't a part of their strategic vision. Well, X-Plane on the other hand, is very clearly committed to their customers. So please, no more boo hoo'ing for Bill Gates.

Some of the comments on this board in defense of Microsoft are laughable. Microsoft, a company that got to be who they are by buying up smaller competitive companies, laying off their employees and eliminating competition. Yeah, people are crying tears for that same anti-competitive company. I just don't understand that.As to the comments made by Austin on his own site, good for him and more power to him, the small guy eating into Microsoft's market share. Capitalism at its best. Microsoft made a bold statement by firing it's Aces team. That statement was that they don't care much for their flight sim customers. We just aren't a part of their strategic vision. Well, X-Plane on the other hand, is very clearly committed to their customers. So please, no more boo hoo'ing for Bill Gates.

They are not defending Microsoft. They are defending the ACES team and there tremendous work and dedication to make the Flight Simulator series what it is. Honestly the only excellent prodcuts from Microsoft are Windows XP and Flight Simulator!

Some of the comments on this board in defense of Microsoft are laughable. Microsoft, a company that got to be who they are by buying up smaller competitive companies, laying off their employees and eliminating competition. Yeah, people are crying tears for that same anti-competitive company. I just don't understand that.

There's nothing to understand, because no one here is defending Microsoft nor crying tears. Most posters feel that FSX suits them better than XPlane and that's their prerogative. For the matter I agree that X-Plane has a lot of catching up to do - admittedly, it does some things better than FS, but not enough to tide me over. Personally, that has nothing to do with Microsoft nor Austin.Boshar - so your advice is that Geofa should just get over it and spend weeks producing suitable bitmaps on his own? My time is so limited all I want to do is jump into a plane and enjoy the flying. X-Planes menu system alone is so complicated that I can't do that. Even if Austin call user friendliness just a feature of video games, I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to tinker...

so your advice is that Geofa should just get over it and spend weeks producing suitable bitmaps on his own? My time is so limited all I want to do is jump into a plane and enjoy the flying. X-Planes menu system alone is so complicated that I can't do that. Even if Austin call user friendliness just a feature of video games, I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to tinker...

Didnt Geofa already do that to make his custom panel FSX? Likewise if he wants a similar custom panel for XPlane then he would need to do it again. You find the menu system complicated? Seems well laid out to me.

Didnt Geofa already do that to make his custom panel FSX? Likewise if he wants a similar custom panel for XPlane then he would need to do it again. You find the menu system complicated? Seems well laid out to me.

I think he is speaking of the default panels that don't work in a 1920x1200 resolution....I spent all day working on a custom panel-so far the same limitations as when I did one before. I'll keep at it though.

X-Plane on the other hand, is very clearly committed to their customers.

Yes! This commitment is demonstrated by them releasing a major new version almost every year, and several updates during the year. Unlike the Microsoft approach of once every 3 years (and what would have been 5 years in the case of FSX to FS11).

I think he is speaking of the default panels that don't work in a 1920x1200 resolution....I spent all day working on a custom panel-so far the same limitations as when I did one before. I'll keep at it though.

Ok. Are you using 9.22 because they made lots of panel improvements in version 9. Version 8 is not as powerful panel wise.