FSX is broken...

[MatthewS 761]

As far as photoscenery-Orbx ready has 7 cm. scenery for fsx. I have used 1 meter and I still am well into the 60's-100 for fps.

Isn't that 7cm is for a couple of airports and not photo-scenery covering large areas?

Why there is a need to proclaim fsx dead when it isn't and in fact is just getting going

I need to be more specific, the FSX "core" platform is stuck with 2006 tech, it's never going to improve because ACES have been disbanded and the FSX source is locked up in a Microsoft safe somewhere gathering dust.The X-Plane "core" platform was last updated a few weeks ago. Laminar Research are actively developing the core platform and the platform will continue to be optimized and take advantage of improvements in new hardware/software tech.Of course 3rd parties will continue to develop for FSX and the 3rd party market is not dead. However as time progresses they (and the FSX user base) will begin to realize how constrained they are by the outdated FSX tech when compared to newer sims like XP. We are already seeing evidence of this with the CRJ200.

[LAdamson 240]

I just took xplane for a spin

Me too. An FSX flight earlier today, and X-Plane a while ago. Both were flying eastward, from the western edge of the Rockies. In real life, that's what I see every day................ the western edge of the Rockies.. :( At this point, I still prefer FSX for the mountain scenery. Today, they were covered with snow. X-Plane mountains look good from a distance, but become very repeating (texture wise) when flying low. I even cranked up the settings high for the effect before the fog rolled in. And of course the limited visibility in X-Plane drives me nuts. L.Adamson

[tf51d 284]

As far as this thread I don't really understand the upset at stating that when setting the two sims as closely as they can be matched feature for feature, I get better performance on fsx. Perhaps because that has been a rallying cry for supporters of Xplane along with the superior flight model claim for years it is hard to shake off. I don't really see it as a slight, or a competition, just a fact-and one I think fsx'ers who often don't look at the sliders need to take notice of. Already in this thread several did not know you can manually adjust the visibility in fsx.Geof, I knew it could be set in the weather itself, but I don't think doing it there reduces the amount of scenery the sim loads in the background. I could be wrong.

[MatthewS 761]

X-Plane has been in existence years, and there have never been any interest from the FS developers, and there are none now.

Until ACES was canned in Jan I would never have considered using XP either. There has been a groundswell of development over the past 9 months. I would venture to say that if the CRJ200 is any good then you can forget about PMDG being the leader in realistic sims since the CRJ200 already blows any FSX offering out of the water with regard to 3D modeling/lighting. Time will tell and I hope they really nail the systems.

I've always said X-Plane can produce decent planes, there just isn't enough of them. Also I don't believe you can just build a 3D model and out pops a a aircraft with an accurate flight model like Blade Element theory proports to. It still takes tweaking of the numbers to get it right. I believe that is why there are so few decent flying models in X-Plane because of this myth. I would bet if you asked Tim Kyler what he did, you'd find out he went the extra distance and tweaked the numbers to get his model correct.

Yes of course the numbers have to be tweaked, that's why those options are in plane maker. No-one said you don't need to tweak the numbers. It's good you agree that the MU2 is correct, it just goes to show that XP is quite capable of excellent flight dynamics.

[bsupnik 23]

Hi Y'all,The paint smearing is a poor visual trade-off by me. Basically it's the anti-repetition algorithm in the terrain code looking ugly (but not repetitive). In 941 you can turn it off from the command-line using --no_autovary. I am looking at architectural reworks in the long term that will make the issue moot.I don't know what the limit is on high-res orthophotos - someone will have to make a big pack to find out. Since orthophotos are paged while you fly on multiple cores, the real limit is the number of individual textures more than any one res.Geofa, understood re: the plane. The only thing I can think of: if you've done your own panel, you can transplant the panel into a new plane...if the panel is the perf problem you will have (1) isolated the problem and (2) then can send me the panel. Watching fps change with view (w vs shift-w vs a) can also give you a hint as to where the cost comes from.And finally to everyone: there's a lot of arguing about whether x-plane is fast or not, but...X-Plane has fps tests. X-Plane has rendering settings. If everyone sees better perf for the hw than Jeff then...- Someone send him a pic of your rendering settings.- Someone run a fps test and post the numbers.This whole discussion could be a lot more data driven.cheersben

[flyerkg 62]

I certainly appreciate this discussion. I've come to terms with many of the differences each of you have mentioned and have maintained the latest versions of both MSFS and XP. And actively use FS9, FSX, and XP 9.41 I recently listened to a PODCAST on which it was stated that many up coming features for XP are not ready to be announced but will be plentiful. The CRJ-200 might be an indicator of the days ahead. I have started to see freeware scenery conversions of FS to XP so a few of airports in XP have taken shape. With the global scenery DVDs in XP 9... I am not seeing a lot of evidence of repeating textures where in previous releases we saw common textures and grids of city streets so a city looked like a city no matter if it was Los Angeles or Kansas City or Berlin. I also believe there are plugins that allow for a limited inclusion of AI flights. I have not read enough about this. A lot of the analysis here has encouraged me to do some homework and dive into the SDK for XP.

[Geofa 108]

"Isn't that 7cm is for a couple of airports and not photo-scenery covering large areas?"Correct. Imagine in two years when worldwide scenery and hard drives capable of holding the 7cm scenery are available. Fsx is hardly dead and while 2006 technology has many years of growth left in it in many areas besides this one, because the designers left future improvements like this to be implemented .Now here is the problem for me. You mention the Mu2 which is presently the best representation for xplane and a future Crj which is the best hopeful future implementation.As of now I use the sim to train, especially ifr practice. Until recently-there was no realistic gps available for xplane-thankfully now at least there is the reality xp gps available-a very recent event. However nice the present Mu2 is-it is not useful to me for training. No offence to the freeware or payware guys-but there is no aircraft in xplane presently that is useful to me for rw training. Fsx has a Seneca, Duchess, and Duke among others that are not only the quality of the mu2-but also have rw instrumentation I require to practice in a serious fashion. In fact the mu2 which is stellar for xplane (and no offence to tkyler) is pretty typical for an add on aircraft for fsx-now. If I want some g1000 practice I only have to load my Flight 1 Mustang to not only get an aircraft of at least the quality of the mu2, but a pretty much 100% g1000 or I can work with my Mindstar unit that can be easily added to any aircraft. Then there are the world wide approaches, accurate for the most part world wide airport environments,ai traffic and interaction, atc, highly detailed 3d cockpits, missions which can be useful training scenerios, and just about anything you can think of to add to the sim via 3rd party manufacturers to make the sim into what you as an individual require.Now I like Xplane-but right now I pretty much fire it up-enjoy the autogen trees which I like better than fsx, and the water reflections and especially rivers which I think look better, and bird strikes, and system failures, sloped runways, cloud shadows, icing effects.I also notice the barren lifeless airports, the non sharp textures, the poor landclass, the lack of atc, ai traffic,limited visibility, poor or non existent 3d cockpits, and frankly strange aircraft control that makes me feel like I am flying a flying wing with no stability. At that point the usefullness is gone-and it becomes a game suitable for short fun experiences. I speak for myself of course only.Now you continually speak of xplane 10 and the Crj and the future. I hope there will be something useful in it for me. The Xplane Crj even if for some reason is more groundbreaking than the pmdg's, captain sim, and a few other high end jet simulations that collect dust on my computer just because I don't have time to spend the year I would on each of them to learn to fly them correctly, will be great, but of little use to me. What will there be for me?Will the 3rd party situation have changed so that I can make xplane into the sim I need? If not-I don't care how old fsx is-it will still be alive for me and many others that find themselves in the same situation. Will textures be sharp, will worldwide airports be populated with buildings,will there be approaches for every airport in the world, will there be atc, ai traffic, and fantastic high resolution textures and 3d cockpits? Will it be at least what we can get in fsx now? Will there be the 3rd party add ons that will not only allow customization to make the sim what the individual needs but also take it further?Dead is relative...tf51d-good point on the visiblity. If in fact turning the visibility down on fsx changes nothing about performance-how much more compelling..

[Syd Weedon 11]

FSX isn't broken. It works just fine. I love it. If you can't run it, wait a while and save up your pocket change. Eventually you'll have a computer that runs it.

[LAdamson 240]

and frankly strange aircraft control that makes me feel like I am flying a flying wing with no stability.

:( It's the bottom line for me. I just don't sense that I'm flying an airplane, as much as is possible. There is still a gap when it comes to "mind tricks".......for getting a feel of inertia, dampening, and power to weight.Pro-Pilot was the first to project those senses, while Microsoft's FS98 could not. Microsoft finally got it, and X-Plane still needs to improve on it, IMO.L.Adamson

[tf51d 284]

I'm convinced right now that X-Plane doesn't like the GeForce 9800GTX, I can turn all rendering options to none and even set it to the lowest resolutions and I still can't get it out of the low 20's That's with frames set unlocked. This happens both with XP and Vista. This is what is causing X-Plane to reduce visibility more on me if I add more objects, when it drops me below the 19FPS minimum frame limit imposed.

[jasonX 24]

Hi allSome interesting stuff getting aired here. While I am not getting involved in all that I noted something of interest in the numbers on Avsim forums and an Xplane.org forums. Several months ago I had a look at how many users were on xplane.org and out of interest had a look at avsim forums to compare. It was pretty level with xplane just a little ahead. I had a look again just these last few days and the figures have increased to sometimes over a hundred more people using xplane.org forums. (same day/time).That does seem to indicate that there is a rapidly increasing interest/user base growing for xplane regardless of the anti xplane views being voiced here. Interesting hey.Regards Pete

[MatthewS 761]

Dead is relative...

You are still being "evasive"... do you not agree with the following?The FSX "core" platform is stuck with 2006 tech, it's never going to improve because ACES have been disbanded and the FSX source is locked up in a Microsoft safe somewhere gathering dust. The X-Plane "core" platform was last updated a few weeks ago. Laminar Research are actively developing the core platform and the platform will continue to be optimized and take advantage of improvements in new hardware/software tech.

tf51d-good point on the visiblity. If in fact turning the visibility down on fsx changes nothing about performance-how much more compelling..

Doesnt that just show how poorly optimised FSX is? Presumably FSX is still rendering objects that are not visible and hence the performance does not improve.

[tf51d 284]

Doesnt that just show how poorly optimised FSX is? Presumably FSX is still rendering objects that are not visible and hence the performance does not improve.

That's like a red herring, since he is showing that even then FSX is performing better then X-Plane. So that would indicate, X-Plane is the least efficient at rendering it's world then FSX even when rendering scenery more then 6 times distant, and it's actually further. For example I can start to see Mt. Rainer at altitude (When at max visibility and clouds clear) in FSX around CYVR that's over 175nm away based on Google Earth. The only time on a medium (C2D's) to highend system (I7's) that FSX will bog down is when combined with both high detail system oriented aircraft and high detail airport metro area like New York, and even then I get in the teens. X-Plane's aircraft are currently no way as near as complex or detailed. Put a PMDG level detailed aircraft in X-Plane, and you'd probably be in single digits on an I7.

[MatthewS 761]

Put a PMDG level detailed aircraft in X-Plane, and you'd probably be in single digits on an I7.

At the moment this is just conjecture but we shall soon see with the release of the CRJ200.

[tf51d 284]

Ok 1 down, I solved my performance issue, it appears in many cases when you update from version 9.3 to 9.4 or 9.41 you can see performance problems unless you delete the the previous preference files under the output/prefeences folder. Now I get in the 40's at LAX and at LOWI with the default Cessna. Of course that means I have to re-setup everything. So based on the results I'm seeing now I would now say that in terms of framerate alone, there about equal, thats with objects set to "A Lot" which is about equal to FSX at dense level. Of course there is still the rendering area limitation. One thing, Number of AI used to be defined in the rendering settings it's not there anymore, how do you put AI air traffic in X-Plane now?