Competetion is a good thing.If there is a sim that makes use of modern hardware and decend framerates, why not?Off course it has to be good on the graphics side, no too complicated and with good add-ons.Microsoft stopped with Fligthsim a couple of years ago and left us stonecold in the water with a product that wasn't mature enough by far, build with old source code and/or techniques or whatever.If there comes a good alternative for triple the price, I'd buy it!Best Regards,Bert Van Bulck

I'll switch to another sim as soon as a PMDG/Level D quality add-on is available for it and it has global scenery. If X-Plane becomes good, it would allow me to switch to Linux too (:

His insistence on using OpenGL as the rendering API could be problematic too in the future - the video card companies focus almost solely on Direct3D in their drivers, hardly anything outside of the professional and academic CAD/3D modelling world uses OpenGL.

that's oversimplifying things just a bit - OpenGL has had some setbacks, but it is hardly relegated to the extent you are implying. As this article supports, there are other up-and-coming technology modes which do not target DirectX. Also, as the article alludes to, OpenGL is dominant in the mobile phone space, which is quickly growing. However, your observation about video card designers focusing on DirectX at the expense of OpenGL is regrettably true. Just as MS was getting their act together with DirectX, OpenGL unravelled with the Khronos Group mishandling of 3.0, etc. However, OpenGL is not to be counted out and certainly not as deprecated as you imply.

In my bordem whilst waiting for NGX, JS41 patch, 777, new B747 DH8D i was wandering around the net and stumbled across some X-Plane stuff.... Seems there a version 10 on its way(although they got the PMDG bug of delaying releases ;)I've looked at X-plane before, although never installed or used it, people rave about the flight model used in it over FSX, but although eye candy isnt always my number one priority when flying, I simply couldnt stand how poor looking X-plane looked compared to a nicely speced up FSX.However having seen this....X-Plane at NightGlobal Lightingand although this video is X-plane 9 - the aircraft are xplane 10...take a look at the lighting effects on the aircraft and panels! at start of the film in the shuttle

and some beta lighting videos seen here.cirus lightsstrobesNow why am i worried? Well although it too early to tell, it could look like X-plane 10 could be something worth considering - and FSX could be be removed - and then what use is my new PMDG NGX? so PMDG you thought of maybe looking to develop again for x-plane?It certainly could also mean MS with their upcoming Flight will need to look hard at what it is they are releasing and ensure it isnt just FSX optimised for mutlicore.the new flight will need to fix flight model, weather engine, lighting also.Food for thought though.

is there someone who noticed exhaust gases on video - cirrus lights ???It could be very nice...brdsMartin

no matter with Laminars claim of technology being used (the reason I happily spewed out the money for X-Plane 9, I want to sell it out to anyone interested) I never really liked it, it just doesn't have that feel or the ease of use. Neither the smooth frame rates as the developers claim, it still requires a pretty heavy processing capability. Menu system to configure a single flight is such a big irritation and on top of it, the requirement that DVD be always in the drive is another. I just don't have time or energy to appreciate X-Plane 9 no matter what the developers claim unless I see something radically improving in version 10. they do these small Visual Pep-Ups here an there and claim that it's much better than FSX, which I think it's not.BTW as far as FSX goes, hoping they'll do something different like using 3D Card capability more than processor in the MS Flight, it'll simply outdo what most real world pilots and sim enthusiasts need to enjoy the simming experience FS series gives, in one word "Incredible" compared to X-Plane.So No Worries :) Just my two cents ...B h a s k a r - K r i s h n a

Interesting. I have never used xplane that much but I hear good things. Its funny because it would really only take 3 or 4 developers to change the course of FS. If say, PMDG, ORBX, HiFi Sim, and someone like FSDT switched to XPlane I think within a few years the shift would be well on its way.Jack Colwill

X-Plane needs a complete overhaul of its UI I think - I would even go so far as to say that if Austin/Laminar want FSX users to switch over, there should be a mode for the keypresses and menu system that basically replicates the user experience from FSX. Every time I've tried X-Plane I end up lost in esoteric menu settings, adjusting the gain curves of the joystick trying to get it to respond right etc. It's fine if he's got those advanced options in there IF you want them, but the base UI needs to be dead simple for the average simmer.

Absolutely correct.Out of curiosity I purchased the X-plane 9 including some very nice scenery addons plus the only airplane worth the money (its actually a helicopter - the MBB-Kavasaki). For about a month I played around but eventually end up back to FSX. Just could not stand the menus.

I have X-Plane 9 as well and just as others have said, I found it to be very underwhelming. The user interface was far too complicated, airport graphics where ... well, they weren't. Unless you were at a major international airport, you did well to have a ramp area let alone any buildings. I found that any aircraft I tried suffered from adverse yawing so much so that they felt like they were balancing on the head of a pin. I have been in a fair few aircraft and never had the feeling of yaw like I see in X-Plane.That being said, when X-Plane 10 comes out, I will see if there is a trial download . If so, I will give it the opportunity to make up my mind.ChuckCYXU

I downloaded the demo for x-plane 9 a while ago and agree with others, the UI was just too complicated and I'm just so used to MSFS after 12 or so years of using it, I just couldn't cope!

I primarily use FSX for flying airliners and X-plane for GA aircrafts and helicopters. The overall experience you get from FSX greatly exceeds X-plane, but the flightdynamics in X-plane, IMO, greatly exceeds FSX in regards to the light aircrafts.Also X-plane has some nice effects like sloped runways and cloud shadows on the ground.So, if you can live with empty airports (no buildings except Innsbruck and several add-ons) and AI that never lands or take of, I think that X-plane is a very nice addition to FSX.

Keep in mind, though, that the use of OpenGL allows X-Plane to remain cross-platform, which could be a major benefit in the future as more and more people switch to Macs.

Correct, OpenGL is necessary for it to run on Macs. Macs do not support Direct3D since it's a typical MS thing - much like Mac has stuff like Core Audio and Core Video. The only problem with OpenGL on the Mac, is the drivers. Apple for some reason doesn't see a reason to keep them fully updated all the time, creating the big performance gap in graphical applications seen between Mac OS X and Windows computers (heck, I have the very same gap on my iMac I'm sitting at right now. Playing Half Life 2 on the Mac and on Windows shows me very different FPS values). Fortunately, together with Valve, Apple seems to have started on an offensive to keep the OpenGL drivers up to date. hopefully. Gaming on the Mac will benefit enough from that so that gaming will have some sort of revival. I think it ahs already started though, mainly thinks to the efforts of Valve and Transgaming, who bring out big titles such as the Half Life series, Dragon Age: Origins and Assassin's Creed 2. A few months ago, the GTA3 trilogy was also released (GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas), so it seems that even Rockstar has seen something in the Mac platform. I can only hope the trend continues this way.

Yes, the User interface of XPlane is horrible

+1 from me, that kept me from using xplane once I tested a v8.x or so.

I think the Outerra engine is also based in OpenGL. http://outerra.blogspot.com/http://www.outerra.com/I think that development is looking really promising. I read in their forum somewhere that Aerosoft approached them about a technology demonstration for their simulator (if it happens?!), but weren't too keen on the use of the OpenGl API. They wanted something written in DirectX11. Still it does look very good. I agree with Tabs about X-plane's UI which needs to be far more user friendly than the current text based menus that seems like they were developed for engineers rather than the consumer market. I think after ACES were dispanded by Microsoft, the X-plane team made a large push to make version 10 a more complete and polished simulator. Hence the completion of the default aircraft with new models and VC's (which should have been done years ago in earlier versions IMHO) as well as the introduction of ATC and AI. One thing that can be said for OpenGL (which has already been written in this discussion) that it can be cross platform and Laminar have targeted the iPhone and Android mobile phone markets as a result. I have friends who have bought X-plane mobile who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in flight simualtion but they bought it regardless to just have a go since it was recommended software by so many technology websites. That is a huge market to tap into and all becasue OpenGl made it possible. I think that X-plane 10 needs a user interface similar to the design that the REX developers have made for their product. It's clean, uncluttered and stylish interface would make it far more easy to use piece of software, as well as making it a more modern, complete product.Unfortunatley, I think until X-plane slows down their release schedule, as they update very regularly, some 3rd party developers are put off by that sort of cycle. Mind you saying that, Carenado and REX have both made products for the current version 9. Who knows if anyone else will follow, especially given the prediction by former MS MVP Owen Hewitt about Microsoft Flight possibly having a developer's 'App' store in windows marketplace rather than releasing through the traditional channels...it's just a prediction though and not that this (if true) will be a bad thing per se. Who knows where this leads. It's all good competition though isn't it? This is surely what drives our hobby forward. Nothing to get worried about.http://polypoke.word...t-add-on-store/CheersRhydian Yeoman

This topic has already been going for ever. Those new visuals of XPlane sure look convincingly exiting and is surely an advance in the field of flight simulation, whether it may be on a home PC or if it is utilized as external model in real simulators. It is other fields where Xplane falls tremendously short and those shortcomings have been named here and elsewhere on numerous platforms - so I will just add my personal opinion on the 2 biggest PC-Simulator issues for me, as a professional pilot.1.)I disagree with those, that XPlane's flight dynamics are far better than FSX. This is what Austin always claims and advertises, but that makes the experience with that sim so much more disappointing - it is not much better than FSX. (Small plane, large plane=makes no real difference). There is in fact much to be desired and still a lot of room for possible improvement from developers side.Even though Austin claims that he has the most realistic flight modeling of aerodynamics, his model, though different from the flawed FSX, feels even less realistic to me. To do it by the laws of physics is a very complicated issue and I do feel there are still too many variables missing in XPlane's equations and FSX feels more realistic to me, although it's modeling may be far more simple. Taking both simulators to the boundaries of the flight envelope - both of them tend to behave in an increasing unrealistic fashion. Disappointing is the fact, that neither of them even get to model a simple aircraft like the C172 to behave aerodynamically realistically. What has always bugged me in FSX is the difficulty of flying a normal coordinated turn with the ball kept nicely centered with constant angle of bank. Xplane might make a better job of that, but also tends to fail increasingly,when the the parameters approach the models boundary limitations. After all what Austin claims - I would expect a better performance and Xplane simply does not deliver - I might as well stick to FSX. Maybe the commercial version of Xplane is better - I would like to try, however the second issue is what would still keep me away from their product:2.)Where FSX definitely beats XPlane is with the aircraft panels. Even the default C172, B58 and other less complex aircraft beat XPlanes by far (I have to mention that I have not tested Caranedo's products in Xplane, but those are 3rd party anyway). Thanks to devs like PMDG also complex aircraft in FSX are of no comparison. The look of the working panel and its functionality, next to the flight dynamic model, is the most important aspect of the simulator. If Xplane does not offer a drastic improvement to this, there is no real point to switch - the look and feel of the cockpit should represent the type of aircraft and not just be sort of generic.I do not expect Xplane to iron out those issues mentioned. In the same breath it is also a pity, that FSX as a product with the hugh backing of Microsoft did not have a chance to be optimized and reprogrammed for performance and better flight modeling. We will see if "MSFlight" we cure this or be more of a game, than a tool.All this said I am of course also aware that many FSTD and FNPT devices and even real Simulators also have some major issues when it comes to simulating the real thing, even though they have been approved by the authority. However I do believe that it must be possible to come up with better solutions in future, also for the so called "home cockpit" i.e. it can be done. Better eye candy is always nice, but it should go in hand with making the whole simulation machine more realistic as a top priority.Those of you, that fly as real life pilots will know what I am talking about - for everybody else: if you can afford it, go for a few introductory lessons in a real aircraft and you will instantly feel what PC simulation is lacking and you start thinking: why didn't they try to get this right in the first place ? (I am not referring to thing like motion and seat of the pants feeling etc - just plain exact representation basic aerodynamic principles and behaviours - it is probably more difficult and complex than anybody would think it is - just as the Bernoully principle is only responsible for a fraction of why lift is generated by a wing planform in the first place). If that is the case, then Xplane should not claim that they have got it all figured out in the way that they claim and admit, that there is still much room for improvement. I do not think that much will actually happen in the near furure. But that is just my humble opinion.Greetz !

I think the Outerra engine is also based in OpenGL. http://outerra.blogspot.com/http://www.outerra.com/I think that development is looking really promising. I read in their forum somewhere that Aerosoft approached them about a technology demonstration for their simulator (if it happens?!), but weren't too keen on the use of the OpenGl API. They wanted something written in DirectX11. Still it does look very good. I agree with Tabs about X-plane's UI which needs to be far more user friendly than the current text based menus that seems like they were developed for engineers rather than the consumer market. I think after ACES were dispanded by Microsoft, the X-plane team made a large push to make version 10 a more complete and polished simulator. Hence the completion of the default aircraft with new models and VC's (which should have been done years ago in earlier versions IMHO) as well as the introduction of ATC and AI. One thing that can be said for OpenGL (which has already been written in this discussion) that it can be cross platform and Laminar have targeted the iPhone and Android mobile phone markets as a result. I have friends who have bought X-plane mobile who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in flight simualtion but they bought it regardless to just have a go since it was recommended software by so many technology websites. That is a huge market to tap into and all becasue OpenGl made it possible. I think that X-plane 10 needs a user interface similar to the design that the REX developers have made for their product. It's clean, uncluttered and stylish interface would make it far more easy to use piece of software, as well as making it a more modern, complete product.Unfortunatley, I think until X-plane slows down their release schedule, as they update very regularly, some 3rd party developers are put off by that sort of cycle. Mind you saying that, Carenado and REX have both made products for the current version 9. Who knows if anyone else will follow, especially given the prediction by former MS MVP Owen Hewitt about Microsoft Flight possibly having a developer's 'App' store in windows marketplace rather than releasing through the traditional channels...it's just a prediction though and not that this (if true) will be a bad thing per se. Who knows where this leads. It's all good competition though isn't it? This is surely what drives our hobby forward. Nothing to get worried about.http://polypoke.word...t-add-on-store/CheersRhydian Yeoman

Thanks for the mention Rhydian!Regards,Owen