I am not so sure I am in the same boat with you there :) If I need suspension of disbelief to fly around areas I know well I would rather have a nice flight somewhere I don't know, the disbelief works a lot better for me like that :) You can disbelieve what you are seeing but if you need some landmarks to hop from one half of the country to the next and they are not obvious how does VFR flying work well?

Even the lovely group of houses near the coast and the little lake are modelled and positioned nicely in xplane. Remember, this is FREE, not $30.

No, I wont take your post to task :) there is fiddling around in fsx to get things going but the more I read about xplane it can be similar. The only thing I thought I would single is is that fsx is probably around for a while to come with more addons to come as well. So, you can't quite say that a feature was free, not $30 when fsx gold can be had for $30 and xplane is $80. You could turn it around and say not only is it not free, it is a premium. You can buy a few good addons with the $50 difference.

Last time I used fsx it was pretty stable. Not sure what's changed since then- anyone know what might have happened?

Maybe a Windows or DirectX update broke something? I don't know. It's been a while since I booted up FSX.

I've said numerous times, my expectations are in regards to the founding base of the simulator. Clouds, water, weather... - important visual elements. Do I expect these important elements to look as good as my 5 year old FSX? You better believe it. This is an 80$ piece of software. Nobody should have to pay out even more money to get these basic elements to look as good as another simulator 5 years older.Enji....I took a hop in XP-10 yesterday, around 8am sim-time or so local (newly rising sun in the sim), and was in the King Air. When I popped up out of the clouds, and flew just at the cloud-top/blue level, it was absolutely incredible--the 3D clouds shimmered as I came in and out of them, and the lighting in the cockpit changed real-time. When I was fully immersed in the cloud, I could see the diminished view of the wingtip. I've never felt like I was actually flying in clouds in FSX...so I'd say, in terms of clouds and weather alone that XP-10 is worth it's asking price--IF you want a flight simulator to go along with your ground-map simulator.The night flying experience is par none, and you you turn off auto-gen (except roads) and have a ton of exceptional flying at night experiences. No green cities at night....or even dawn/dusk.The level of mesh complexity is tremendous, and the lighting makes it far more 3D in effect than FSX (and I love FSX), especially on final approaches.The XP water, for me, is fine, but I keep it at low settings. What I like is that on overcast and "dark" days the water matches and is dark. In FSX I can't get the Bearing Sea in the Aleutians to ever look nasty...in XP-10 I'm sure it will be the dark grey-black I expect.So, out of the box, for me the $80 is paid for the actual "flying experience" in the atmosphere. With comparable top-shelf payware flight models (Bonanza, CRJ-200), XP-10 makes me sweat when I'm flying in bad weather--as it's hard work (much harder than FSX--which tells me XP is onto something).I'd be willing to bet, come next December, as more add-ons become available, that XP will become a true complement to FSX and that I'll be flying the majority of time in XP. Again, I love FSX, and have the "full-set up" in terms of add-ons. When I want a dose of full-airports and Sim-Saavy clear day flying, I'll hop into FSX. When I want white-knuckles IMC and immersive "low and slow country flying", I'll hop into XP-10. What could be better than BOTH?BillKGYH

Hello everyone. I'm new to this forum and have been trying to decide which flight sim to get for my new PC. I have been out of the PC flight sim market for a long time. Last one I used was Fly! years ago with a CH yoke and rudder. I loved the eye candy! Nice looking textures and scenery is more important to me than realistic ATC or random traffic AI, etc..I just got a new PC with the following specs:

• Intel Core i7-2600 3.40GHz processor (8MB Cache)
• 10GB DDR3 SDRAM
• 1.5TB (5400RPM) SATA, SuperMulti Blu-ray Player
• Radeon HD 6850 1GB
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

I downloaded the XP9 and FSX demos and tried them both. FSX looked like a 1990's cartoon graphics. I guess no one buys this based on the demo, but I saw some nice looking videos with add-ons like REX. XP9 looked better, but some of the 3D object looked cartoon like. I have looked into XP10, but trees and objects still look fake to me. What would you guys recommend based on my hardware? I plan to upgrade my dual monitor setup (24 & 22) to a 3 monitor Eyefinity layout after the new year.

Are you saying that for you the depiction of Seattle in the demo with fully maxed out settings is a plausible representation of a major US city?I cannot agree with this. FSX does a better job of depicting urban scenery with a fraction of the CPU/GPU resources.

Of course, if you are flying XP-10 on a low clouds, windy day, you won't need to be looking at a "real" or "plausible" city, as you'd better be concentrating on the approach :)Bill

I'd also like to see the New York shot with the autogen maxed out as it appears the fsx one is (I don't think the xplane one is at the highest setting).

Here's XP10's settings - had to drop the res to get better FPS:And the resulting screenshot, just south of Ground Zero looking at what should be the most built-up part of NYC:

And the resulting screenshot, just south of Ground Zero looking at what should be the most built-up part of NYC....

Rural areas, beautiful.Urban areas... rural?Good God, that's full settings 100%? Wow. Even I expected it to be a little better than the shots provided to me earlier today.Thanks for doing the work and posting this up...-Greg

It's a military simulator, guys. Take off in a Fighter and see what's left in the NYC after the last nuclear war. That bridge is the best one in this aspect.Now the question is can we use missiles in X-Plane? :-)That way we will be able to fly in those "cities" hoping they will be all fixed some day...Another way is to always fly at night...Sorry, but it's just too bad the cities are looking so bad. Who knows if and when they will be fixed. 3d party can fix it by making some custom scenaries, but I don't think they will not be able to fix each and every city in the world and I don't have so much money to buy every airport/city that I want to fly to...

I don't love FSX, its a product that I paid for. How can you actually physically love a piece of software? similarly, how can I hate X-Plane? it is a piece of software I don't even own yet but I was considering buying it.I'm here to find out what I'm going to get for my $80 if I buy it. I'm also interested in the new AeroFS flight sim, should I love it or hate it or just coldly evaluate if it will improve my simming life and then plunk down my cash?

Take your 80 clams and buy a life.. Talking about "loving" a piece of software.. Do you think they are meaning it as having an affair with a CD?? Get real.. The word love can also mean admire (look it up in the dictionary).. I admire what they are attempting to do with this edition of X-Plane.. As described in other posts/messages, whatever you want to call them they mention recreating the world to the exact blade of grass count is impossible.. You have to give/flex a little on your expectations.. We are still in the 10.0X build, there is TONS of room for improvement in performance, graphics, flight dynamics, and anything else you want to pull out.....I have yet to buy XP10 myself.. On that note, i never have bought X-Plane, doesn't mean i wont give it a chance though.. And if you are that concerned over 80 greenbacks for a software title, i'm sure buying any kind of flight hardware (yoke, throttle, pedals) is out of the question..

It's a military simulator, guys. Take off in a Fighter and see what's left in the NYC after the last nuclear war. That bridge is the best one in this aspect.Now the question is can we use missiles in X-Plane? :-)That way we will be able to fly in those "cities" hoping they will be all fixed some day...

I had to laugh at that one.....post apocalyptic would have craters and NO moving cars, no? With dead shells of cars littering the highway...I suppose to edit the vehicles on the road to be more blown up (but somehow moving) would add to this approach...

Another way is to always fly at night...

First thought that popped in my head at this statement is the chick with the amazing body and slightly not-so-hot above the shoulders bag-over-the-head trick...amazing the similarity between the two subjects...I want to love it...but just can't get over the discrepancies of realistic building type placement...the buildings don't have to be real, but come on...seattle has major fishing/dock areas where its completely concrete for 1/2 mile and in XP10 its green with no piers at all...I see no water-based buildings AT ALL and supposedly buildings near the water are different from the buildings inland? Not from what I've seen.

Rural areas, beautiful.Urban areas... rural?Good God, that's full settings 100%? Wow. Even I expected it to be a little better than the shots provided to me earlier today.Thanks for doing the work and posting this up...-Greg

Hey Gregg-via I think one of your other posts I tried turning all the roads off over downtown Seattle-all the buildings still appeared with the max setting so it appears roads do not influence the building placement/type.By the way-I have a two year old system and can run in the mid 20 fps range with roads/buildings/trees at maximum fine. However, anything less than maximum just looks bare imho and cuts into the reality factor. I also run fsx at maximum autogen, but actually get better fps overall, but xplane is much smoother even at less fps.P.s. I just got my disks in the mail so will have more findings to report back later today..

Take your 80 clams and buy a life.. Talking about "loving" a piece of software.. Do you think they are meaning it as having an affair with a CD?? Get real.. The word love can also mean admire (look it up in the dictionary).. I admire what they are attempting to do with this edition of X-Plane.. As described in other posts/messages, whatever you want to call them they mention recreating the world to the exact blade of grass count is impossible.. You have to give/flex a little on your expectations.. We are still in the 10.0X build, there is TONS of room for improvement in performance, graphics, flight dynamics, and anything else you want to pull out.....I have yet to buy XP10 myself.. On that note, i never have bought X-Plane, doesn't mean i wont give it a chance though.. And if you are that concerned over 80 greenbacks for a software title, i'm sure buying any kind of flight hardware (yoke, throttle, pedals) is out of the question..

Steady on, put down your handbag I guess I like value for money and I also have to consider how much time to invest in new software.I'm a married man with two young children and a business to run. I have very few hours in the week to relax, so if I'm going to invest hours and hours to learn a new flightsim it had better be *good*.

Hey Gregg-via I think one of your other posts I tried turning all the roads off over downtown Seattle-all the buildings still appeared with the max setting so it appears roads do not influence the building placement/type.

You guys are missing it.The X-plane scenery files with the extension .dsf contain all the information about terrrain mesh, texture placement on the terrain mesh, vectors (including road network, powerlines and rail lines), object lists and object placement information, etc. The library.txt contains a list of objects (that are referred to in the DSF file) with the possible alternate choices of buiding objects. To put it simply, that is how I understand it.You don't see Laminar or anybody associated with Laminar worried about the lack of urban landscape, do you ? BECAUSE THEY KNOW THE SOLUTION AND IT IS SIMPLE. The problem is that it appears that the artwork and the additional buildings they want to show are not complete and/or they haven't fully digested what they do have collectively - to come up with a library.txt file. It's the same movie as X-planers saw in v8. See my post at the link below:http://forum.avsim.n...32#entry2181832

Edited December 7, 201114 yr by m_av

@m_av: thanks god, finally someone else out there who understood a little bit (but very important) aspect of how the xscener yworks. Yes, that is the very short but correct description how it works. Soon there will be a detailed interview from me on "Xplane10's Blog" ...and I included (I hope the guys post that part too) a lecture about how the scenery basics work! And yes, its all about abstractions! And thats how - step by step - we at Laminar (or who ever) can improve EVERY aspect of the artwork over time (textures, objects, forests ... what ever you want).