The tell-tale reality is that there are only a handful of "alternatives" to FS platforms, XPlaneX comes to mind and it's not even close in many ways (but shines when flying near the ground especially near roads and freeways). If companys like E/A got into it, you might well see the multi-million dollar development of an all-new fully-multi-threaded 64-bit native gaming platform that requies 8GB min ram and uses it ALL.

X-Plane 10 will eventually have a 64bit build out of necessity http://www.x-plane.com/blog/2011/12/bad-alex-bad-the-road-map-for-memory/ because 3GB of address space simply doesn't cut it anymore.

That is a link to a great article and everyone should read it. The lack of 64-bit address space is what is going to kill FSX eventually and P3D as well. LR is in a position to do something about this and the sooner they do it the better it will be for everyone.I still don't like XP10, but if it were at least 64-bit, it would be a huge impetus to change over there for us and the 3PDs as well.

That is a link to a great article and everyone should read it. The lack of 64-bit address space is what is going to kill FSX eventually and P3D as well. LR is in a position to do something about this and the sooner they do it the better it will be for everyone.I still don't like XP10, but if it were at least 64-bit, it would be a huge impetus to change over there for us and the 3PDs as well.

I believe that P3D plans to move to a 64 bit version -- but it is not an insignificant task. ( to do correctly).However, once on a 64 bit platform, with DX11+, hopefully there will be a signicant improvement, and it will barely be recognisable as being the old FSX.

First, as one guy said above, people will go where their 3rd party developers go. If ORBX and PMDG (and all other FSX developers) released a new product for X-Plane 10, that was not already in FSX and exclusive for X-Plane 10, they would have great sales. FSX users will migrate to X-Plane 10 just to use the new products and fly in a simulator that's still under major development.Second, I really didn't like X-Plane 10 when I first played the demo but now it's all I fly. How did that happen? I tweaked the graphics to an awesome quality to FPS ratio, found great freeware aircraft that I enjoy flying, turned the wind off so that the plane stopped bobbing around unrealistically, and most importantly did my first cross country flight in the demo with the 10 minute time limit removed.That cross country flight was so rewarding as I really enjoyed the instruments, 3D virtual cockpit, plausible auto-gen, weather/atmospheric effects, terrain mesh and shadowing, flight model, and rewarding feeling of arriving at my destination airport. The approaches and landings in X-Plane just have this very realistic feel to them if you're flying a well built 3rd party freeware aircraft. I bought the full version and have been flying all around the western United States in my freeware Beechcraft Baron. I install airport scenery at every destination airport I fly into on my cross country flights. If a destination airport hasn't been modeled for X-Plane yet, I just download the airport for FSX and convert it to X-Plane on my own (takes about 30 seconds to convert an airport).I really hope that FSX developers and users will continue to give X-Plane 10 a chance so that we can gracefully move on to a brighter future for flight simulators.

The newbies with no names and 1 or 2 posts who are promoting Xplane reminds me of the movie Aliens." they are coming out of the walls !! "10 out of 10 for trying though !Fred.

The newbies with no names and 1 or 2 posts who are promoting Xplane reminds me of the movie Aliens." they are coming out of the walls !! "10 out of 10 for trying though !Fred.

Thanks for making me laugh (the "Alien" thing makes sense to me now). Let it be known that I too fly FSX and have been flying MS Flight Sim since version 4.0. I own ORBX, multiple PMDG aircraft (flown hundreds of hours in them over the years), UT, FEX, REX, and use a host of other freeware and payware addons. I just haven't been flying FSX recently with X-Plane 10 being my current preference.But let's face it... There are three foreseeable options in the near future of civil-based flight simulation. FSX developers and consumers either stick with FSX (which isn't that bad although it's definitely showing its age, hasn't had any core development in three years, getting a little stale IMHO, and is the end of the line for MSFS franchise), they migrate to P3D (which offers nothing over FSX except a performance increase which is becoming moot with Sandy Bridge CPU architecture and Nvidia 600 series video cards... I currently get about eighty FPS in FSX with ORBX/PMDG on a 4.8 GHz overclocked 2600K and 580 GTX), or they move to X-Plane 10 (which is something different, truly enjoyable to fly, in major development for almost two decades, always implementing new scenery and graphics technology, has a healthy 3rd party developer base, and has a talented core team of flight simulation purists).So, I'm promoting X-Plane 10 because I want to see its development and consumer base grow so that we're not stuck with the options of FSX and its derivatives forever.

Edited January 9, 201214 yr by xgibbousx

Wow you're sticking your neck out a bit there. But nice to hear someone who tried xplane long enough to go below the surface and check it out (and it's potential) properly.I used MSFS from just before 5 came out then I think there was an update to 5.1. Anyways had a blast with all the MSFS releases all the way up to the release of FSX. When I saw all the complaints it generated I thought to myself, "time to move on". I also had a lot of fun with Propilot and FU3 I thought was brilliant but the suits canned it.Been with Xplane from the initial 9 release and never looked back.

I really want to like x-plane. And i've tried it, v9 and now v10 the demo. But as i said in an another thread (with my fb account, i now created a new one not fb connected) the customization is a pain, and even if you learn how to do it, the graphics are something between fs9 and fsx. Don't get me wrong, lot's of nice stuff at x-plane that fsx doesn't have, but if i fly VFR, well the scenery is not that good. Apart from the trees and forests that i like better in x-plane, everything else is better at default fsx. If someone can point me out to where i can find sceneries and aircrafts for x-plane please do, and also if i can convert the orbx sceneries for x-plane, the ultimate terrains, and all that.