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MSFS Ralf

3 years X-Plane 9, my summary

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After using X-Plane for 3 years I think it's time for a little report. When I started flying X-Plane, everything looked different. It took a few days to get familiar with the sim itself and I started flying the default planes. Not much fun so I looked for add ons. Downloaded many planes from the org to find out that freeware planes are not very satiesfying, I looked for some payware. Found the planes by Jason Chandler and started with the Lear 25. What a great plane. I always wanted to have a good classic learjet for FSX but never found a good one. This was different. Nice handflying qualities and I was able to fly it by the books. More planes followed, the great Piper package, some planes from other companies but I always returned to th Chandler planes.

After some time I became bored by the scenery, having no buildings at airports looked strange to me, as a convert from FSX. OK, the org again, downloading, checking, deleting... Once again payware did the trick, my first purchase was the "Canadian Rockies" scenery. To be honest, that was the first step back. For a payware scenery it does not omprove eneough things. Streets still looked weird, non plausible autogene etc. So I discovered OSM made scenery, photorealistic scenery and a mix of both. I liked the results very much but the data is limited for some parts of the world. I came to a stage of installing, checking, deleting, no more time to fly, the setup of a nice scenery took all of my time.

To be honest, I never used much payware for FSX but after I purchased so many things for X-Plane, I tried some Carenado aircraft and my first ORBX scenery. So I use both sims for the last 6 month and learned that the "pimped up" FSX became more and more the sim of my choice again. Yesterday I felt like an X-Plane pilot again, I took the PA46 by Jason for a nice flight from Kelowna to Prince George. I found some strange static planes at Kelowna, but a nice scenic flight made me forget about them. During approach I was hit by the overdone turbulence effect, but somehow I made it to the final approach. No airport buildings (remember, it's a payware add on), a small photorealistic ground scenery only. While landing I noticed a big antenna near the runway, like a misplaced object that could cut off your wing...

Conclusion: I can't say what sim I like more. But X-Plane is lacking of ´good add ons. The only good ones I found are the planes by Jason Chandler, not enough for continue using XP9. Maybe once XPX is finished and the big boys will develop good addons it will look different.

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Nice post.

Unfortunately, as a commercial member, I am not permitted to provide links to various payware outlets, but if that's all you tried, then you haven't even scratched the surface.

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I know what you mean. Planes are not what I miss. It's more about scenery and a good weather generator. PM is welcome...

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I used to fly a lot in fs9 and built up quite a catalogue of airports to fly to. But it was always the scenery in between airports that I found wanting. Landclass was far too inaccurate, roads were inaccurate and infrequent. In 2003 I spent a lot of time developing my local area (NW England at the time) to improve roads and coastlines. It was a big improvement, but just a scratch compared with what OSM delivers.

 

FSX was flown just a little, mainly because framerates at big, busy airports were rubbish. XP9 was just too sparse for me, but I found the novelty of spaceflight was fun.

 

Xplane10 has changed all that for me. The scenery between the airports is excellent with OSM roads, railways and water, and better landclass. It might not be finished, but it's certainly much better now than all you can measure in XP9.

 

Now it's just the airports left wanting. As you say there are no buildings. But the tools are there, and I've certainly found that my corner of the world (Scotland) is starting to get reasonably well represented with 3rd Party addons. The quality varies, but the freeware add-ons are often quite reasonable.

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I will purchase XPX after the summer vaccation and will follow the development. On my end it was just the time for a descision for the future. I don't want to continue spending money on aging sims and I really look forward to a new simming experience.

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Nice review. I had XPlane years back and I do keep my eye on it but it hasn't grabbed my imagination. Still, I see some interesting things happening in their space.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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