My 2 cents.

 

Those 2cents are worth my €69,90 :-) Great point!

+1

 

Cities need to be designed in many areas to attain higher visual fidelity. I am also convinced that the airport database is based off the ancient DAFIF release before it was sealed to the public, and many of the airfields are in desperate need of upgrading to reflect changes. This comes back to having a larger team working on the project.

 

Yes, we need a larger team working on the project, and you, everyone can be part of this team !

 

WED is available here:

http://scenery.x-plane.com/tools.php

 

Tutorials are here:

http://wiki.x-plane....irport_Creation

http://wiki.x-plane....t_Customization

And you can make this available for everyone. Just read this page: http://data.x-plane.com/

 

If you want up-to-date cities and roads, help the OpenStreetMap project. Roads, railways, power lines can be imported with XPOSM (you need X-Plane 9 to build for now but you can use the sceneries in X-Plane 10):

http://marginal.org....nery/tools.html

 

Buildings, forests, objects (lighthouses, wind turbines, etc...) can be imported with OSM2XP:

http://osm2xp.com/

 

If something is wrong or missing near your location, it's your fault. :P

 

Read more about OpenStreetMap here:

http://en.wikipedia....i/OpenStreetMap

 

To contribute, start here:

http://wiki.openstre.../wiki/Main_Page

http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/tools/guide

 

 

 

My favorite OSM editor is here (JOSM):

http://josm.openstreetmap.de/

 

Happy building ! B)

Sorry for the old link to the World Editor in my previous post. You can find the new versions here:

http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/05/wed-1-2-beta-1-is-here/

http://developer.x-plane.com/tools/worldeditor/

If something is wrong or missing near your location, it's your fault. :P

 

 

I'm all for collaborative world building, since I cut my teeth on FS4 and all the freeware that was born from it, but that particular statement always rubs me the wrong way. I can understand perhaps Lake Bob in East Podunk, Nebraska being off by a couple of seconds in latitude as being something left to the end-user to fix, but my "Okay, hold on now, waitaminute!" reflex kicks in when you're talking about something like a major city skyline.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally behind the crowdsource model of populating the X-Plane world, but there's just something about the wording up there that sticks in my craw.

Not something that interests me at all, i just wanna fly. Sort your own flightsim laminar, why should we improve it for you to add another million or so to your bank balance.

reflex kicks in when you're talking about something like a major city skyline.

 

You're right here, but If you had to choose 10 "major" cities, how would you select them ? Population ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population

 

I'm glad Laminar Research is more focused on the sim than on the content. Content can be modified by everyone or by 3rd party developers. The core of this simulator not.

 

Sort your own flightsim laminar, why should we improve it for you to add another million or so to your bank balance.

 

Don't do it for Laminar Research, but for the community, for yourself and for the accuracy of your location. OpenStreetMap is not only used in X-Plane. It's a great world map that can be used the way you want, including inside your smartphone where roaming would be too expensive for downloading proprietary maps:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services

 

It's also used in other flight simulators

- Fly! Legacy: http://fly.simvol.org/

- FlightGear: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FlightGear

- FSX/SceneProc: http://www.pilote-virtuel.com/viewtopic.php?pid=417984#p417984

 

It's an open content license (CC BY-SA 2.0/ODbL) and this will be more detailed and up-to-date than any other source. It's like Wikipedia, but for maps.

Yes, we need a larger team working on the project, and you, everyone can be part of this team !

 

Hello Georges

 

If anything ever gets me over to the XPlane camp it will have been your screenshots, they are excellent.

My 2 cents.

I think You have a few bucks in front of the 2 cents. Well described, especially for those who might just be coming into flight simming and are looking for a straight forward answer. If I was brand at this stuff I would be confused beyond belief.

I think the entry first time flighsim market already moved to the smart phone / tablet market before Flight came to market. Apps like Inifinte Flight and the different X-Plane offerings give a cheap first experience and if successful there are in app add-ons to expand these light flight civie flight sims.

 

So from a X-Plane perspective this is probably o good thing for the X-Plane apps. The apps act as an appetizer for the full desktop version so we might see some growth there as well.

 

I don't know if my experience is typical but I to tried some X-Plane versions and always returned to the Microsoft side. With version 8 however my X-Plane sessions became more serious. With version 9 I began buying some of the add-ons. When version 10 came around I realized I rarely used the Microsoft sims anymore. My gaming PC with FS-X and FS9 is still packed up (moved house a few months ago) I fly X-Plane on the iMac and don't want to go through the hassle of setting up the gaming rig for a few scarce MS flightsim sessions. I'm satisfied with X-Plane 10 and still have to find me some time to tinker with the local airports and WED. X-Plane has so many tools and for my flightsim use it has become the program that is the perfect fit.

I agree with most of cmdrnmartin said.

 

Regarding add-ons: there already are a lot of add-ons for X-Plane. Their increase depends on the increase of the user-base.

 

Regarding the size of the development team, I think they're not lacking on the coding part, but rather on the art-assets part. 90% of the current "incompleteness" of X-Plane is due to the lacking of art-assets.

 

Regarding X-Plane competitors, in the short term I see P3D as the main competitor: il LM changes the license, P3D will effectively be FS11 to all effects.

 

In the long term, I see Google as a potential (and "dangerous") competitor. Google basically owns a database of the entire world in terms of photorealistic textures, and I think new 3d buildings are added every day to the database.

With the financial and coding resources Google has, if they decide to develop a flight simulator, it will probably blow out every other one in terms of scenery.

 

Marco

The end of Flight is really neither a gain nor a loss for the flight simulator enthusiast community because it had so little impact on the market. The sim enthusiasts didn't want it, and the casual gamers didn't care about it.

 

Now this could positively impact X-Plane because this final nail in the coffin of Microsoft's flight simulator development could drive a lot of long time MSFS fans to X-Plane seeing how they are never going to get satisfaction from Microsoft (some were still holding out vain hope that Flight would somehow morph into Flight Simulator 11). It has also pushed a lot of longtime MSFS add-on developers to finally start taking X-Plane seriously.

Here's another reason why I just pulled the trigger with XPlane: http://www.x-plane.c...ep/12_prep.html

 

While I've found him odd at times, this guy has a vision and passion and is actually a pilot.

 

Austin is like the mad scientist of flight sim developers.

Regarding add-ons: there already are a lot of add-ons for X-Plane. Their increase depends on the increase of the user-base.

 

 

I think you are spinning your wheels with that thought.

 

The user base isn't going to grow without some very basic (but major) features being included in XP10. At least not at a pace that's worth stomaching.

 

XP10 has some great features. It still feels like a shell though with too many holes that need to be filled, not by the community, but by the developer.

 

I wish Austin would make it a priority to add basic landmarks around the globe and find a way to autopopulate airport buildings like in FSX. That and designing the AI system to allow 3rd part developers to use it the way it's used in FSX (i.e. realistic traffic) would take XP10 to another level of marketability with the flight sim fanbase at large.

 

I'm not a fan of the plausible world thing or the way XP10 draws urban scenery, but I think it's workable with some landmarks and skylines mixed in.

I think you are spinning your wheels with that thought.

 

The user base isn't going to grow without some very basic (but major) features being included in XP10. At least not at a pace that's worth stomaching.

 

Infact I said: "Their [add-ons] increase depends on the increase of the user-base.", I didn't say that the user base is necessarily going to grow in the future.

My point is, you cannot say "X-Plane needs more add-ons for the user base to grow", because it is the other way around.

 

I wish Austin would make it a priority to add basic landmarks around the globe and find a way to autopopulate airport buildings like in FSX. That and designing the AI system to allow 3rd part developers to use it the way it's used in FSX (i.e. realistic traffic) would take XP10 to another level of marketability with the flight sim fanbase at large.

 

I agree!

 

Marco

Oh I see what you meant. I agree.