Hey folks. Long time simmer here just coming back from a big 2 year break or so from flight simming, looking to get a basic set up again... joystick with a good sim + loads of addons.

 

Since microsoft dropped the ball with flight and no plans to make any future sims in this area, I'm thinking of branching out, my background: Started with FS2002, followed all the way up to FS2004 and stayed there for quite some time until FSX mature heavily, and I mean years before I came from FS2004 to FSX.

 

However I do think that maybe FSX is getting dated as well now, so before I commit to FSX again, I'm re-thinking some of my sim options. X-Plane is one of them, how does it stack up with graphics, performance and addons?

 

I know FSX is very CPU bound game, which is frustrating when you have a very capable system but the game code is bottle necking you a lot, does X-Plane take full use of todays high end GPUs? I have 2xGTX 670s in SLI and would love to hear the news that it will eat all these resources up (I do have a i5 3570K at 4.2ghz however)

 

FSX When stacked with addons, does look great, but requires a lot of effort to get there, and the bottle necking doesn't help. How does X-Plane graphics compare? Lastly, addons... I can't find much about x-plane addons where as FSX is heaving with them.

 

Would love to hear your input and advice.

xp10 does use all your hardware, I use both sims but like xp10 more since it's from 2012 and the traffic/road/autogen/night flying is awesome. Xp10 is also 64bit now with smooth, stable amazing performance. FSX has awesome payware addons and xp10 is slowly getting amazing payware but most devs are waiting for xp10 to be finalized.....out of beta to start producing more payware.

I would suggest you download the demo and try it. www.x-plane.com

-SLI wont make any difference in terms of performance

 

With our setup, XP WILL perform very well with high settings, even with HDR on.

 

When it comes to smoothness, XP is the clear winner.

Hello Colasanto,Welcome back! X-Plane is A Beautiful sim,You will have to go through a bit of a learning curve[setting up controls] but it's well worth it.

 

Check these guy's out for incredible aircraft

http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/

 

These guy's are making cutting edge scenery for X-Plane

http://truscenery.wordpress.com/

I would go with P3D, but wait for the 2.0 update coming next year, to me X-Plane 10 64bit is like stepping back to 1999.

X-Plane 10 64bit is like stepping back to 1999.

 

You've got to be kidding me....lmfao!

Didn't take long, lol, thats just my opinion, by all means you guys buy what you want, your money

Didn't take long

 

Yep, that's what I thought too. LOL

I would go with P3D, but wait for the 2.0 update coming next year, to me X-Plane 10 64bit is like stepping back to 1999.

 

this does not look like a sim from 1999:

Colasanto, try the demo, decide for yourself

I tried the XP10 demo once, with all the graphic settings maxed up it looked even worse than default FSX textures / low settings.

Didn't even bother to find out why.

If your interested in the product, try the demo again.

 

They've made some inroads into the scenery issues, but it's still not complete. The updated demo will let you see the changes since your last attempt. Keep in mind the demo is a 100% faithful representation of what you will see in the retail product... albeit limited to Seattle and 15 minutes of flight time. If you have issues with the appearance, settings, or quality of the demo, you will see essentially the same exact thing in the real product and should make your purchasing decisions accordingly.

 

The demo is a very important tool for your evaluation - give it another shake. X-Plane certainly isn't for everyone, and the demo is a good vehicle to help determine if it's for you.

 

-Greg

I personally dislike the way aircrafts handle (although with a joystick it isn't as bad), and even with addons the sim doesn't look as nice as addons in FSX. While the lighting is slightly more realistic in X-Plane, I feel there is a constant shadow over everything, and flying gets a little dreary even. There are some great things about it, but I'm not ready to make any permanent changes yet. I'm going to still be stuck on FSX for at least another year and then switch over to I believe P3D, but we'll see where that goes.

I tried the XP10 demo once, with all the graphic settings maxed up it looked even worse than default FSX textures / low settings.

Didn't even bother to find out why.

You must have a beast of a machine to run X-Plane at max settings in the demo area.

Just a quick comparison between FSX default textures/low settings and X-Plane at near max settings.

I honestly don't know what you're seeing, but the results are pretty obvious to me.

 

FSX

 

 

X-Plane

 

 

And X-Plane at night

Edited January 3, 201313 yr by firehawk44
Images removed. Exceed 1600W and far exceed 400KB limit.

Downloading the demo now to see how it runs for my first test, will report back.. thanks.