Welcome to X-plane. I too was a long user of FSX and all that, and it was great at the time.

 

But ever since I started flying in real life, FSX just doesn't cut it with its plastic feel. X-plane fills my need for a fun, yet challenging enough experience with CRJ and some scenery that can be currently found.

 

IMO the default aircraft are very useless and I would discourage from from basing opinion of XP on them. And I miss some of the small FSX features (scroll tuning..) here and there but love the new ones I discovered. (Sloped runways while not 100% accurate are way more fun to land on than the perfect grade in FSX.

 

I used to care about all the ATC stuff (FSX ATC, Vatsim, IVAO) but after RL it's hard to go back to the unrealistic nuances of those networks. If I want the ambiance of ATC I'll just streatm liveatc.net. And still fly my STARs and SIDs.

 

The point is- I can fly a complex plane on a nice IFR route from gate to gate on a scenic airport, just download it first.

 

I find a lot of people from flight simming community (and I used to be one of them) too caught up in all the wrong things that they believe makes flying more real or simulator more authentic. You need a plane that recreates realistic performance and one that Enables the use of its features to simulate it like you would in real life. I believe PMDG creators are one of few who truly understand this. Everything else is mostly eye or ear candy or a bunch of gizmos that you wouldn't know the difference in real life anyway.

Welcome to X-plane. I too was a long user of FSX and all that, and it was great at the time.

 

But ever since I started flying in real life, FSX just doesn't cut it with its plastic feel. X-plane fills my need for a fun, yet challenging enough experience with CRJ and some scenery that can be currently found.

 

IMO the default aircraft are very useless and I would discourage from from basing opinion of XP on them. And I miss some of the small FSX features (scroll tuning..) here and there but love the new ones I discovered. (Sloped runways while not 100% accurate are way more fun to land on than the perfect grade in FSX.

 

I used to care about all the ATC stuff (FSX ATC, Vatsim, IVAO) but after RL it's hard to go back to the unrealistic nuances of those networks. If I want the ambiance of ATC I'll just streatm liveatc.net. And still fly my STARs and SIDs.

 

The point is- I can fly a complex plane on a nice IFR route from gate to gate on a scenic airport, just download it first.

 

I find a lot of people from flight simming community (and I used to be one of them) too caught up in all the wrong things that they believe makes flying more real or simulator more authentic. You need a plane that recreates realistic performance and one that Enables the use of its features to simulate it like you would in real life. I believe PMDG creators are one of few who truly understand this. Everything else is mostly eye or ear candy or a bunch of gizmos that you wouldn't know the difference in real life anyway.

 

When it comes to flight dynamics between the two sims, I'll always put in a word or more. I've flown planes for a long time, as well as being a higher performance GA aircraft owner. Since I usually prefer third party aircraft for FSX..................I see no X-Plane advantage as far as "feel", performance, or handling is concerned. I also have four X-Plane payware airplanes, in addition to freeware. Not a lot, but enough to still make comparisons. My point here, is that there isn't this tremendous & wonderful change when flying an X-Plane. For what I look for, there aren't that many differences.

 

For what I prefer, night flying will only be a small part. I want to do, just what I did in real life. And that's to take the wife on a short hop to Yellowstone

Park & and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.............or perhaps the Grand Canyon. At the moment, FSX has an excellent Jackson Hole airport by Orbx, and good looking Teton mountains too. For products like this, I'll certainly keep FSX & use X-Plane for other interests. But at the present, and being realistic about the situation, X-Plane is just too far short on "content", as of right now. I have no interest at all, in making my own scenery. For me, it will have to be both products, whether 32 or 64 bit.

 

L.Adamson

Vteckick have you tried flying on Pilot Edge? It might be just what you're looking for. They've got a 2 wk trial available.

 

I agree with some of your points but not all

 

Tell you what, if I had physical hardware to manipulate controls I wouldn't care which sim I used. Tactile feedback is king.

 

In real life I'm a pilot and air traffic controller.

Like I said above... huge pluses to XP10

 

x64 Code

Night Flying

GPU offload to the engine...my video card fan actually turns lol!

Some say the flight model, but I've not experienced this glorious "kills-fsx-FM" yet... I'll probably check out Goran's (LES) Duchess or something

HDR light rendering... it's like Lotus lights in XP10 stock

Weather - IMC means you can't see anything in and out of clouds. FSX's OPUS does this for ground layers but not higher layers

"Moving Code" with constant development...

 

Huge cons imho:

 

Lack of mouse wheel support for knob manipulation

Odd autogen

Poorly implemented landclass if they call it landclass

Shimmering scenery in the distance, somewhat cured by high in-game AA but with huge loss of performance

AI traffic (planes) just random planes all over the airports.... 3rd party could tap this I bet

"Moving" Code updates keeping some 3PD's away

 

Sorry if some of this post was not as tactful as I'd hope to be...

 

 

Ryan, I see your pretty detailed overview very encouraging overall. If the SDK's aren't there, that must become the focal point for LR to focus on so that 3PDs can move forward. It seems from what you are saying the core engine is pretty much there. Autogen, landclass, aircraft, even ATC can be added, and indeed that is the direction that will allow XP to bloom well, leaving LR to keep improving the core engine, the interface, etc, leaving the big content to 3PDs. Designing an SDK for seamless ATC to be inserted would be fabulous. This whole model of a robust core engine tailored to scale in the same trajectory as the hardware solves so many issues: 3PDs can count on what the engine will do for X number of years. Publish it LR! 'XP11 will be the core for the next 5 years'. Then XP12 will come, and WILL NOT necessarily provide legacy support for 3P add ons, though 3PDs can patch the product to function in XP12 etc, for maybe a max of 2 generations. This gives lots of opportunity, LONG TERM. And bonus, it drives hardware upgrades since the core engine is designed to encourage more system & video memory, more CPU cores, more GPU cores, etc.

 

Thanks for your overview Ryan ;o)

never mind...

Also here's a quick compare non-HDR to HDR. IF you fly low and slow the difference is easily visible. I could see how big iron XPers could care less about HDR. Unfortunately the performance drop with HDR is hefty. I can't decide if I want eye candy or performance hehe..

 

 

I don't use HDR normally. Its so nice and clear without it. With it, I get a slight shimmer in the distance which becomes anoying during the day. At night, I turn HDR on, since I can't see the shimmering and the HDR effect on airports and roads looks so nice.

 

Rob

Hmmm, see I presume something is wrong with my setup. I get more shimmers with the HDR off and in-game AA settings than I do with HDR on and even 2x AA in-game.

 

Are you using nvidia inspector?

I use it for Rise of Flight where it helped get rid of shimering. I did not see anything in inspector that affected X-plane 10, for better or worse.

Its odd that we are seeing different results with HDR. What type of video card are you using? I am using an Nvidia 660ti. With my old card, a 460GTX, I also got jaggies with HDR on, but crisp and clear with it off.

 

Here are my setting with HDR off.

 

Here is a sample image I took with these settings.

 

Rob

For what I prefer, night flying will only be a small part. I want to do, just what I did in real life. And that's to take the wife on a short hop to Yellowstone

Park & and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.............or perhaps the Grand Canyon. At the moment, FSX has an excellent Jackson Hole airport by Orbx, and good looking Teton mountains too. For products like this, I'll certainly keep FSX & use X-Plane for other interests. But at the present, and being realistic about the situation, X-Plane is just too far short on "content", as of right now. I have no interest at all, in making my own scenery. For me, it will have to be both products, whether 32 or 64 bit.

Agreed about having both. I have never looked at XP until version 10. I believe that XP10 is finally offering enough to grow on. Some of the sceneries for XP10 is of ORBX quality, IMHO:

 

http://secure.simmarket.com/truscenery-helsinki-malmi-airport-for-x-plane-10.phtml

 

and I hope, much smoother than ORBX with FSX/P3D.

CUT

 

You could save A LOT of time and energy if you just write down and save on your pc a "Standard LAdamson reply on FSX vs X-Plane". Just copy and paste it everytime any user on any forum says he prefers X-Plane to FSX and, hey pronto!.

 

 

You could save A LOT of time and energy if you just write down and save on your pc a "Standard LAdamson reply on FSX vs X-Plane". Just copy and paste it everytime any user on any forum says he prefers X-Plane to FSX and, hey pronto!.

When it comes to flight dynamics, I'll challenge every time. Make me a list of why XP is superior and more realistic. One letter at a time from my I phone...

When it comes to flight dynamics, I'll challenge every time.

 

I'm not challenging your claims, even considering that many limitations of FSX flight and ground models (prop slipstream, runway friction, thrust vectoring, helicopter flight dynamics, etc.) have been bypassed by 3rd party add-ons with heavy external interventions and that is fine.

 

I'm just suggesting you a way to save a lot of time with a standard reply everytime the X-Plane vs FSX debate comes up.

Thanks Rob. It's a little hard to tell from your smaller screenshot if you have jaggies or not. If you did a 1:1 crop I might notice it.

 

Anyyway I was running 16x AF that might be the culprit... I run it for FSX so I sort of presumed it would need the same settings.

 

So I set your settings and it looks better in the day time. I don't know what the heck I was running before with HDR off but those settings work pretty well. It's still not super smooth in big cities like socal but it's decent. Also my sim is using half the VRAM compared to your shot. I suppose it's all the Carenado Waco taking up vram huh? I'm using GTX570 btw

 

p.s. I'm getting about 16 fps with the same settings as you. I'm flying the Falcon 700EX freeware.

The reason, the VRAM usage was high, is because I took that screen shot of my settings, while I was at an airport that I had created hires satellite scenery for withG2XPL. I looks great and runs smooth, but uses a lot more VRAM to display. As long as your card has the headroom for it, its not a problem. Rob