Please help me to like it

[MSFS Ralf 149]

That sounds funny, so let me explain it please.
Here is what I have:
XP10.20
Payware: Mu-2, JAR A320, Piper Package and some jets by Jason Chandler, Canadian Rocky Mountains scenery
Things that I like: XP is running stable and with good fps, most settings are medium on my system. The light effects are great while flying in the dark.
What I'm missing is the satisfaction while flying. I know we have great add on airports, payware and freeware. Few here, few there, but I don't want to spend all my simming time flying traffic patterns over a "nice scenery hot spot".
As soon as I want to populate a region with add on airports, I download freeware airports at the .org, many airports are low quality and most of them come with static aircrafts that don't make sense, like European turboprops at Caribbean airports and Fed Ex planes at the gates.
The Canadian Rocky Mountains package is nice, but not what I'd call payware scenery in the year 2013. Sorry for the comparism, but ORBX looks so much better.
Next choice would be to fly the A320 between the European Aerosoft airports that come with XP10. Well, not much choice, very basic airports and an aircraft that is full of bugs in it's beta stage.
Next I started to fly from default to default North American airports. Well, no airport scenery. I could live with that, but wherever I fly, the scenery looks all the same. Miami, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, you could never tell where you are. Different taxiway layouts, different runway heading, that's all?
Well, we have talked enough about missing seasons, airport buildings and landmarks, I don't want to start that again. What I really like to know, and that is my honest question, what is it, that keeps you flying XP. I have an open mind and I really want to feel that "wow" moment too.

[rick_studder 4]

I think it comes down to what aspects of flying one appreciates. I have the opposite experience of you; I enjoy XP more and more and MSFS less and less. I appreciate the fluidity and the feel of speed in XP (it isn't just the high frame rates, but they help) and the way the atmosphere influences the aircraft, the feel of actually floating through the fluid of air. I like the weather effects — try a cross wind landing in gusty conditions and heavy rain in the two sims and you will know what I mean. In MSFS it will be too easy, in XP perhaps too hard, but I prefer the latter.

 

I use XP mostly with relatively light aircrafts such as the MU2 or the Carenado Caravan, often flying to remote places. I still use MSFS if I fly heavy metal because I find MSFS has much better AI traffic and the edge with regards to ease of manipulating knobs, and I can drag panels to a second monitor (hope that will be possible in XP someday).

 

If populated and graphically pleasing airports is a high priority for you, XP might not be the sim for you, at least not yet.

[Muskoka 104]

Agree with Rick. Xplane is a "flight simulator / engineering tool", it simulates flight and offers aircraft building, not much else other than that (yet). Yes it can get boring flying around in a basically empty / void world (besides car traffic). FSX on the other hand is a more "complete" flight simulator, and with it's many addons (not absolutely necessary) becomes even better still.

 

Until all the missing or lacking parts of Xplane are taken care of, or are in place, it will not be a "complete" flight simulator, and perhaps FSX is still your better choice. If you want advanced AI traffic, ATC, world scenery coverage, your best to stick with FSX. Performance is not an issue with the DX10 mods in FSX as well, very different sim from the DX9 version.

 

Xplane and FSX are two completely different sims, and shouldn't be compared. They don't come close to offering the same amount of immersion from a complete flight simulation standpoint. Xplane still needs to grow to become complete. As a pattern flier, or engineering tool, it is great.

 

Glen

[MSFS Ralf 149]

Thank you so far. And it looks as if XP is the wrong product for me indeed.

[greggerm 312]

Ralf,

 

I too am someone who finds X-Plane 10 lacking in the world scenery department, but I've found that despite this, there is still some value to the product. While I use MSFS near-exclusively at this time due to the scenery shortcomings in X-Plane, I'll still take XP10 out for a spin around the pattern and/or a little "IFR" (I follow roads) at full afterburner in the F-22. It's funny - X-Plane is a "toy" for me, and MSFS is the professional simulator... which is the complete opposite of what many X-Plane users would say. Different expectations and requirements lead to different experiences and usage. Nothing wrong with that at all.

 

In my opinion, simmers who completely and suddenly switch from one platform for another are more likely to switch back disappointed when they discover shortcomings. Simmers who opt to use two platforms, enjoying the strengths of both independently, are more likely to have an enjoyable experience overall.

 

I know the disappointment that comes from the scenery world of X-Plane... been there, done that, own the tee-shirt, and sent a postcard. Even though it falls short in that aspect of simming for me, I still find small reasons to fire it up and take a loop around the pattern (usually at sunset) every now and again. Hang on to your X-Plane installation, and keep tabs on updates and the forums. Perhaps in the future, enough improvements will be made to make it a more complete package that you can enjoy.

 

-Greg

[CarlosF 1,247]

greggerm, on 22 Mar 2013 - 08:54, said:

In my opinion, simmers who completely and suddenly switch from one platform for another are more likely to switch back disappointed when they discover shortcomings.

In my case I've been flying XP only since 9.7 and now only XP10, haven't look back and not planning too either. I have given FSX many chances only to come short of my expectations and yes I too have invested in 3dparty aircraft addon’s, like PDMG, Carenado and RealAir simulations, weather injectors like ActiveSky etc., but didn't spend a cent on Orbx because of the performance issues I encounter. I too did my homework trying very hard to work with all of the “optimizations” tips out there, even with all of these good suggestions I still had problems with OOM, CTD’s. With XP9.7 and now XP10 I haven’t had one such bad experience, not one.

Because of this performance issues I tried XP 9.7 and lord and behold, smoothness and instrument fluidity at last, I admit XP 9 did had a lot of short comings, even more then XP10 but I was willing to accept and trade eye-candy for performance. Now with XP10 I completely dropped FSX and haven’t looked back. Granted, poor performance may be due to my not so high-end pc, but I wasn’t about to spend $1000 just to get one sim running smoothly when the rest of the games I have did. Games like DSC World A10, Black Shark and now P-51D, among others. All of them run very smooth on my system with high rendering settings.

 

For me at least, scenery comes in second to what I look for and consider important in a sim. XP’s feel of flight, fluidity of instruments, weather, rain effects and the immersion experience (no blurries, or popping objects, no micro stutters) is what is important to me.

Some can argue about Flight dynamics between XP vs FSX all day long (I’m not qualified in this area) but I find FSX aircraft to be sort of flying on rails, too easy. With the latest release of the Jetstream 32, I have never neither in FSX or XP9.7 had such a wonderful immersion of flight until now.

 

I've downloaded tons of airports, OSM and photoscenery from SimHeaven, all for free. This has taken care of the lack of airport buildings, most major airports are there. I have spent no more than $150 on 3r party aircraft like the Jetstream 32, MU-2, Caravan and I’m already a very happy camper.

Now that LR has switched to a 64-bit platform, things are only going to get better!

 

But as you pointed out

“Different expectations and requirements lead to different experiences and usage”

 

Totally agree with you here!

 

Carlos

[Comanche 417]

I was just about to chime in, but Pirata wrote what I was going to say and he summed it up well for me.  So. "What he said"

 

Rob

[carrotroot 77]

X-Plane 10 runs really smooth on my system ... also the textures are nice and crisp.

 

The blurry textures while flying in FSX is what killed it for me, I was spending too much time tweaking the FSX.cfg in a futile attempt to get the textures to look half-way decent. And not enough time flying.   

[LAdamson 240]

Short note from IPhone. The flying on rails from FSX is correct. The learning to deal with constant torque for the XP Cessna 172, as mentioned at Flightsim Com is NOT correct. Unfortunatly, the user believes the torque must be realistic, because the FSX model seems to easy. Sometimes, XP leads people down the wrong path.

 

PS........ I keep reading about the sense of speed. Unless you're low to the ground, there really isn't that much sense of speed. XP usually over does the effect. And yes, I'm qualified to make these flight model comparisons.

[carrotroot 77]

Why not simply get another Cessna 172 that has the correct handling? It sounds more like you'er advocating tossing the baby out with the bathwater over a default plane.

 

I think X-Plane has some good points, however those points may not be reflected immediately well in its base package.

[Geofa 108]

I am in complete agreement with Greg above. Once I  accepted that Xplane is not going to be useful for me as a home trainer I can accept it in the same way as Greg and enjoy it for its fun aspects and non serious fun flying.

 

Carrotroot-I think Larry is speaking of certain failings that seem to be in all aircraft that have been actively pointed out in other threads.

[MSFS Ralf 149]

Thank you, some of you made my day. I will not take XPX that much serious anymore. After each update I will fire it up again for a pattern. In the meantime I give up any hope that this sim will mature durin the 10 life circle. Let me guess, we will not see good ground textures or even seasons and I doubt that big 3pd players will join the party. There will be no ORBX terrain for sure, most likely no superior REX or UTX product and PMDG went silent. Well, there's still that nice Finnish airport, some of you might think now. So the end of another XP life cycle comes closer, and maybe in XPXI we will see ... (fill in your hopes and dreams here...)

What do we have? We still have the urban legend of the best flight model of all sims, the blade element theory. I like the overdone torque and turbulence most of it. If it would be real, I would never enter an airplane again.

I leave another XP version behind in frustration and hope when Austin writes the next chapter, I can resist.

[rick_studder 4]

Just tried the default Cessna 172 in XP 10.

 

- At takeoff the aircraft rolls to the left. Pilot instinct is to apply right rudder to correct. However this will make the ball move to the left (you will fly uncoordinated) — unlike in real life. It seems torque (roll movement) is much more pronounced in X-Plane than P-factor and spiraling slipstream (yaw movement). This is unrealistic.

 

- In straight and level flight, normal power settings, the aircraft flies straight ahead, no turn tendencies, and the ball is centered. Realistic.

 

- In a power off dive the aircraft turns slightly to the left. Realistic. The aircraft is built that way to fly straight and level in normal cruise.

 

Overall I think the C172 behaves acceptable, apart from the torque issue, which seems to be a general problem for props in X-Plane. Many aircrafts will need right aileron trim to fly straight in cruise. Usually not realistic. (Though twins with counter rotating props should not have this problem, and you can make props counter rotating on any twin in plane maker. I cheated and did that with the MU2.) Jets are not affected by this.

 

Why hasn't the torque isse been fixed? Only flight dynamics dictator Austin Meyer knows, and he moves in ways just as mysterious as X-Plane's props.

 

So yes, X-Plane has issues, and I agree that it is harder to find an aircraft in XP that flies by the number like MSFS add ons — but there is an increase in quality add on developers for XP now, so I think that will change.

 

And I still prefer the wind tunnel feel of XP. Landings illustrate how much XP after all gets right: the sense of speed; the effect of wind, turbulence and gusts; the ground handling. A student pilot could practice x-wind landings in XP and benefit from it, not so with MSFS.

[CarlosF 1,247]

Unless you're low to the ground, there really isn't that much sense of speed

That's exactly the point. In FSX even close to the ground it feels like you are floating or flying at high altitudes. No sens of speed!

 

Edit:

 

I may not be qualified but I've been in the co-pilot seat for many hours along with my bother who IS a commercial pilot. So I know what sense_of_speed means.

[GodAtum 69]

Its like Windows vs Mac. Why would I change to Mac when I haves £1000s of software on Windows.