Gotta give that guy HUGE kudos- sloped runways. He has went toe-and-toe with MS for ten years, and in many ways has flat out kick their butts. The new scenery looks pretty good too. Looks like it has virtual cockpits now also.

Well, hold on here a second. I had sloped runways in 1983 with FS.1 and my trusty Apple IIc. Three single malt scotches and those puppies were sloped, let me tell ya! To this day, I can slope a runway to any degree I want. The degree of the slope is directly proportional to the number of drinks one consumes (or is that inversely proportional?). :)Seriously, yes, that would be a great feature in MSFS and I am sure we'll see it someday.

Elite has had sloped runways for yonks and better than that, they actually have the correct gradients rather than some random low res terrain bump that just happens to be where there should be a flat runway.

Not strictly true, there are a few addons available in the library that offer sloped runways.But, yeah, its not a "general" MS thing, I think I will give the demo a whirl, as I have not liked X-plane so far, maybe this version will win me over? :)Dan.

In the last few years MSFS has blown by X-Plane like the SR-71 passing a Cub........

Wrong! There is plenty of stuff in X-plane that FS can't touch yet. Both still have problems IMHO.

Well FS 2004 is better for mainstream and X-plane for hardcore pilots I guess :DMe I am more mainstream.

>Wrong! There is plenty of stuff in X-plane that FS can't>touch yet. Both still have problems IMHO.Like what?

It's a pretty nice feature. Will be interesting to see how this version of X-Plane turns out.There are advantages to FS's flat airports however. If the runway positions and/or mesh are inaccurate you could end up with very sloped and unrealistic runways. But the option of using sloped runways should be in FS for those who want to create realistic runways...BTW FU3 featured sloped runways as well. At least several grass runways were sloped (don't know about asphalt/concrete runways).

I've never owned X-Plane but as far as I can tell from reading the forums and so forth, it basically has two qualities that are in its favor in comparison to MSFS - flight modelling and guage smoothness. Now, for me personally, not being a real world pilot, I'm pretty certain that the differences in flight modelling would go completely unnoticed by myself. I've got a few of the add-on planes for FS that are generally considered to be the best available for the sim in the flight model area and they seem pretty darned convincing to me. Also, in reading posts on the various forums, it seems theres still lots of room for debate as to how much more realistic the FMs in X-plane actually are in the end. I've read posts by quite a few rw pilots claiming that there are still lots of issues with the planes in XP in spite of its more complex physics engine and that in the final analysis a well designed FS airfile can be made very close to as good as what X-Plane offers anyway. There also seems to be general agreement that X-Plane is no better at all at modelling the "heavies." Having said that, I'm prepared to give X-Plane a marginal "victory" in the flight modelling category. Guage smoothness? I assume since X-Plane has no VCs, that we are only comparing 2D here and afaic, the guages in the 2D panels of most of the good add-ons for FS9 are really pretty smooth - certainly more than smooth enough for flying under most normal situations. Perhaps the fact that I've been flying sims since the early 80's and can remember what it was like back then has made me a bit more forgiving than the X-Plane guys but ftmp the 2D guages in MSFS seem completely smooth to me. Now the VCs are of course a different story and some of them are very jerky but since X-Plane hasn't even had them I don't see how that could count against FS. So, I'm sure the guages in X-Plane are a bit more smooth, but to me anyway, that's not a particularly significant selling point.What else? It seems to me that in every other area MSFS has considerably more to offer. Better (though not perfect by any means) ATC, better scenery (I saw a couple of screenshots of XP8 and frankly it looks horrible afaic), better weather, an endless supply of freeware and payware add-ons to enjoy...in any event, from what I can glean by reading about the sims it certainly doesn't seem like X-Plane has really "kicked but" in any area of comparison.

For smoothness and framerates X-plane CANNOT be beaten.But I personally just feel to is to weak in alot of areas to draw me away from FS at the moment.Graphically, it is a very poor match to FS, both externally, and with gauges and panels, in XP7 the panel of the A320 is a bit of a mess, it just simply looks nothing like an A320, and alot of other models suffer the same problem.I am going to DL the demo of XP8, gawd knows how to use this bit-torrent stuff though ;), and see what it has to offer.Also, the ATC is pretty poor in XP, and I am not convinced that XP's "blade eliment theory", not sure if thats what its called, way of flight modelling is the right way to do it.As I understand it the flight model is calculated from the model, and the way it interacts with its environment, ok, in theory that sounds very good, just like a real plane, BUT, what if the external model is not accurate? what happens then?, surely a slight anomily in the model would result in the FD being thrown off kilter?At least in FS, the FD can be "tweaked" by numbers regardless of the shape of the model, we have seen so many posts about plane x's di-hedral not being right, something like this must have a detrimental effect on XP's FD's?.Still, it is nice to have some sort of competition, as we don't want MS to have (another) monopoly ;)Dan.

One thing that always kept me away from X-Plane was the fact the engine(s) could not be started from a dark and cold cockpit. Like in sublogic ATP, I am not sure if that is still the case.. Have a great dayJohn.

I forgot FU3 had sloped runways.But for flight models- I think it would be hard to say that X-Plane doesn't offer MORE realistic flight models (Nothing is 100% realistic). In FS, you can achieve good flight models, but it seems like you have to fudge things to do it (Some planes CGs are all out of whack). I think Elite, or PS1 do better jobs by using lookup-tables, but the limitation is that it only works for very specific planes- it's not a flexible way to do it, but it will achieve the best real-world numbers.And you can't argue that X-Plane allows many,many more aircraft configurations. They certainly beat MS's buggy turboprops. It seems like X-Plane actually models props, clutches and other things, while they are kind of hard-coded in FS. Like the ATR 72- It just annoys me that although the prop brake is on, and the prop is not spinning- this is only modeled visually- the physics think the prop is spinning, and adding throttle will make you move. It's not Flight One's fault- It's MS fault for not having the systems available to the developer.Personally, I like FS more because it is more mainstream, and companies like PMDG develop planes for it. I would LOVE to see a head to head comparison of the NG in FS, and X-Plane- to see what it can really do.My favorite sim is PS1 though- Arguably the oldest (Dos?!), ugliest (640x480 only),most limited scope (747-400 only) sim out there, but it runs circles around everything else for it's modeling of the 747-400.I'm not trying to bash MS- but when ONE guy with some dedication can make X-Plane, and have people EVEN COMPARE it to FS, it's pretty amazing.The FS team is like 30 people- Shouldn't it be 10x more (at least)advanced than X-Plane? I've loved FS since FS 2 on my Apple IIe, but I don't get the feeling of awe with each new version like I used to. Even with FU2, I fired it up and was like "Wow!"- built in ATC, AI aircraft, etc. etc.FS just seems to get some minor updates every few years- nothing mind blowing.

>Gotta give that guy HUGE kudos- sloped runways. Wonder how accurate they are. Are they just higher on one end than the other, or accurate the entire length of the runway? There is a grass field in Vineland NJ, where the runway is flat, then slopes down into quite a hollow, then back up and flattening out. All GA aircraft at the field, also used by the Forest Service, but Ive watched them taking off and it sure looks weird as they go down, then up while gathering speed. Its not just a "little" depression either, at the deepest, it must be at least 5' lower. BOB

Yeah, I'm sure the flight modelling is a bit more realisic, but I guess from my perspective, I'm not interested in giving up 70% of the sim experience that I get from FS9 in trade for 5% better flight modelling. I mean its true what you say that some of the modelling in FS9 is achieved by "fudging the numbers," but to me that doesn't matter at all. I don't care a whit how they get from point A to point Z in the modelling, I only care about point Z. As far as smoothness goes, I suppose if one were to turn the options down in FS9 to make it as barren as X-Plane you'd likely get some nice framerates. Theres no doubt its impressive what one guy has done with X-Plane. I'd argue though that in many cases, its the stuff that isn't in X-Plane that actually makes up a fair percentage of the development work in FS9. So while I give Austin tons of credit for achieving what he has, in the end I just don't have the spare time to fit two sims in my schedule and so a choice becomes necessary and for me the choice is fairly simple to make...