Hi all,

Ok I'm new to X-Plane after many on the MS side of the fence and I am trying to adjust.

There are many things I am struggling with as I try to move forward after the death of FS among which are the sight at my local GA airfield of a B52 and a NASA 747 trying to take off, random ATC chatter and strange looking roads. Tonight a major curve ball was setting up a flight at my local airfield (EGKA) with real weather as we are in the middle of a bad storm 80mph winds, heavy rain etc to load up the sim with clear skies and the Northern light's dancing across the skies as I'd think they would appear in the 

far north. Is it just me that has messed up my X-Plane install or is this to be expected???

 

David G

David,

 

weather in X-Plane, the way it "renders" winds and turbulence, precipitation, etc... is really better than anything you can have for FSX, plus it adds by default ridge lift - not perfect, but for FSX you have to buy it, and it isn't that good after all.... ( the default that comes with FSX in some scenarios is very poor too...)

 

But, there is indeed a problem with X-Plane 10 when it comes to properly depict daylight near dusk / dawn according to what you see outside from the window of your simulation room :-)

 

There are add-ons that can tune the effect, and we can even edit the color maps to better suit our liking, but it's a delicate operation and I tried it once but didn't really like the results. I am waiting for the new line of SkyMAXX products to solve this problems and make the skies a lot more plausible in X-Plane 10.

 

Now, in as far as weather goes, I am with you in that my experience this weekend, and particularly yesterday, was somehow puzzling!!!!

 

Something "strange" happened to X-Plane's weather fetched from the Internet? 

 

I usually open SkyVector in my browser and search for places with bad weather, gusting winds, rain, etc... to go flying. I'm a masochist!!!  

 

Well, yesterday whenever I moved the aircraft to one of those nasty airfields I was finding weather conditions that were a lot less extreme than what I was supposed to find there. This included wind speed, but also cloud cover and precipitation ???

 

Today, just half an hour ago or so, I was using X-Plane around France and Belgium because I knew the weather there today is really nasty, and I was able to get those gusting winds, and rain at some places. Cloud cover was also plausible!

 

Well, what might have happened yesterday?  Was it just yesterday, maybe because the source of info X-plane 10 uses is in the USA and ( I believe ) their Public services are still under severe cuts ( were the services available yesterday ???? ), or is it some problem with 10.25b1?

 

I'll try to get more data during this week and see what is going on, but the fact is that today that bad weather across Central Europe is there too in X-Plane!

 

Ah!  EGKA was one of the airports I buzzed around yesterday too :-)

And as for the AI, you can set which planes you want to see in the aircraft menu so you can change those heavy tubes / bombers to GA planes, but it doesn't solve the problem of whatever you choose spawning right on top of you. Basically the AI is rubbish as it stands, but this is on the list of things to be improved. I've turned mine off.

 

If you've just come from FSX you will certainly miss a few things at first, but take some time to download AlpilotX's HD meshes, Simheaven's OSM packages, and take a flight from Nice to Lugano or some other Alpine destination in the early morning and you'll soon start to enjoy XPlane B)

A few of the things I missed the most when I began the transition to XP10 still persist today, lack of a complete AI package like UT2, multiple texture packs to choose from, REX, FEX, AS2012. Airport facilities, mouse wheel manipulators, etc. So initially it can be a challenging transition frock with frustration and disappointment, however; if you give it more than a passing glance and work within the Sim itself you will begin to see many merits that make it a rewarding platform to sim in. Just about every thing I still find frustrating with XP I can mitigate in some way, of course this won't work for everyone because we all have different priorities...

Issue/Concern                                             Mitigating/ Temp. Solution                                                                                  Long Term Solution
Lack of AI & ATC                     Turn it off or manage it by exception and/or fly online                           Sooner or later a 3PD completely automated solution will show up
Same Boring Textures            Some free sets available or do as I do and fly XP mostly at night      Companies like REX are interested in XP and SkyMax is just around the corner             
Lack of Airport buildings         Lots of freeware and some payware out there now; more coming                Crowd sourcing with WED and big name payware should make XP evolve

I could go on but I'm sure you get my point. I've learned to live with some of XP's more disappointing aspects through appreciation of what it does very well like night environment and lighting/shadowing, road and vehicle traffic, not to mention core aspects like stability and performance. Yeah it still has some true warts blurry textures at altitude, lack of a true hardware control manipulation software like FSUIPC (that is persistent & configurable by aircraft), and "white out" cloud transitions are three of the most annoying things for me personally.

My advice is to stick with it, I think I came to XP a bit too early. At times it feels that progress is being made at a glacieral pace it is being made. 64bit transition was a major milestone and I think much of the XP community (especially us FSX transplants) are counting on V1.3 to be the turning point that I thought was about to occur a year ago but unfortunately has yet to materialize. I remain cautiously optimistic that we'll see the platform mature significantly over the next two years. At times I have to remind myself that FSX didn't really start to get enjoyable for the majority of its users until the release of SB processors and that was about four years after its initial release. So in light of that XP10 seems to be on a pretty steady pace but one I'm sure we'd all like to see expedited.

Fly them both... That's what I fo

Fly them both... That's what I fo

Me too

 

I also apologize for the spacing of  my previous post expanded on a 22" or larger monitor and it reads ok smaller and it gets all garbled :wacko:

I fly both XPX and fs, but get frustrated with the lack of mouse wheel control... becomes a show stopper for me. Unfortunately this is a "feature" and not a 'bug"

 

Bruce,

I usually open SkyVector in my browser and search for places with bad weather, gusting winds, rain, etc... to go flying. I'm a masochist!!!

 

Just wondering,

 

 

If...........it was real life; would you be willing to pay all of the expenses required to operate an airplane, including the time it takes to remain current......if flying just involved weather as listed above?

 

 

I tend to use sims, to recreate flights. I'm not a real fan of bad weather. In my part of the country, it means icing, downdrafts, obscurred mountains, cold cockpits, and general misery. :smile:

 

In my former 31 year life bad weather was the norm for a majority of the year-and thus practice on a sim of poor conditions was very useful ( though no sim then or now does icing at all well that plagued life from October to May....).

It was learn to deal with it in a safe way or never fly...But yes-avoidance was always plan A.

In my former 31 year life bad weather was the norm for a majority of the year-and thus practice on a sim of poor conditions was very useful ( though no sim then or now does icing at all well that plagued life from October to May....).

It was learn to deal with it in a safe way or never fly...But yes-avoidance was always plan A.

Practice, which I assume is IFR work.

 

During my IFR training, I had to get realistic about the situation. First was the icing problem. It's a real problem out here in the mountain west. My second problem was the mountains. Actually, I love mountain flight, and IFR routing, isn't really where I wanted to go. While flying with another pilot, he asked what I really wanted out of flying. At this point, I made my decision, and scrubbed my Instrument training. I would never enjoy instrument routes, enough to keep current. And if you don't keep current, then you had better not be flying in IMC conditions. At that point, I devoted my spare dollars to aerobatic training, and building my RV6A.

Well not to churn up history- but I got my ifr in '93 or so but aways considered that just made me a good Vfr pilot. In the pro pilot days 1998, when duats first emerged we started postulating that live weather could be downloaded and possibly put in a sim- giving great simulating value to an ifr pilot. Low and behold fs2000 had real weather downloads ( yes despite the ms team never appearing on avsim boards they monitored, gathered ideas, listened, and innovated-god I miss that).

...and fs2000 had real weather downloads-yes not perfect but cutting edge for the times.

 

Every day I would download rw, and fly every approach in my state-adf, vor, and ils at the time. Took me about a year to fly all of them but what a valuable training experience at the time and how it made me a better pilot at little expense.

 

As for icing-almost always a problem in my former Michigan-and still modeled porely in any sim. Nothing like flying happily on and seeing a sheet of ice form on your windscreen/ leading edge in one second.

Flight Unlimited 3 did various types of icing very well!

 

ELITE does it too, but you have to use the instructor screen ( on a separated monitor ) to be able to enable, for instance, the most comprehensive set of icing effect of the pitot dynamic and static ports I have ever seen in a simulator.

 

But I agree, this and other so basic and important factors in RL flying should be accounted for in a good sim.

 

Of course both in fsx and in x-plane you can do it  - sort of - from the outside.

 

X-plane at least does a much better job at replicating the evils of flying through convective clouds, a sensation I can't get in fsx.... Let's not forget that inside such a cloud you can have updrafts at 65+ knot and downdrafts not so intense but still very fast!!! Would you fly with a 65+ knot wind? Now imagine travelling through a heavy mass of air moving down at that speed :-)

 

The various forms of precipitation and their effects on the aircraft cell are also a lot better in x-plane by default. I believe there are add-ons for fsx enhancing it ( ? )

 

My problem with fsx was that the flight dynamics and engine model stopped in 2006. X-Plane 10 is stepping ahead every version / beta, and now that Austin got the time to dedicate to that annoying "torque bug" I believe I can perfectly live with other limitations in the sim, mostly cosmetic...

My problem with fsx was that the flight dynamics and engine model stopped in 2006. X-Plane 10 is stepping ahead every version / beta, and now that Austin got the time to dedicate to that annoying "torque bug" I believe I can perfectly live with other limitations in the sim, mostly cosmetic...

 

I wouldn't agree there. 3rd party developers for FSX have been stepping around the MSFS programming for years. I should know, as I've beta tested numerous 3rd party products, as well as MSFS itself. As to the "torque bug", Austin and some developers seem to say, that it doesn't exist. And they produce videos, in an attempt to prove it. I certainly wasn't impressed by that last video....in Austin's airplane.

 

 

Flight Unlimited 3 did various types of icing very well!

 

ELITE does it too, but you have to use the instructor screen ( on a separated monitor ) to be able to enable, for instance, the most comprehensive set of icing effect of the pitot dynamic and static ports I have ever seen in a simulator.

 

But I agree, this and other so basic and important factors in RL flying should be accounted for in a good sim.

 

Of course both in fsx and in x-plane you can do it - sort of - from the outside.

 

X-plane at least does a much better job at replicating the evils of flying through convective clouds, a sensation I can't get in fsx.... Let's not forget that inside such a cloud you can have updrafts at 65+ knot and downdrafts not so intense but still very fast!!! Would you fly with a 65+ knot wind? Now imagine travelling through a heavy mass of air moving down at that speed :-)

 

The various forms of precipitation and their effects on the aircraft cell are also a lot better in x-plane by default. I believe there are add-ons for fsx enhancing it ( ? )

 

My problem with fsx was that the flight dynamics and engine model stopped in 2006. X-Plane 10 is stepping ahead every version / beta, and now that Austin got the time to dedicate to that annoying "torque bug" I believe I can perfectly live with other limitations in the sim, mostly cosmetic...

Icing simulated on present sims is done about as well as scenery was for sims in the 1980's.....

 

 

Austin and some developers seem to say, that it doesn't exist.

 

No, Larry, he has finally accepted that something is not done the right way and is looking into it for one of the next 10.X releases !