The photos are Default / Stock Out of the Box Un-Enhanced X-Plane 10.25 North America Regional Edition.

 

Thank you.

 

Hook

I Think this thread is done now.

 

In summary: 

 

People have invested lots of £ in FSX, they enjoy the diversity of add-on material and are content with it's performance. X-plane has potential for future development, but lacks any real muscle right now.

Perhaps a newer generation of simmers, who don't have their £ tied up in FSX, will come along and invest.

Who knows...

 

Good debate team.

My FS9 take on PNW WA45 :ph34r: ...

 

 

I Think this thread is done now.

 

This thread was done the instant it became about XP and trashing FSX instead of about PMDG.

 

Let's say things had been the other way around.  Everyone was flying XP10, with tons of add-ons to add some functionality to the XP plausible world.  Suddenly, Microsoft releases FSX.  What would people be saying then?

 

Wait... you mean I can have accurate city skylines at a LOT of major cities, and it's all standard and I don't have to buy anything extra?  There are landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Stonehenge already included?  Of course, I've already paid good money for an XP Paris to get the Eiffel Tower, but no one's made Stonehenge for XP.

 

The terrain is accurate enough that I can do dead reckoning navigation from real world charts... pretty much everywhere in the world, without spending money on add-ons, using only the default terrain?

 

Ok... you're telling me I can have seasonal textures that change from month to month everywhere in the world?  Real world weather downloaded from the Internet?  Accurate stars and moon phases?  And I can change the date to be any date I want, with correct seasons, sunrise and sunset times, and everything?

 

Other aircraft traffic, and even air traffic control!?  And if I fly to the next town over (no one's made a version of this for XP yet), and land at the airport there, it will have the necessary buildings and such?  I'd actually recognize the airport if I had flown there in real life?  And this is practically every airport in the world??

 

Let's say I've spent $1000 on add-ons for XP and I *still* won't have everything that comes standard with FSX?

 

Ok, what am I giving up?  Looks like the night time textures and lighting aren't nearly as good as XP.  Roads and such look a little substandard, but they're all there.

 

Um... let me think about this for a second... OK, time's up.  Where to I sign up?

 

Hook

Indeed at the moment XP is the looser because of the missing interest by 3rd parties and the lack of features that could appeal the broadest audience, specifically ATC+AI and detailed aircraft.

Scenery is not the real problem, enough of airports of decent good level. If only LR could develope a more realistic IFR environment and with a couple of PMDG style aircrafts the tide could turn fast.

 

None the less can offer some awesome experience even with default scenery + freeware data. I took a ride around LOWI with SMP. Weather I guess was not perfectly portrayed but they look much more immersive that what I saw running PR3Dv2 with Opus. Much more real in the distance but never real when you close in. Hope you enjoy as much as I did flying into.

 

 

 

 

This thread was done the instant it became about XP and trashing FSX instead of about PMDG.

 

Agree, PMDG staff must be on vacation, because I can't believe they would knowingly let this go on this long.

At the moment I'm finding it difficult to stick to one platform 100%. Over the past year my time has been spent mostly with FSX particularly after the 777 was released, but I always keep XPX installed on my other drive and always end up going back to take a look at it especially when a new update or something new is released for it. I still don't want to ditch FSX as I still really enjoy flying the 777, NGX etc. I don't have a ton of scenery installed except for a few airports, ORBX AU regions, FlyTampa Dubai, FEX and a few GEX regions.

 

I tend to try and look for updated free AFCADs for airports whenever I can which is the same approach I take with X-Plane. With X-Plane there's a lot of quality scenery particularly airports that can be downloaded for free from places such as xplane.org, you'd be surprised with how much you can find there. Google is also your friend when it comes to X-Plane scenery hunting.

 

With X-Plane I find I don't have to spend as much money to get decent scenery and what is available for free tends to look nicer than what's available for free in FSX. If I want something decent in FSX scenery-wise, there's usually always a price tag attached to it. The downside is there's a bit of work involved finding all this free stuff in XP and filling in the blanks around airports etc.

 

One major factor I see now in X-Plane is weather as there's still no 3PD weather engine equivalent to ASN or REX available for XP. The devs of FSGRW have plans to develop for X-Plane but apparently they've been halted due to limitations in XP that will supposedly get addressed.

 

 

 

How does XP10 look in Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and India?

 

I'll admit that Australia looks rather plain out of the box. I remember being disappointed when I first flew over Brisbane and noticed that the river bank where the city skyline is supposed to be was just flat suburbia. I had to put a bit of work into getting the cities to look right in XP by adding custom OSM buildings etc.

 

The large bay surrounding YSSY Sydney airport is also a major one as for some reason it doesn't exist and is all lowland covered with trees. Looks a bit like all the water has drained away or dried up. Apparently this will be addressed next update.

Agree, PMDG staff must be on vacation, because I can't believe they would knowingly let this go on this long.

 

Why can't you believe it? Maybe they are interested in everyone's thoughts.

 

It will be fascinating to see how well PMDG's sandbox X-Plane project does. Interesting times ahead I think!

 

 

It will be fascinating to see how well PMDG's sandbox X-Plane project does. Interesting times ahead I think!

 

Agreed.  I don't care much about XPlane and I don't fly any of the aircraft made by PMDG, but I'm definitely interested in how they proceed with making their aircraft for XP.  I wish them all the success in the world.

 

Hook

This thread is of value to pmdg as it allows them to gather peoples opinions. 

 

 

Hook, your response is a joke i take it. Are you honestly praising the default FSX!!??

 

 

Hook, your response is a joke i take it. Are you honestly praising the default FSX!!??

 

I'm still flying it.  While I have a few good payware aircraft now (I didn't buy the first one until September 2011), I still fly a few of the defaults, and have NO add-on scenery.  Don't need it, as I seldom fly the same area twice in a year.  I've also got some stuff like CumulusX for sailplanes and Accu-Feel for most aircraft.  Oh, and Active Sky... the very first add-on I bought in February 2008.

 

Yes, I am praising default FSX.

 

Hook

Fair play.

Thank you.

 

Hook

 

You're welcome Sir!

My closing comment. Another factor we overlook is what the competing platforms are like to develop on, including the quality of support add-on developers (such as PMDG) get from them.

I'm still flying it.  While I have a few good payware aircraft now (I didn't buy the first one until September 2011), I still fly a few of the defaults, and have NO add-on scenery.  Don't need it, as I seldom fly the same area twice in a year.  I've also got some stuff like CumulusX for sailplanes and Accu-Feel for most aircraft.  Oh, and Active Sky... the very first add-on I bought in February 2008.

 

Yes, I am praising default FSX.

 

Hook

 

It's interesting how add-on's can change people's perceptions of simulation in general. It was only a few years back when I first got into FSX and simming, I also only used default and my knowledge of 'add-ons' was limited to POSKY 777, PA Airbus and whatever I could find free in the Avsim library.

 

I still treated it very much like a 'game' back then as that's what it started out as. I then discovered PMDG and all these other 'payware' add-ons which at first were very daunting, but as I got more and more into them I just couldn't think about looking back, especially now. It seemed to get a lot more serious after that as well and no longer seemed like such a 'game' anymore, maybe because of all the time and effort put into learning (LOTS of learning) and doing things the 'proper' way.

 

I think there's really only so much you can learn from default FSX. At the same time though it's not everyone's cup of tea and many people probably still prefer to treat as a casual 'game' without getting too involved.