The "other" future is full of OOMs

[realkewl 3]

I have been flying FSX for years and when P3D came out, like a dummy, I deleted FSX (kept all add on) and went to P3D full throttle. P3Dv1,4, P2Dv2.0 and now P3Dv2.1.  I was looking forward so much for 2.1.  The latest version fixed some things but messed up other things like GPS systems and flight planing.  I know LM is trying hard to fix things as we the testers find things wrong. I guess I am just disappointed. May go back to FSX til LM gets things sorted out. Or I may try X plane 10. It has a future with the flight simmers as well.

 

Can't FSX and P3Dv2.1 both reside on the same machine?

 

-Ray

[captain420 3,099]

I'm about to reach that point myself. I started with FSX, and got fed up with tweaking, and dealing with OOM and crashes, and then started to invest my time into P3D v2.x. I was still having problems. If its not one thing its something else. I'm very tired of constantly messing around trying to get things just right and when I do, the game crashes and I get OOM. It totally ruins the experience. With that being said, I am trying to move on to XPX. I have used it before but this time I really want to say goodbye to FSX/P3D for good. I am going to start getting into XPX again, at least I don't have to worry about OOM and CTD's and endless tweaking to get the game to run. Games these days should just load and go, I never had to do so much just to play a game in my life, and it's getting extremely ridiculous. Anyways just thought I share my rants as I can completely relate to the OP in this situation.

 

I really wish the developers would just drop investing time and money into FSX, its dead. I think a wiser choice would to invest that time into XPX 64 bit. In order to be successful sometimes, one has to make take risks like Apple did when it made the move from PPC to Intel. Bold move but extremely successful turnout. Thats how I feel with FSX. Drop the dying platform and start building from scratch, although it may be time consuming, the results will be worth it. If it's not going to dye now, it will soon. Stop hanging on to a dying platform. They're just limiting themselves by doing so. XPX is a very strong and growing platform and is the next best thing as far as flight simming goes. You have a much larger playing field to develop your add-ons with XPX than you do with FSX/P3D.

 

I'm glad Carenado is actively developing for XPX, and I really hope PMDG will do so too. It's a shame they spend so much time on a dying platform and 32bit too. I'm grateful for those developers who are seeing something in XPX and are developing add-ons for it. But for those other developers like OrbX, who don't see a future in it, they're completely wrong. 

[Christopher Low 5,427]

For those of us who like to see lots of AI planes at the major airports, I get the feeling that X-Plane is (at the moment) a very poor substitute.

[Baylorguy 39]

I'm about to reach that point myself. I started with FSX, and got fed up with tweaking, and dealing with OOM and crashes, and then started to invest my time into P3D v2.x. I was still having problems. If its not one thing its something else. I'm very tired of constantly messing around trying to get things just right and when I do, the game crashes and I get OOM. It totally ruins the experience. With that being said, I am trying to move on to XPX. I have used it before but this time I really want to say goodbye to FSX/P3D for good. I am going to start getting into XPX again, at least I don't have to worry about OOM and CTD's and endless tweaking to get the game to run. Games these days should just load and go, I never had to do so much just to play a game in my life, and it's getting extremely ridiculous. Anyways just thought I share my rants as I can completely relate to the OP in this situation.

 

I really wish the developers would just drop investing time and money into FSX, its dead. I think a wiser choice would to invest that time into XPX 64 bit. In order to be successful sometimes, one has to make take risks like Apple did when it made the move from PPC to Intel. Bold move but extremely successful turnout. Thats how I feel with FSX. Drop the dying platform and start building from scratch, although it may be time consuming, the results will be worth it. If it's not going to dye now, it will soon. Stop hanging on to a dying platform. They're just limiting themselves by doing so. XPX is a very strong and growing platform and is the next best thing as far as flight simming goes. You have a much larger playing field to develop your add-ons with XPX than you do with FSX/P3D.

 

I'm glad Carenado is actively developing for XPX, and I really hope PMDG will do so too. It's a shame they spend so much time on a dying platform and 32bit too. I'm grateful for those developers who are seeing something in XPX and are developing add-ons for it. But for those other developers like OrbX, who don't see a future in it, they're completely wrong. 

 

I agree with what you said, but unfortunately the big players look at dollar signs... and there is still a lot to be made on FSX.

[LAdamson 240]

Unless you're using a Carenado, or something similar, FSX still has the better flight model for airplanes. I've been reading a recent post at the org. The question is, has the XP-10 flight model been changed? According to the writer, it's "boring", as XP-9 was more lively. Someone replying, wondered if XP-10 was "dumbed down" for potential FSX users.......should they start flying X-Plane. Another one said he wouldn't bother with P3D, if it used FSX's flight model.

 

 

 

Me, myself, a pilot and all of that....................I didn't much care for the flying aspect in XP-9. XP-8 was worse, as I remember. I thought it was much too "lively", and couldn't live with it for more than five or ten minutes. Of course, I've often mentioned this before. Lively, isn't how a real plane should fly, unless it's pure turbulence. We go out of our way to adjust rigging on a new plane, to get rid of that "lively" feel of control forces. We don't want, what's known as a "heavy wing". We don't want to have to add trims, which add drag, just to stay wings level. And I don't want to use aileron trim for every power change. I can expect elevator trim, but not constant aileron. Besides, a lot of small airplanes don't even include aileron trim as part of the package.

 

 

 

I prefer "boring". It's more like real life. I've often used the comment from my wife, that we appeared to be almost standing still, when the small GA airplane we were flying, was doing about 200 mph across the ground. Carenado has included a temporary fix. Good for them! In the meantime, I don't feel all that great about the X-Plane bandwagon. I feel like I'd be jumping aboard, and still get irratated after that five or ten minutes. A bunch of those devoted XP'ers at the org, can just continue to think that "lively" is how it really is. Too bad, 'cause it isn't.

 

 

 

In the meantime, a poster who I think highly of, has stated that it's more the change in turbulence, than the flight model, that effects XP-10. In the meantime, if Austin actually does re-write some of the "flight dynamics" code for X-Plane, as he say's he'll do..........then great! Then I'd like to see more developers jump aboard too. In the meantime, I hope some stick with FSX and P3D. I want a flight model I can live with....

[Murmur 3,978]

Larry, believe me, using CTRL+V would save you A LOT of time! :smile:

 

EDIT: moreover, nobody in this thread ever mentioned or compared flight models of X-P vs FSX/P3D, except ryanbatcund that mentioned Carenado and en-passant added:

 

For payware Carenado has the best looking cockpits (and they fly very well in XP - better than fsx usually). But that's not to say XP models handle more realistically than FSX - it's on a model to model basis in both sims.

 

So, why do you always and always have to dig up your old FM rant, when everybody here seems to have gotten over it except you?

[Robert McDonald 167]

64-bits is a great enhancement and valuable advantage in XP.  It is not a panacea or cure-all for all things flight-sim related.

 

What makes XP really viable and attractive (to me) is the ease to which it may be scaled across multiple PCs.

 

I have a number of comparative videos up on YouTube that show the differences between FSX and XP 10.x.

 

If you throw 180-degree triple pcs and a glass cockpit into the mix, there is no question in my mind that ultimately XP wins, notwithstanding the known weaknesses  (haze at altitude when looking out to the horizon, airports with no buildings, etc, etc.).

 

Will XP eventually become "all that and a case of Tostitos?"  In my mind, that is a certainty.  The only salient question becomes "when?"

 

But as another has written, with minimal cost, you can get XP and the HD textures, and a nice payware airplane, and just with some of the freeware airports, you can have a pretty nice time of things.

 

The XPlane 'demo' is handicapped by much too short of a timer, and to really try it, I think a person should buy it.  It's not crazy expensive, and you don't necessarily have to buy the global version to start off with (although I did).

 

To ask just ONE PC to run the amount of hang-ons we throw at it including complex aircraft, active RW weather, live ATC, payware airports, textures, night-lights, ORBX HD scenery... and expect it to render EVERYTHING at 30Fps or more in REAL TIME at 32-bits?

 

UNREALISTIC.

 

When you split the work amongst multiple PCs with powerful video cards via a high-speed hard-wired Ethernet network, you can achieve $100,000 simulator performance at a fraction of the cost.

 

What has hurt FSX is the incessant adding 'just one more straw' to the sim.  The endless tweaking and adjusting, in search of the holy-grail "butter-smooth" CGI quality graphics and close-to-RW aircraft handling is a fool's task.   If you could live with low-end graphics and avoid the piling-on of add-ons, FSX can look and fly pretty nicely.

 

After a couple of years running wild with your credit card at sim shops online, though, things are quite different.  You start hitting 13 fps at LAX payware airport in your PMDG, and you become increasingly unhappy.

 

Thus, as some have suggested, it might be time to consider a platform that is DESIGNED to be expanded via additional PCs.  That ACCOMMODATES and USES the high-end, high-dollar, high VRAM GPU you paid hundreds for... that can RENDER in HDX quality... and continues to evolve and become BETTER because it is still in ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT at the source-code level, not just at the hang-on add-in level...you may elect to at least purchase and experiment with Xplane.

 

This isn't to say "XPlane is better", but the future is looking more and more like XPlane.  Once PMDG brings one of their planes to XP, the land rush will be ON.

[carrotroot 77]

 

 

Unless you're using a Carenado, or something similar, FSX still has the better flight model for airplanes.

 

I think the whole argument of "my flight model is better than yours" is becoming more and more of a mute point since it's now common for Aircraft developers of both X-Plane and FSX to use plugins to compensate for their platforms short comings. Heck there are planes on FSX's platform which are using Flightgear's flight model engine. 

 

There are plenty of areas where X-Plane is definitely deficient in ... but to argue about the Flight Model when the trend is to become more platform agnostic in respects to the FM is a straw-man argument at this point.

[Murmur 3,978]

I think the whole argument of "my flight model is better than yours" is becoming more and more of a mute point since it's now common for Aircraft developers of both X-Plane and FSX to use plugins to compensate for their platforms short comings. Heck there are planes on FSX's platform which are using Flightgear's flight model engine. 

 

There are plenty of areas where X-Plane is definitely deficient in ... but to argue about the Flight Model when the trend is to become more platform agnostic in respects to the FM is a straw-man argument at this point.

 

The ironic thing is that LAdamson himself, has apparently now become the only one fixated on FM-arguing around here...

[HiFlyer 9,417]

Maybe they just don't WANT to be as competitive as avsim users would like them to be ... if their business model works fine for them, why change it?

If that were true (and I'm already half-convinced) then I really don't mind, since once I know the situation I can adjust my expectations accordingly.

 

I'm not sure how I would feel about all of that if I were a potential vendor/partner, though.

 

Would I really want to jump in bed with a small company with little or no apparent ambition?

[GoranM 3,815]

Once PMDG arrives in XP10 territory, I'm switching over.  The VAS limitation is definitely frustrating. 

 

I'm a little late to this party, but this statement begs the question...why would you switch when PMDG switches???

PMDG won't make the sim any better or any different.  It's still the same sim with the same features.  There are at least 2-3 developers who have made/are making aircraft that can match or even exceed PMDG level detail and accuracy.  

You are depriving yourself of a possibly more fulfilling experience (having 2 platforms instead of 1) because of 1 dev team who have not released anything for X Plane yet.  

[Guest Mik75]

I'm a little late to this party, but this statement begs the question...why would you switch when PMDG switches???

PMDG won't make the sim any better or any different. It's still the same sim with the same features. There are at least 2-3 developers who have made/are making aircraft that can match or even exceed PMDG level detail and accuracy.

You are depriving yourself of a possibly more fulfilling experience (having 2 platforms instead of 1) because of 1 dev team who have not released anything for X Plane yet.

Absolutely correct. With the cost of a good addon plane, or less than a global texture pack for MSFS and it's derivates, and so much freeware available that makes the scenery of XPX so realistic, it's neither expensive nor that complicated to give it a try! And as I stated so many times before, having both or even all three (including P3D2) sims installed at the same time, won't do any harm! ;-)

With all these choices, I am having the best simming experience ever right now!

[jcomm 6,080]

My 2 cents....

 

X-Plane 10 is nice, I look forward for 10.30, but honestly I no longer believe in a miracle :-/

I agree with most of what Larry repeats, regarding how stable and easy to trim aircraft are IRL as opposed to what most aircraft add-ons offer in X-Plane 10.

Well designed aircraft for FSX and a better weather model in terms of turbulence modelling when a good weather injector is used, make, IMO, FSX better, overall, than X-Plane in terms of the representation of how stable and easy to fly aircraft are IRL...

 

I am not using FSX or X-plane 10 right now. I am using mostly ELITE ( again, and having a GREAT time doing the exercises Alec kindly passes to me after his ELITE RC-1 RL simulator sessions on his IFR training ), DCS and IL2 ( for some extraordinary flight dynamics, fixed and rotary wing ), and having a great time overall with Flight Gear 3.

 

I admire the progresses made in X-Plane 10, graphically, but that's not what turns me on... Flight Dynamics and Weather modelling are a LOT more important to me... Systems modelling too, specially the engines... areas where both FSX and X-Plane fail miserably, unless external code is used to mask the internal models...

 

I admire the potential that FSX still has / represents, but I can't live with some of it's flight and systems modelling quirks... It's 32 bit limitation was never a problem for me, because I use almost only default scenery... no AI, etc...

 

Flight Gear is a great ongoing Open / Freeware project, that will save me a LOT of money :-). I am really enjoying reading ( again ) about the latest version of JSBSim, but also Yasim ( the FG version of X-Plane's BET ), and it's interesting to find in some texts the descriptions of the limitations of a BET-type approach to Flight Dynamics modelling, and to find that, after all, Yasim suffers from some of the problems that plague X-Plane's flight model...  Curiously, DCS and IL2 also partly use BET, but complement the areas where BET is not able to reach the details they want, with the good-old table-based approach.

 

ELITE, being totally table-based, and also JSBSim, are excellent examples of how these approaches can actually produce much better, closer to real, outcomes than BET, unless you have a super-computer running the calculations for your sim :-), at least when modelling flight behavior within the "normal" flight envelopes, where flight data is available and can be used to make the aircraft models extraordinarily match their real counterparts.

 

In this ELITE review we recently posted at SimReviewsHouse - I emphasize some of these unique features that users can find in ELITE, and not in ANY other GA flightsim! They're important because it is used as a learning tool for IFR training and proficiency, by RW pilot's flying the same aircraft types included in ELITE's fleet, and they acknowledge the excellent reproduction of those effects. I don't believe this is possible with X-Plane's BET approach :-/

[Murmur 3,978]

I am not using FSX or X-plane 10 right now. I am using mostly ELITE ( again, and having a GREAT time doing the exercises Alec kindly passes to me after his ELITE RC-1 RL simulator sessions on his IFR training ), DCS and IL2 ( for some extraordinary flight dynamics, fixed and rotary wing ), and having a great time overall with Flight Gear.

 

I've yet to find an aircraft in FlightGear that has a realistic post-stall behaviour. It's worse than X-Plane was years ago... I'm sure JSBsim is very powerful (much more than the comparatively limited FSX flight model), so probably it's just a matter of a lack of expert aircraft designers.

 

I am really enjoying reading ( again ) about the latest version of JSBSim, but also Yasim ( the FG version of X-Plane's BET ), and it's interesting to find in some texts the descriptions of the limitations of a BET-type approach to Flight Dynamics modelling, and to find that, after all, Yasim suffers from some of the problems that plague X-Plane's flight model...

 

Except that EVERY recent hi-fidelity flight simulator (DCS, CondorSoaring, I assume IL2 BOS as well) use a BET-type flight model. Of course this doesn't mean that a BET FM is necessarily better "per se", but only if it's made to be accurate, and certainly X-Plane needs improvements in the area.

[jcomm 6,080]

I've yet to find an aircraft in FlightGear that has a realistic post-stall behaviour. It's worse than X-Plane was years ago...

 

Murmur, even the default C172 in Flight Gear does a much better / more realistic job at reproducing a stall in a C172, than any C172 you can get for X-Plane 10, that I know of...

 

As far as FSX is concerned, RealAir and A2A ( probably Milviz and other too... ) found the ways around the core MSFS limitations in stall / post-stall flight, and can give you some rather plausible stall experiences, but IMO, inferior to what even that good-old, very poor graphically, C172 in FG provides...

 

At the same time I should say that the default K-13 ( glider ) in FG is poorly modeled :-/

 

DCS and IL2 use a mix of BET and table based approaches... That's probably why they can reach such quality...