The "other" future is full of OOMs

[Murmur 3,941]

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...

 

I wouldn't exactly define this "much better/more realistic":

 

http://youtu.be/jwxxNJKkXUA

 

Mind you, I'm not saying JSBsim is not capable of realistic FMs, I already said I think it's more powerful than FSX! The problem is simply a lack of top quality FM designers like RealAir etc. probably due to FlightGear being much less popular than FSX.

 

I agree that FlightGear has a lot of VERY good features (incredible weather modeling for example).

[wolke85 150]

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?

 

Good for them then - really - and indeed absolutely nothing wrong with that!

 

But as a user and home-flightsimmer i also share HiFlyer's thoughts to a certain extent, when raising the following question in regards to vendors/partners ...

 

[...]

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?

[jcomm 5,939]

I wouldn't exactly define this "much better/more realistic":

 

http://youtu.be/jwxxNJKkXUA

 

Mind you, I'm not saying JSBsim is not capable of realistic FMs, I already said I think it's more powerful than FSX! The problem is simply a lack of top quality FM designers like RealAir etc. probably due to FlightGear being much less popular than FSX.

 

I agree that FlightGear has a lot of VERY good features (incredible weather modeling for example).

 

 

You're ruining my reputation Murmur :lol:

 

Hmmm, confess you either had a fat lady in the back seat, or a tweaked powerplant ..... :-)

[Guest Mik75]

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?

So true!

X-Plane is as good as it is right now because of its individual character and because LR doesn't try to make a sim as close as possible to MSFS. I always wondered why people complain about the UI. Sure, it is completely different to what MS offered. But I got used to it within one or two hours.

On the other hand, nobody talks about the fact that there is no need to tweak cfg files, or to read through the internet to setup a sim which runs at an acceptable frame rate.

These both products are the same genre, but they couldn't be more different, and that's what I love about it! ;-)

[wolke85 150]

X-Plane is as good as it is right now because of its individual character and because LR doesn't try to make a sim as close as possible to MSFS

 

I might be wrong, but the majority of flightsimmers most likely does not expect just another MSFS-like flightsim.

There may be some, but that's certainly not the majority.

 

But sure:

As many flightsimmers use MSFS, or at least come/came from that direction - including myself - they may, to a certain level, compare these two (and other) sims with each other.

Overall though:

What most simmers, so i dare to say, want and expect from - any - flightsim is it to be a plausible - and immersive (!) one!

 

Furthermore it is just natural that wishes and expectations are being expressed i think.

And as long as there are at least two products of the same kind, there will most likely also always be some comparison/competition between these several products then in regards to what may be better or what not.

 

I furthermore just think that the question is not and maybe never was so much:

Is X-Plane good enough ...

 

But the questions are:

Can and should X-Plane become better?

And:

Should Laminar also consider focusing on attracting a broader userbase and fulfill some of its demands/wishes/expectations ... to a certain level/point at least - even if these may not always be on LR's (top) priority?

I'd say:

Yes.

By the way:

I am pretty sure that LR can do so by also keeping X-Plane's own individual character vivid and alive! No need to give up anything but rather trying to gain, improve and add something.

 

And once again i dare saying that many flightsimmers (including myself) do certainly not expect X-Plane to become a mere copy of MSFS.

Really not!

 

Only my two cents here though.

[rototom 198]

 

 

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.

 

Agree 1000%. If you build it, we will come...gladly.

 

I just bought 6GB of additional RAM for my PC because X-plane actually uses it. I also picked up another SSD just for X-plane.

[Luis_KMIA 242]

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.  

I enjoy both platforms.  On XP10, I fly Javier's CRJ and FF's 777.  On FSX, I fly PMDG and Majestic Software.  I'm just frustrated by the VAS limitaions on FSX.  I wish a 64-bit update would have been made for FSX.  IMHO, PMDG's future arrival in XP10, will probably make me use that platform more.

[Anxu00 176]

Interesting debate!  For real pilots, you guys speak for the rest of us (like me), who just want to pretend doing some flying, where I am not going to be able to do in real life.  Therefore, I will yield the FM discussion to the experts.  For me, it all boil down to which one give me a decent "approximate" experience without boiling degree of frustration.  Why the heck is the sim (FSX) pushing 13 FPS with all the expensive HW? Oh yeah, because of that damn FSDT airport, which looks really good, except I took off in slow motion, LOL.

 

Try approach with 13 FPS!  So off the airport goes and another number of bucks down the toilet.  At least in XPX, I have a reasonable amount of visual, and I can land my bird smoothly. Do I still curse? yes, but not at the SIM, but at the slow pace of LR to fix annoyances like the high altitude blur or the simpleton GPS.  At least I can put in a few hours pretend to fly and land successfully without OOM, stutters or worse CTD on approach.  What fun is that?  I sworn off spending money like I did with FSX with frustrating results.  Those dollar are gone.  Someday, when I am forced to upgrade my OS and FSX does not run anymore, so be it.  Hopefully by that time XPX+ will fullfill all its promises.

[strider1 575]

You're ruining my reputation Murmur :lol:

 

Hmmm, confess you either had a fat lady in the back seat, or a tweaked powerplant ..... :-)

 

And the graphics look horrfic ! You left XPX for that ?? lol............

[Robert McDonald 167]

I won't say which sim platform is 'best' or 'most realistic'.  Each captain develops a list of priorities, then pays his/her money and away they go.

 

I will say and continue to believe, that if you can add more than ONE pc to your setup- XP will reward you, not punish you.  You won't have to jump through hula-hoops to make your network setup work in XP- it's BUILT IN to the sim.

 

XP has a lot of nifty performance monitoring features, where you can set up various parameters to output to your screen, or a file, or what have you.

 

If multiple PCs with matching screens going across a gigabit network is something you've dreamed of, it's SIMPLE to set up in XP.

 

If glass cockpit PFD/ND/MCP appeals, this can be done with Sim-Avionics, and will give you the added cross-benefit of a highly advanced flight model in lieu to the developer's or 3pd's internal workings of their airplane.  S-A is not for the faint of heart (it's pricey) but it can make a low 5-figure investment look and fly like a 6-figure sim.

 

The only limits are your budget and your imagination.  Once you start using full-scale gear from a company like FlightDeckSolutions (their 737-Overhead is STUNNING and full-size, not a 'toy' like some competitors... albeit it costs $4000 USD plus $600 for the stand) you can start to make the crossover from toy sim to RW hardware.

 

If you want to move up from flying your desk to a mini or even full-scale cockpit, this is now a lot easier via aftermarket hardware choices.

 

And in these high-end sims, the driving platform of choice seems to inevitably  drift towards XP over FSX or P3D.

 

Sure, 64-bits alone is a game-changer, but when you are sporting video cards for 400 up to $1000 each across 3, 4, 5 or 6 pcs...you want a sim that is built to use up all of that horsepower and VRAM.  The winner, with no reservations, is XPlane.

 

Yes, we all 'wish' that Xplane would do this or do that, and you need to factor in priorities, and difficulty of implementation.  Because XP is designed to be flexible enough to run on lower-end hardware and laptops as well as the bleeding edge systems, some stuff is slow to show up in the sim itself.  The 'laundry list' of wish-list additions at Laminar is a long one, and plainly speaking, choices have to be made, and priorities assigned.  Still, I see XPlane as the future of flight simulation.  10 or 15 years from now, it will likely be drop-dead spectacular.  Still, it's worth flying today, in my book.  Plenty to like, lots to love!

 

The engineers at LM are always trying to build the better mousetrap.  Yes, we can suggest things, and we can also wish and hope.  Better winters,  Better visibility to the horizon at high altitude, buildings at all airports, and so on.

 

But even if XPlane never got one bit better than it is right now, it has dazzled me and provided far more OMG moments than FSX ever did, and that is a personal observation (your mileage may vary).

 

Watch videos of both platforms.  For maximum frames, and much more reliable hardware performance under high-rendering settings, plus scalability across many pcs and monitors, my heart belongs to Laminar.

 

Start throwing in real-world-scale hardware, and you will likely be an XP pilot.  Although FSX is still installed, I -never- fly it any more, and that's saying something given Orbx just released Northern California scenery.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Robert McDonald

[Murmur 3,941]

And the graphics look horrfic ! You left XPX for that ?? lol............

 

Well I had low rendering settings, certainly FlightGear can look better. However depending on the subjective priorities, graphics isn't the only thing important in a flight simulator. The accuracy of FlightGear in several aspects (flight instrumentation, ephemerides, most importantly weather!) is extremely high!

[jcomm 5,939]

And the graphics look horrfic ! You left XPX for that ?? lol............

 

But she has GREAT LEGS!!!!

 

Well, truth is, I never really cared much about the graphics, although, as Murmur pointed out, we have to choose the right settings to get the most out of FG3.

 

Anyway, I can't find in the other sims such simple things as performing a procedure turn, looking at the Turn Coordinator, and see that it takes the expected 2' to complete 360º, Having the torque there at high power / high AoA, but feeling it blending as you gain speed, provided you use a good aircraft add-on ( just as with any sim, GiGO ...).

 

The new secenery system has problems,  it is also OSM based, has some annoying quirks here and there ( specially at dense areas, just like Paris, for instance, where in XP10 I was also seeing 1 digit fps !!!), and there are only a couple of highly detailled aircraft with complex systems, like the tu-154 and the b707 or this 777. In fact I am enjoying a lot more flying the dr-400, the CAPs, the B1900d ( Ah! A Pt6 with proper relation between FF and RPM, something I can only find in ELITE!!!).

 

Weather is not as beautiful as we can see it depicted in either FSX ( with a good weather program and textures ) or XP10, but in some aspects though, like convective cloud depiction, it looks / feels a lot better to me. The physical effects can also be challenging, although for instance turbulence and shear need to be addressed, specially when flying in the vicinity of powerful convective clouds...

 

Instruments ( depending on how they're programmed ) can be true to live, as Murmur pointed out about for instance the lag with altitude in the response of a simple variometer... and many other details.

 

Flight feels very plausible to me, and the new joystick / controller configuration menu is easy to use. There isn't the same power we have in XP10 ( which, for me, still has the best joystick / controller configuration interface among all sims I have used ) but it works very well. I like to see some effects modelled in FG3 for prop aircraft that I only find so well modelled in ELITE. On some prop aircraft you may have to cross controls to turn coodinated by the side the prop turns into, and even outside rudder when turning the other way.

 

Aircraft are easy to trim, and stable!

 

Even rotary wing can be made to fly very plausibly, certainly better than default helicopters in FSX, and all being taken into account, at the same level of XP10, specially when the new JSBSim FDM is used for rotary wing.

 

Above all, I have to pay $0,00 for it, or it's add-ons, can expect a new version every 6 months, and have a deddicated community contributing to the projectc. Saving money in this hobby, and being able to direct it to something like PSX or ELITE v9, are also part of my plan, so, staying away from payware helps... It's a temptation, every time a new, gorgeous, not necessarily well modelled aircraft is released....

 

I didn't trash XP10 or FSX - I keep them on a separate disk. Should 10.30 really be a major improvement in the areas that I am mostly interested, I can easily restart using XP10. I know LR is at it! Should the FSLabs Airbus be released for FSX, then we will probably have a decent Airbus simulation for the first time in the history of PC flight simulators, and it will be worth using FSX just to be able to enjoy it!  The same might apply to the QPAC A320, when it arrives to the final ( Pro ) version - the authors are seriously studying the Airbus logic and trying to nail the most tricky aspects of it...

 

See, for me flight simulation was never the looks outside in the first place... Well, it turned into it, for a while ( and I am still to get that same sensation... ) when I installed MS FLIGHT, still the best overall sensation of "being there" I ever had with a flight simulator!

[Robert McDonald 167]

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?

 

From what I have read by back tracking, the above quote seems to refer to Laminar Research. To say they have little or no ambition seems unfair.  They have been in business for twenty years, and they are the only company that offers a 64-bit simulator platform, that can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac.  Check me on this, I think FSX is solely Windows and is solely 32-bit.

 

While X-Plane still has some work to do on several fronts, I am confident that if they survive their patent lawsuit, the future will be bright for Laminar.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

I am confident that if they survive their patent lawsuit, the future will be bright for Laminar.

 

Actually, I always believed so as well and said so. The question was, what type of future? Most companies strive to grow; yet the impression I always receive from Laminar is that they not only acknowledge nichedom but are relatively comfortable there. They seem to be on a mission of "realism" which while attractive in theory, has in practice been so focused on BET that other aspects have suffered.

 

Sound, visuals, interface/ui..... In fact, even in version 10 no real depiction of Airports was available. reminding me of a podcast with Austin in which he noted that for himself it was pretty much all about the plane and the runway, with other things apparently being optional, as in X-plane graciously offered users the choice of adding all those..... extras. (if they really wanted them)

 

It seems a fact that X-plane lags its major competition in market penetration. The obvious question to most companies might be... why; followed by an earnest attempt to define areas where users feel your product is lacking/deficient and then address those areas as aggressively as your resources allow. Instead, X-plane continues with its singular vision (which it has a perfect right to do!) that continually has failed to make impressive inroads into the FSX user-base over the long term, even as that user-base struggled with issues (OOM's and the like) that would ordinarily make them very open to other alternatives.

 

Again, another company might be very interested in why that was so, and what they could do to make their offering more attractive to a wider audience. But..... X-plane doesn't usually seem to respond to regular market forces. Instead we have calm statements to the effect that they are not pursuing as broad an audience as FSX. To me, it seems that you either come to X-plane on Laminar's terms or... have a nice day.

 

Not particularly a robust recipe for growth (or even to attract third parties, I suspect) unless your competition happens to fall off of a cliff, kinda of like the troubles that P3Dv2 is having right now, in which case you may have a nice opportunity to remind people that an alternative is available and what you perceive to be the advantages of your offering....

 

Yet from Laminar, as far as I can find, not a peep is heard.

 

That's what I mean by lack of ambition. Contentment/acceptance with/of the status quo.

 

I am, like many others I suspect, left with a quandary. Frustration with FSX and even P3Dv2 leads to a stronger willingness to explore alternatives.... only to find that the only obvious alternative is still too........ frustratingly quirky to be wholly attractive.

 

Fortunately you have people like Jspahn and others working on some of the issues, because honestly, things like no seasons after all this time is not even quirky. Its just plain old ridiculous.

Edited February 23, 2014 by HiFlyer

[ADamiani 470]

Well, for me it is even simpler....

 

I'm smoking a much better stuff :-)  - Flight Gear 3.0.0 !!!

I keep using ELITE, a lot lately thanks to our friend Alec, who has kindly provided me with his IFR classes, also IL2 Sturmovik together with DCS, both not for the combat component but rather for the excellent flight and systems modeling, and looking forward for two other mandatory releases - ELITE v9 ( this year for sure ) and PSX ...

 

 

I already knew about PSX, which is the reason why I am saving at the moment, but ELITE 9!!!!

 

Because PS1.3 and ELITE 8 are the best flightsiming products I have experienced in the last 30 years (at least those that appealed to me), so it could really be a great year!