I've never seen this done before and thought it might be an interesting exercise. FSX and XP10 head to head, making the same flight in the same aircraft showcasing the kind of addons each sim currently has to offer. The screenshots that follow are unedited and show both sims as they are installed on my PC right now. I also thought I'd offer some commentary and observations along the way, primarily from the perspective of a long time MSFS user who is still relatively new to XP. These are just my opinions, I'm not trying to promote one sim at the expense of the other. Both have strengths and weaknesses and it is of course up to the individual to determine their relative merits!

 

It's taken me a good few hours to put all this together, but as I said I don't recall anyone doing this before so I hope at least some of you find it a worthwhile effort.

 

First of all the flight itself... a 390NM flight from Shannon (EINN) in Ireland to Manston (EGMH) in England. The flightplan is pretty straightforward VOR to VOR and the routing is EINN SHA STU BCN CPT OCK BIG DET EGMH

 

In more descriptive terms... after taking off from Shannon we head east south east passing over Limerick and then between Kilkenny and Waterford, leaving the Irish coast at Wexford. Across the Irish Sea we make landfall on the Welsh coast at Fishguard, tracking across south Wales past Swansea and Newport, crossing the mouth of the river Severn and into England just north of Bristol. Continuing to track eastwards across England we pass over Swindon and Reading before adjusting course to pass to the south of London, past Heathrow, over the famous WW2 RAF Fighter Command station at Biggin Hill before heading further into Kent over the Medway Towns and finally tracking along the north Kent coast towards our destination of Manston where the intention is to fly the published NDB/ILS/DME approach to runway 28.

 

The aircraft in use will be the Carenado Beech King Air C90 - available for both FSX and XP10. Cruising at 18,000ft we can expect a respectable 240 knots TAS.

 

The flights took place on consecutive days using live weather. The XP10 flight was first on 10th March 2014 departing at 1400 local using XP10's built in weather downloads and depiction. The FSX flight was on 11th March 2014 departing at 1200 local using Active Sky Next for weather conditions. Ideally I should have used the same weather for both flights as the weather for the FSX flight had considerably more cloud cover than the previous day with fog at the destination.

 

The addons in use are:

 

FSX:

Orbx FTX England - AUD$32.95

Orbx FTX Wales - AUD$32.95

Orbx FTX Ireland - AUD$32.95

REX4 Texture Direct - AUD$39.10

Active Sky Next - US$49.99

Steve's DX10 Fixer - AUD$37.30

Carenado King Air C90 - US$39.95

RealityXP GNS430 WAAS (installed in the C90 cockpit but not used for navigation during this flight) - US$49.95

 

Total cost of addons approx £180/US$300

 

XP10:

alpilotx HD Mesh V2 - FREEWARE

alpilotx Farms and Treelines V2 - FREEWARE

alpilotx Experimental Dense Forests - FREEWARE

Sim Heaven OSM Europe - FREEWARE

OpenScenery Object Library (required for OSM Europe) - FREEWARE

Urban Maxx V2 3D - US$7.95

Sky Maxx Pro - US$39.95

EINN Shannon Airport Scenery by Renair from www.x-plane.org - FREEWARE

EGMH Manston Airport Scenery by adriansw from www.x-plane.org - FREEWARE

Carenado King Air C90 - US$34.95

 

Total cost of addons approx £50/US$83

 

 

I consider the above mix of addons to be fairly typical for an "enthusiast" and a good representation of what both sims have to offer currently.

 

As far as in sim settings go:

 

FSX:

DX10

8xCSAA

2x SGSAA

16x AF

SweetFX used to increase contrast slightly, decrease gamma and add some bloom

All scenery sliders maxed except autogen on "very dense" and water on "2x low".

 

XP10:

2x SSAA + FXAA

16x AF

HDR on

Atmospheric scattering off

All scenery sliders maxed except road traffic at "Chicago Suburbs"

 

Both sims running 2560x1440 res on a 27" Asus PB278Q PLS monitor. Please people I can't stress enough the importance of properly calibrating your monitors.

 

System specs are:

 

i7 950 (Bloomfield) overclocked to 4GHz

12GB RAM

Nvidia GTX780Ti

Asus Xonar DG 5.1 PCI sound card

Both sims installed on a 1TB 7200RPM mechanical drive

Windows 7 64bit

 

So then, on to the pictures!

 

PLEASE CLICK ON PICS FOR FULL SIZE!

 

 

 

 

The astute observer will notice in the XP10 shot I made the silly mistake of taking off from a closed runway at Shannon! Perhaps the most striking difference here is the almost glass like water of XP10. If you look closely you'll see both sims have the bauxite refinery at Aughinish on the other side of the river Shannon.

 

 

 

 

Climbing out of Shannon and turning right to intercept the SHA 112 degree radial. With the default XP10 clouds you'd get an instant "white out" when flying into clouds, but the XP10 shot here shows the much better Sky Maxx Pro clouds which reduce visibility but don't have instant white out. Both sims show the prominent industrial estates in the town below. Looking at this area on Google Earth neither sims get it quite right but I'll perhaps tip a nod towards the Orbx version for looking more like the real thing.

 

 

 

 

Heading east and climbing. You can see here the quite significant difference in terrain textures, clouds, and particularly the amount of autogen.

 

 

 

 

Looking back across the Shannon river. Another good comparison between the terrain textures and clouds.

 

 

 

 

Up at cruise altitude now showing the C90's instrument panel in both sims. XP10's cockpit shadows are shown to quite good effect here. Also note XP10's notoriously not-so-good GNS unit with the infinitely better (and more expensive!) RealityXP GNS430 in the FSX shot.

 

 

 

 

Another comparison of the Irish countryside as depicted in the two sims.

 

 

 

 

One thing I do have to point out is how great the Carenado C90 looks in XP10, it's an absolute stunner! The FSX version by comparison, in my opinion just doesn't look quite as nice. I've also got issues with the anti-aliasing and overall image quality in DX10 that are visible here (take a closer look at the jaggies on the cheat lines on the aircraft livery) but more on that later.

 

 

 

 

Passing over the river Barrow with Waterford in the distance. This shot shows pretty well one of the biggest problems with the MSFS graphics engine. The further away from the aircraft the lower the LOD (Level of Detail) becomes and the engine displays lower res terrain textures. Compare the textures underneath the aircraft - nice and crisp - to the ones progressively further away - blurrier and uglier. Contrast this with the XP10 shot where the terrain textures remain beautifully clear all the way into the distance. I know this FSX shortcoming can be mitigated to an extent by forcing a higher LOD radius, but that comes at the expense of both framerate and increased VAS usage, something we have to be mindful of considering FSX's 32bit VAS limit.

 

 

 

 

Leaving the Irish coast at Wexford. One of the criticisms of the OSM scenery in XP10 is the buildings can sometimes look like "Lego brick building" slapped down on the ground. You can perhaps see that here with some of the larger buildings in Wexford that look a little out of place.

 

 

 

 

Out over the Irish Sea. FSX's sun effect courtesy of REX4 Texture Direct is rather anaemic. Sky Maxx Pro's effect in XP10 is much more satisfying.

 

 

 

Now here's a real eyesore. I think it's a waterclass issue? Anyone care to shed any light on this?

 

 

 

 

Approaching the Welsh coast. This shot shows the water in both sims. The wave animations and reflections in REX4 Texture Direct are pretty nice, and up here the sea certainly looks a bit livelier than in XP10. Sometimes XP10's water looks fantastic, other times it looks very artificial and plastic. To be fair though as a seafarer I think neither sim has really captured the look and feel of large expanses of water. For every day I've seen a blue sea there would have been three or four when it was green, grey or even brown.

 

 

 

 

Crossing south Wales. The XP10 shot shows quite well how good forested areas look with the experimental denser trees mod from alpilotx

 

 

 

Here's an XP10 shot that I think shows quite well how good towns or villages can look using the OSM scenery. Basically the buildings are placed as they are in reality and follow the roads much better than the FSX approach of autogen annotated textures with vector roads slapped down over the top.

 

 

 

 

The large town just above and in front of the C90's nose in the FSX shot is Llaneli. The XP10 shot is a little futher along the coast and you can see Swansea in the distance. Right at the very top of the XP10 shot you can see some strange things going on with the urban textures. That's Port Talbot.

 

 

 

Now here's a shot I want to use to illustrate something you won't see in XP10 - approaching clouds. XP10's weather depiction is really limited and you don't transition nicely between different degrees of cloud cover. Clouds just pop in or pop out as you move from one METAR reporting area to another. Big thumbs down from me! XP10 really needs better weather depiction.

 

 

 

 

Crossing the Severn.

 

 

 

Here's another pic I want to illustrate something else. This shows the DX10 cockpit shadows in FSX. Not as stark or strong as the ones in XP10 - see my earlier cockpit shots - but very blocky and pixellated. Not very nice to look at IMHO.

 

 

 

 

Another shot showing the differences in the sky environments. Sky Maxx Pro's clouds are way better than the default XP10, but sometimes (like here) they still don't look very natural.

 

 

 

 

Now's probably a good time to talk about terrain textures. Orbx took quite a pasting on various forums when they released FTX England and I think a lot of the criticism was very unfair and perhaps built on unrealistic expectations. In my opinion they achieved the most important objective and that was to make it look like England. The only reservation I have is the bright yellow fields they have scattered everywhere which I presume are meant to be rapeseed fields. Yes lots of rapeseed is grown in England and you will see quite a lot of it in the summer months. However, I think maybe Orbx went a bit over the top with the bright yellow rapeseed fields scattered over the landscape everywhere.

 

To be fair to Orbx though they definitely did do a good job getting the look of England right. Check out this video and you'll see what I mean:

 

 

Which brings me on very nicely to XP10. The elephant in the room here is the lack of seasonal textures. Whether you are flying in July or January it all looks exactly the same. From the interviews with Laminar I don't think they're going to address this any time soon so hopefully John Spahn will work some of his "Maxx Magic" and get us XP seasons! The XP10 textures used here whilst far from being ugly or an eyesore, unfortunately do not look like English farmland. Orbx FTX England - even with all its rapeseed farmers - looks much more like England to my eye at least which is perhaps to be expected as it's a product specifically meant to represent England.

 

 

 

 

Having said all that XP10's terrain can still look pretty good, especially with the HD Mesh V2 and OSM Europe. Unfortunately the weather didn't co-operate for my FSX flight and I couldnt' get a direct comparison shot!

 

 

 

 

Passing Heathrow. Now's a good time to talk performance. Passing London was going to be the stress test. On both sims here the performance on my system was fine and at no point did I notice the framerate tanking to an unflyable degree. My biggest concern was FSX and its much maligned 32bit VAS limit. I watched the memory used by FSX as I passed London and it was pretty steady at around 2.5GB - absolutely fine and well within safe limits. No doubt DX10 helped here somewhat. Now as far as XP10 goes... The OSM Europe scenery by default draws objects at an excessively large distance from the aircraft. There were some instructions posted recently about how to reduce this distance, but having only recently reinstalled XP10 in the last few days I forgot to apply this tweak. This combined with running XP10 scenery settings pretty much maxed out meant poor old XP10 was suddenly drawing literally tens of thousands of buildings in London! Net result was all 12GB of my RAM was rapidly gobbled up by the voracious 64bit XP10 and I got an OOM! No the irony wasn't lost on me. Quick reboot and reload and I was good to carry on from where I left off, with some more sensible scenery settings.

 

 

 

 

The FSX shot here shows me just after starting my descent at BIG and the XP10 shot shows me shortly before starting the descent at BIG. The eagle eyed reader will have noticed the AI traffic in the FSX shot... in this case a British Airways A319 on its way to Heathrow from Munich. This means it's time to talk about AI. XP10 has AI traffic, but not as we know it. It basically randomly populates the airports with a random selection of installed aircraft. This means you might very well see the NASA's 747 Space Shuttle Carrier at your local grass airstrip. Also, because XP10 uses the same models as the user flyable aircraft, and calculated the flight models in the same way it means a mere handful of AI aircraft in the sky will severly impact your framerate. In a nutshell XP10 badly needs an AI traffic overhaul because the XP10 skies are awfully lonely at the moment.

 

 

 

 

Now heading away from London descending towards the VOR at Detling Hill.

 

 

 

 

Descending further as we head into Kent. Check out the strange things happening with the Urban Maxx textures in the XP10 shot.

 

 

 

 

Over the Medway Towns. One probably subjective thought here is that the Sky Maxx Pro clouds look not so great from a distance, but really nice close up. Conversely REX 4 Texture Direct's clouds look very nice from a distance and perhaps a little flat and "cardboard cutout" up close.

 

 

 

 

We are afforded a sight of our destination though the XP10 clouds, but the following day was foggy so no such luck in FSX! Note the functional weather radar in XP10.

 

 

 

 

Passing overhead Manston we turn to 111 degrees and continue on for another 10NM before executing a procedure turn left to intercept the ILS. In XP10 we can see Ramsgate and its harbour, but it's a pea soup in FSX.

 

 

 

 

XP10 has the runway in sight but FSX is still stuck in the soup. Now's probably a good time to touch on that perennial of subjects.... flight models. I hand flew this approach all the way from Detling Hill and both aircraft and one observation really struck me. On the outbound leg of the approach I flew 100 knots at 2,500ft with one notch of flap. After making the procedure turn and intercepting the localiser, at one dot below glideslope I dropped the landing gear and selected full flaps, all at 100 knots. The C90 in XP10 handled this in a fairly docile and well behaved manner - I had to push the yoke forward a little to counteract the trim change until the aircraft settled down at a slower speed. In FSX the aircraft quite literally ballooned 100ft up in the air and I lost 20 knots in the space of about two seconds. It was very abrupt and almost impossible to counteract. Now I don't know which depiction is more accurate to real life, but if the FSX depiction is correct for the behaviour of a C90 selecting full flaps at 100 knots then all I can say is "wow". Other than that I also noticed quite a difference in engine behaviour. In XP10 the engines were much faster to respond to throttle movement and settled down very quickly (both in torque and prop RPM). In FSX there was noticeably more lag in response and the engines took longer to settle. From what I understand about the PT6A engine I think FSX might be closer to reality here. However, I'm aware both sims come up short in modelling turboprops. I also noticed the aircraft in both sims performed very close to the performance charts supplied by Carenado.

 

 

 

 

Come on, you've got to admit the XP10 one looks so much better!

 

 

 

I tried to get a shot that really captured Sky Maxx Pro's crepiscular ray effect but this was the best I could do on this flight. The native HDR of XP10 combined with Sky Maxx Pro means you can get some really nice sky effects. This shot really doesn't do it justice.

 

 

 

 

Journey's end. Note the American style freight train passing by. There's one along literally every minute or two in XP10! A minor annoyance but something I hope gets fixed. Another thing I noticed is that in FSX the road traffic in the UK drives on the left. In XP10 they are driving on the right. It's no big deal but worth mentioning.

 

 

I know I haven't touched on ATC here. It's fairly common knowledge XP10's ATC is pretty basic. So is FSX's but at least we've got some other options from third parties with FSX. I really hope someone steps up soon to give XP10 a better ATC. The other thing I didn't show here is the night time environment. Put simply XP10 blows FSX away in this regard. Night flying in XP10 is exquisite and the FSX simmer will have to pick their jaw up from the floor after seeing XP10 flying at night.

 

 

Finally I want to say something that might be a little controversial. Quite a few people are swearing by Steve's DX10 fixer and the improvements it makes in FSX. It's been written that not only does FSX look better with DX10 it also performs better as well, with a lower VAS overhead thanks to DX10's superior memory management.

 

Unfortunately the better performance and better looking bits simply aren't the experience I've had. I've seen no appreciable gain nor drop in performance using DX10. I'm also finding DX10's anti aliasing and overall image quality to be inferior to what I can get with DX9. Please take a look at the images below, taken with DX9, 8xS anti-aliasing, 2x SGSAA, 16x AF and running with ENB on my system:

 

 

 

In particular look at the cheat lines in the aircraft livery and compare them to the same in the earlier shots all of which were taken with DX10 8xCSAA and 2x SGSAA. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I simply cannot get my DX10 FSX to look as good as this.

 

 

 

Anyway, I had some fun putting all this together and I found it an interesting exercise. I hope somebody finds some use in it. One particularly interesting - and surprising - thing I noticed is how good XP10 looks and flies relative to FSX, and now compare how much money was sunk into the addons used during these flights.

Wow, nice comparison, thanks. Xplane is where I'll be heading to when it gets a few features it lacks from FSX.

One of the most comprehensive and unbiased reviews I have ever had the pleasure of reading.  I really appreciate you putting this together.........

Interesting thread and thank you.

I must admit that if it wasn't for Orbx regions and FTX Global, interest in FSX would have waned a long time ago.

In the here and now however, X-Plane looks good but lacks that regional touch that makes our flights feel more special.

ASN makes the weather look much more plausible too, XP doesn't yet have that magic weather add-on although SMP is a step in the right direction but more a cloud add-on than weather as such.

 

Hopefully it will all come one day (the X-planer's motto I know!).

:lol:

Its always been a double edged sword trying to extend X-Plane. With every add-on and update I see a small transition from the simulator community.

I also see more happy simmers who have adopted xpx.

 

But on the other end I see, rightfully so, users who are use to some of the more defining features in the msfs series, like atc or seasons.

 

I think it is important to highlight, for the first time you are seeing a serious push to bring these elements into the sim. And looking at it as a consumer its frustrating to not see them available right now.

 

As a developer on this platform I know some of the inner workings of xpx and there is a very serious potential for some amazing things, coupled with a very accessible and motivated development staff who are eager to help third parties.

 

Knowing this I scratch my head and wonder why more talent isnt drawn to X-Plane? I am seriously puzzled by this....

Thanks for the kind comments guys.

 

As I said above, I'm not trying to promote one sim above the other - they both have their strengths and weaknesses. XP10 by far has the more modern engine and where developers have managed to tap into that it really shines, FSX on the other hand has had the benefit of seven years' attention from a massive third party developer base and it really shows.

 

Like a lot of FSX flyers I picked up XP10 when it was released in 2012 and gave it a try, wasn't overly impressed and went back to FSX. I did try and keep an eye on XP10 development though and to be fair it really has come along quite a bit since 2012. To be perfectly honest for every time I thought to myself "Hmmm XP10 is missing X/Y/Z that I have in FSX" I was also thinking "Wow XP10 does X/Y/Z so much better than FSX"

 

As a flight simmer I don't see the point in pinning my colours to one sim at the expense of another. If anything I wish I had more time to spend simming as I currently have way too many flight sims and addons installed for the time I have available to fly them.

 

FWIW I also posted the same over at SimHQ, and there are some interesting comments from one of the regulars over there who is a reviewer for PC Pilot magazine and a real world King Air pilot.

Knowing this I scratch my head and wonder why more talent isnt drawn to X-Plane? I am seriously puzzled by this....

 

I've written before it's a circular argument.

 

XP lacks a large developer base because it lacks a large user base.

 

XP lacks a large user base because it lacks certain features that have been staples of the MSFS series for many years now.

 

XP lacks certain features that have been staples of the MSFS series for many years now because it lacks a large developer base.

 

Guys like yourself are really making the difference now, especially in getting stuff into XP that draws people in. It's still going to really take a big push to turn XP from a niche or cult sim into something that is embraced by the wider flight sim community and I sometimes wonder if Laminar are even interested in doing that.

 

I'd be interested to hear the experiences of the various MSFS addon developers who have dipped their toe into the XP market. The only one I can think of that has really jumped in to the XP waters is Carenado/Alabeo.

 

I think another hurdle is with the users themselves. Lots of people approach XP with an MSFS mindset, and are either unwilling or unable to "unlearn" the MSFS way. When presented with a sim that is different and does do lots of things differently they just give up and go back to familiar territory. If however, one approaches XP with an open mind and a willingness to accept it is different and you will have to learn new stuff then you will be rewarded with a very nice flight simming experience.

 

Right now though my two biggest wishes for XP10 are:

 

i) Better weather depiction. FSX currently has three top notch weather injectors on the market. XP has none.

 

ii) The ability to use my mousewheel to manipulate rotaries in the cockpit.

Im at work right now so my reply will be brief...some food for thought both here and at SimHQ. Im looking forward to both threads later today...

Great work... Amazing pics!

Epic work OP :im Not Worthy:   ... that took some doing and is a very interesting comparison. XPX has some serious potential, but whether it will ever be realised is another matter. I spend time playing around with the demo, and enjoy it, but as yet there is not enough to make me splash-out for the full version. It really needs some big third party support, and that much asked for feature 'seasons' to be a contender... and better clouds; my gosh I hate XPX clouds ^_^

 

 

I've never seen this done before and thought it might be an interesting exercise. FSX and XP10 head to head, making the same flight in the same aircraft showcasing the kind of addons each sim currently has to offer.

 

This is a nice review and everything but you posted at least 62 images and this is against the AVSIM Image Posting Rules.  I could remove the post but will allow it to stay.  Just be aware of the Image Posting Rules if you post additional images.  In the future, you should split the topic up into 3 or 4 topics, such as:

 

FSX VS XP10 Part 1

FSX VS XP10 Part 2

FSX VS XP10 Part 3

etc.

 

Thanks for your cooperation.

 

Best regards,

Thanks Jim, appreciated. Apologies for posting too many images.

Great shots ! :Applause:

Thank You for taking the time to put together this Great Comprehensive Comparison of our favorite Flight Sims.Cheers!! 

Nice comparison, thread! I don't agree with all your conclusions, but that's ok! One thing though in the later FSX fog pics, it looks like the fog that you would see with the older weather engines. With ASN that shouldn't be. (Maybe a problem with DX10?) With ASN you should see something like this in fog.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/429001-the-ngx-in-the-clouds-with-asn/

Great comparison, very interesting!

 

Just one remark:

 

 

 

One of the criticisms of the OSM scenery in XP10 is the buildings can sometimes look like "Lego brick building" slapped down on the ground. You can perhaps see that here with some of the larger buildings in Wexford that look a little out of place.

 

This may lead to misunderstandings. The buildings on this picture are not default X-Plane autogen, but OSM scenery (probably by SimHeaven?) They look much better if you use photo textures as base layers, because then the buildings usually fit perfectly in size and shape onto the ground photo.

 

For non-photo meshes like HD Mesh, it usually looks better to use default autogen. In Europe with the Europe library.

 

 

 

XP10's weather depiction is really limited and you don't transition nicely between different degrees of cloud cover. Clouds just pop in or pop out as you move from one METAR reporting area to another. Big thumbs down from me! XP10 really needs better weather depiction.

 

On the other hand, X-Plane's approach leads to a working weather radar out of the box, which you can actually use.

 

 

 

 It basically randomly populates the airports with a random selection of installed aircraft. This means you might very well see the NASA's 747 Space Shuttle Carrier at your local grass airstrip.

 

You can select the AI aircraft manually. You can also check out WorldTraffic payware, which is not a perfect solution, but you can have hundreds of airplanes at the same time in your sky, either with randomly generated flightplans (which you can influence greatly), or one can manually flight plans (but this is very cumbersome at the moment). Also, WorldTraffic uses much less resources.