What type of flying do you do in X-Plane?

[tonywob 4,769]

What type of flying do you do in X-Plane, and do you think the inclusion of the new GPS and Navigraph support for X-Plane itself will change this?

 

I say this, because in FSX/P3D I enjoy flying IFR in small GA aircraft and heavies. Visuals aren't/weren't too important, in fact I loved making the weather as ugly as possible, and enjoyed the challenge of breaking out of the clouds and seeing the runway. What enabled this for me in FSX was easier to use cockpit controls, the RealityXP units (although I also did VOR-VOR and VOR/NDB approaches). I also loved flying the heavies in FSX, and of course, everyone's favourites, the PMDG 737NGX and Dash Q8.

 

In X-Plane, I almost always stick to VFR. I have most of Carenado/Alabaeo's GA aircraft and Dreamfoil's Helicopters and generally just fly around looking out of the windows and following landmarks, and generally not being too serious, i.e. Following procedures, entering traffic patterns, using vatsim. I do occasionally use real VFR charts and plan routes from A to B, but generally I just fly around areas I know. One of the big strengths of X-Plane for me is the scenery, and how you can get it looking very close to real life, with free software (including my own World2XPlane scenery of course B) ). One big advantage for me is that the scenery doesn't blur out and X-Plane can look absolutely incredible, even the default scenery has its WOW moments (As Mitch will tell you :smile:).

 

Although I used to hate helicopters, I was introduced to helis when I first started developing World2XPlane, and now I'm completely addicted. The challenge of getting these up into the air and landing, and even things like taxiing means I actually spend more time close to the ground (or smashing into it). They are also incredible for getting close to the scenery, and I honestly never knew that you could actually land on the boats and oil-rigs which randomly appear in the scenery :lol: .

 

I have a few heavies for X-Plane, any my favourite is the Saab 340. I admit I haven't used it for a while, but I've created a few flights I've done in real life in a real Saab 340,following procedures etc, but it always bothered me that the cockpit controls are very hard to manipulate, e.g. It's a real struggle to tune in to frequencies without the help of keyboard shortcuts or external apps. I also have the 777, but same problem here, I simply find the cockpits easier to use in FSX and generally just stick to GA where most of the time you just look out of the window.

 

Well, the new GPS is impressive, and I was amazed to see that we can actually use the mousewheel (although it's still a little buggy) to turn the knobs. It's not 100% exact to its real life counterpart, but it's such a big improvement that I might start using it for simple IFR flights again. I'm also hoping that we will "one day" see the ability to control the cockpit controls with the mousewheel. This one simple thing would completely change the sim for me, from a VFR-only sim, to a full general sim.

[jcomm 5,919]

Mostly GA aircraft and helicopters, although the QPAC A320 is another aircraft I am a fan of.

 

I fly very small flights, the bigger sim sessions being those I spend flying tasks in Condor. All other simulators I use get me at the PC for no longer than 20 to 30 minutes. A short circuit around a nicely rendered area, under adverse weather conditions, is probably how I use X-plane 10 most of the time.

 

Recently I have been losing interest in complex aircraft simulations, the kind of we get wwith  PMDG stuff.

[User72 28]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat, I've lost interest in the heavies in favor of GA and heli flights. Now that X-Plane has gotten to the point where the photoscenery is so sharp even at low levels I spend my time sightseeing in my own country in aircraft I could imagine flying as a private pilot. I honestly don't miss the heavies at all. I have small kids so there's not all that much time for simming so when I get on my flights are short and sweet, from the field I landed at to the one which takes as much time as I have to get to or just touring the area around the field and back.

[PingPong 60]

Light GA and Helicopters.  I have made some really large photosceneries of Florida(my home) and California(my future home hopefully) and pretty much fly exclusively in those areas.

 

I have a PPL and use XPX to practice and plan real life flights I intend to take.

 

I hope to learn how to fly helicopters one day so I use XPX for simulating rotorcraft.

 

I am REALLY looking forward to the release of Oculus Rift CV1/DK2, from what I have been reading it will be a game-changer!

[Humpty 751]

I love flying VFR , Do touring flights around Europe and also doing bush / mountain flying with the Twin Otter in Alaska / Canada. X plane VFR is the best.

 

 

 

Would love to have real bad weather but the GPU does not support too much of clouds.

 

Don't fly the heavies at all as in a Sim to me they are useless unless you are training to get your ATPL or CPL. Helis i can never fly as I keep going in circles.

[Anxu00 176]

GA, CRJ-200 and recently the Challenger 300.  I retired all airliner sim (757, 777 etc) that I bought for XPX, mainly because of the lower quality than PMDG but mostly because of the control clunkiness.  I fly the CRJ and Challenger for short routes, and that's enough for me.  I too lost interest in complex airliner in XPX or FSX.  Every time I sat down in front of the computer and start to decide which plane model to fly, I ended up picking a GA plane, as the airliners feel like work  :lol:

[rototom 198]

Pretty mixed for me. I fly both VFR and IFR. I love FlyJSim's 727 and 737. The 727 is where I've logged most of my hours. I have the FF757 and Ramzess T7 which are both very nice as well.

 

X-plane is continually improving, and more and more great addons are becoming available, so I'm excited for the future.

[Guest Mik75]

I do all kind of flying in this beautiful simulator. But most of the time, I fly the big ones for my VA all over Europe (and I just started a world tour) while streaming on twitch.tv.

I also got into FSEconomy lately, so the GA aircraft (mostly Carenado) get more and more love as well! ;-) XPX's scenery, fluidity and feeling, just turns any kind of flying into a highly enjoyable experience for me!

[nanosour 9]

I've flown all over the world in my career as real world pilot.  Now that I'm retired, I enjoy using XP to recreate some of the flights I flew over my career.  I enjoy the Boeing payware, particularly the T7 and 727, which closely resembles the cockpit I flew in the old 707.  With the latest scenery developments, I also enjoy VFR flying throughout Europe with simheavens photo scenery tiles.  Love the fact that photo scenery is so easy on the frame rates given my 512 VRAM card.  That's opened up a whole new world to explore and flying the Mediterranean coast is awesome.  My system can't quite handle the newer W2XP and OSM data files, but when my 2009 i7 iMac dies, I'll be replacing it with a high powered XP PC and will be able to the latest in scenery development.

 

Overall, I'd say I'm 50/50 with small GA (Carenado BE58/Be33) vs large commercial airlines (CRJ/T7/727) with a small does of military jet flying.  Enjoy them all and fly most every day.

[deetee 164]

Well... Having gotten disillusioned by the general bugginess of the X-Plane airliners and the inherent awful system of adjusting knobs, I have been spending my time in P3Dv2.2 (kill the heretic...!!)

Now that the wonderful VoxATC is compatible with it, like thousands I enjoy flying my AXE over Orbx scenery etc. blah blah blah, wonderful cloud shadows, blah blah, ASN etc

 

I still like to dip in to XP though to see how things are progressing and take the occasional GA spin.

Though it sometimes seems to progress like a one-legged snail crossing the grand canyon, we are seeing some improvements.

[User72 28]

Well... Having gotten disillusioned by the general bugginess of the X-Plane airliners and the inherent awful system of adjusting knobs, I have been spending my time in P3Dv2.2 (kill the heretic...!!)

Now that the wonderful VoxATC is compatible with it, like thousands I enjoy flying my AXE over Orbx scenery etc. blah blah blah, wonderful cloud shadows, blah blah, ASN etc

 

I still like to dip in to XP though to see how things are progressing and take the occasional GA spin.

Though it sometimes seems to progress like a one-legged snail crossing the grand canyon, we are seeing some improvements.

 

Don't know why people dislike comments like this, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's just an opinion. Nobody is legally bound to one sim or another. I prefer XP and like to support it with my commenting but I do not require anyone to think as I do. Each to their own.

[ryanbatc 12,835]

Well I typically use XP10 for GA - bizjets and props, and I'd like to buy a cool big jet but I'll still fly as GA.

 

I've found and reported a few bugs with the new GPS but overall they did a nice job.  I'm just miffed it doesn't fit the VC as well as they'd originally stated.  Also I'd really like it to do SIDS and STARS because say, in the Carenado king airs, you'd be assigned SIDS or STARS but now you have to manually enter everything in.... grrr

 

It won't really change my style of flying except that now I can file /G and shoot RNAV (GPS) approaches.  I do all my XP flying on Pilot Edge (highly recommended!!) where it's TEC route style flying or VFR in and out of busy airspace.  The GPS will be good for displaying airspace for VFR routing actually helping me out to not bust class C or B airspace.

 

I tried to just love XP but with my lower end (gosh I can't believe I'm saying that) GPU I'm having to only run FXAA with HDR and it looks terrible, all jaggy and blurry.  And I have to run high textures with my King air otherwise the fps are too choppy and low.  Also I hear you Deetee reference the click spots - they are usually poorly designed in XP.  Some addons do a nice job (carenado is pretty good), and the LES Saab is good but the controls are on the center rear console hard to get to (even with TIR) while navigating by hand.

 

Helicopters.. yeah I have the DF AS350 - while it looks nice it's almost impossible to fly by hand while making frequency changes online.  I think that's the difference between me and a lot of people who like XP.....  they're happily using physical radio stacks or something lol....  I'm having serious issues making comm and nav changes while flying unless I'm on autopilot.  So typically I'm on AP a lot flying XP because of the nature of the click spots.  Of course helos don't have AP (except the BK117 which I do have but because of my free moving joystick it can be impossible to engage lol)

 

Ummm, overall I can still enjoy XP and its looking better every new patch.  It still works better at night for me imho....  and looks better too.

 

Ironically, Deetee, I bought P3D and it's a nightmare for me - very low fps in fact I get about 1/4 of the fps I do in FSX.  Again, this is probably because of my GTX570 with 1.28GB of vram....

 

So XP10 and P3D are my "techy tweak sims" while FSX is my goto it works great lets fly sim.

[PingPong 60]

Don't know why people dislike comments like this, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's just an opinion. Nobody is legally bound to one sim or another. I prefer XP and like to support it with my commenting but I do not require anyone to think as I do. Each to their own.

 

I think people "dislike" it because it is the kind of post that kicks off an FSX vs Xplane rant.  No-one is bound to like one sim or another, that is true, but anyone with any time in the forums knows that this will only lead to degeneration of an otherwise fine discussion.

[captain420 3,099]

I fly mostly the 777, but would like to get back into flying VFR with the GA to do some sight seeing. What's a real high quality GA aircraft that you guys can recommend for XPX to do this with? I currently own the Carenado A36, but is there something even better?

[Robert McDonald 167]

I fly the EADT x737 v2 with the FlightDeckSolutions SimAvionics Glass Cockpit.  I've invested in two important bits of hardware, the FDS ProMax CDU and the FDS JetMaxx MCP.  In addition, I run GARMIN PILOT on my Android using Xplane2GPS interface.  The glass cockpit display is on an HP Rove all-in-one PC.

 

So I fly tubeliners, and use IFR on all of my flights (but with visual approaches and landings in most cases unless weather is MVFR or worse).

 

My YouTube videos show the results, and I have some older stuff from FSX and P3D days up there as well.

 

XPlane has made some amazing progress "lately", and the addition of SimHeaven and AiPilot's HD Mesh have really brought Xplane to the point where I'm completely happy.  Sure, I want 'winter' and sure, I want the razor sharp view to the horizon at high altitude, but I'm confident that those items will happen sooner rather than 'never' or 'much later'.

 

Flying at dusk in Xplane is jaw-droppingly beautiful, particularly since 10.3b2 came out, the clouds are vastly improved.

 

Frame rates are dazzling, I have mid to high-end PC/GPU cards.  But the simple truth is that XPlane is overall smoother and more stutter-free than any of its current competition.  The fact that XP is in 64-bits is a game-changer.  I just ramped up all my system ram to 32-gb across the board.  XP is the ONLY sim that can use more than 4GB of VAS (Virtual Address Space).

 

Nothing wrong with FSX or P3D, they are quite pretty.  The troubles come in terms of rendering speed and smoothness.  I've never dorked with XPlane to  push my frames, other than mild adjustments on the rendering page.  I run near-max and in HD rendering with per-pixel lighting ON.  The night lights in XP 10.3b2 are to die for - they finally got that right!

 

I have friends coming out of P3D v 2.2 as well as FSX who see my flight deck graphics and are now moving to XP.  Again, it's a -choice- no right or wrong.

 

I tried HARD with P3D.  I have a TON of purchased airports and Orbx stuff for FSX/P3D.  Sadly, it runs poorly, even on 4.7GHZ with GTX TITAN graphics card.  That was it for me.  I erased my old stuff and fly XP exclusively.  682 hours logged in tubeliners.