I now finally and fully know...where the future of Flight Simulation lays!

[nikaslan 9]

LR have made it clear that they're not trying to get FSX/P3D users by just reproducing all the features they have.

 

Ooh, I have heard that again and it made me hit my head on the wall!!

 

What kind of logic is this??

 

Ok, I can build a helicopter but because I hate Eurocopter, and Eurocopter has rotors in its helicopters I will build a helicopter without a rotor because I don't want to attract Eurocopter's fans..

 

Well, good luck getting your helicopter to fly!!!!

What are we, kids?

 

You sell an incomplete product because another product that you feel as inferior has the features missing from yours? Yes X-Plane is better in many ways BUT when key features are missing don't you think that the "completely new simmers and younger folk" will demand them eventually?

 

(man, I love my 100th post! B) )

[mdavis 10]

A more accurate test would be to find someone who has never seen or used a flight simulator, someone who is a professional pilot intimately familiar with a given aircraft, and someone who has not been influenced by advertising.  Unfortunately, I suspect no such person exists, so it all comes down to personal preference as to what is important and what is desirable but less important.

 

I can tell you that, having spent a brief amount of time on a "real" Navy CH-65 training simulator (moving platform, 180° multiple screen views), that the emphasis in that simulator was on flight characteristics and handling.  Weather was adjustable and of course day/night.  But the scenery was very limited and not as good as my then-current version of FS2004.  In the real world, it is not the scenery that is important as much as the flight modeling.  (I will also comment that, inexplicibly, the control tower at the Naval base where the simulator was located was demolished by a rocket just prior to my leaving the simulator compartment.  I have no knowledge of how or why that might have happened.)  :-)

[brucek 38]

A more accurate test would be to find someone who has never seen or used a flight simulator, someone who is a professional pilot intimately familiar with a given aircraft, and someone who has not been influenced by advertising.  Unfortunately, I suspect no such person exists, so it all comes down to personal preference as to what is important and what is desirable but less important.....

 

I don't qualify as I have used flight sims since FS5.0 in 1994 (OMG, I'm getting old ). But I do fly "for real", am IR, and am new to XPX, having owned many sims in the past (mainly versions of MSFS, but also ATP, etc.).

 

The problem for those of us that have to talk to ATC is that even a simulator that ploughed literally millions of $$ would not come close to the interaction in real flight with controllers. This may be where the developer(s) are going with XP, I'm not sure... those that have the option of real ATC, seasons, wing-views, etc. don't sim for any of these things, why would they? What interests me is a simulated plane that behaves like the real thing. This what you refer to in your full-motion sim as lacking scenery, seasons, etc. -

 

What IS missing is a decent weather generator, and it may be that it exists but I just haven't found it yet. That's the other part of the equation in having a plane that flies correctly- the weather environment.

 

The other thing that's missing is a better sound engine, and maybe here I also just haven't found it yet. XP in it's current form, at least on ahome PC, doesn't simulate 3D motion, but sound is a much cheaper and (to me) almost as effective way to get immersion into the sim. This is where FSX/P3D has the edge, and I hope that XP can catch up one day.

 

I love XP.. my sim sessions are usually very time-limited by work and other stuff, so a sim session may last only 30 minutes on any one day..... but loading up a good XP aircraft at dusk or dawn, on a 10 mile final, with some challenging weather that requires an instrument approach, and manually flying the bird to touch-down or missed approach, to me is priceless.... even if the Denver scenery is colored green in February....

 

Good thread... Bruce.

[LAdamson 240]

As the years go by, scenery for professional real world simulators, keeps on improving. I remember keeping up with the scenery advances from Evans & Sutherland, as they were located nearby.  In the real world, it takes time, lots of money, and FAA approval. The FAA part takes more time.  It's not really a case, of real world pilots just don't need scenery. It's really a case of real world simulators not keeping up with desktops.  It's just like real world navigation systems. Many commercial airliners as well as military aircraft, didn't have the navigation capabilities, that you could find in a Garmin equipped Cessna 172 trainer, let alone handhelds.  As I tended to have the latest and greatest when it came to portable aviation  GPS systems, some of my commercial pilot friends were quite astonished with what my Garmins could do for weather, terrain, and mapping. They often wanted to check it out, for a while.

[LAdamson 240]

Agree about the jaggy reflections.

 

The reflections of things like mountains don't seem to get any aliasing and it's horribly distracting in a place like the San Juan Islands in Washington State, USA

After the two comments about "jaggy" water reflections, I just visited the San Juan Islands, for some opinions from myself, as well as others.  In all cases, they looked GREAT!  IMO, it's the best water in any sim I've seen.  The look was anything but distracting, and very much added to the illusion. I have no doubts, that we're looking at the way our particular graphic cards are rendering this. I'm using a Geforce 980.

 

edit: Settings are on advanced for reflections. I changed to complete, but it knocks off  a few fps. Moved it back to advanced.

[N1G 88]

I had been unable to satisfy my thirst for AA and wanting to rid the sim of the squirmies with my truster 337.xx driver, but since I updated to current drivers I now can use NI with a very high AA (16) along with a 4x grid option for AF. (Sorry, don't have my sim machine booted so I cannot remember the exact names of the AA and AF) The part that worked for me was to use "Enhance" and NOT OVERRIDE. What is amazing is that it does not seem to have much of an impact on performance. I would agree that somehow the AA is being dampened somewhat in XP as compared to P3D and FSX. If I try to use 16 AA and 4x grid settings for P3D or FSX, the performance would be terrible. I am using a GTX760 with 4 gig. Not the fastest card but I got the memory which helps. I had a 560 before so it was a good investment for me. I am maxed out in XP for objects and visibility and using SkyMaxx with medium settings for the most part.  I am very pleased with the performance of around 30-45 fps flying the Carenado 337 and the Malibu around the KSEA area.

 

Bob

[jcjimmy 150]

 

 

I really enjoyed your slideshow, so much so that I added it to my collection of inspiring X-Plane videos. The music was perfect as aviation theme music.

Hi Murfman, Thanks for your comments. That music was from the tv series "Air Power" of 1956-57 narrated by Walter Cronkite. I loved the show and music.

 

In general, a lot of the freeware scenery and aircraft I use comes from the .org and I like xpfr.org as well. Payware I like Carenado for their fine customer support and great planes. I also have the B727, B757 and B777 payware. The B757 is a favorite of mine.

[ErichB 3,640]

Although XP looks awesome in some contexts and is slowly getting better, it still has too many rough edges for me.  But it's great that we all have so much choice right now, which is good for everyone.   

[alpha12125 213]

Ooh, I have heard that again and it made me hit my head on the wall!!

 

What kind of logic is this??

 

Ok, I can build a helicopter but because I hate Eurocopter, and Eurocopter has rotors in its helicopters I will build a helicopter without a rotor because I don't want to attract Eurocopter's fans..

 

Well, good luck getting your helicopter to fly!!!!

What are we, kids?

 

You sell an incomplete product because another product that you feel as inferior has the features missing from yours? Yes X-Plane is better in many ways BUT when key features are missing don't you think that the "completely new simmers and younger folk" will demand them eventually?

 

(man, I love my 100th post! B) )

 

well you are interpreting quite alot into a sentence that was taken out of context and you havent read (unless you speak german) They never said any other products are inferior, infact they (or atleast the programmer in question) has been very respectful of P3D and FSX.

 

The sentence in question was made in regards to P3D as an FSX Upgrade. To give more context: He stated that Veteran FSX Users, that are heavily invested (with addons etc. spending up to thousands of dollars) into a system forget that they are a minority in the flight simulator world. For them the upgrade path to P3D is very easy and logical. However P3D cannot and will not be marketed to End Users.  All the new young people getting in contact with flight sim the first time (even on IPAD, the reason for x-plane mobile) will find X-Plane. Thats why its on Steam. They rather stick with new young people and build a userbase from there that increases the exsisting flightsim community. Its a better idea than trying to please FSX and P3D userbase that is heavily invested into their economic system and doesnt want to change anyway. And in this context this sentence makes sense.

 

Also they do not think everything is perfect with x-plane but with 4-5 developers and an lets say excentric CEO they manage quiet good imho.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Like both FSX and XPX it's cheaper to own XPX because scenery, airports, planes cost less even with pay-ware, and the free airports no different than fsx just prettier.

 

Xplane does not need P3d users anyways as steam crowd that younger is its future. If they are working on XP11 I am glad they are because means more visual improvements and features.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Like both FSX and XPX it's cheaper to own XPX because scenery, airports, planes cost less even with pay-ware, and the free airports no different than fsx just prettier.

 

Xplane does not need P3d users anyways as steam crowd that younger is its future. If they are working on XP11 I am glad they are because means more visual improvements and features.

I agree with you...but I still can NOT understand why one would simply NOT purchase a copy of XPlane, and have it also, as an option to 'pull back the throttle, when one wants to...'   I read that FSX'ers, P3D'ers, have perhaps thousands of dollars cumulative, buried in FPS, P3D, FS9, but with all the generous free-ware offerings for the Xplane franchise, it would not add to their monetary investment, other than the down-stroke for the actual Xplane purchase, itself.  I would want Xplane in my hangar, JUST for day/night transition flight singularly, let alone for any of the other great reasons to have it upon your system. I really do feel sorry, for those others of our community that just, simply, will not jump the fence for a day, or session, and see what great benefits, the rest of us that do have this franchise, enjoy, with each flight.   I have them all...I fly them all, regularly, sometimes one after the other, if I have the time...and can clearly see the strengths (they all have theirs...) of all the sim platforms, as they stand.  Again...to not have XPX.x also in your flight stable, puzzles the h*ll out of me.....truly!

 

Post Edit:   Just finished a great scenic flight from the ocean, and east, following the Sacramento River, in California.  I'm doing a lot of G.A. scenic flying lately with XPX, and enjoying the experience, very much.

 

Mitch

[tonywob 4,769]

@Mitch

 

Completely agree. I'm not sure why people dedicate to one platform and refuse to install anything else along side (as if it's cheating on their partner). It's nearly always the same thing, a die-hard FSX user will install the demo, spend 5-10 minutes with it, hate it because the UI and keyboard shortcuts are different and then leave it as a lost cause. The ones that stick around a bit longer will either refuse to use X-Plane because they have too much invested in FSX (Which is a nonsense to me, just use both!!!), or more legitimately, they simply can't sim happily without certain plugins.

 

As proved in this topic, if you give it a chance (just like you must with FSX/P3D), spend time learning the interface, shortcuts and also build up your scenery and aircraft library, it becomes a powerful and stable sim. It's not without its warts, but then again, neither is any other flight sim.

[nikaslan 9]

well you are interpreting quite alot into a sentence that was taken out of context and you havent read (unless you speak german) They never said any other products are inferior, infact they (or atleast the programmer in question) has been very respectful of P3D and FSX.

 

The sentence in question was made in regards to P3D as an FSX Upgrade.

 

I was under the impression that this argument came to justify their decision not to bother to improve the weather system or the ATC or the AI, because they do not care to please the FSX/P3D crowd, but instead to attract younger people. I just fail to see how beeing a younger and inexperienced simmer means that you do not care about such an important factor in aviation as proper weather depiction, for example.

a die-hard FSX user will install the demo, spend 5-10 minutes with it, hate it because the UI and keyboard shortcuts are different and then leave it as a lost cause. The ones that stick around a bit longer will either refuse to use X-Plane because they have too much invested in FSX (Which is a nonsense to me, just use both!!!), or more legitimately, they simply can't sim happily without certain plugins.

 

As proved in this topic, if you give it a chance (just like you must with FSX/P3D), spend time learning the interface, shortcuts and also build up your scenery and aircraft library, it becomes a powerful and stable sim. It's not without its warts, but then again, neither is any other flight sim.

 

So true, I've been through all these phases.

[alpha12125 213]

I was under the impression that this argument came to justify their decision not to bother to improve the weather system or the ATC or the AI, because they do not care to please the FSX/P3D crowd, but instead to attract younger people. I just fail to see how beeing a younger and inexperienced simmer means that you do not care about such an important factor in aviation as proper weather depiction, for example.

 

So true, I've been through all these phases.

 

Well I could be wrong, but I know of no interview where they explicitly state that the FSX/P3D weather system is not something they want. With the comming visibility changes they will need to tweak the weather system anyway. But my guess is that changes to the weather engine is something that is too much for 10.x release and more for 11

[mdavis 10]

There are some good comments here.  As a dedicated (and still) subLogic/Microsoft owner from waaaay back in the old Atari/Commodore days, I've seen sims improve year by year.

 

I more or less switched from FSX to X-Plane 10 when I built a new simming rig a few months ago.  Installing XP was a simple matter.  All add-ons were an easy drag and drop into the new computer.  Not so with FSX which has (on my old computer) hundreds of dollars of add-ons and dozens of special installers, registrations and a host of impediments to moving the whole thing onto a new machine.  Add to that the demise of FS Genesis (sold out to a company that does not honor a lifetime access guarantee), an old 32-bit RAM-limited code base, lost serial numbers in the fog of time and computer changes, inaccurate terrain elevation at far too many remote airstrips, occasional crashes even on a new installation when changing flight plans and/or locations with the sim running, and FSX became a second-class competitor for me.  I stick with it from time to time because it's Squawkbox interface to VATSIM is better and it has some old favorite aircraft that I can't find in XP, but overall, it's a dog with good weather and good seasonal display.  Yes, the UI is different, but once you get used to it, I like it much better with customizable view settings for the numeric keypad and 3D mouse "look around."

 

XP is rapidly gaining many free and payware custom airports, the scenery editors are easier to use than FSX, the XP community is much better at helping support missing scenery, the new HD and UHD mesh (free!) is fantastic, flight modeling is arguably better on well-made aircraft, many top-end custom designers like Alabeo, Carenado, Aersoft, etc. are showing up, and life gets better every day.