[03MAR15] PMDG's First Product for XPlane...

[Robert McDonald 167]

It's going to be wonderful to have PMDG bring this and (hopefully) other products to the XPlane world.  Each platform has it's pluses and minuses, but the 64-bitness of it all coupled with being able to address ALL of your Video Card's VRAM and much more multi-screen/multi-PC network friendly - XPlane will change many hearts and minds.  The sheer smoothness and astounding frame rates and the death and riddance of OOM's once and for all... are game-changers.  Laminar has been hard at work working on upcoming 10.4 which promises several 'new' features which are long-awaited.

 

PMDG could release a flying wastebasket for XPlane, and I'd buy it.  Many have said that the automation in the tubeliners doesn't make for solid pilots, and I can testify I never knew how MUCH I didn't know till I flew a little Cessna without all the cool GPS, CDUs and glass cockpit.

 

Any airplane is a joy, but of different types, and flight simulation can mean a lot of different things to different people.  Some just want the closest to real flight model, and aren't really concerned with scenery, whilst others want something that looks like a modern CGI motion picture in terms of realistic scenery.

 

XPlane has a number of stellar airports plus some ortho scenery packs and HD Textures that can truly dazzle the scenery-hungry.  Now that PMDG is bringing it on... it can only add to the joy.

 

Applause and gratitude as always to PMDG-- Their 737NGX is my first love (from FSX days).  And you NEVER forget your first love!

 

Oh, and for those that don't know it- XPlane 10 means ALL of your sim stuff lives in ONE SINGLE FOLDER, not scattered to the winds as in FSX/P3D.

 

Much easier to backup and restore FYI.  And all that time you used to blow trying to squeeze out 1 or 2 fps in FSX/P3D?  Nah.  Now you can just fly.

 

64 bits will change your world.

[Scramjet333 39]

Oh, and for those that don't know it- XPlane 10 means ALL of your sim stuff lives in ONE SINGLE FOLDER, not scattered to the winds as in FSX/P3D.

This - this is the BEST thing about X-Plane. I tried FSX, and add-ons for it nearly always default to install to C:\Program Files\, and sometimes if the install path was changed, the add-ons didn't work. I very quickly went back to X-Plane.

 

I hope PMDG makes life easy for us (and probably themselves too) and give us a simple .zip file that we decompress into our /Aircraft folder when we download their X-Plane products - no installers.

[yidahoo 365]

This - this is the BEST thing about X-Plane. I tried FSX, and add-ons for it nearly always default to install to C:\Program Files\, and sometimes if the install path was changed, the add-ons didn't work. I very quickly went back to X-Plane.

 

I hope PMDG makes life easy for us (and probably themselves too) and give us a simple .zip file that we decompress into our /Aircraft folder when we download their X-Plane products - no installers.

Let's hope so, thats how virtually all current X-Plane developers do it, and they still maintain their piracy protection with simple installations.

[vr-pilot 11]

 

 

Oh, and for those that don't know it- XPlane 10 means ALL of your sim stuff lives in ONE SINGLE FOLDER, not scattered to the winds as in FSX/P3D.
Much easier to backup and restore FYI. And all that time you used to blow trying to squeeze out 1 or 2 fps in FSX/P3D? Nah. Now you can just fly.

+1!

Live is really amazingly easy in the XP10 folder oriented world. Just drop your new plane's folder in "Aircraft", your new scenery in "Custom Scenery" or e.g. a new separate plugin in "Resources\plugins".

Everything shows up and works fine the next time you start XP10. And if you want to set e.g. the new scenery to an intermediate pause, just remove the scenery folder out of the "X-Plane 10" folder structure: that's it...

 

And regarding the framerates: my autumn 2010 laptop runs complex scenery settings enormously smooth. Besides the fact that competitors do not offer "real lighting" (which is also called HDR rendering but is much more than just the eyecandy FX), the world scenery in XP10 is  accurate, up to date and will be using actual real world data in the near future.

There is a huge kind of "creative cloud improvement" going on that is both: freeware and payware. And due to the easy and save to use folder structure anything can be tried and tested without real harm...

B)

[fabiopittol 0]

 

 

...and will be using actual real world data in the near future.

 

Which data?

[vr-pilot 11]

 

 

Which data?

 

e.g. http://download.geofabrik.de/

 

used e.g. by http://world2xplane.com/

 

Also interesting:

http://x-plane.cleverest.eu/

http://developer.x-plane.com/2015/03/extended-dsfs-in-x-plane-10-40/

[fabiopittol 0]

I know XP uses an striped-down OpenStreetMap data, by default, since quite a while!

 

When you said "will be using..in the future" I though I missed some announcement!

[ferrariman15 13]

Can I please request that PMDG uses some of its influence in getting Laminar Research to sort out the weather engine in Xplane. Did a flight two days ago in Xplane and when from glorious VFR weather to being surrounded by clouds with a weather update. Also clouds coming out of the ground......

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Also clouds coming out of the ground......

 

Hmm...guess I should tell Mother Nature to knock off her shenanigans  :

 

Sounds like a request that one might want to aim at HiFi. No?

[Scramjet333 39]

Can I please request that PMDG uses some of its influence in getting Laminar Research to sort out the weather engine in Xplane. Did a flight two days ago in Xplane and when from glorious VFR weather to being surrounded by clouds with a weather update. Also clouds coming out of the ground......

That's not a nice thing to ask of a company - to hard-hand another to bend to its will. In fact it is quite rude. If you want better weather, there's the NOAA weather plugin, plus Skymaxx Pro if you don't like the default clouds. Please don't ask one company to "use its influence" to force another to do something to your whims and fancies.

 

Furthermore, this is not how things are done in the X-Plane world. Developers feedback to Laminar to make life easier for them, or tweak/fix some quirk in the simulator, but no one is flouting around their "influence". PMDG will probably do the same, and it possibly already is providing feedback to Laminar Research.

 

Anyway, Austin Meyer has the final say over what goes in and what doesn't, and the only people who can and do affect his decisions are the core developers of X-Plane (you can see who they are in the About menu of X-Plane).

 

Maybe you can put in a feature request/bug report, and Laminar will respond to your qualms and issues.

[ferrariman15 13]

That's not a nice thing to ask of a company - to hard-hand another to bend to its will. In fact it is quite rude. If you want better weather, there's the NOAA weather plugin, plus Skymaxx Pro if you don't like the default clouds. Please don't ask one company to "use its influence" to force another to do something to your whims and fancies.

 

Furthermore, this is not how things are done in the X-Plane world. Developers feedback to Laminar to make life easier for them, or tweak/fix some quirk in the simulator, but no one is flouting around their "influence". PMDG will probably do the same, and it possibly already is providing feedback to Laminar Research.

 

Anyway, Austin Meyer has the final say over what goes in and what doesn't, and the only people who can and do affect his decisions are the core developers of X-Plane (you can see who they are in the About menu of X-Plane).

 

Maybe you can put in a feature request/bug report, and Laminar will respond to your qualms and issues.

 

For a start I use Skymaxx pro, but that is a texture set and not a weather engine. And I have used NOAA weather plugin and its no better than the default weather engine.

 

If Austin Meyer only pays attention to developers about getting things in the sim sorted them surely he will listen to PMDG. One has to hope that HIFI releases a weather engine for Xplane then.

 

(Ow and BTW when you talk about being rude your post isn't exactly the model of politeness is it)

[x-plane 123 61]

Can I please request that PMDG uses some of its influence in getting Laminar Research to sort out the weather engine in Xplane. Did a flight two days ago in Xplane and when from glorious VFR weather to being surrounded by clouds with a weather update. Also clouds coming out of the ground......

Have you seen this?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Maybe you can put in a feature request/bug report, and Laminar will respond to your qualms and issues.

(Ow and BTW when you talk about being rude your post isn't exactly the model of politeness is it)

 

Both of you, knock it off. It was a simple question. No need to blow it out of proportion, or get defensive. I will add, though, that this discussion will need to carry on elsewhere if you wish for it to continue. This is a PMDG subforum, and a PMDG thread. Disagreements about over developers' functions can be directed to their respective developers.

[ferrariman15 13]

Have you seen this?

 

I had heard rumours but thank you cant wait for it to be released.

 

 

Both of you, knock it off. It was a simple question. No need to blow it out of proportion, or get defensive. I will add, though, that this discussion will need to carry on elsewhere if you wish for it to continue. This is a PMDG subforum, and a PMDG thread. Disagreements about over developers' functions can be directed to their respective developers.

 

Point taken.

[Scramjet333 39]

Both of you, knock it off. It was a simple question. No need to blow it out of proportion, or get defensive. I will add, though, that this discussion will need to carry on elsewhere if you wish for it to continue. This is a PMDG subforum, and a PMDG thread. Disagreements about over developers' functions can be directed to their respective developers.

Alright - sorry 'bout that.