In X-Plane it felt as though I was flying the scenery around the aircraft whereas in P3D it feels like I am flying the aircraft around the scenery (as in real life). 

So that's what it is.  I was wondering about that where the scenery around the plane seem not proportionally correct sometimes.  It must me the way the sim renders then.

I love opinions like this....one based on lots and lots of real world experience.

Bravo

Tons & tons of real world mountain experience, over the western United States.  XP-10 wins for overall depiction of mountain & desert regions. Very well defined, and real looking.  FSX (don't have P3D) combined with ORBX, wins by a land slide, when I fly low to the ground, and land at so many small rural airports.  At low altitudes, the scenery, which includes trees, grass, rural farm houses, etc,..................look excellent with ORBX.  X-Plane in comparison is much more bland & repetitious.   I know that I could download a bunch of lego airports for XP-10, but ORBX is just so easy. I'd rather spend the money, than search for everything. No OOMs here either. Mostly just GA.

@LA

 

Totally agree with your comments. 

 

 

That's the problem with XP - Everything is always "coming soon" or "right around the corner" or "with the right tools, x and y can happen, but not z", etc

Correct.  It's the total package that counts.  For real world pilots, flight sim is a training tool, so some elements missing do matter much to these folks.  They practice approach, landing, procedures and off to fly the real planes.  It's only us the sim pilot who cares about these "realism"   and spent hours sitting in one place flying somewhere.  That's the reason why small shop like XPX don't need to cater to us. LR is after the training market.  With P3D in the game, they may be etched out in that market too, hence the focus on mobile stuffs.  Not sure if LR charge a license fees for 3rd Party developers, LM surely did and it is quite costly (just go and peruse over the Flight1 forum to read about the lament of cost there).

 

Heck I am not so sure LR still exists in the current form in 5 years, with the shrinking market for flightsim as we die off. :ph34r:

 

The truth. Not that many real pilots actually use desk top sims for training, or entertainment.  Between pilot forums, experimental aircraft forums, and all of the pilots I knew over the years, it was just a small percentage who use the sims. Most just never got into it, to see what it's about.   Since I was using desktop sims and flying at the same time, I'd often compare the sim to the real thing. Mesh scenery for mountains, accurate airport elevations,  flight dynamics, and the cockpit as well as exterior became very important, in my view.   

Oddly enough I've found that active real world pilots normally want to do silly and fun things with my flightsim.  My good MEII friend came over last month and just wanted to fly inverted under the golden gate lol!  And then there's me, inactive real world pilot wanting to do uber realistic navigation stuff with live ATC and blah blah blah.

 

It's because I can't do it for real anymore.  The guys who do it for real want to have fun because flying has become a chore for them hehe!

 

Obviously this is some generalization, but I know a lot of pilots, and a lot of them have come over to check out my sim.

I love opinions like this....one based on lots and lots of real world experience.

Bravo

I have flown as well and my feeling is right the opposit, I don't pretend you feel the same though as many FSX believers do, I have both sims and in the end I use the one which looks more real FOR ME not for you...I'm lucky to live and fly virtually in an area fully covered by good data and with photoreal turns to be amazing, not always, not everywhere, I'm not a blind worshipper of Xplane, full daylight and weather long distance depiction have indeed limits...but you know what...this is for free while in FSX i was spending tons of bucks. I know many have plenty of them thus not a variable, unfortunately that is not my case. Have fun...

Fair enough as we all have opinions...

 

 

 

this is for free while in FSX i was spending tons of bucks.

 

I really never agree with this statement when I see it on the forums in the "XPX vs FSX/P3D" debates.

 

I personally always *want* people making a living doing the work to make my Flight Sim better and more detailed.

 

"Free" has been a death spiral of sorts and a race to the bottom in so many industries.  It's important to recognize that there are "people" involved that have families and need to eat and just wanting everything for "free" is not a sustainable strategy, nor does it lead them to care about making more updates and progress.

 

...lastly, it's a little ironic that people that favor X-Plane enjoy the "free" aspect, since Laminar is now hawking "meh" mobile versions of XPX to....

 

...you guessed it....

 

 

Make money.

I did spend some money with FSX:SE - ORBX FTX Global - and that was one of the best acquisitions I ever made for this sim.

 

I also had, from the distant past, Aerosoft's Madeira LPMA.

 

The rest I download from AVSIM's File Server, FLightsim.com, and other places, for free, just as I did with XP10...

Fair enough as we all have opinions...

 

 

 

 

I really never agree with this statement when I see it on the forums in the "XPX vs FSX/P3D" debates.

 

I personally always *want* people making a living doing the work to make my Flight Sim better and more detailed.

 

"Free" has been a death spiral of sorts and a race to the bottom in so many industries.  It's important to recognize that there are "people" involved that have families and need to eat and just wanting everything for "free" is not a sustainable strategy, nor does it lead them to care about making more updates and progress.

 

...lastly, it's a little ironic that people that favor X-Plane enjoy the "free" aspect, since Laminar is now hawking "meh" mobile versions of XPX to....

 

...you guessed it....

 

 

Make money.

 

Sounds thrilling, flying in Xplane on your iPhone 6..... LOL

Sounds thrilling, flying in Xplane on your iPhone 6..... LOL

 

lol - yep

 

I honestly can't tell why people are "choosing" the XP Mobile version on iOS.  There are a couple other options if that's your thing (mobile flight sim) that seem much better to me.

I think because a lot more people would hear about it. I had friends at work who where suddenly talking about XP who'd never heard of it. I think that's a good marketing tool. Maybe make some money, and hopefully give yourself exposure and new customers for the desktop product. It makes sense to me

 

 

As for the free is a race to the bottom comment, well that's not exactly true. Many things in the IT world are free and open source. If you look at things like Apache, postfix, HAProxy. whole operating systems, they are all free. Free is sustainable, most of the reasons the internet work is based on a free protocol called BGP. Anyone can have a BGP router up and running and all you need is some hardware. BGP is the glue of the internet. If someone wants to make content for free, they will. Just because you pay for something doesn't mean you will always have updates. Look at FSX....

 

 

As for the free is a race to the bottom comment, well that's not exactly true. Many things in the IT world are free and open source.

 

 

X-Plane is not open source - thus if they don't make money and keep developing it we are all stuck with "what it is".

 

 

(see FSX before P3D came along and kept running with it)

 

Besides that, my "free" comment is about 3rd parties mainly.

If everyone just wants everything for "free", and cherishes that aspect of X-Plane, it's no shocker there's no good 3rd party add-ons for X-Plane.

 

 

A vibrant 3rd party market is what needs embracing by Laminar

XPX has loads of potential, but it remains as "potential" until third parties take it higher (just like FSX and P3D)

 

 

Who even knows if desktop flight sim is a viable market anyhow?  (for the sim creators)

Laminar's actions on mobile would lead us to believe it's not.

 

I personally think it's a chicken & the egg issue.  

 

There are LONG standing things we've all wanted addressed in XP to make it more feature competitive and complete and they've still never gotten around to it.

 

So is desktop flight simming not viable as a business?

Or have we all just gotten tired of waiting for Austin to "get interested in fixing complaints and adding requested features"?

I was referring to the add-on scenery, not XP. If someone wants to make freeware scenery, that's their choice. You where speaking of freeware scenery, that happens to be in abundance in XP. Although, I have a tonne for FSX

I was referring to the add-on scenery, not XP. If someone wants to make freeware scenery, that's their choice. You where speaking of freeware scenery, that happens to be in abundance in XP. Although, I have a tonne for FSX

 

Sorry, my post above got edited while you were typing.

 

Free is fine for some things, but I personally like "products".

 

I have a life outside of this and want to compensate others for doing the work I can't and don't have time for so that in my limited time available for simming, I can sit down, and enjoy flying.

 

...not spend hours wading through the Org looking for things that are actually "ok" and not old and/or junky.

 

 

I swear I've installed a handful of "highly rated sceneries" from the Org of areas I'm extremely familiar with and I'm not sure what the designer was doing.

Buildings in the way of approach paths, tall buildings in areas there are none, trees that look nothing like foliage in that region, on and on

 

On that note - Good lord is the Org ever going to prune old garbage from there?

They still have a wasteland of old junk files on there.  :-(