"If I had a hundred dollars" - newbie advice requested!

[Guest Mik75]

UrbanMAXX just changes the ground textures, so it doesn't conflict with W2XP. OSM scenery just populates the scenery with facade (autogen buildings), vegetation and defines where streets, urban areas, forests, etc. are. With UrbanMAXX, you'll see more realistic ground textures in urban areas, that's. It's cheap as well, and together with SkyMaxx Pro v2, it's what I would call essential for XPX. The fantastic scenery you get from simheaven is donation ware! It's that good and its surely a lot of work to create it, so I'd encourage you to donate some money through the website. An external program I use on every XPX flight is EFASS. It is a very good flight planning tool, a moving map, source of information (about airports, airfields, etc.), injects the weather, etc. The developer doesn't seem to update the program anymore, but in its current state, it's perfectky usable and very handy!

All the best and a warm welcome to the most realistic flight simulator out there! ;-)

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Holy crap.  I was thinking about Skymaxx, but those clouds shadows....  I'm not a P3D user, so I haven't had those 'til now.

 

That's an incredible plugin.

SkyMaxx Pro has fabulous clouds...and with the new E-DSF, I had cloud shadows being displayed out upon Lake Ontario...over 25 miles away...check out my pics...and you will see them darken the lake water...amazing!

UrbanMAXX just changes the ground textures, so it doesn't conflict with W2XP. OSM scenery just populates the scenery with facade (autogen buildings), vegetation and defines where streets, urban areas, forests, etc. are. With UrbanMAXX, you'll see more realistic ground textures in urban areas, that's. It's cheap as well, and together with SkyMaxx Pro v2, it's what I would call essential for XPX. The fantastic scenery you get from simheaven is donation ware! It's that good and its surely a lot of work to create it, so I'd encourage you to donate some money through the website. An external program I use on every XPX flight is EFASS. It is a very good flight planning tool, a moving map, source of information (about airports, airfields, etc.), injects the weather, etc. The developer doesn't seem to update the program anymore, but in its current state, it's perfectky usable and very handy!

All the best and a warm welcome to the most realistic flight simulator out there! ;-)

Yeah..it does...run UrbanMaxx and W2XP textures at North Bay Ontario...check out the blotcheness and incomplete W2XP objects. Now...remove UrbanMaxx from the folder...and fire up the same airport and a fly over of the town...and you have proper W2XP streets, populated by the great home objects, and not truncated in the towns and cities.  UrbanMaxx sure does inhibit the W2XP object calls and placements.  Again....do an A/B test at North Bay, Ontario, Canada...fly over downtown, and the water front....and you'll see a massive difference....

[PDX Flyer 111]

WOW!  This thread is also just for me as I just installed x-plane 10 and am as I write this downloading the World1xplane files for France.

 

I just had one to many problems with the FSX blurries (and I am sure you know what I mean).  I either want to find another sim to replace it, or I may give up a 20 year hobby and passion.

 

Would look forward to any suggestions for GA planes, either payware or free downloads.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

WOW!  This thread is also just for me as I just installed x-plane 10 and am as I write this downloading the World1xplane files for France.

 

I just had one to many problems with the FSX blurries (and I am sure you know what I mean).  I either want to find another sim to replace it, or I may give up a 20 year hobby and passion.

 

Would look forward to any suggestions for GA planes, either payware or free downloads.

I'd start with two...payware:

 

1:  Carenado SkyMaster C337 high-wing for exceptional tour and G.A. duty.  Dual push/pull prop, in-line beam, great handling...10 star all -round.

 

2: For water, tunda, ski all of it...also Carenado's SkyWagon C185F v3.0 package.  You need the base plane, and then you pick up the Extension Package for it, that gives you Ski, Amphib, Float, Tundra out-fitting.

 

There are other great options by other Dev's for turbo-single and multi, Big Iron, commuter...and others that have these planes will chime in....but for G.A....you have many with Carenado...Baron 58, Saratoga, 208B Caravan, the Cessna 510 Mustang...on and on...I have a stable full of 'em!

 

Have fun...

[Longranger 148]

Well, I would say for Amphibian and small GA stuff I would now say: Get teh new DHC-2 Beaver from SoulMadeSim.

 

Other good GA Planes would b the vFlyteAir Piper Arrow III

 

Or if you want to get near A2A Quality (not quite in the form of graphics) you could buy the Carenado CT210 and the Reality Expansion Pack from simCoders that pushes the CT210 from a rather mediocre plane to a wholöe new level. But I would probably still wait till they had more time for updates.

[RJC68 820]

Just to prove you made a good decision  :-)  .....

 

Enroute from EGCC to LEAL in the excellent FF 757

 

 

 

And the return trip today in the awesome Jardesign A330

 

 

 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Just to prove you made a good decision  :-)  .....

 

Enroute from EGCC to LEAL in the excellent FF 757

 

 

 

And the return trip today in the awesome Jardesign A330

 

 

 

Simply stunning snaps...totally life-like!

[Mirtma 0]

I've flown many virtual aircrafts, but never airliner. Now I want to start with them. And I don't really know what plane to buy. I want it to have 3d cockpit, good textures and that it would be good step for beginners. I've read some of reviews and end up with deciding whether to put FlightFactor Airbus A350-900 in shopping basket? Price 50 $ is acceptable. Any suggestions? 

[RJC68 820]

I've flown many virtual aircrafts, but never airliner. Now I want to start with them. And I don't really know what plane to buy. I want it to have 3d cockpit, good textures and that it would be good step for beginners. I've read some of reviews and end up with deciding whether to put FlightFactor Airbus A350-900 in shopping basket? Price 50 $ is acceptable. Any suggestions? 

 

I also considered the FF A350 too, the lack of support  of SIDS/STARS put me off. This is supposed to be addressed in a future release but I'm not sure if to date it has been done.

 

As you will see from my post above I have both the FF 757  & JARDesign A330. They are both great aircraft and very in depth so it will take some time time to master them both. I would say that the A330 is a little easier to learn. The flight model is fantastic and it is a dream to hand fly. So much so I find myself engaging autopilot much later on departure and disengaging much sooner on arrival. I even hand flew the entire SID into runway 33R at CYYZ recently, something I have never done before in eith FSX or P3D

 

Just my 2 cents worth ....

Simply stunning snaps...totally life-like!

Thank You  B)

 

All freeware mesh (HDMesh V3)

 

I was a bit daunted at first when starting with X-Plane as out of the box it is a very baron simulator. A little research online and so much freeware now makes this a very nice place to be. At last my purpose built flight sim rig can really shine.

 

The X-Plane community is fantastic too.

[CoolP 283]

You frequent X-Plane users correct me if I'm wrong but as I read the "If I had a hundred dollars" title, I was thinking that one doesn't actually need to spend many dollars (well, except for the base sim of course) for entering the the XP spheres and get a lot of fun out of it.

 

The reason being that most parts to enhance XP come as free or donation ware (worth spending there) while only special locations and planes would require you to get some payware.

 

So you can literally stay with the base for the longest time while flying Real Terra Haze over excellent W2XP scenery and now even get some 25.000 airports up to good default standards.

 

Perhaps this "cheap" entry level is the element blocking some payware devs to join the game but, from a starter's perspective, it's actually awesome and also leaves you with some money to spend on lets say optional things. Pretty neat. :smile:

[RichUK 474]

 

 

Simply stunning snaps...totally life-like!

 

I agree, they are good shots. However, XP seems to graduate into outer space rather quickly. Anything above FL200 or so and the sky is way too dark above you, and you can see stars on occasion (all during the day). I've felt on occasion more like the space shuttle during the cruise than an airliner

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

You frequent X-Plane users correct me if I'm wrong but as I read the "If I had a hundred dollars" title, I was thinking that one doesn't actually need to spend many dollars (well, except for the base sim of course) for entering the the XP spheres and get a lot of fun out of it.

 

You know, when I created the topic, I had the FSX mindset of, that "Okay, this freeware looks pretty great, now let's make it even better by throwing money at the screen".  I had bought CZST alongside X-Plane, and I assumed that there was more like that somewhere.

 

With more research, I've discovered that there simply isn't the massive amount of payware scenery addons available, such as in FSX.  However, I've also discovered that the freeware available for X-Plane is more than capable of elevating the sim (in very select regions) to a level I've never seen in FSX, even with my massive (and very expensive) library of payware.  Sure, it's not like that everywhere, but where it is, boy oh boy, there's simply no comparison.

 

Last night I spent a good two hours flying the Dreamfoil R22 around the freeware PAJN by MisterX.  I spent the whole time absolutely in love; not only with the excellent scenery that in some respects is more than on par with my FTX version of PAJN, but by the real world look given by RealTerraHaze. 

 

And I guess that just leaves more left over to spend on aircraft. Every minute I spend in the R22 leaves me thinking "why don't we have anything like THIS in FSX".  I know I'm just scratching the surface of what Dreamfoil offers, but there is simply not an equivalent helicopter in FSX that offers as much immersion.  To put that in perspective, I own pretty near every payware helicopter offered within the last few years for FSX, and I really loved some of them!!

 

But yea, I guess this thread turned out to be a dud in some ways, since no-one had a firm suggestion on how to spend a full $100 on scenery in the region I'm interested in!

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

 

 

But yea, I guess this thread turned out to be a dud in some ways, since no-one had a firm suggestion on how to spend a full $100 on scenery in the region I'm interested in!

 

----------------------------------------------------

 

The beauty of this thread, in a off-handed way, shows the reader that it is a 'challenge' to spend a hundred bucks....amongst the fabulous free-ware and donation-ware available for this platform.  If this had been the same topic in regard to FSX.x or P3D.x....people would have gone' ----> "...one hundred dollars?  Pfffffft....let's talk over a thousand to date, and continuously climbing...".    <_<

[tonywob 4,768]

As the thread already shows, you don't necessarily need to spend any money once you've got X-Plane (At least scenery wise). As an example, you can get the following for free (or donationware):

• Thousands of airports. Some very high-quality, some bad
• A high quality HD Mesh (AlpilotX's HD Mesh) for a large portion of the globe
• Photoscenery from various sites, and an application (donationware) for generating photoscenery. G2XPL
• World2XPlane/OSM scenery from Simheaven. i.e. Accurate buildings, forests.
• A thriving community of freeware developers all working to improve the sim. e.g. Texture packs, Ship Traffic, Sky Effects).

I think for aircraft, you almost certainly need to put down some dollars. $100 will buy you a few decent GA planes from Carenado, or one of the study-level planes. $100 will buy you a few high quality helicopers if that's your thing. There are some decent freeware planes, but none of the come close to anything payware (But there is also some very bad payware ;-))

 

For payware, I personally use:

• Skymaxx Pro (Don't leave home with out it ;-))
• Dreamfoil's helicopters. All of them are fantastic
• The Saab (Which has just gone into v1.2 which is incredible)

 

I guess this shows one of the problems with X-Plane for commercial developers. You are going to need a really incredible product to beat some of the freeware, and even then, competition is tough and sales numbers are probably pretty low (Anybody know any X-Plane scenery millionaires?). This year should be a good one for X-Plane, with the eventual release of IXEG's 737 and PMDG's first product, I think we'll see a surge of interest

[Glenn_C 135]

I bought X-Plane also during the Steam sale and so far have downloaded some amazing free scenery and purchased a few payware scenery's. I also got the Boeing 757 Pro and am looking for a good GA plane was thinking of the B1900? that has just been released. I am really happy with the performance and no dreaded OOM's as is the case in P3D and FSX. I think though that my videocard is in need of an upgrade GTX670 with only 2GB of VRAM. I miss atc sometimes as I am an avid user of RC4 for years but maybe I should take a shot at online atc for once.