In all of the above, however, if you let go of the controls in perfectly smooth air and look back after 5 minutes, you will be all over the sky. This even applies to the Airbuses to some extent.
 

 

Which of course, is why I liked my two axis auto-pilot for those four hour trips, even when the air was smooth. I couldn't do Airbus speeds.

 

As far as smooth & turbulence goes, I had an advantage of living next door to the airport. I didn't have make due with rental days. If the weather was excellent, I'd just go for a ride. One day, my wife and I were just going to fly around the pattern.  We took a diversion to Yellowstone Park, 

which would be most of the day, by car. With a landing for fuel, we were back by 2:00 PM.  This flight started with very smooth air, and ended with strong crosswinds in Wyoming for fuel, and the usual afternoon turbulence.  It's very normal on summer days, to have morning or late afternoon smoothness. As the sun heats the ground, it usually gets rougher around 10 in the morning. 

As I currently (unfortunately) have a lot of family commitments I only chime in from time to time ... especially when the items "no seasons" and "UI/operation of XP" are raised :wink:.

 

"No seasons"

I had a (kind of funny) discussion with a guy here on the avsim forum longer time ago. I wrote that XP of course has seasons - admittedly no seasons textures, but ... and described the technical background. He only seemed to have read "admittedly no seasons textures" and answered "you contradict yourself".

 

I tried again:

"SEEING seasons textures but hardly SIMULATING seasons on the one hand, and SIMULATING seasons but not SEEING textures on the other hand is a HUGE difference.

 

In other words:

Have you ever heard of the Potemkin village and radioactivty?

Potemkin village: you SEE a village, but there is NOTHING (only a "texture")

Radioactivity: you SEE nothing (not even a "texture"), but there are A LOT of alpha particles around with BIG effect."

 

After that, the a.m. guy was never seen again in the discussion .

 

Ok, and here the technical background:

Wet or icy runways in FSX are very poorly simulated (braking distance for one). Not so in X-Plane: (much) more realistic braking distance

Wing icing is not simulated in FSX (at least not by default) - but in X-Plane (although not perfect, but at least existent)

Fogging and icing of the plane's windows - possible in X-Plane (t.b.h., I don't know if this is possible in FSX or not)

 

 

"UI/operation of XP"

Of course XP is more "complicated" as FSX/P3D - because it is different and you have to learn something new. As I was tired of all these threads about this item, I did a research and instead of writing it down again, I refer to my posting back then (with some sarcasm included :Big Grin:).

As meanwhile not only me, but many other people write, once you are used to the XP UI, it is pretty easy and straightforward - and you might wonder why some things are so complicated in FSX.

A great post. The F1 B200 has amazing icing simulation capabilities, but many claim that performance is so bad that they don't even have it installed.  :smile:

 

I've been an FSX simmer for so long, I'd consider myself an expert. However, I do not know everything about FSX. What I do love is Realair, A2A, and PMDG airplanes. There's nothing (4me) that can replace REX4 + ASN. The GNS 430/530 & GTN 750 are irreplaceable!

 

There's nothing that comes close to XP10's night lighting and some of the freeware airports (MisterX) are better than most of my payware FSX airports. Where XP fails to deliver is in smooth weather transitions and ATC. Those two are as bad as it gets. If I was an XP10 dev, I would implore those in charge to improve this ASAP.

 

It really does not matter to me how many great airplanes are available for XP10 if the environment leaves much to be desired.

I can´t really vouch for all planes, since I have only flown F33s, Piper Cherokee´s, C152s, Cheyenne IIIAs, Boeing 737s, Boeing 747s and even Airbus 320 family with their supposedly "fly like on rails" FBW system...

 

In all of the above, however, if you let go of the controls in perfectly smooth air and look back after 5 minutes, you will be all over the sky. This even applies to the Airbuses to some extent.

 

The much toted "stability" that is required for certification is not an autopilot, and you can´t even eat a big hamburger (requiring both hands), unless you have a very big mouth and eat really fast...I tried that.

 

Jan

 

 

Yep, spiral mode. All aircraft have it.  Some are worse than others depending on configuration and speed.  Considered 'stable' as long as the spiral doesn't turn into a death spiral haha.

I tried again:

"SEEING seasons textures but hardly SIMULATING seasons on the one hand, and SIMULATING seasons but not SEEING textures on the other hand is a HUGE difference.

 

In other words:

Have you ever heard of the Potemkin village and radioactivty?

Potemkin village: you SEE a village, but there is NOTHING (only a "texture")

Radioactivity: you SEE nothing (not even a "texture"), but there are A LOT of alpha particles around with BIG effect."

 

After that, the a.m. guy was never seen again in the discussion .

 

Ok, and here the technical background:

Wet or icy runways in FSX are very poorly simulated (braking distance for one). Not so in X-Plane: (much) more realistic braking distance

Wing icing is not simulated in FSX (at least not by default) - but in X-Plane (although not perfect, but at least existent)

Fogging and icing of the plane's windows - possible in X-Plane

True. But visuals go a long way. The nerd isn't always as strong as it should be in simmers; )

 

 

There's nothing that comes close to XP10's night lighting and some of the freeware airports (MisterX) are better than most of my payware FSX airports. Where XP fails to deliver is in smooth weather transitions and ATC. Those two are as bad as it gets. If I was an XP10 dev, I would implore those in charge to improve this ASAP.

 

 

that pretty much sums it up the best right there. Not sure why XP devs dont take that seriously and do something about it. Its for that reason that P3D will remain my goto sim for now and the forseeable future.

 

 

It really does not matter to me how many great airplanes are available for XP10 if the environment leaves much to be desired.

 

Exactly, I would be running XP10 now if it had a fully rounded environment.

Its a very sterile environment without good ATC and Ai, give me those two things along with much better weather depiction and I will probably move over from  FSX/DX10

Exactly, I would be running XP10 now if it had a fully rounded environment.

Its a very sterile environment without good ATC and Ai, give me those two things along with much better weather depiction and I will probably move over from  FSX/DX10

 

Online ATC is perfect or are you telling me that poor excuse for an ATC in FSX / P3D is great? You can use Radar Contact 4.3 with a plugin plus there are are up and coming ATC plugins in the make. AI? World Traffic 2.0 suits me fine, I have more than 20k flight plans that actually follow SID's and STAR's from Navigraph's AIRAC's. Admittedly not every airport has ground routes but for the ones I fly to they do. As for weather yes that is a downside at the moment but using NOAA and SkyMaxx 3 it looks pretty good.

XP is awesome in its own way.  Far better night lighting for example. You can run far higher airport detail then you can in FSX/P3D with out the performance hit!   And there is thousands of airports available for free. The people who only ever loaded XP for 5 min and said " I don't like it because FSX/P3D has this or that but XP does not etc.. " ) As Mr-T said "don't listen to these fools!" You need to try XP for a month and I promise you will love it.

 

Links for airports

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

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showcat=6&dosort=1&sort_key=file_rating&sort_order=desc&num=&filter_key=all

 

X-camera  Like Ezdoc but better and free

https://www.stickandrudderstudios.com/

 

Free HD Mesh

http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-mesh-scenery-v3/

I have yet to see convincing weather in any sim. In FSX/P3d/XP10 I can be flying in clear weather, than all of a sudden a storm pops up all around me. I never get the feeling Im flying into bad weather where I see big cumulas clouds miles up ahead and need to fly around them or find a place to land before thay pass over. It just pops up. I had that with FSX and P3d and bought all the weather and cloud addons, but nothing made a difference. I get the same with XP10  and tried the NOAA plugin etc. Thats why I dont put much emphasis on weather in flight sims anymore, since they all seem to suck at it, its a moot point for me. 

 

ATC is a different issue. I do feel default ATC in FSX and P3d is way better than what we get in X-Plane, but RC4 blows default ATC away in any sim and that runs on all platforms now, so again its a moot point for me.

 

As mentioned above, Wolrd Traffic 2 does a very good job of depicting traffic in X-plane and the best part for me is it does not eat up a lot of FPS as the traffic addons do in FSX/P3d. However, its somewhat time consuming and a pain in the neck to set up and I think thats whats holding it back right now. If it can be made as a fire and  forget type of installation and generate ground and airtraffic for all airports, this issue would be put to rest.  I like world traffic and it does a good enough job for me without eating up precious CPU cycles, but I think purists who want planes to follow actual sceduals and park at the correct gates etc, will be disapointed in it.

It all depends on what you want out of it.

 

Rob

ASN is a different experience in either FSX or P3D, and it does create that "transition" into the Storm area you mention Comanche...

 

I believe we miss an ASN-like weather injector for X-Plane 10.

ASN is a different experience in either FSX or P3D, and it does create that "transition" into the Storm area you mention Comanche...

But the clouds are based on the same technology in FSX and P3D. X-Plane uses a totally different technology for their clouds. And they have more or less passed the number of acceptable API changes for X-Plane 10. We don´t know what they will do with their weather engine for X-Plane 11.

There is now a plug in for Proflight Emulator for X-Plane-10 so the ATC issue has been dealt with.

There is now a plug in for Proflight Emulator for X-Plane-10 so the ATC issue has been dealt with.

 

Is this better than RC4?

Those are not rumors. It simply depends on your settings and the sceneries, that you use. If you use UHD Mesh and extended DSFs and  w2xp sceneries and good settings  it is very likely that your RAM will not be enough in some areas or with some planes.

 

What is DSF ? I went to the X-plane website and noticed that they listed 16-20 Gb RAM as recommended system requirement. As far as I know 20 Gb RAM isn't possible at least not on my mobo. It would have to be 16 or 32 Gb RAM. It sounds a little strange that 20 Gb should be needed and 16 Gb be to little.

What kind of problem would surface if you have less than the required RAM available ?

I have yet to see convincing weather in any sim. In FSX/P3d/XP10 I can be flying in clear weather, than all of a sudden a storm pops up all around me. I never get the feeling Im flying into bad weather where I see big cumulas clouds miles up ahead and need to fly around them or find a place to land before thay pass over. It just pops up. I had that with FSX and P3d and bought all the weather and cloud addons, but nothing made a difference. I get the same with XP10  and tried the NOAA plugin etc. Thats why I dont put much emphasis on weather in flight sims anymore, since they all seem to suck at it, its a moot point for me. 

 

If I remember correctly, Flight Unlimited II had a great representation of weather, where you could fly into and out of thunderstorms.

 

That being said, while it's true that neither FSX nor X-P deliver a complete representation of weather phenomena and their effects on flying, I think FSX is a lot ahead in the visual department.

 

The fact that clouds in X-P appear somewhat more volumetric than those in FSX, does not make up for the fact that in FSX you have a much more varied, complete and realistic rendering of clouds, AND (also very important) with very little effect on FPS, provided you have a good PC and optimized rendering settings.

 

FS9 (2003) had the same weather engine of FSX and still a lot more capable (visually) than any other flight simulator "family" available today.

 

Here are default FS9 clouds: