Interesting that the X-Plane and Outerra shots are the only ones showing tree and object shadows on the ground from the low sun angle. I do like the X-Plane shot, but then I freely admit I'm biased because that's what I fly now.

 

Anyway, I think it's way too early for this kind of comparison (although I do think it's interesting!). Let's see what the DTG sim looks like when it's finally released. If it has seasonal terrain like snow cover in LOWI, then it's already ahead of what X-Plane can do in that area.

 

 

Outerra.. Not a flight sim yet, but hopefully some day..

X-plane with a few freeware addons, do the job real good..

 

Actually after the next update The Outerra should should be even closer, as they are adding all the world's rivers from OSM, and are working on OSM cities airports etc as well and have shown some preliminary results.

 

Other than that, I am partial to the cleanness of the FLIGHT photo and Murmurs photo of the "competing sim"

It is certainly too early to do comparison from an early preview screenshot. For flight school, they've already said the terrain will be basically the same as FSX. X-Plane will win for accuracy here because of HD Mesh which is more detailed (and you can make it even more accurate with free addons), but I think the point was to highlight the lighting and not necessarily to compare a 10 year old sim's terrain to a modern more dense mesh. 

Outerra.. Not a flight sim yet, but hopefully some day..

 

Nice! Unfortunately there is no scenery for this area so it's hard to have a good comparison shot.

Here is a view of McChord Field Airport (WA) with similar settings (but oriented north, so the shot is not facing the sun).

 

 

If you know south Tacoma, I'm sure you will notice most of the area is empty (except the suburb north-east of the airfield), but the shot gives a good perspective of the buildings rendering range.

 

Actually after the next update The Outerra should should be even closer, as they are adding all the world's rivers from OSM, and are working on OSM cities airports etc as well and have shown some preliminary results.

 

Other than that, I am partial to the cleanness of the FLIGHT photo and Murmurs photo of the "competing sim"

That's great, VFR experience will be great.

 

Nice! Unfortunately there is no scenery for this area so it's hard to have a good comparison shot.

Here is a view of McChord Field Airport (WA) with similar settings (but oriented north, so the shot is not facing the sun).

 

If you know south Tacoma, I'm sure you will notice most of the area is empty (except the suburb north-east of the airfield), but the shot gives a good perspective of the buildings rendering range.

 

Most of us know that Outerra is a great engine, its fun to fly (VFR) specially with your sceneries. atm Outerra Mesh and Veggies is unbeatable. 

I prefer the Xp screen and I have fsx,p3d and xp. not much to show in the DFS..

Actually, I find all the FSX heritage to be much too strong in both P3D and FlightSchool. All in all they are near twins externally, and the parentage shows all too strongly even if the youngest is sporting a tan. It leaves me a bit troubled, but fits with DTG's previous strategy of minimalist updates with Railsim when they purchased it from Kuju.

 

I'm curious if this pattern continues with their Flight Simulator, or whether they take the opportunity there to break away more from a past that I hope is not the future as well.

Well, I think the Outerra shots are best followed by the XPlane shot.  Both show what I believe to be correct coloration and brightness.(in the sky).

 

The problem with the FlightSchool pic is the same problem I have with P3D bloom. It produces a dramatic hue shift with brightness.  Its not realistic.

I dont know what Outerra and Xplane are doing but I hope DTG does something similar.

 

I just saw that Outerra also relies on OpenGL like XPlane.  Is DirectX not capable of the same realism?  Im hoping it must be.

 

 

just saw that Outerra also relies on OpenGL like XPlane.  Is DirectX not capable of the same realism?  Im hoping it must be.

 

This is a good decision on their part, it means they're not locking their engine down to Microsoft operating systems. Even though there is currently only a version available which runs on Windows, I guess it wouldn't be hard for them to make a Linux or Mac version as well.

I think the issue is more the ground lighting is a bit too dark in the DFSL shot, but this is only a promo shot, so it's hard to determine if that's how it really looks in sim. Remember the famous FSX promo shot?

 

I think it's pretty clearly an in game shot.

And there's definitely a lot going on with the land class. Even with the bad lighting, you can see it's mostly sparse trees vs. the urban buildup it is in the other sims.

By the way, the Outerra developers (in the form of Cameni) have chimed in with a matching pic with the still unreleased 30m dataset and the upcoming global rivers active. Add in OSM cities and........ 

 

 

The amazing thing about those Outerra screenshots is that you can also go right down to ground level and see the grass in high detail

In case anyone wants to know where the Outerra screenshot came from, you can find it and a couple other variations here: http://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=2109.msg40136#msg40136

The atmospherics in that 2nd Outerra shot are very well done. About as close to what I see when I'm flying in real life as I've ever seen in a computer program.

 

The XP screen shot is really nice as well because of how clean the lines on the ground are and the colors. But the lighting in XP is still too dark IMO and that detracts for me a bit. (There also should be a disclaimer on every XP screen shot about the amount of work and space it takes to get XP to look like that in certain areas that have good OSM coverage. Stock XP does not look like that).

HD mesh v3 - that will get you the scenery/terrain then most people use RTH presets to get the sky /atmosphere coloring

The atmospherics in that 2nd Outerra shot are very well done. About as close to what I see when I'm flying in real life as I've ever seen in a computer program.

 

The XP screen shot is really nice as well because of how clean the lines on the ground are and the colors. But the lighting in XP is still too dark IMO and that detracts for me a bit. (There also should be a disclaimer on every XP screen shot about the amount of work and space it takes to get XP to look like that in certain areas that have good OSM coverage. Stock XP does not look like that).

 

I've always found something cold about XP lighting, but its always been hard for me to define exactly what about it strikes me as wrong.... 

 

I just know that in various sims, there are those where the lighting "feels" right, and those where it just doesn't.

 

The lighting in the Flight school pictures (so far) for instance just hit me as "weird"