First impressions of X-Plane.... not great

[ryanbatc 13,012]

I think that the flight dynamics of a real aircraft are quite misunderstood. A Cessna, if trimmed properly (with the qualification of flying in calm air), will fly quite happily for reasonable amounts of time without pilot intervention. Sometimes it is made out by simmers like you are wrestling an anaconda. Cessna's in particular, are very, very benign aircraft.

 

 

I'm glad someone with more hours than me posted this! Was just going to write this! In smooth air most training aircraft are totally stable once trimmed properly.

 

In fact, last two nights ago I flew an SR20 for some practice approaches (nighttime) - very calm air. Once trimmed the plane didn't move from altitude until I changed power setting or banked. The heading changed a few degrees here and there but I was in the right seat and trying to use the instruments so I was chasing the bug a little.

[leinsters 42]

For a quick reply to the post preceeding this one, I've flown MSFS since the beginning, and downloaded demos of X-Plane somewhere around 1994. Own versions 8,9, & 10. None of this is new to me. I'll never be deleting FSX, as there is always reasons for it (unless I go to PD3). Orbx, RealAir, A2A, and all that stuff. IMO, unless someone has a real shortage of drive space, there is no reason for just one.  My system runs both sims with excellent fps ----- most of the time. 

 

Deleted due to a continuous exercise in frustration and lack of patience in the dark arts of .cfg tweaking and persistent FPS management. I flew MSFS since 1995, I know what I'm talking about. Take EZCA for example,use that during a long flight and the center of the pilots view slowly moves further back because of how FSX handles coordinates. Nothing you can do about it. Sucks when you're in a beautiful PMDG 777 with TrackIR, halfway across the Atlantic and your head is in the middle of a chair and there's nothing you can do about it. No thanks. It was time to face the music. Why even bother when X-Plane 10 is so good, and DCS is better than both but limited by theater and military aircraft. 

[Wing 32]

LAdamson nailed why I simply can't get into X-Plane 10 (and yes, I've got some good payware planes and plenty of time with it) and simply prefer the P3D platform.

 

Good post.

I completely agree.

 

If FSX is like riding on rails, then X-Plane is like trying to jockey a butterfly.

[warbirds 555]

Flying a Cessna 150 at high noon on a hot day over Iowa cornfields can give you quite a workout. Best flight I had was late at night and it was like driving over a freshly asphalted road,,,smooooth.

 

In Xplane I turn all the control sensitivities down and go for the calmer flight but then again I use an Xbox controller modified for flightsim use so that does add to the itchy twitchy.

 

I went to Xplane from FSX and P3D (still use them all) and found it took a long time to get comfy with it but now, after several months, I am somewhat used to it. It is alien but so was the Fs series when I first started them back in the day.

 

FSX is like an old pair of tennis shoes or walking shoes - you want to have the cool new pair but breaking them in is the hard part so you stick with the old comfy pair a bit longer.

[CarlosF 1,243]

Gentleman,

 

You can have 10 expert pilots with gazillion hours each but if you ask the exact same question to each one, for sure you WILL get a different answer. Its all about one's self perception of things, in this case flying, whether in real life or simulated.

 

I still think FSX is like flying on rails, but that is just my own perception, right or wrong, its just me.

 

 

If FSX is like riding on rails, then X-Plane is like trying to jockey a butterfly

 

I prefer the second, makes flying more interesting.  :wink:

[strider1 575]

I completely agree.

 

If FSX is like riding on rails, then X-Plane is like trying to jockey a butterfly.

 

Turbulence can be that bad in real life. I almost pooped in my pants as I flew over the Ventura Mountain Range one early evening. The plane violently rolled to the left and right, pitch up and down, etc... Luckily it only lasted a few minutes as I cleared some of the higher mountain peaks !!! In my opinion as real world pilot the turbulence is pretty spot on. But if you been flying on rails for so many years you would think the way you think! Cheers............ 

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

You can have 10 expert pilots with gazillion hours each but if you ask the exact same question to each one, for sure you WILL get a different answer. Its all about one's self perception of things, in this case flying, whether in real life or simulated.

 

Well put.

 

Personally, I've found moments of perfection in both platforms.

[strider1 575]

Your rentals must need a serous re-rigging!   :smile:   

 

In my rental days, I always preferred newer airplanes if possible.  I once ferried a Cessna 172 across a couple of states, after it's windscreen was destroyed by a bird. I went with a friend in his plane to pick up this one, after repair. It constantly yawed, and was a handful. Seriously out of rig.  Since I was around all of these higher performance experimental category planes for so many years,  perfection in rigging, was something I was highly familiar with. After an initial heavy right wing with the RV, due to a slightly different aileron trailing edge radius, the RV became a real joy to trim, and fly with a very light touch to the stick. If left alone, it would just change heading & altitude on it's own, but slowly. No fight, or constant attention. A non-pilot friend of mine, would fly it for hours, on our long cross countries.

 

Note: Saitek X-52 joystick (for the other post question)

Probably ! I remember 5298J required a lot of right rudder on a dept climb, it now requires no right rudder on a climb. They must have adjusted a trim tab or the rigging is really out of alignment. I ran a few tests in 98J a couple of years ago; I let go of yolk on climb and the plane rolled to the left, in cruise flight I pulled the power back and let go of the yolk again and the plane rolled to the right. I ran those same test in the airfoillabs 172 with similar results but a little more subdued. Was it the torque or the slipstream or a combination of both that rolled the plane ? Ive never been able to trim a plane to fly hands off for any real length of time before it drifted in one direction or the other. Remember it's the unequal heating of the earth that causes weather/wind. I am not a weather expert but in my experience there is always some kind of wind aloft that going to be pushing the plane in some direction. It reminds of scuba diving, the ocean is never perfectly calm, there is always some movement in the current.        

[Wing 32]

Turbulence can be that bad in real life. I almost pooped in my pants as I flew over the Ventura Mountain Range one early evening. The plane violently rolled to the left and right, pitch up and down, etc... Luckily it only lasted a few minutes as cleared some of the higher mountain peaks !!! In my opinion as real world pilot the turbulence is pretty spot on. But if you been flying on rails for so many years you would think the way you think! Cheers............

Unless you've spent megabucks on a full motion sim then debating which sim has the most realistic turbulence model based on sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen manipulating a flaccid joystick is pretty silly to me since you get none of the sensations or seat-of-your-pants feedback that you get in a real aircraft.

 

I did most of my flight training around southern California and flew around the Ventura mountains many times. I certainly encountered my share of turbulence, sometimes pretty violent, especially when the Santa Anas were in full force. It never made me want to poop my pants though. X-Plane doesn't feel like that to me. X-Plane feels like you're in a row boat bobbing around on the ocean. To me it's tedious and annoying.

 

For the record I'm not one of those people that feels FSX/P3D is like "flying on rails." P3D with ASN and the A2A Cherokee is a glorious combination and feels reasonably legit to me. I don't know how anyone could call that "flying on rails," but maybe if you've been bouncing around in X-Plane for many years then positive stability feels unnatural to you.

 

For me flight simulation is largely the pursuit of that intangible joy I've experienced in real-world aviation. X-Plane doesn't do that for me. If it does it for you then that's great.

[60North 120]

FYI guy's, with regards to flightmodel in XP, there has been a huge development.  You have the core model which is very advanced and dynamic, but now you can also

ad extra forces and overwrite or "bend" the core model in most areas with a bit of programming skills.  So basically a skilled designer/team can do just about anything he wants - everything the pilots here have mentioned is no big deal to adjust.

 

I think the problem is many designers in XP have not yet taken advantage of the capabilities that exists and just use the out of the box flightmodel.  As an engineer working on Xps flightmodel for 15 years, and knowing alot about how "the other sim" works, there is no question in my mind as to which sim is more powerful from an engineering and dynamics point of view.

 

But remember, an aircraft will never be better than it's designer in any sim

[strider1 575]

Unless you've spent megabucks on a full motion sim then debating which sim has the most realistic turbulence model based on sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen manipulating a flaccid joystick is pretty silly to me since you get none of the sensations or seat-of-your-pants feedback that you get in a real aircraft.

 

I did most of my flight training around southern California and flew around the Ventura mountains many times. I certainly encountered my share of turbulence, sometimes pretty violent, especially when the Santa Anas were in full force. It never made me want to poop my pants though. X-Plane doesn't feel like that to me. X-Plane feels like you're in a row boat bobbing around on the ocean. To me it's tedious and annoying.

 

For the record I'm not one of those people that feels FSX/P3D is like "flying on rails." P3D with ASN and the A2A Cherokee is a glorious combination and feels reasonably legit to me. I don't know how anyone could call that "flying on rails," but maybe if you've been bouncing around in X-Plane for many years then positive stability feels unnatural to you.

 

For me flight simulation is largely the pursuit of that intangible joy I've experienced in real-world aviation. X-Plane doesn't do that for me. If it does it for you then that's great.

 

If it is so tedious and annoying then what brings you the Xplane forum today ?

[Wing 32]

If it is so tedious and annoying then what brings you the Xplane forum today ?

The hope that I would discover some revelation that will make it not tedious and annoying. I was compelled to get into X-Plane because there are several aircraft available for it that sadly aren't available for FSX/P3D--the vFlyteAir Grumman Traveler and the AeroSphere Seminole to name a couple. I really want to like it, it does some to have its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and a lot of people seem to be pretty passionate about it. I've invested some money and I'm not ready to delete it from my hard drive yet, so other people's experience with it interest me.

[DavidP 1,421]

A reasonable amount of time would be what ? I only have a few hundred hours of real world flying, and ive never experienced a calm day where I can let go of the yolk for more 1-15 seconds before the plane would start to veer off to the left or right. Granted these are rental planes so they are not in tip top shape. The problem with Xplane is the spiraling slip stream model is broken !

 

 

Don't know where you fly, but in my experience I could trim it out in good conditions and fly for several minutes, and then only tiny adjustments. Of course, turbulence will necessitate more action, but honestly, there seems to be a perception that in the real world you are hanging onto the controls for grim death like John Wayne flying a WW2 bomber! There are definite issues with both the torque effect and slipstream modelling. I also fly a turbo Mooney M20M, and this does have significant torque effect at take off (at 270 hp!), so if it were a default model in XPlane, after seeing the C172 career off the runway within seconds, you would be heading back the way you came in seconds.

[warbirds 555]

A long time ago in internet land I had a website called "RC Warbirds" and this site was all about scale radio control warbird flying and control. I had advisors on the site that users could ask questions of and one advisor was an older gentleman that flew all types in the Air Force for a very long time. He flew P-51's and P-47's in WWII and even bagged a few Me's.

 

This gentleman also flew sim's and whipped my younger a"" many times online. Heck we both even flew against real German WWII pilots online. Anyway this guy knew airplanes and made the statement that developers of such games or sims make their planes much to unstable and twitchy. He said they did not snap on a dime and you could fly them relaxed and had to on long missions.

 

Well he got a lot of forum flak about this statement and was called old and forgetful.

 

What this message means is that no matter who tells you what it really was like you will still cling to and support your beliefs about flight models. Even if a decorated WWII flying ace says those P-47's were pussy cats you will deny and denounce. We all have our idea of what a certain plane should fly like and most of these ideas are wrong. I learned this the first time I took up a real Cessna 150 and was shocked at how much different it was than my favorite flight sim version.

 

I have all three sims and when you get right down to it they all are games with very little resemblance to real world flight dynamics.

[carguy4471 19]

So this thread went off the rails a bit.   There is a lot of great information though.  Unfortunately I didn't get to hop back in XP last night but I will this weekend.  

 

So far I have:

Turn down sensitivity on yoke

Use < and > to adjust seat position

In "rendering options" I can change the view (zoom as it would be in P3D)

 

I think with those I might be getting along better.  I just want to make it flyable so I can get some flight time in it and make a good judgement on it.  I've flown XP in the past but didn't give it a fair shake.  I don't think I'll be leaving P3D behind at any point.  I feel with a quality A2A or Realair aircraft with ASN it flies pretty well.  I flew threw some storms last night in P3D out of South America on my way to the Philippines and in trying to get above it, there were no rails to be found to fly on.  In a Cessna 206 at high altitude hitting the tops of storms it was more bumpy than I'd likely attempt in real life.  P3D can be amazingly realistic in some areas, and a bit lacking in others, but overall it's pretty solid.

 

I'll be taking the advise given for adjustments though to give XP a go and hopefully make it another sim I'll keep.