I think the idea of buying XP and installing it alongside FSX is probably the way to go. At least until I have given it a fair chance. But I will follow advice and wait until after the announcement in October, just in case XP11 is imminent.

Hi all,

 

As Tony said above just install both Xplane and keep FSX. I would like to mention my brief experiences with Xplane if that helps any.

 

I have had FSX for about six years or so after buying a new PC, and spent a fair amount on addon aircraft and scenery, although not £5000. I use Windows 7 64bit and Steve's DX10 fixer which gets rid of OOM's..............I have a sim which works, and with AS16 and ASCA it works well too. I can fly around my local area and I see roads and features that I recognise in real life when out and about. There is so much variety we really are spoiled for choice. I just love it flying around and spend way too much time on it, it really is very immersive, especially if you use TrackIR too.

 

I had recently been thinking about where the future for flight simming might lay, be it P3D or Xplane, or indeed with Dovetail games. I think it is a shame that the next improvement won't be able to still include our much coveted addon's, but then that is the price of progress I guess. After much thought I decided that Xplane would be the way to go and seemed to offer most development potential, it runs in 64bit which is good and the screen shots looked amazing.

 

So I bought Xplane 10 and installed it as it comes out of the box or as downloaded. Yes the scenery looks a bit naf compared with what I am used to in FSX. The weather and clouds seemed ok but what really drew me to it was the night lighting and those crazy realistic sloping runways, you don't get those in FSX. I also liked the idea of the physics behind Xplane how it simulates an aircraft wing through an airflow etc...............I tried to install my local airport EGNX East Midlands but found you needed to install this and this and something else and a whole host a stuff so gave up in the end............I did install the freeware 737 which kind of works ok but what xplane does seem very good at, is GA aircraft.

 

However what killed it for me in the end is this. Running Xplane on an older 6 year old system I couldn't get the required 21 frames per second and that meant that the sim was running slow, which meant the sim time ran slow too. Xplane if it can't maintain the visual scenery and other things from the GPU, just slows down so that it can draw in all those things. Well that's ok maybe just messing around the local airport but if I want to try a long flight of a few hours I might never get there! I once took off from Heathrow just to see what London looked like, I used the 737 and after half an hour still hadn't reached Stanstead, which surely isn't right, and just killed the experience.

 

That is a real shame for me, but I think if I ever needed to buy a new PC I would maybe return to Xplane again and explore it further, although FSX is still my go to sim. I still have xplane installed and occasionally give it another go around my local airport, using the default GA aircraft, but for the time being I will stick to FSX, although I think as I said maybe Xplane is the way forward in the future.

 

So it really depends on your system in the end. As someone said for the price of a few FSX addons you can have Xplane or wait until you see it on offer and then get it, and give it a go yourself..........Either that or just stick to what you have now and enjoy the many hours of flying it gives you.............We very often seem to spend hours and hours tinkering with our sims trying to get them better and better, and very often not enough time actually flying around and going on adventures within our virtual worlds.

 

Sorry to be so long winded but those are just a few thoughts from an Xplane noob.

I have both P3D and X-Plane installed on my system... I find myself always going back to P3D. I have no blurries, and even with the ocassional OOM, I still fly in P3D because overall it looks and feels better than X-Plane. I do a lot of tubeliner flying, and that's a horrible experience in X-Plane. There's not one decent cockpit, and the FMC/MCDU is a joke. Yes I've tried IXEG's 737 and so forth but I don't like flying classic airliners. I fly the modern versions, and in FSX/P3D we have much better quality planes than X-Plane.

 

I've done just about every type of modding for X-Plane, from downloading freeware scenery, purchasing 3rd party add-ons like SMP, RWC, FSGRW, MAXX XP, SOUNDXP, etc. Making my own photoreal scenery with g2xpl, ortho4scnery, converting my own scenery from fsx to X-Plane, and in the end, the "overall" experience is just worse than P3D. I don't like how things are implemented in X-Plane. For example, third party planesl ike FF 777, or Carenado planes can do away with those annoying HUD elements that show up on the side of your screen. FSX/P3D versions don't have this, I hate flying and seeing those tabs on the side of my screen, it's frustrating, especially when I want to take screenshots. I have to bring those photos into PS and remove those elements. As for the FMC, why can't they implement the menu into the FMC/MCDU itself like on PMDG or Aerosoft's Airbus. Seems much better to me than having a slideout menu with terrible GUI. I'm sorry, just the more I think about X-Plane, the more frustrated I get. 

 

Like I said before, what's lacking in X-Plane is the high quality add-ons. Which X-Plane doesn't have enough of.

Hi all,

 

As Tony said above just install both Xplane and keep FSX. I would like to mention my brief experiences with Xplane if that helps any.

 

I have had FSX for about six years or so after buying a new PC, and spent a fair amount on addon aircraft and scenery, although not £5000. I use Windows 7 64bit and Steve's DX10 fixer which gets rid of OOM's..............I have a sim which works, and with AS16 and ASCA it works well too. I can fly around my local area and I see roads and features that I recognise in real life when out and about. There is so much variety we really are spoiled for choice. I just love it flying around and spend way too much time on it, it really is very immersive, especially if you use TrackIR too.

 

I had recently been thinking about where the future for flight simming might lay, be it P3D or Xplane, or indeed with Dovetail games. I think it is a shame that the next improvement won't be able to still include our much coveted addon's, but then that is the price of progress I guess. After much thought I decided that Xplane would be the way to go and seemed to offer most development potential, it runs in 64bit which is good and the screen shots looked amazing.

 

So I bought Xplane 10 and installed it as it comes out of the box or as downloaded. Yes the scenery looks a bit naf compared with what I am used to in FSX. The weather and clouds seemed ok but what really drew me to it was the night lighting and those crazy realistic sloping runways, you don't get those in FSX. I also liked the idea of the physics behind Xplane how it simulates an aircraft wing through an airflow etc...............I tried to install my local airport EGNX East Midlands but found you needed to install this and this and something else and a whole host a stuff so gave up in the end............I did install the freeware 737 which kind of works ok but what xplane does seem very good at, is GA aircraft.

 

However what killed it for me in the end is this. Running Xplane on an older 6 year old system I couldn't get the required 21 frames per second and that meant that the sim was running slow, which meant the sim time ran slow too. Xplane if it can't maintain the visual scenery and other things from the GPU, just slows down so that it can draw in all those things. Well that's ok maybe just messing around the local airport but if I want to try a long flight of a few hours I might never get there! I once took off from Heathrow just to see what London looked like, I used the 737 and after half an hour still hadn't reached Stanstead, which surely isn't right, and just killed the experience.

 

That is a real shame for me, but I think if I ever needed to buy a new PC I would maybe return to Xplane again and explore it further, although FSX is still my go to sim. I still have xplane installed and occasionally give it another go around my local airport, using the default GA aircraft, but for the time being I will stick to FSX, although I think as I said maybe Xplane is the way forward in the future.

 

So it really depends on your system in the end. As someone said for the price of a few FSX addons you can have Xplane or wait until you see it on offer and then get it, and give it a go yourself..........Either that or just stick to what you have now and enjoy the many hours of flying it gives you.............We very often seem to spend hours and hours tinkering with our sims trying to get them better and better, and very often not enough time actually flying around and going on adventures within our virtual worlds.

 

Sorry to be so long winded but those are just a few thoughts from an Xplane noob.

 

Thanks for taking the time to explain so well Dave, it's very much appreciated. Lot's of information to chew over.

 

I have both P3D and X-Plane installed on my system... I find myself always going back to P3D. I have no blurries, and even with the ocassional OOM, I still fly in P3D because overall it looks and feels better than X-Plane. I do a lot of tubeliner flying, and that's a horrible experience in X-Plane. There's not one decent cockpit, and the FMC/MCDU is a joke. Yes I've tried IXEG's 737 and so forth but I don't like flying classic airliners. I fly the modern versions, and in FSX/P3D we have much better quality planes than X-Plane.

 

I've done just about every type of modding for X-Plane, from downloading freeware scenery, purchasing 3rd party add-ons like SMP, RWC, FSGRW, MAXX XP, SOUNDXP, etc. Making my own photoreal scenery with g2xpl, ortho4scnery, converting my own scenery from fsx to X-Plane, and in the end, the "overall" experience is just worse than P3D. I don't like how things are implemented in X-Plane. For example, third party planesl ike FF 777, or Carenado planes can do away with those annoying HUD elements that show up on the side of your screen. FSX/P3D versions don't have this, I hate flying and seeing those tabs on the side of my screen, it's frustrating, especially when I want to take screenshots. I have to bring those photos into PS and remove those elements. As for the FMC, why can't they implement the menu into the FMC/MCDU itself like on PMDG or Aerosoft's Airbus. Seems much better to me than having a slideout menu with terrible GUI. I'm sorry, just the more I think about X-Plane, the more frustrated I get. 

 

Like I said before, what's lacking in X-Plane is the high quality add-ons. Which X-Plane doesn't have enough of.

 

Thanks Aaron.

I have tried that X Plane demo so many times.....but simply cannot get past that control input screen. By the time you've set up a few basic controls (or at least, you think you have) the initial 15 minutes is up so you have to reload. Then you find that the inputs you thought you had saved actually haven't so you do it all over again....by which time your 15 minutes has ended....again. Rinse and repeat.....

 

 

 

When in the setup screen, the 15 minute time limit is actually paused.  You can be setting up your hardware for 3 hours, return to the sim, and still keep flying until your FLYING time runs out.  So I don't know how your time limit can run out while setting up your hardware.

I bought the full version used twice, back to FSX-SE, I still have the DVDs in a box  in the closet. I think the possible way of scenery building  and lack of 3 display support did it.  :wink:

I have to say, I think LR need to remove the 15 min time limit from the demo and simply limit the area to just Seattle for flying. The 15 min limit is too little for someone to appreciate the sim.

JustFlight makes one for FSX/Prepar3d, and there are others. The Xplane version is superb and with the AFE the learning curve isnt bad. 

About which DC6 version are you talking about ? Pmdg ? If yes...How you can compare a Pmdg product (which is not out yet on Fsx / P3d) with a Just Flight product ???

 

Or maybe I misinterpreted your words...

 

Regards,

 

Richard Portier

About which DC6 version are you talking about ? Pmdg ? If yes...How you can compare a Pmdg product (which is not out yet on Fsx / P3d) with a Just Flight product ???

 

Or maybe I misinterpreted your words...

 

Regards,

 

Richard Portier

The issue was about moving to Xplane. I think the PMDG DC-6 is one reason to move to xplane as there is nothing comparable in FSX or Prepar3d and it is a suberb addon. The other high quality addons, eg, Flight Factor or IXEG are not as good as their counterparts on the FSX/P3D platform.

 

I would add that the weather in x-plane is highly problematic especially thunderstorm depictions. X-plane cannot replicate the task of evading TS's at high altitude which is very common issue in real life in North America.

It can look great in daylight too:

What airport is featured in the video?

I am slowly getting there. I have had every major release of X-Plane since XP4 and it has come a long-long way. I keep up with all the updates on 10.00 and up and anticipate v11. This might be the kicker for me. The major investments in FSX and P3D have kept me from complete departure. I believe the GUI will be completely overhauled in XP11. I've been using the World Traffic addon and getting back used to dialing radio frequencies with mouse as opposed to the handy list of nearest frequencies on FSX P3D. Perhaps my favorite feature of X-Plane is the option to have contoured runways. I think this feature has improved some since earlier releases. It's not perfect but neither are the default flat runways in FSX.

 

Keith

 

 

I've been using the World Traffic addon and getting back used to dialing radio frequencies with mouse as opposed to the handy list of nearest frequencies on FSX P3D.

 

World Traffic 3.0 will be a revelation for X-Plane, coming soon. Also, X-Plane now has this neat little list of frequencies, too.

I have been using XPX now for about 20 months. I got an iMac (Christmas of 2014), and decided to try it. I'm also a RW pilot, although any PC sim doesn't do justice to the visuals that one gets in the real thing (as much as one hears "3D", it's a 2D monitor up to several feet away from you, so your eyes are not focused on infinity and it's flat plastic). But people still get over-dosed on eye candy...

 

But I love PC simming all the same, been doing it since 1994 (FS5.0 and ATP). I agree with the comments about the deficiencies in scenery / clouds / sky, and the lack of AI (ATC and other aircraft). But if you can put up with these issues, and particularly if you like flying at dawn/dusk/night (the best time to fly IMO in RL), and more particularly if you like the flight modeling, XPX can be a blast. For my computer experience (2014 iMac), XPX is very smooth. But with limited graphics settings.

 

I would agree that XPX is behind P3D in many aspects... But I never let it worry me. I think the optimum is to have both P3D/FSX and XPX, and take the best of either depending on your mood. The Mac doesn't allow for me to do the other sims (I know, I could add Windows of it worried me enough), but I'm a happy simmer. Then again, I only get the occasional few minutes nightly to sim in my busy life.....

 

Bruce.

When in the setup screen, the 15 minute time limit is actually paused.  You can be setting up your hardware for 3 hours, return to the sim, and still keep flying until your FLYING time runs out.  So I don't know how your time limit can run out while setting up your hardware.

 

Actually I have just tried the demo again....and you're right. Perhaps they've changed it....I don't know.

 

Anyway, I am tempted to give this more of a go.

I think the optimum is to have both P3D/FSX and XPX, and take the best of either depending on your mood. 

 

Bruce.

 

I think this is the way I will go. I have invested too much in FSX, but I do agree, from what I have seen, flying at night time seems to be awesome in XP.

What airport is featured in the video?

 

Hi Jose, so my question is, can you get that degree of quality of scenery with Europe? Or is it just one single area ie, Colorado?