p3d 3.4 v xplane 11 pros and cons

[wiler 394]

Guys, 

I am not here to start a flame war between the two products, but I do hope to start a pro vs cons list thats unbiased as possible in the best interest of the community. I have used p3d since the very first beta came out all the way till now v3.4 and I am very grateful to LM and 3rd party developers that they have prolonged fsx's life span with p3d. I have enjoyed the many benefits that p3d has over fsx10, and its truly a much better sim at this point. However,P3d still has its limitations  (mainly frame rates in dense areas, micro stutters, VAS, etc) even with the very BEST computer components money can buy. ( I am running a 4.8ghz 6700k with a 980ti vid card thats OCed as well). with Rob Ainscough's tutorials I have been able to get a smooth running sim @ 30hz monitor refresh rate in 80% of areas. Still in NYC, Paris, london , etc its a disaster to say the least. With all due respect,  with these high end components we should have software thats pushing the limits of graphics that are available today, not struggling with a program thats 15 years old. I have to admit I dabbled with xplane 10 last year to see it its a better alternative to p3d.  I decided that it is not. My #1 issue with it is its not user friendly and even simple things like assigning joystick commands is not straight forward.  The lighting and traffic are superior in my opinion, also slopped runways is a nice feature.  Also. frame rates were much better (smoother i should say, no stutters). However, the scenery is sparse and generic. Like  I said , I dont want to start a flame war but an honest discussion of where this is (hobby?) going. Even if this PC was running @5+ ghz  paired with a titan X or 1080ti the micro stutters will still happen, frames are going to be in the mid teens to low 20s  in big cities which to me is unacceptable. Is xplane 11 going to be the new way to go or is LM going to surprise us with a better running version of p3d in the future? 

[laserit 93]

I'll be happy to purchase and dabble with X-Plane 11 when its released. IMHO there are no cons as progress is still being made with both products.

 

Its a win win

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I have recently come to feel pretty much the same way as you do about P3d. The OOM issues are getting to the point where it is making the sim unusable, at least for me. I recently upgraded my monitor to 4K and I have lost even more VAS headroom by doing so. Whereas, I was always previously wondering if I could complete a flight with a PMDG aircraft. Now I am having similar problems with aircraft like the RealAir Turbine Duke and the recently released Milviz UH-1 Huey redux. The only solution is turning down various settings within P3d, but that defeats the purpose of running the sim on high end hardware.

 

On the other hand, my opinion on what to do is more of a "wait and see" attitude. I have XP10 and I have a decent number of addons, but nothing like what I have purchased over the years for P3d/FSX. Before I am willing to make a jump to XP11, I'm going to wait and see what happens with the DTG Flight Simulator and Aerofly 2. I should add that there is no upgrade path from the DVD version of XP10 (which I have) to XP11. This is also a factor in my decision.

 

Unlike some people here, I believe that faithfully maintaining more than one flight simulator and dozens of addons is not only time consuming but prohibitively costly. The whole flight sim "industry" is going to be in chaos for the next 6 months at least. I'll just wait for the dust to settle.

[Guest]

Maybe you should have asked this a few weeks after the release of XP11...? :wink: Not much useful anyone can say about this now.

 

I have to add that I am, for the very first time, seriously interested in XP. I am also getting a bit tired of various limitations. No VAS problems here but the way scenery is being loaded in FSX/P3D keeps on annoying me (constant loading and morphing and moving of mesh and textures). XP has a totally different system and some of the announced (graphical) options seem pretty cool to me. I might even buy XP just for the Cessna with its cool sound system (while I actually don't like Cessna's at all). The main thing that is holding me back is the scenery. I'd like to see Orbx quality but with the XP way of doing things. As it is now getting nicer scenery into XP seems very cumbersome and complicated and even then it looks like crap (imho). The weather also seems to suck out of the box. For FSX and later on P3D I have bought a lot of addons over the years: in order to get XP slightly on the same level I have the feeling I would have to spend almost the same amount of money but not AT ONCE. Which is also holding me back.

 

These are interesting time (btw funny DTG FS seems to be out of the picture for most of us) but it doesn't make a simmer's life much easier... :wink:

[ryanbatc 12,775]

Since XP11 isn't out yet there's no way to do a good comparison

 

I use P3D and XP10 heavily - with a more mid range PC - I plan on getting XP11.

 

I'll let you know then

 

Otherwise search the many threads on XP10 vs FSX / P3D

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

 

 

(btw funny DTG FS seems to be out of the picture for most of us)

 

It is funny, since it's most likely going to be a 64 bit version of FSX.

[Guest]

NDA's and all so not much I can say ... but I'll do a unbias compare next year listing features of each.  But I'm not going to do a Pro/Con and establish "value" to the features as that is entirely subjective and at the end users discretion.  I will go in depth with performance testing at various resolutions and graphics settings and add-ons (fortunately we have some same add-ons for both platforms), including details on view distances, AG count, animation counts, etc. etc.

 

I've seen many very BIAS compares of XP vs. P3D (base product and with add-ons) ... most of the compares I've seen are really thinly disguised attempts to sway a user base from one platform to another platform (on either side of the platform fence) with the expectation that 3rd party will follow ... the quest for market share.

 

Not really interested in FSX/FSX-SE - dead end road as far as I'm concerned.  DTG is a unknown for me so it's wait and see. Aerofly 2 PR scenery and view distances are fantastic, but not sure where they plan to go as their feature list will be considerably shorter than XP and/or P3D.

 

But as Jay suggests, it is difficult to maintain multiple platforms (not so much cost, but time) so I can see the desire for individuals to pick one and only one platform.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Jimm 437]

To the OP, with what you said, I was in a similar situation a while ago.  I'd been using P3D for quite some time and had fought a long fight with P3D to get it running smooth.  Sometimes it ran just fine while others, I would get issues.  Like Jay has stated, I had quite a bit invested with P3D, and the only reason I stuck with it, at least for me, was the guilt I would suffer by switching sims, leaving all that content gathering dust, thinking I wasted the money.  I switched over to XP and for the past month or so, I have been extremely pleased with it's performance.  In comparison, XP outperforms P3D on my rig, based on not only FPS, but the smoothness of the sim even if the fps are low.  I'd been finding quite a lot of freeware content for XP that works really well.  The selling point for me on XP was the evening environment.  When the sun goes down and the lights come on, I feel I get more realism out of it than with P3D, despite having ORBX scenery that touts having great, new and improved night lighting.  Lighting in P3D isn't the same.  While you are parked at an airport, you get lighting on your aircraft just as the AI aircraft do too, but you can't get that type of lighting in P3D. 

 

As far as flight dynamics, the range of key and button assignments, I found XP to have a whole lot more out of the box, than with P3D.

 

Granted, with XP, the level of and quantity of content is less than P3D right now, but I am sure that will change in the future.  This is not to say that I am playing favorites, but I am leaning more towards XP than P3D right now, just for the simple fact that I don't do any tweaking with XP.  I had to with P3D.  Out of the box, XP was simple enough to install and fly.  This is what I'd been striving for with P3D because I know some could agree that we spend too much time tweaking and less time flying, when it comes to P3D.  

 

Ryan mentioned XP11, and I have the upgrade waiting for me.  I am patiently waiting for it's release because at that time, I will use it and if it proves enough of a progression or evolutionary step, I will probably stick with it.  Staying vested with more than one sim is not something I can feasibly do and considering that I do enjoy what XP offers right now, i am willing to live with the guilt of having all that content for P3D if only to start enjoying XP on a permanent basis.

[pilot83 387]

Moved from FSX to XP10 because of VAS limitations, I bought thousand of dollars worth of add ons for FSX which I could not use properly due to RAM limitations. So I Invested in XP10, lots of personal effort to make it look nicer, it is cheaper then FSX in terms of cost/addons. And though the performance, the flight dynamics and the graphics are great but always lacked something (in the visuals). Read a lot about P3Dv3 improved performance over FSX, so I moved the compatible add ons which I bought for FSX to P3D mainly FTX global and vector and aerosoft airbus but lost my PMDGs 777/747/MD11/737 and hundreds of dollars incompatible add ons. I bought ASN and REX soft clouds for weather but did not want to invest more in a 32bit ESP platform. X Plane 11 announced with PBR, new UI, lighting engine and all the other new features...I pre ordered and back to XP 10 flying IXEG 737 until the release...

[Silicus 849]

Unless XP fixes and vastly improves their weather engine I am not considering purchasing version 11.

 

Weather is the single most important feature in a sim for me besides study level aircraft and I can not believe airport vehicles and region specific autogen and all sorts of eye candy has priority over weather, I don't get it. Austin Meyer is a pilot himself and knows how weather is a huge part of flying...

 

I bought XP 7 and 9 and it went on the shelf very quickly, mainly because of the weather engine, that is still kind of a joke even in XP 10. Besides the 'fog' and visibility seem to be improved in 11, it still will lag a 'believable' weather engine.

[wiler 394]

I am torn but I feel LM has gotten most of what it can out of p3d barring the 64bit which doesnt address performance (microstutters , frames) . Ive been a fsx user since fs95 so  i am used to its interface for 20+ years and moving over to xplane just seemed so ....  difficult and incomplete.  I hope the new interface helps people like me give xplane another chance. 

[pilot83 387]

[Guest]

That's one cool video... Love the lighting and reflections. Very realistic. Pretty awesome. Pity that I never leave the cockpit when I am simming.

[neucoas 82]

 

 

I dont know if you know about Ortho4XP. With the latest release, is much easier to create the tiles!

 

I am really looking foward to XP11. It's a big plus that the default airplanes seems to be payware quality. I really want to try that 737 with FMC. And the C172! And the MD80!

Another great thing is that XP11 will come with Navigraph database by default.

 

As someone who have not purchased many addons, the transition will not be that hard ($$$).

 

Will download the Demo and see how it runs on my mid-range PC, and then make a desition. I'm really happy with P3D right now, with my few GA aircraft over ORBX Regions and some freeware airliners like T. Ruth A300 over default textures... but the possibility of getting a good 737 by default and fly over *much* better default scenery is really growing on me.

[Guest]

Yes, I know about Ortho but the fact that I have to create things myself already scares me. I like double clicking on installers. Apart from that: as I said elsewhere the first tutorials I read about Ortho left me pretty confused and dazzled. Apart from all that: the scenery it creates didn't impress me too much. I absolutely hate flat photoreal and specially bad looking flat photoreal and the autogen solutions also leave things to be desired. But still, if I get XP11 I will give it a try.