What's missing from the Xplane demo

[wallydog 0]

I downloaded and tried the demo but was not necessarily blown away as some others. I found the cockpit shadows blocky, clouds to be a little blobby and hat difficulty with slow panning with my hat stick. After hearing quite a few raves from the PD3 forums i thought I would post here to see what the demo is missing compared to the beta version.

[sizziano 172]

I downloaded and tried the demo but was not necessarily blown away as some others. I found the cockpit shadows blocky, clouds to be a little blobby and hat difficulty with slow panning with my hat stick. After hearing quite a few raves from the PD3 forums i thought I would post here to see what the demo is missing compared to the beta version.

 

Which demo, 11 or 10? 11 is still in beta so I wouldn't base of any decisions off of that.

[wallydog 0]

11..seems some folks think that 11 is a game changer but curious how demo is different from the beta

[soaring_penguin 428]

It isn't. The demo is the beta, but limited in area (Seattle) and time (15 minutes time limit).

And I think it can not be stressed enough, but it is a real beta, as in the classic meaning: buggy, out to the public for testing.

Stable, yes, as it is not crashing most of the times, but still missing a lot of assets, nothworthy default clouds, moon and stars, framerate not optimized, errors, plugins not working correctly, etc.

So if you run this beta, please report any bugs you find to Laminar.

 

Please don't judge the book by it's cover, it isn't a finished product.

[Murmur 3,941]

11..seems some folks think that 11 is a game changer but curious how demo is different from the beta

 

In terms of features (and bugs), the demo is identical to the paid version, except for the 15 minute time limit, and for the limited scenery (only Seattle area, while the rest of the world is only water).

 

I downloaded and tried the demo but was not necessarily blown away as some others. I found the cockpit shadows blocky, clouds to be a little blobby and hat difficulty with slow panning with my hat stick. After hearing quite a few raves from the PD3 forums i thought I would post here to see what the demo is missing compared to the beta version.

 

 

Yes, shadows tend to be a little blocky even at high settings.

 

Default clouds are honestly ugly. The developers said that they're working on cloud visuals for the next betas. However, there are several add-ons that improve the depiction of clouds.

 

Keep in mind that you're probably comparing the first betas of a product with no add-ons, to other mature flight simulators full of add-ons. You can expect many little and not so little improvements in the future releases of X-Plane during the next months, and also the number of available compatible add-ons will increase.

[StarTux 2]

Just to add, if you cannot get past some of the beta issues and missing assets I would wait until at least a release candidate if not full release and then make better judgement. With X-Plane though, that's not the end. With 10 we got from version 10 to 10.51 over the course of a few years and i changed over that period.

[pilot83 387]

I found the cockpit shadows blocky, clouds to be a little blobby and hat difficulty with slow panning with my hat stick.

To get better cockpit shadows in beta/demo untick in graphics "Draw shadows on scenery" this will give you with better resolution of your cockpit shadows and on aircraft. Clouds there is barely a consensus that no one uses them, these usually are replaced with skymaxpro or xenviro so in demo better to keep them off. And yes the hat is bit slower then P3D/FSX, feel free to report it as a bug http://dev.x-plane.com/support/bugreport.html

11..seems some folks think that 11 is a game changer but curious how demo is different from the beta

I only used the beta so cant compare to demo... a game changer or not its up to you to decide...

[harrry 322]

A beta is a beta Paid or ot.....but come the end of the month I consider it to be a release as that was what was promised when they took my money.  I then expect things to be included and work....and that includes Alaska and the North Atlantic.

 

The only thing I do not like about the Demo....and this applies to all demos, I think it is deceptive to use the higly improved over other areas Seattle region for this.  It leads people to expect the rest to be like this and it is not.  The land is good but not as good as Seattle.

[pilot83 387]

A beta is a beta Paid or ot.....but come the end of the month I consider it to be a release as that was what was promised when they took my money. I then expect things to be included and work....and that includes Alaska and the North Atlantic.

 

The only thing I do not like about the Demo....and this applies to all demos, I think it is deceptive to use the higly improved over other areas Seattle region for this. It leads people to expect the rest to be like this and it is not. The land is good but not as good as Seattle.

Just keep in mind that autogen data depends on OSM data, the below shot was taken near Lugano airport with autogen max , this is not included in the demo, the point you are raising is not very accurate. So depending on OSM data, some areas will look more filled with autogen (buildings, roads, houses, rails,trees...) then the others and some airports will look more detailed then the others...but also plenty of freeware...Also autogen depends on your settings/specs. Surely i can find many areas with less details also...the images below are taken at very low level to show more details...

 

 

[harrry 322]

So you are saying that the contents of the KSEA Demo Area folder are not better than the average depiction of Xplane.  In other words if we leave it off it will look just as good?

 

Yes other areas can be improved to this but people think when they see that area that the rest will be like that.

[Desaix 235]

So you are saying that the contents of the KSEA Demo Area folder are not better than the average depiction of Xplane.  In other words if we leave it off it will look just as good?

 

Yes other areas can be improved to this but people think when they see that area that the rest will be like that.

With photoreal and good OSM data (both freeware in XP11) I'd say even better than default KSEA area.

[alpha12125 213]

So you are saying that the contents of the KSEA Demo Area folder are not better than the average depiction of Xplane.  In other words if we leave it off it will look just as good?

 

Yes other areas can be improved to this but people think when they see that area that the rest will be like that.

 

KSEA is the best area in the default scenery. But pretty much noone uses it.  You have to imagine that it needs to fit on a dvd.

 

HD-Mesh V3 which is pretty much the standard add-on to go to and covers pretty much all major populated areas of the world is around 100gigs.  This will poplulate the world atleast to ksea standards and in some places beyond.

 

It depends however on avaialble OSM data.  Alpilotx hinted that he probably will do a recut of the hd-mesh, to bring it to V4 so coverage should be even better then. BTW this piece of magic is dontation/freeware.

A beta is a beta Paid or ot.....but come the end of the month I consider it to be a release as that was what was promised when they took my money.  I then expect things to be included and work....and that includes Alaska and the North Atlantic.

 

 

They already know about the alaska issue. They said they will recut the scenery at the end of the beta cycle when everything is finished. So you will get that Btw if you use HD-Mesh V3 you can already have that.

[Jimm 437]

I downloaded and tried the demo but was not necessarily blown away as some others. I found the cockpit shadows blocky, clouds to be a little blobby and hat difficulty with slow panning with my hat stick. After hearing quite a few raves from the PD3 forums i thought I would post here to see what the demo is missing compared to the beta version.

When I first experienced X-Plane, as a demo, I thought it a bit wonky (due to a lot of things being different between XP and other sims) and while it looked like it had potential for sticking around my HDD, I set it aside.  Flash forward about a year or so, and I started to be a little mroe receptive to the community and I decided (what the heck, I'll give it a go", so I plunked down the $60 for X-Plane 10 (with the upgrade to v11).  From the moment I installed the full version, I was floored.  Now, as far as differences, Seattle still looked the same from Demo to Full Version, with the big difference being no time or geographic restriction.

 

I feel that even at this stage, with XP11 in beta, I got my money's worth and then some.  The performance is a huge leap ahead of what I got with previous simulators.  Of course, the downside is content, but I feel more confident that this will be my goto simulator and I won't mind buying add-on content for it, and the freeware (donationware) out there right now, is enough to populate your sim and have a great flying experience.