Few opinions on X-Plane 11, and PMDG products for XP11

[Sebjo89 33]

Let me hear it. Will XP 11 get PMDG's well-made and wonderful aircrafts?

[slavik35ua 12]

2 minutes ago, kevinh said:

X-Plane does have a better flight model in that it offers finer detail to the designer. FSX/P3D is a "whole aircraft" model, whereas XP uses aerofoil elements to build up a whole aircraft. XP also has a more detailed lateral-directional aerodynamics so it's better in asymmetric conditions. But each element is still a lookup table, so XP uses those but at a much lower level than FSX. The fact that FSX uses whole aircraft lookup tables does not make that a bad flight model, it's how full flight simulators are usually programmed too. Both FSX and XP follow the same aerodynamic and stability principles. 

Of course they follow same principles, physics can't be different, it's based on the real-life aspects after all, the difference between XPL and FSX physics is that XPL is making its calculations in real time, taking into the account all the factors at that very moment of flying.

[kevinh 409]

17 minutes ago, slavik35ua said:

Of course they follow same principles, physics can't be different, it's based on the real-life aspects after all, the difference between XPL and FSX physics is that XPL is making its calculations in real time, taking into the account all the factors at that very moment of flying.

What makes you think that? FSX is making its calculations in real time too.

[slavik35ua 12]

It is, but limited or something, or maybe not, i'm not a developer of any of those, btw, so I can't say exactly. However, in XPL I can see the flight model making its calculations IRT, by pressing ctrl+m, I can see the thrust vector, I can see the lift vector etc etc...

[kevinh 409]

12 minutes ago, slavik35ua said:

It is, but limited or something, or maybe not, i'm not a developer of any of those, btw, so I can't say exactly. However, in XPL I can see the flight model making its calculations IRT, by pressing ctrl+m, I can see the thrust vector, I can see the lift vector etc etc...

No, it is not limited by something like that. Just because FSX doesn't let you visualise forces in real time does not mean it doesn't calculate them like that. XP does that primarily to help designers visualise the forces along the wingspan. FSX flight model designers don't need to visualise that because the whole aircraft is simulated as one entity. Also, it wouldn't make any sense not to do it in real time.

Please don't base your criticisms on how you think things might be.

[slavik35ua 12]

29 minutes ago, kevinh said:

No, it is not limited by something like that. Just because FSX doesn't let you visualise forces in real time does not mean it doesn't calculate them like that. XP does that primarily to help designers visualise the forces along the wingspan. FSX flight model designers don't need to visualise that because the whole aircraft is simulated as one entity. Also, it wouldn't make any sense not to do it in real time.

Please don't base your criticisms on how you think things might be.

If you read carefully you'll see that I didn't say anything exact about fsx limitations, this was just my assumption, definitely not a statement, so don't make me look like a self-confident physicists who says he's the god of everything and obey him and pray to him. 

Maybe we should finish our physics discussion and I'll continue begging PMDG to make at least one airliner for the mighty xp11.

[slavik35ua 12]

Oh, and that "one entity" says a lot about the calculations, because you know, it's not that precise when you take a 70m long plane and calculate all its movements just as a tiny "one entity", this could be acceptable for GAs, but definitely not for the big airliners 

[kevinh 409]

13 minutes ago, slavik35ua said:

Oh, and that "one entity" says a lot about the calculations, because you know, it's not that precise when you take a 70m long plane and calculate all its movements just as a tiny "one entity", this could be acceptable for GAs, but definitely not for the big airliners 

As I said earlier, "whole aircraft" models are how flight dynamics are simulated in full flight simulators too. If you think such Level D sims have inferior dynamics as a consequence you'd better have a word with the FAA and others that all the sims they've qualified aren't good enough, in your expert opinion.

[kevinh 409]

19 minutes ago, slavik35ua said:

If you read carefully you'll see that I didn't say anything exact about fsx limitations, this was just my assumption, definitely not a statement, so don't make me look like a self-confident physicists who says he's the god of everything and obey him and pray to him. 

Maybe we should finish our physics discussion and I'll continue begging PMDG to make at least one airliner for the mighty xp11.

If you don't know something don't speculate about it and expect not to be challenged by people who do. I did read carefully and I just explained why your "maybe limited" idea was not correct.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

K...since it's clear that my earlier less-than-hints weren't clear:

Knock it off.

...please 

[slavik35ua 12]

8 hours ago, kevinh said:

If you don't know something don't speculate about it and expect not to be challenged by people who do. I did read carefully and I just explained why your "maybe limited" idea was not correct.

Ok, so if I don't know something I should stay away from that and never try to express any of my opinions. IMHO People who are familiar with that shouldn't be like "hey go call FAA if you doubt my words"

Thanks

[kevinh 409]

4 hours ago, slavik35ua said:

Ok, so if I don't know something I should stay away from that and never try to express any of my opinions. IMHO People who are familiar with that shouldn't be like "hey go call FAA if you doubt my words"

Thanks

Sorry Viacheslav, I didn't mean it that way. Only that if you speculate about something you should expect that opinion might be challenged. Yes, I shouldn't have been sarcastic but there is a serious point behind that. Whole aircraft models are perfectly valid.

[denthibbe 18]

Although the topic has fallen into the "mine is better than yours" sphere I still wanted to add my honest thoughts about the matter.

Since my last post on this topic I still did not buy the QoTS V3 because I want to know what the possible 64bit upgrade of P3D will have to offer exactly and, yes, at some point I really would like to be able to tell a final goodbye to P3D. Why? simply because it's old, expensive and keeps you from updating very simple things like graphics card drivers or I will have to cope with showstoppers like VAS depletion. In a way XP11 is such a breath of fresh air. When preparing your trip you just fill in your flight plan and, if you just feel like it, enter both SID and STAR (including runways) even before starting your checklists... seems so obvious yet these are the things I never do since the last 3 years or so without keeping a stressed eye on my VAS counter for the next 30 minutes in order to check whether or not I triggered some unexplainable memory operation which basically ruins the whole experience.(sorry for the very long phrase !)

Do I think XP11 is perfect? Absolutely not. Actually I was surprised to see it being officially released so soon because I really thought it still needed a lot of polishing up. I think that even the most developers where a bit surprised because a lot of addons had to kind of push out patches really quickly to temporarily address only the most obvious glitches in their products.
The plugins philosophy is also something I am not that fond of. Coming from a P3D setup where everything (wxr engine, radio, IVAO client, etc...) is run on a networked PC, having to come back to a setup where everything has to run on the Simulator PC is actually very hard to accept... strangely enough.

Honestly it is very difficult to try and step away from a sim I have been using for 10 years now (I know that is not even that long...). I feel like I know it inside out (been through the whole FSX tweaking history).

Bottom line, the main reasons which made me look elsewhere where the many technical issues really feeding me up to a point where I wondered why I was still coping with it and most important of all, I was paying for it... imho XP11 really needs to evolve and I am still afraid that without a bigger user base (read "higher potential to attract more developers, bringing their creativity and know-how") it will never really get the chance to reach that point where I can really ditch P3D totally...

Again thoughts of a random customer

A nice day to all of you.

[slavik35ua 12]

5 hours ago, kevinh said:

Sorry Viacheslav, I didn't mean it that way. Only that if you speculate about something you should expect that opinion might be challenged. Yes, I shouldn't have been sarcastic but there is a serious point behind that. Whole aircraft models are perfectly valid.

No prob, the whole world can't live in harmony cuz there r always different opinions and that's okay, I do expect my opinion to be doubted/challenged and so do others(I hope), besides that, even if the FAA approves the "one entity" calculation system, would it be more precise to calculate the forces applied on the wings/vertical stab separately, than just calculating how a slight wind shear affected the whole planes tragectory? Or am I wrong? Would be more than pleased to hear your thoughts.

[downscc 1,327]

1 hour ago, slavik35ua said:

would it be more precise to calculate the forces applied on the wings/vertical stab separately, than just calculating how a slight wind shear affected the whole planes tragectory?

I am not taking sides in a simulator platform debate; however, the engineer in me has to step in on this and respond with a definite no.  You are not assured of a "better" solution to a dynamics problem by breaking the system into parts, in fact in most cases the solution will be less that "better" because it easily can be worse.  Most structures of comprised of individual elements and finite element analysis is a powerful tool but one has to be careful that when separating the elements you do not lose the interaction between elements.  Simple exaggeration may help illustrate this: Aileron deflection applies a moment to the longitudinal axis of the wing causing it to twist, now your element analysis of a wing may do a good job of modelling this but what about the moment that is applied to the wing box carry through to the other wing and fuselage. In practical sense it should be nil but if the moment did carry through to other structural elements in a way that affected the solution then the piece by piece analysis may miss it and in this case modelling the entire structure will give a "better" answer.  I could come up with more precise examples but I would have to revert to much simpler structures than an aircraft.

Bottom line, neither is inherently better. Either can be a good model or a poor model.  The quality of the model is considered "best" when it provides a solution that describes a system sufficiently well enough to get the job done.  I'm pretty confident that Boeing and Airbus use both approaches depending how the specifics of the problem.