The flight model in P3D vs XP

[WebMaximus 372]

Will start by saying my intention is not to start a flaming P3D vs XP war so for anyone not able to behave in a grown-up and civil way please find another kindergarten. With that out of the way what I would like to ask those who have experience from both simulators is how the flight model compares between these two simulators?

I've never tried XP myself doing all my flying in P3D but tonight I was watching this clip on YouTube showing an approach into St. Maarten / Princess Juliana in XP11 and watching how the aircraft is wiggling from side to side and how the pilot needs to constantly correct working the yoke in order to perform a safe landing I just thought it looked and felt very realistic in a way I'm not used to in P3D flying the NGX.

I know XP in the past has been known to have a very good and realistic flight model so maybe that's what I'm seeing here? Would love to have this in P3D flying the NGX but I honestly can't think of one single time I had to work the yoke very hard even during severely bad weather using AS16 which in a way is quite boring. Being able to perform a good landing during bad conditions is very rewarding.

Thanks in advance for your comments guys!

[CarlosF 1,234]

Download XP demo and find out for yourself.

There is no winner/better, both are great in their own way.

[PWJT8D 446]

I can see your point from the video you watched but what I got from it was a different point of view. Watching the wind direction indicator, I saw a lot of headwind component with a little bit of left to right shifting. And speeds were only around 8kts. This should not have that much of an impact on a 767 as we were seeing. I'm not implying that it is the simulator or the aircraft at fault, but more so the pilot. No disrespect to the one who is flying but it seemed to me they were over-controlling the yoke. Being a little too jerky and overcorrecting which then leads to an overcorrection the other way and you end up fighting the aircraft. I bet if they were to slow down their control inputs and be more smooth, the aircraft would have flown more smooth as a result with a lot less control input.

With that said, this debate can go into a long list of variables. Default vs default, add-ons, weather injectors....... I invite you to download the X-Plane 11 demo, it gives you a good list of default aicraft to fly as well as a good chunk of the Seattle area for scenery. I do feel that default X-Plane aircraft do have very good flight dynamics. For example when flying the Cessna 172, you can set your power at cruise, trim the aircraft for level flight and it will stay there. You can yank the yoke pitch up or down and disrupt the fine balance you have trimmed, and if you let go of the controls the Cessna will oscillate a few times and return to it's trimmed level flight. Slight power adjustments will result in the expected power for altitude, as well as pitch for airspeed. This is something I find lacking in P3D. I do feel that it is a lot harder, nearly impossible to trim an aircraft and have it stay level. Power for altitude seems to take a lot longer than it should to respond.

But that is all thrown out the window if you wanted to start discussing add-ons. I feel that that the developers on the P3D side have been able to hit a lot of flight dynamics spot on, especially in regards to different weights as well as ground handling a lot better than the latter has in X-Plane. With the advancements that we have been able to see from PMDG, A2A, FSL and Majestic in regards to aircraft complexity and being able to bypass a lot of the limitations of the base simulator, I feel that they come out on top. Of course this is all subjective. I have flown X-Plane 8, 9 and 10 as well as FS9, FSX and now P3D. 

[Chock 17,769]

With regard to the video link, I think you'd have to know the weather settings in relation to wind, gusts and turbulence and the weight and C/G of the aeroplane to make a judgement on whether that was how the aeroplane should be behaving, but I have my doubts about that...

A 767 (depending on the variant) weighs about 150 tons at its maximum landing weight. Something weighing that much, with a 150 feet+ wingspan and doing 140 knots doesn't twitch around much unless the wind is really switching direction and gusting a lot, it has too much inertia to change direction that quickly and is subject to some adverse yaw too, so I'm suspecting a lot of the movement was due to overcontrolling. I've rarely seen the kind of gliders I've flown twitch around that much on finals in blustery conditions, and they come in at 65 knots weighing considerably less than a thousand pounds, which is 299,000lbs less than a 767 weighs on landing and they have far less inertia for a gust to overcome, so if anything was gonna swing its nose around a lot, it'd be a little glider with no engines thrusting it forward and only gravity giving it some airspeed.

But as others have said, download the demo and judge it for yourself. X-Plane 11 does look very good though, I think it's a big improvement on preceding versions and it's not hugely expensive, especially if you are the kind of person who will happily buy an add-on FS aeroplane which costs more. Of particular interest is the A320 Laminar are working on for X-Plane, which sounds intriguiging.

There's no rule says you can't enjoy more than one flight sim.

[rototom 198]

It's not a simple question to answer I think for anyone. In the P3D and X-plane, the aircraft developers do a lot to get things right. The A2A 172 flies well, not because of the simulator. In fact, I think they probably went to great extents to work around it. The Majestic Dash 8 is praised but my understanding is they went around the simulator.

If we are talking about default aircraft. I am convinced based on experience that the default 172 in X-plane is better. But that doesn't mean that a 737 comparison would be the same and I have no idea because I've never flown a 737.

So at the end of the day, it's more about each individual aircraft rather than the simulator. I think the simulator helps and a developer might have less work and tweaking to do with one over the other, but a successful flight model is ultimately up to an aircraft developer.

I think we know that no single simulator has all the best flying airplanes.

[Bobsk8 12,492]

I flew a 767-400 ER full motion sim at an airline training center for about 5 hours. The handling of it was about on a par with the PMDG NGX, taking into account that the NGX is a much smaller aircraft. the A2A 172 is pretty darn close to a real C 172 which I have many hours in a real 172. I don't see anything wrong with good add on aircraft in P3D. I know a Q400 pilot that has flown the Majestic 400, and he says it is pretty darn close to the real thing. Let's face it, most default aircraft are pretty poor no matter what the sim. lately I have started flying copters, and having some experience in military copter  sims, RC copters, and a few hours in an R-22 , I think the Milviz choppers  are pretty good. Last night I was practicing autorotations, and was pretty happy with the performance of the Milviz Helis. 

[WarpD 824]

I'll also point out that it appears to be flying on autopilot, not by hand.  I watched the VS and altitude and I didn't see a great deal of variation.  Watching the flight director is not a good indicator of flight dynamics.

Neither sim wins the flight dynamics contest, they each have their strengths and weaknesses.

[avgaskoolaid 292]

Just my opinion, but as someone with around ~150hrs in a C172, ~200 tt, I really prefer the XP11 default 172 to the A2A version in P3D. The real 172 is certainly a very stable plane, but the A2A version, to me, feels a little too stable. I'm sure that this isn't a fault with A2A per se, just the platform. The XP11 172, on the other hand, flies just like the real thing does, and gives that feeling of heaviness/liveliness that I miss in P3D. The only weak points I've noticed is that the torque effect is *slightly* exaggerated, and it seems a little too eager to spin. Keep in mind, that no matter how good your sim or addon is, you simply won't get the proper feeling of flying a plane without a fully wrap around display, a motion base, and force-feedback controls. But, with a simply logitech 3D Pro, the XP11 default is the best IMO. (Of course, when you couple that with the superior atmospheric, lighting, and visual effects, which are extremely important for VFR flying immersion, XP comes out on top for me).

As for the video, keep in mind that the author is using edtracker, a head tracking software, so the movement might seem a bit exaggerated. That being said, the FF767 and 757 do indeed feel a bit too 'light' for large planes. They're both lots of fun to fly, nonetheless. 

27 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I flew a 767-400 ER full motion sim at an airline training center for about 5 hours. The handling of it was about on a par with the PMDG NGX, taking into account that the NGX is a much smaller aircraft. the A2A 172 is pretty darn close to a real C 172 which I have many hours in a real 172. I don't see anything wrong with good add on aircraft in P3D. I know a Q400 pilot that has flown the Majestic 400, and he says it is pretty darn close to the real thing. Let's face it, most default aircraft are pretty poor no matter what the sim. lately I have started flying copters, and having some experience in military copter  sims, RC copters, and a few hours in an R-22 , I think the Milviz choppers  are pretty good. Last night I was practicing autorotations, and was pretty happy with the performance of the Milviz Helis. 

If you're interested in helis, I highly recommend trying them out in XP11. Aside from the debate about planes, IIRC it's generally accepted that XPlane delivers a far superior helicopter experience. I'm not a helicopter guy, but I picked up the Bell 407 from the org store because I had a lot of loyalty points, and holy heck is it fun. I've never flown a helicopter in real life or the Milviz versions, but the 407 seems to be exactly what a helicopter would feel like. 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

It's easy to say that the night lighting and building autogen  are more immersive  in XP than P3d... because they are. By the same token, it's easy to say that the AI traffic, ATC and the quality and quantity  of addon scenery are all better in P3d... again because they are.

But when it comes to assessing something like the flight model, as Bobsk8 stated above, both XP and P3d are lacking what a full motion simulator provides...the impact of g forces on the inner ear and other parts of the  human anatomy. So what we are left with as desk pilots is how the human visual system perceives the flight model.

It's no question at least to me that the default 172 model in XP11 is far more realistic than the decade older flight model in the default MS 172. But aside from that, it becomes a more difficult  task to match up competing aircraft. The XP 172 and the A2A version to me, are about equal in simulating handling and aerodynamics. And neither is even close to flying the real  thing. When one pilots a 172 in real life, you really feel the buoyancy of the air, which is basically an invisible ocean.

I can't compare the PMDG NGX to the IXEG 737 because I don't have the  latter. The RealAir Turbine Duke is as good or even a bit more realistic  than the RW Designs model. The Milviz helis will match anything in XP and the VRS FA-18 and Dino C's  F35 are as good as they come.

But all this tempered with the caveat that without factoring in real world g  forces, it's somewhat of a hollow,  endless debate.

[Adrian123 1,015]

Excellent points Jay. Like to say having both the P3D PMDG 737 and IXEG 737, to show thy volatility of XP. The very excellent IXEG needs to be updated to compensate for Austins constant tinkering. I have sympathy for XP developers. ;) (Not getting into which ones "Better"). I like them both.

[ryanbatc 12,774]

In simplistic terms, most aircraft are too twitchy in XP, but too stable in P3D.  I have now put many hours into both sims so I feel I can comment on both.  In xp the way even larger jets handle in turbulence doesn't look quite right.  But outside of turbulent air I prefer their handling vs P3D.  Smaller props feel better in xp but I still love my P3D addons - there's much more of them and they look a LOT better!

im still enjoying both sims!

just try the demo!

[Adrian123 1,015]

And as a great hockey commentator always says "And why Not"

[bonchie 2,305]

They've both got issues. P3D sucks at handling ground effect (it's way overstated). XP has issues with torque modeling (their default 172 pulls left like it's got 300 horses out front). They both have terrible ground handling models. Whether it's P3D's skidding on ice landings or XP's hugely overstated left turning tendency at taxi RPM levels.

One day someone will get it all right at one time...I hope lol

 

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for the input guys, lots of good info and thoughts in there!

I've been thinking about getting the demo but haven't invested any time into it so far since I figured it wouldn't be a fair test unless I also bought a good payware aircraft. Thinking about the default aircraft in P3D (which I never fly) I figured probably the same thing is true in XP or at least to a certain extent.

I realize my question is a tricky one since lots of different parameters play a role into how the aircraft behaves just like some of you mentioned where I guess weather is the dominating one. I also realize it's much up to the aircraft developer how realistic the aircraft will behave but at the same time we've all heard hundreds of times how different things can't be simulated in a good way in FS and P3D due to all the different limitations in the ancient core of the simulator.

Should also mention that I didn't pay any attention to the details in the video clip such as the wind or any instruments like the FD. I was more "experiencing" the flight by watching how the aircraft moved in relation to the outside view and it just "felt" very similar to what you often see IRL. The sensation of "feeling" the aircraft in the simulator has become much more important to me since I started flying in VR using a pair of Oculus Rift glasses and the FlyInside software.

Personally I couldn't care less what the label of the product I'm using says as long as I know it's the best out there and it will serve all my needs. This goes for flight simulators as much as for any other products. Looking at P3D (and before that FS9 and FSX) I've been overall very happy and still is. What I'm often missing though is to really have to fight the aircraft down onto the runway during bad weather for instance as mentioned in my initial post.

Since my main interest is simulating airline flying online on VATSIM in Europe that is what my simulator must be able to provide me with regardless of its name.

Well, I think I'll follow your advice and at least try the XP demo out and then we'll see where I end up in the long run...staying with P3D, converting to XP or enjoying both

Thanks again guys for all input so far, much appreciated!

[Bobsk8 12,492]

Something to keep in mind, while airlines use Flight Sims for all their training today, and usually the pilot has one ride with a check pilot after the sim training and then is on his own, the sims they use for the majority of training are not full motion sims, but something more like the sims we use. When I was at the Delta Training center, the only full motion sims were for the 767. Smaller  aircraft like the 737 used a cockpit mockup sitting on a floor with no motion at all. Yet these pilots would come out of the 737 sim in a sweat, after practicing emergencies.