XP11 review by FSX/P3D developer

[michelh 43]

Agreed, I also use DCS for military aircraft's.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

4 hours ago, rototom said:

All makes sense to me; the only preference I would have is if all military simulations were done in one place; then it could really meet the needs of everyone interested in those types of aircraft and there would be many more to choose from. I will often fly in DCS and not use weapons. The aircraft systems simulation seem to be very good. For helicopters, I don't think there is a comparison, the ones in DCS are miles ahead.

The helicopters are another area where I end up forgoing the consensus of what's the best (DCS) in order to fly some of the equipment that I'm more interested in (I'm generally more interested in light civilian helicopters). Although, I'm quite tempted to give the Gazelle a go one of these days.

[Mountain Man 142]

He says that "Daylight rendering looks a little washed out".  I think people need to compare X-Plane 11 to real-life instead of to the ubiquitous surrealistic over-saturated video game look which seems to be the baseline for a lot of folks.  Real-life looks "washed out" due to atmospheric haze, and X-Plane 11 simulates this look far better than any other simulator on the market.

Also, a bit unfair of him to "ding" X-Plane 11 just because FSX and P3D might maybe possibly have "new" versions released in the near future.

[Paraffin 2,197]

23 minutes ago, Mountain Man said:

He says that "Daylight rendering looks a little washed out".  I think people need to compare X-Plane 11 to real-life instead of to the ubiquitous surrealistic over-saturated video game look which seems to be the baseline for a lot of folks.  Real-life looks "washed out" due to atmospheric haze, and X-Plane 11 simulates this look far better than any other simulator on the market.

I'm not against a realistic depiction of haze in the air. I'm retired from a career that included a lot of aerial photography so I know what it looks like up there. But it can vary depending on weather and location. Flying over Beijing or in the vicinity of a forest fire doesn't look the same as the clear air of the Peruvian Andes. Ideally the sim would track local variation but I'm guessing the data isn't there. So what we get is a standard amount of fixed haze per visibility setting. In my opinion, and experience flying around at lower levels shooting airphotos in Florida, Central and South America, it's a bit too thick to represent haze worldwide.

It's also not correlated with the visibility slider in the weather menu. Try setting up XP11 1.0 with a plane loading at 10 mile approach to an airport, with weather set to clear skies at noon, and 10 miles visibility. If your version of XP11 looks like mine, the runway is invisible. It's buried in the haze effect, and doesn't start to get clear enough to see at that distance until the visibility is changed to around 20 miles, depending on lighting and time of day. This isn't right, unless Laminar has a different definition of "visibility" than is standard in aviation.

Modeling haze is a good thing in the sim for the sake of realism, but it's just overdone here (IMO), especially with relation to the visibility slider. It's why you get these complaints about a washed-out look, and people fussing with mods to clear the air. Maybe Austin only flies his plane when it's smoky outside? It's the only rationale I think think of, for why it looks this way.

[rototom 198]

I'm sure they will tweak it. X-plane isn't perfect, but it gets better all the time. Base on all the added features I've seen in version 11, I think they are listening. It took 10 years of addons to get FSX to look good. They made just about everything you could think of. I think someone made an addon at one point to replace aircraft contrails. Heck, some people on here probably don't even remember what FSX actually looks like (unless they installed P3D).

[irrics 1,517]

If this fix for the water is so simple, why does LR not simply "fix it" on their end?

 

Looks horrible at default..

[rototom 198]

I like the water

[Paraffin 2,197]

52 minutes ago, irrics said:

If this fix for the water is so simple, why does LR not simply "fix it" on their end?

Looks horrible at default..

It will be fixed, I'm sure. It's probably just lower in priority because it's cosmetic, and not as important right now as stability for add-on developers to get to work on v11 products.

Ben mentioned finding a way to show at least a bit of shallow water color in tropical areas, which I'm really looking forward to, but it isn't in yet. Maybe the water wave pattern fix will be rolled into that. .

[Mountain Man 142]

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I'm not against a realistic depiction of haze in the air. I'm retired from a career that included a lot of aerial photography so I know what it looks like up there. But it can vary depending on weather and location. Flying over Beijing or in the vicinity of a forest fire doesn't look the same as the clear air of the Peruvian Andes. Ideally the sim would track local variation but I'm guessing the data isn't there. So what we get is a standard amount of fixed haze per visibility setting. In my opinion, and experience flying around at lower levels shooting airphotos in Florida, Central and South America, it's a bit too thick to represent haze worldwide.

It's also not correlated with the visibility slider in the weather menu. Try setting up XP11 1.0 with a plane loading at 10 mile approach to an airport, with weather set to clear skies at noon, and 10 miles visibility. If your version of XP11 looks like mine, the runway is invisible. It's buried in the haze effect, and doesn't start to get clear enough to see at that distance until the visibility is changed to around 20 miles, depending on lighting and time of day. This isn't right, unless Laminar has a different definition of "visibility" than is standard in aviation.

Modeling haze is a good thing in the sim for the sake of realism, but it's just overdone here (IMO), especially with relation to the visibility slider. It's why you get these complaints about a washed-out look, and people fussing with mods to clear the air. Maybe Austin only flies his plane when it's smoky outside? It's the only rationale I think think of, for why it looks this way.

That's a completely different kettle of fish.  The reviewer criticized the "washed out colors", which is what I took issue with.  You're talking about draw distance.

[Paraffin 2,197]

14 minutes ago, Mountain Man said:

That's a completely different kettle of fish.  The reviewer criticized the "washed out colors", which is what I took issue with.  You're talking about draw distance.

No, I think the haze is responsible for the "washed out colors" because there is too much of it, at any visibility setting including 100 miles viz.

It's a white overlay that reduces gamma, if you prefer. 

[Jimm 437]

16 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

No, I think the haze is responsible for the "washed out colors" because there is too much of it, at any visibility setting including 100 miles viz.

It's a white overlay that reduces gamma, if you prefer. 

I beg to differ.  If you set CAVOK (no weather), I've seen some pretty good color saturation.  I see we're revisiting the argument over whether the sky is truly blue or not again. 

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

10 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I'm not against a realistic depiction of haze in the air. I'm retired from a career that included a lot of aerial photography so I know what it looks like up there. But it can vary depending on weather and location. Flying over Beijing or in the vicinity of a forest fire doesn't look the same as the clear air of the Peruvian Andes. Ideally the sim would track local variation but I'm guessing the data isn't there. So what we get is a standard amount of fixed haze per visibility setting. In my opinion, and experience flying around at lower levels shooting airphotos in Florida, Central and South America, it's a bit too thick to represent haze worldwide.

It's also not correlated with the visibility slider in the weather menu. Try setting up XP11 1.0 with a plane loading at 10 mile approach to an airport, with weather set to clear skies at noon, and 10 miles visibility. If your version of XP11 looks like mine, the runway is invisible. It's buried in the haze effect, and doesn't start to get clear enough to see at that distance until the visibility is changed to around 20 miles, depending on lighting and time of day. This isn't right, unless Laminar has a different definition of "visibility" than is standard in aviation.

Modeling haze is a good thing in the sim for the sake of realism, but it's just overdone here (IMO), especially with relation to the visibility slider. It's why you get these complaints about a washed-out look, and people fussing with mods to clear the air. Maybe Austin only flies his plane when it's smoky outside? It's the only rationale I think think of, for why it looks this way.

Note that the slider is square miles - so at 10 miles setting what you are actually seeing is 2 miles in front and 5 miles across :)

 

cheers

Peter

[Mountain Man 142]

12 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I think the haze is responsible for the "washed out colors" because there is too much of it...

I disagree.  Again, compare it to reality, as in what you actually see with your eyes.  Get a couple of thousand feet up in the air and the ground tends to look "washed out" and becomes more "washed out" the further it is from the observer.

[virtualstuff 753]

2 hours ago, Mountain Man said:

I disagree.  Again, compare it to reality, as in what you actually see with your eyes.  Get a couple of thousand feet up in the air and the ground tends to look "washed out" and becomes more "washed out" the further it is from the observer.

Well in the real world up there it changes it's not always like that as they currently implemented it and it's overdone ;-)

But then again easy to adjust in XP...

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

9 hours ago, CaptCWGAllen said:

Note that the slider is square miles - so at 10 miles setting what you are actually seeing is 2 miles in front and 5 miles across :)

Heh... that would explain it!  But it would still be wrong, since the visibility slider is automatically adjusted by the currently loaded METAR if you're using real weather downloading. If X-Plane is doing something different than the way visibility is defined for METARs, then it's doing it wrong:

"In meteorology, visibility is a measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. It is reported within surface weather observations and METAR code either in meters or statute miles, depending upon the country"

If I can't see a runway 10 miles away on final approach with the viz slider set to 10 miles, then something is amiss.