[20JUL17] Update thread for XPL users

[vin747 316]

the other reason we get so excited about the sim is that it not only looks gorgeous at night (unlimited HDR lighting) but daytime scenery (which used to look ugly in XP10) can be revamped with Ortho4XP which takes it beyond the best in the market now.. and now they're bringing in landmarks and way better autogen (was shown in FSCon 2017).. so quite a lot of things to be excited about.. but the biggest vacuum in XP11 is lack of high quality widebodies (777/747).. that's where PMDG's presence will go a long way in taking the sim to the next level..

[Davidrebolton 42]

1 hour ago, vin747 said:

Not trying to brag here (maybe a little), but IMHO, the XP11 GUI is the best in the market right now.. also, XP 11 has the reflective materials thing (they call it PBR) and yes it is the best in the market again..  its not just shiny metal but reflective metal that reflects the environment truly.. you can see the jetways reflection on the fuselage.. the VC also has reflective glass.. when u move the throttle, you can see its mirror reflection on the PFD..  

Agreed, not to mention the night lighting + some select pay-ware add-ons. Its blatantly obvious that its the best flight simulator money can buy at the moment. 

[letec 6]

FF & STS team. This is future there for XPL. And others developers will come. I personally do not need PMDG in X-Plane. I would just like to see an update for DC-6 in the XPL11. In FSX / P3D world is PMDG the leader but thats is all.

 

 

[Davidrebolton 42]

3 minutes ago, letec said:

FF & STS team. This is future there for XPL. And others developers will come. I personally do not need PMDG in X-Plane. I would just like to see an update for DC-6 in the XPL11. In FSX / P3D world is PMDG the leader but thats is all.

 

 

Would be very interesting to see if they could match or top ixeg quality in XP! If anyone can, PMDG can - the wait for news continues 

[letec 6]

2 minutes ago, Davidrebolton said:

Would be very interesting to see if they could top ixeg quality in XP! If anyone can, PMDG can - the wait for news continues 

You know. This is not just about how the end product looks, but also how it has  support (adequately flexible) and I'm not happy with IXEG. And it's not just about 733, but about their other aircraft for which I've spent my money.

 

 

[yidahoo 365]

11 minutes ago, letec said:

You know. This is not just about how the end product looks, but also how it has  support (adequately flexible) and I'm not happy with IXEG. And it's not just about 733, but about their other aircraft for which I've spent my money.

 

 

Interesting, seeing as IXEG have only ever made one plane and that is the 733

[Davidrebolton 42]

15 minutes ago, letec said:

You know. This is not just about how the end product looks, but also how it has  support (adequately flexible) and I'm not happy with IXEG. And it's not just about 733, but about their other aircraft for which I've spent my money.

 

 

In comparison to PMDG they are tiny, no excuse though, I feel your woes 

[letec 6]

9 minutes ago, yidahoo said:

Interesting, seeing as IXEG have only ever made one plane and that is the 733

Not quite. In the IXEG team is the same person who created MU-2. And, of course, all coding depends on this person. So everything is getting slow at a slow pace. Because XPL is not his number one.

[letec 6]

2 minutes ago, Davidrebolton said:

In comparison to PMDG they are tiny, no excuse though, I feel your woes 

Thanks. I also try to be patient but B733 and others are not freeware products. But products with a fairly high price tag.

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

20 hours ago, Murmur said:

Fortunately there's been an upsurge of new users after the release of XP11, and that is continuing week after week, month after month. This is evident from several hints (Google Trends, Youtube videos, forums, etc.).

Laminar Research has expanded their staff in the last months, and the first results are already showing. If they continue on this pace, the market share of X-Plane will continue its steady grow. We'll see...

Marco Ottaviano

 

Marco,

I am curious as to where you are obtaining your market data?  Is it an official source or is it just an opinion repeated from others?

Facts are difficult things and I have data. 

 

[anden145 2,285]

21 hours ago, vin747 said:

Robert, I know some of us X-plane users haven't been on our best behavior in the forums and I apologize for that.. bottom line is X-plane will benefit tremendously if PMDG product lines made their way into our sim..  I also believe PMDG devs will benefit too when you start making products for XPL because the platform is so advanced with the PBR, dynamic lighting, etc, that it gives devs more freedom to stretch their imagination.. 

I hope your decision to invest in XPL will be purely based on the merits/demerits of the platform, market size etc and not by our cranky, whiny impatient behavior!

I agree with you, that X-Plane would greatly benefit from having PMDG onboard... but I also keep thinking ... why is it, that developers are holding back from getting their products into X-Plane. In my opinion, it also has something to do with the willingness of Laminar Research from helping set developers and their willingness to build the necessary tools for supporting PMDG, or any other high-end complex addons in X-Plane.

I have never developed anything for X-Plane - but I keep coming back to this post from Virtuali at the FSDT forums...:

Quote

We don't have anything against X-Plane as such. But the problem is: it has been years they promised a better SDK, for example by supplying an official exporter for 3DS Max. This was announced when X-Plane 11 was in Beta to be released after the final release. This, alone would be a mistake, because you should release the SDK *BEFORE* the product gets released to the public. We had the P3DV4 SDK in our hands about 6 months before the product was even announced...that's how you do it.

Right now, the only option to export from 3DS Max to X-Plane 11, it's just an unofficial plugin made by some users, with 2 pages of docs. The rest of the SDK documentation is scattered through a number of unofficial websites, blogs posts and forum posts. 

Now, compare this, with the almost 4000 pages of the P3D SDK, all in the same place, always updated for each minor build, and professionally supported.

Be sure that, if X-Plane devs will come out with a proper SDK, starting with an exporter for 3DS Max made AND supported by the X-Plane devs, we'll surely have a serious look at it. And with "supported", I mean with a full documentation, an official developers forum not accessible to the public, were we could post questions, reports bugs, and get real feedback about it.

Full thread can be found here
I don't know really... if there's (at least) some truth to the above... I can understand why many developers are - sadly - holding back from jumping in... 

[Davidrebolton 42]

The amount of people switching to Xplane (and loving it) is staggering, not to mention the amount of people considering doing so.  I'm reading it daily all over the internet on various sim sites, I don't need a graph to tell me that. Time will tell when concrete figures will speak volumes. 

[Glynn 405]

Xplane simply lacks the things needed to simulate flying in an airline environment, decent ATC and AI populated airports, even the Vatsim client is outdated and cannot even be run on a network client.

It's not going to change anytime soon either.

 

Glyn jones

[anden145 2,285]

8 minutes ago, Glynn said:

Xplane simply lacks the things needed to simulate flying in an airline environment, decent ATC and AI populated airports, even the Vatsim client is outdated and cannot even be run on a network client.

It's not going to change anytime soon either.

 

Glyn jones

Agreed! It's a shame, because it really is an absolutely beautiful simulator! 

But I fear, that the developers focus isn't exactly on extending X-Plane into being more accessible to addon developers. They have their own community and outsiders are having a hard time getting in.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

Where are people getting their staggering stats? I'm genuinely curious. I hear people say all these things, but it seems more that they're just saying what someone else said instead of speaking to a particular fact-based metric.