Another P3Der to XP trial thoughts...just for sharing and discussion

[WebMaximus 372]

6 minutes ago, alpha12125 said:

personally having had the chance to use an "yoko the yoke" at a friends house, i pretty much concluded for myself that all my sensitivity problems are down to my x52 or saitek yoke. It is incredible what good hardware does to the sim. 

I had the same experience when replacing my CH yoke with a Brunner one.

[WebMaximus 372]

Waking this thread up again after hearing about a Zibo mod for the default 737-800 in XP11 and wanted to ask if anyone in here tried it out? Also heard of a great sound package but forgot the name of it.

XP11 is still very tempting to me and if this Zibo mod for the default 737-800 would allow me to get a fairly good 737-800 in XP11 maybe it's time to give XP11 a go.

I also need to learn more about how to get that incredibly realistic ground I've seen in many YouTube clips, how to get the most realistic weather, how to hook up to Vatsim as well as my Oculus Rift etc etc...

 

[michaelray 236]

47 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Waking this thread up again after hearing about a Zibo mod for the default 737-800 in XP11 and wanted to ask if anyone in here tried it out? Also heard of a great sound package but forgot the name of it.

XP11 is still very tempting to me and if this Zibo mod for the default 737-800 would allow me to get a fairly good 737-800 in XP11 maybe it's time to give XP11 a go.

I also need to learn more about how to get that incredibly realistic ground I've seen in many YouTube clips, how to get the most realistic weather, how to hook up to Vatsim as well as my Oculus Rift etc etc...

 

Hi Richard

I was a long time user of FSX and P3D flying the PMDG NGX. When XP11 was released I decided to investigate further and purchased a copy. On quite a few occasions I decided it was't for me and went back to P3D only to find myself firing up XP11 again. Something kept pulling me back even with the numerous warts it has.

The Zibo mod 737-800 is still really a work in progress. If you plan to spend some time on it you need to do so with an open mind that it is still evolving. I find it is still very buggy regarding FMC & Autothrottle. I can't replicate a flight similar to the NGX experience yet. However what Zibo has done with this is amazing and he is continually respond to users feedback and fine tuning this aircraft. I think it has a lot of potential and every week gets closer to being really usable.

The sound pack is FMOD by Audiobird. If you go to http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/forum/308-xp11-general-discussion/ and pinned at the top of the page is all the information regarding the Zibo 737. On the very first page is the information regarding downloads and sound packs.

For realistic ground scenery there is Ortho4XP. If you search "Sesquashtoo" posts on the Avsim Forum he is very knowledgable about setting this up. I have done a corridor from KLAX to KSFO and it is just amazing, I can't stop flying it. Even some of the out of the box XP11 scenery can be very good, but some can be very ordinary. Downloading HDMesh V3 makes a huge difference in mesh and Land Class.

For weather this is another area where XP11 really sucks. My current solution is xEnviro but it is not like AS16. It appears the core weather functionality of XP11 makes it harder to achieve the same level of realism that you can in P3D. Saying that I have seen some pretty amazing sights with xEnviro (even better than AS16) but not consistently. I hope HiIF do make it to XP11 and see what they can bring to the table. I see you are a Beta Tester for them so what a great opportunity. Also xEnviro should have V1.07 out soon and it will be interesting to see what improvements this brings.

Even with all it warts I have to say that the most realistic flights I have done in a desktop simulator have been in XP11 and by a fair margin over P3D even when it was looking it best (apart from clouds). It took me a while to get to the point where I had a simulator that I found acceptable but I finally did. I think that XP11 has huge potential and hope that the Zibo 737-800 continues to evolve to the point where it can be considered as a usable aircraft for VA and online flights etc. I would welcome a PMDG or similar quality 737NG to the platform but the Zibo 737-800 is what we have at the moment. If you do take the time to try the Zibo 737 I will be very interested to hear your thoughts.

 

 

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for the great feedback and all good advice!

I realize I have quite some work to do to figure out if XP is for me at this time but again, with a 737-800 now available although not like the NGX that certainly is a step in the right direction.

[ricka47 611]

When XP11 came out, I tried it and was determined to make it my only sim as I wanted 64-bit and did not want to mess with keeping multiple sims up-to-date.  So, every thing from P3D v3 was uninstalled and I was very happy.  Then P3D v4 came out and the possibility of using all of my addons such as scenery, aircraft, weather and AI traffic plus having seasons and a better default ATC.  I fly mostly low and slow and having real weather, airport structures at all airports (by default) and AI traffic brought me back.  

XP11 still looks better out of the box than P3D.  But, for me, that can be fixed with a few addons and I can still have the things that were missing from XP11.  Funny, I did this with XP10 and ended up coming back to FSX and then to P3D.  You would think that I'd stop doing this and stay with one or another as it gets a bit expensive and also time consuming to make these changes!

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks Rick for sharing your experience and who knows, maybe I'll walk the same path you already did. That is if I even make it to XP in the first place 

I already tried it out once or twice before but I never really gave it a fair chance so this time around I'm planning to invest more both time but also maybe at least a bit of money to make sure I get the best possible experience of what XP has to offer in it's current version.

12 hours ago, michaelray said:

I hope HiIF do make it to XP11 and see what they can bring to the table. I see you are a Beta Tester for them so what a great opportunity.

I went to the private HiFi forums to ask about any XP plans but actually found out elsewhere that they already announced at FlightSimCon 2017 AS will be coming to XP 

[airlinejets 709]

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

I went to the private HiFi forums to ask about any XP plans but actually found out elsewhere that they already announced at FlightSimCon 2017 AS will be coming to XP 

Apparently, they have been working on it for over a year. Hopefully, they will have something for us before end of year. Activesky could become a game changer for many.

[WebMaximus 372]

1 hour ago, airlinejets said:

Apparently, they have been working on it for over a year. Hopefully, they will have something for us before end of year. Activesky could become a game changer for many.

Yep, this certainly is something to look forward to with lack of a good wx engine being one of the main drawbacks currently in XP as I understood it.

I heard lots of people are using xEnviro and I also read an ad today about a product called Ultra Weather XP 2.0. Don't know anything about either of these two but will look more into it the next coming days because an AS version for XP is still quite far away I think and I do want the best option available right now while waiting for that one.

[snglecoil 1,828]

I'm a fan of both XP and P3D. I still use P3D more for one major reason...the planes. I am a GA guy. Airfoil Lab's 172 is very good. Xplane simply needs more of that caliber plane in all categories, including GA. I have REP for the Carenado B35 and it is a step in the right direction as well, but the purchase price of both the base Carenado plane + the REP is a little much for a product that still falls somewhat sort of what A2A has developed for the FSX/P3D platform. I would love to see A2A bring their fleet over to Xplane. Sadly it doesn't appear to be on the horizon. 

That said, XPlane has some HUGE upside in that their implementation of the GNS units is really solid. I am so looking forward to the G1000 as well. Having to buy those via 3rd party for a significant outlay of money in P3D is the reason I still fly mostly /A

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, airlinejets said:

Apparently, they have been working on it for over a year. Hopefully, they will have something for us before end of year. Activesky could become a game changer for many.

I'm looking forward to seeing what ActiveSky can bring to X-Plane, but I'm not getting my hopes up to the "game changing" level. The internal weather engine will limit what they can do, because it's a very simplistic horizontal layer system.

It's the same weather engine Laminar has used for years, carried along with each new version. The only improvement we got in XP11 is the addition of a few more horizontal layers. XP10 only had three layers, although plugins like SkyMaxx Pro were able to add more.

Weather plugins like XEnviro and SkyMaxx Pro can do some neat things to fake the idea that you're flying through discrete weather, like the way SkyMaxx triggers rain only when you're under an actual cloud, or the way XEnviro willl throw 2D cloud billboards on the horizon. But it's still the same horizontal layer system with some smoke and mirrors to make it look better.

At some point, Laminar will have to switch to a full 3D weather engine that can model discrete systems like CBs with vertical convection, storm fronts as discrete objects, and so on. Weather systems we can fly in and out of, instead of weather that magically changes in a 360 degree circle surrounding the aircraft. Austin has acknowledged that this is what's needed in an earlier interview, but we don't know when it will arrive.

Of course, one way around that, would be if a plugin could completely replace X-Plane's stacked horizontal weather system with a 3D weather engine. If ActiveSky can do that, it would be great. But nobody else has managed to do it so far. XEnviro and SlyMaxx Pro work with the current layered system, so again, I'm not getting my hopes up too far.

[Murmur 3,941]

55 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

[CUT]

I would be very surprised if ActiveSky would just use XP's current weather system. That would be a big downgrade for the level HiFiSim has accustomed their customers to. Maybe HiFiSim is in talk with them so that LR can provide some reworkings and improvements of the current weather system, without rewriting it from scratch for now.

To my knowledge, both SMP and xEnviro completely override the default cloud depiction, so in theory they could depict a completely 3D and dynamic weather system. If that's not the case, maybe it means that doing so would have required more coding, resources and time.

Lastly, X-Plane 11 has only 3 cloud layers just like X-Plane 10. :-)

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

27 minutes ago, Murmur said:

I would be very surprised if ActiveSky would just use XP's current weather system. That would be a big downgrade for the level HiFiSim has accustomed their customers to. Maybe HiFiSim is in talk with them so that LR can provide some reworkings and improvements of the current weather system, without rewriting it from scratch for now.

I hope that's possible, but the last reports I read here from HiFiSim was that they were having to work with the limits of the current weather engine. Maybe they've figured out a way to replace it.

Quote

To my knowledge, both SMP and xEnviro completely override the default cloud depiction, so in theory they could depict a completely 3D and dynamic weather system. If that's not the case, maybe it means that doing so would have required more coding, resources and time.

I don't think that's the case, at least with SkyMaxx Pro, because you can adjust the weather it generates with the default weather menu. It's one of the advantages of that plugin vs. ExEnviro, which has no manual adjustments (other than minor overrides on max winds and minimum cloud base).

I don't know to what extent ExEnviro replaces the default weather engine because everything it does is hidden from the user and all you see are the effects outside the aircraft. I suspect it's not a full replacement, because I've seen behavior like "rain blocks" from the ground to 2,000 feet that cut off sharply with a horizontal top. I've also never seen a fully-developed vertical cloud formation like a CB extending from low altitude to high altitude in ExEnviro.

If ActiveSky can perform that trick, with or without full replacement, I'll be thrilled. Although it still won't be realistic unless vertical convection is also modeled within these systems.

Quote

Lastly, X-Plane 11 has only 3 cloud layers just like X-Plane 10. :-)

Oops, you're right! The default weather menu makes it look like more because of the altitude lines, but it's a limit of 3 each for wind layers and cloud layers. 

[Murmur 3,941]

7 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I don't think that's the case, at least with SkyMaxx Pro, because you can adjust the weather it generates with the default weather menu.

SMP clouds move with the wind, so they're certainly 100% own clouds and not default :-) I think they simply use the default weather datarefs to sync the clouds with conditions set in weather menu. I think Ben even created the "override clouds" datarefs so that SMP (and other weather plugins) could use their own clouds.

[Longranger 148]

52 minutes ago, Murmur said:

 

To my knowledge, both SMP and xEnviro completely override the default cloud depiction, so in theory they could depict a completely 3D and dynamic weather system.

Well, they draw directly into the OpenGL system and diesable the X-Plane default weather handling.

SKyMaxx Pro uses with their Real Weather Connector tiles. Each tile has an area of 20 x 20 km and can handle up to 6 cloud layers.

If I am not mistaken even the new default clouds use internally more than three cloud layers.

I don´t think that their idea was so stupid, they simply looked at the data that they can get from the normal METAR system.

It only can handle clouds to a height of 9999 ft.

Since their whole interface will be rewritten for Vulcan I don´t think that any of these settings are currently really written in stone. I would be surprised if Ben wouldn´t discuss several things with the plug-in developers and I would be even more surprised if he wouldn´t listen very closley to what Hifi have to tell them.

Till now X-Plane and the plug-ins hadf their own distinct draw calls, but for the next step all weather plug-ins will in fact draw inside X-Plane and X-Plane itself will finally draw the complete environment.

[Paraffin 2,197]

54 minutes ago, Murmur said:

SMP clouds move with the wind, so they're certainly 100% own clouds and not default :-) I think they simply use the default weather datarefs to sync the clouds with conditions set in weather menu. I think Ben even created the "override clouds" datarefs so that SMP (and other weather plugins) could use their own clouds.

Right, I wasn't suggesting that SMP used the default clouds, but that they're working within XP's internal weather layers and not replacing that entire system.