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tonywob

Now the cat is out of the bag!

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Having invested many $$$ over the years in P3d only to be OOMed to Xplane, lol, I have to appreciate P3d for finally going 64bit to resolve that issue, but also to thank them for introducing me to Xplane!

These are 2 really great products and have their own merits.  They both will live on my harddrive.

Xplane has a longer road to go in terms of 3rd party dev, but it has the advantage of also starting from a clean state....no legacy code to be an obstacle.  Xplane should be bold and push the edge and continue as to what is possible and practical based on current state of art (where's that 3d water yo!?!) :-)

There is room in the market for at least two great platforms especially when they compete!

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I've used FSX/P3D for a long time but this year I demoed XP11 and then bought it. It's amazing. I love the flight dynamics, the more natural lighting/atmosphere, the OSM scenery style and all the addon potential with that like Ortho4XP and particularly your pro sceneries Tony. Even default XP11 scenery (especially with the European buildings) is better than default P3D I almost bought Orbx's England and Germany North but then bought XP11 and use your pro sceneries.

However, my most common flights are VFRing around Canada/Alaska/Norway, and the orthos there are no good, and the default XP11 textures don't do it too great. Some of the freeware (especially NorwayPro) and payware scenery is great. But what Orbx does for me is create that immersion via the regional textures, land details, airport products and so on. I guess that's their product goal to make immersive scenery. Plus there's all the other amazing P3D addons. The addon advantage P3D has is pretty huge, but I have a positive outlook for XP, and it's got some great addons too, but my addon investment continues to be for P3D. For now, my simming is split depending on location - if it's England/Germany and surrounding areas I've ortho-ed then it's XP11; if it's Canada/Alaska/Norway/Australia then it's P3D. XP11's default scenery is pretty good for default, I do also particularly like the default aircraft flight dynamics, but I still wouldn't fly anywhere with just default scenery.

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On 5/26/2017 at 10:07 PM, Asheroo said:

if it's Canada/Alaska/Norway/Australia then it's P3D.

I did think that too at one time; but then I built about 40 gateway airports for my home province (Alberta) & another bunch for the neighboring ones (BC & Saskatchewan), so if I want to fly in my area of Canada, XP is automatically my choice simply due to the much better realistic airport availability. In regards to XP's default textures, I have absolutely no problem with most of BC, nor with huge swathes of Alberta or Saskatchewan. In fact, I far prefer XP when it comes to mountains & foothills; the ability to render sharp textures and mesh at far differences is definitely one of it's strengths.


Jim Stewart

Milviz Person.

 

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OOMs were never truly my main issue w p3d, it was the terrible stuttering and low performance on high end machines. Hours spent tweaking settings and cfg files to no avail, is what made me switch to xp, I had nearly given up on flightsimming after 20 + years. I am very pleased with XP11 , its too good to be true, it does have some quirks but its not frustrating for me, and totally kill my desire to continue like p3d had done. The new p3dv4 doesn't appear to be a huge step up but I will reserve judgement until I try it, but to be honest I don't need p3d ever again because xp11 is everything I require from a sim platform. 

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7900x3d , 64gb 6200mhz 30CL Ram, RTX 3080

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Great thread Tony!

There will always be a place for XP 11 in my SSD. I love flying the Airfoil Labs 172 at dusk and at night in DD NYC and the tri-state area. It's were I learned to fly IRL and XP 11's night lighting is second to none. I'd like to also see improved weather depiction, ATC for VFR & IFR ops, and seasons. But, even if doesn't happen, I'm happy with my $40+ investment.

As for P3D v4, I never embraced P3D because my FSX fully loaded looked better than P3D. P3D is expensive, they charge for updates, and some aircraft devs are charging for updates. I knew that the 32bit limitation would always be a problem and for those reasons I chose not to support P3D.

Now that P3D is a 64bit sim, I have to give it serious consideration. Most of my payware add-on will work and I will have to buy some airplanes again, and I'll need to upgrade my video card, but I will have better visuals (LOD) and OOM errors should be a thing of the past.

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A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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Hi Tony

Thanks for bringing this topic up. It is indeed exciting times in flight sim community. 

Sorry for being late to topic of this discussion but this more of general X plane topic, I thought the statement I made in specfic topic was suitable for this one as well.

If one major 3rd party capitalize on an opportunity others may follow. I think it would be better opportunity for 3rd party new sales as oppose to free or discounted upgrades. Kind of spread the wreath of add on's and competition.

I seen where some are looking and that is great.  They are gaps that can be filled by 3rd party in xplane that will doubt raise the bar for more quality add ons. 

Bob

 

 

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Will always have X-Plane for the great atmospherics and lighting. Have to say though I've been flying P3Dv4 with FTX England + Scotland and Active Sky P4, and it is a sight to behold (full sliders etc). LM have done a bang-up job there.

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But it's still MSFS FDM, still flatland at airports, still no realistic night lighting, still no good choppers to fly... It's Past... That's what actuallt both P3Dv4 and DTG's FSW are...

For that purpose, rather invest in FSW - a lot cheaper...

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1 hour ago, jcomm said:

But it's still MSFS FDM, still flatland at airports, still no realistic night lighting, still no good choppers to fly... It's Past... That's what actuallt both P3Dv4 and DTG's FSW are...

For that purpose, rather invest in FSW - a lot cheaper...

How are those moon phases in FSW?
:biggrin:

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3 hours ago, GoranM said:

How are those moon phases in FSW?
:biggrin:

I guess they're inherited from MSFS, so they're perpetual,and ok, contrarily to what we still have in XP, even with SMP v4 :-/   But heck, I'm waiting for a miracle from Austin one of these days :-)

XP's Earth is static around 2014... 

Since I have had proper daylight and Moon phases even in ELITE IFR for more than 15 yrs, and I have it in DCS and IL.2 Battle of Stalingrad, which are combat flight simulation games, and have it also perfect in Flight Gear, I really don't know why Austin left it that way until now... 

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Main Simulation Rig:

Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, 1 TB & 500 GB M.2 nvme drives, Win11.

Glider pilot since October 1980...

Avid simmer since 1992...

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1 hour ago, jcomm said:

Since I have had proper daylight and Moon phases even in ELITE IFR for more than 15 yrs, and I have it in DCS and IL.2 Battle of Stalingrad, which are combat flight simulation games, and have it also perfect in Flight Gear, I really don't know why Austin left it that way until now... 

Probably because he doesn't fly at night in real life, so it isn't a personal priority.

Probably the same reason the haze is so thick, because he flies his plane in South Carolina where there is a lot of atmospheric haze from humidity and air pollution (flowing down the Ohio valley), compared to other parts of the country.

Probably the same reason we don't have real thunderstorm modeling, because he flies GA and avoids bad weather.

On the other hand, at least we're getting better turboprop modeling because he now flies a PT-6 engine plane. So there are some positive aspects of the "personal touch" in this sim.  :happy:

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X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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25 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Probably because he doesn't fly at night in real life, so it isn't a personal priority.

Probably the same reason the haze is so thick, because he flies his plane in South Carolina where there is a lot of atmospheric haze from humidity and air pollution (flowing down the Ohio valley), compared to other parts of the country.

Probably the same reason we don't have real thunderstorm modeling, because he flies GA and avoids bad weather.

On the other hand, at least we're getting better turboprop modeling because he now flies a PT-6 engine plane. So there are some positive aspects of the "personal touch" in this sim.  :happy:

So... we need to turn Austin into a planespotter to get AI traffic then, I guess?

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26 minutes ago, domae001 said:

So... we need to turn Austin into a planespotter to get AI traffic then, I guess?

Yes! At least during part of the year for the sake of AI traffic. Then for weather, we need to turn him into a Tornado Hunter in the Summer months, bashing around the Midwest in a pickup truck. And in the Fall and early Winter, turn him into a bush pilot out here in the PNW, so he'd see the storms out here. 


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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On 5/25/2017 at 3:41 AM, tonywob said:

As I'm sure everyone is aware, P3D v4 was announced for release next week, and FSW early-access was released, finally bringing all our sims to 64-Bit. It's a pretty exciting time, we have several new sims out, something that is a far cry to a few years ago when MS Flight was cancelled. I think now is a crucial point, as many people are trying out all of these sims and trying to decide which platform to put their hard-earned cash into. Some of us will just run many sims at once, but others seem very reluctant to support more than one sim.

Whilst P3D is aimed at the professional market, it has the added advantage that many addons will be available for it (ORBX, A2A and PMDG are offering free upgrades from v3). This is a pretty smart move and means there is going to be less incentive for users to try out another platform such as X-Plane 11, FSW or Aerofly FS2. (FSW is, I fear, going to need to change their addons policy to be able to compete with this)

It's not hard to see that the X-Plane community has grown a lot over the past year, but where do people think X-Plane could go now in order to attract more users and grab some of the market, attract new developers and stay relevant?. For me, I'd like to see:

  • For X-Plane to keep a good separation between game and sim. I like the way the UI is simple to use, but doesn't gamify it (Like with FSW which reminds users they'll loose rewards if you don't choose a destination airport).  I like P3D's no-frills interface as well.
  • More study-level aircraft. The recently announced A320 was good news. 
  • VR support. But we know this is coming soon
  • Better weather depiction. I'd like to see more complex weather supported. I think the default clouds in XP11 look really good
  • Better addon scenery. Compared to their P3D counterparts, a lot of payware scenery is lower quality but costs the same price. However, there have been some really nice airports released lately, so I think the bar has been raised here
  • Ability to customise the mesh locally per airport. I think this effects the creativity of many developers which maybe why some addons seem lower quality.

Some things I think X-Plane has spot-on are:

  • The visuals and lighting. X-Plane 11 is just a gorgeous sim, even on default scenery. 
  • Ease of development. It is very easy to make addons for the sim, with a big community behind it. I find the SDK for FSX/P3D cumbersome to use, and I like the fact that with X-Plane you can create scenery easily using completely free software (Blender, etc)
  • Multi-platform. I'm happy it works on Mac OS X and Windows. It also runs on Linux, but many devs don't release Linux addons
  • The freeware community. Just look at the tools and scenery available for the sim, for free. The airport gateway is a huge success, and it's great to see people adding their own airports for inclusion into the base sim.
  • Laminar Research. This one might seem strange, but I like their enthusiasm (especially Austin's). The developer blog is always interesting to read, and it's great that users can interact with the developers and get their feedback heard. LR are pretty open on what they are working on

 

 

At their core, FSX, P3D v4, and FSW are the same flight simulation.   If the DTG developer does the right thing (no restriction on addons)  they should be first option for those looking at P3D or FSW.   Most are not using the license for P3D  properly ... you can buy FSW without any worry about proper use of license.

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46 minutes ago, Tierborn said:

At their core, FSX, P3D v4, and FSW are the same flight simulation.   If the DTG developer does the right thing (no restriction on addons)  they should be first option for those looking at P3D or FSW.   Most are not using the license for P3D  properly ... you can buy FSW without any worry about proper use of license.

Well, that's the problem with FSW though. They are making restrictions on addons. Lots of them:

  • All FSW addons must be sold on Steam as well as any outside outlet. Good exposure there, and high volume might make up for the 60% sales cut for Steam and DTG. However, it's still a barrier to pass before you can sell anything. DTG can reject addons they don't deem appropriate as Steam DLC, which presumably blocks any outside sales.
     
  • All FSW addons must have licenses paid to the manufacturers for use of plane and avionics names, company trademarks and logos. That's a heavy burden for one-man shop developers, not to mention any free user-made addons.
     
  • On top of all that, the Steam DLC store is a lousy way to sell addons. It's a flat list, where DTG controls who is listed first. There is no categorization, and it gets very cumbersome past a few dozen listings. See the DTG train sim's DLC page for an example. How is that going to work with the volume of addons you're used to now with FSX, P3D, or XP? 

None of these restrictions apply to developers of addons for FSX, P3Dv4 or XP11. So if you were a 3rd party developer, where would you be focusing?

In general terms, I do hope FSW is successful. I think competition in a market is healthy. But I have to wonder what DTG is actually aiming for. With these restrictions, it doesn't seem like they want it to be an actual successor to FSX, which is what all the FSX fans have been hoping for.

It looks to me more like DTG is just trying to carve out a small niche on Steam, based mainly on Steam users who aren't already flight sim enthusiasts. Maybe it grows from there, maybe not. Maybe remaining an "FS Lite" with a few piston props is enough to sustain sales. Another possibility is that they're making a long-term gamble on LM either closing shop on P3D, or tightening up the qualifications. That would make FSW the only 64-bit platform for the legacy FSX crowd. And also, of course, betting that Laminar doesn't eventually eat everyone's lunch, as XP continues moving forward.

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X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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