Now the cat is out of the bag!

[tonywob 4,768]

5 minutes ago, Boomer said:

To be competitive XP11 will need to improve ATC and AI, so that the commercial airliner environment is simulated.

Yep, or at least for a third-parties to create some decent addons to do this much better. 

2 minutes ago, Airfighter said:

That's the most impossible. I had that conversation about that with Ben over developers' blog... The only way to make that possible is to change the dsf system for 1 degree to 0.1 degrees.

I'm sure they get asked for it all the time and I hope they can come up with some sort of solution for XP12, perhaps some sort of patching ability, but I can imagine this would very complicated to implement efficiently. The situation is complicated even more now because many users now create their own meshes using Ortho4XP.

[Airfighter 150]

31 minutes ago, Boomer said:

To be competitive XP11 will need to improve ATC and AI, so that the commercial airliner environment is simulated.

http://124thatc.matacchieri.eu/

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, Boomer said:

To be competitive XP11 will need to improve ATC and AI, so that the commercial airliner environment is simulated.

Isn't XP already compatible with Vatsim and Pilotedge? That's surely the most realistic option for ATC (when there's coverage). If you prefer offline flying like me, the already mentioned 124th ATC is a good enough solution considering it's free. For AI traffic I'm looking at World Traffic V3, which is in development but sounds promising. I never found AI traffic to be truly essential for an airliner environment though - ATC's job is precisely to keep them away from you when you're in the air. It's nice to look at though.

[GoranM 3,762]

2 hours ago, domae001 said:

As I am not a dev, I cannot really judge this, but something seems to keep the big devs very firmly commited to the ESP platform. One thing might be their experience with these tools, which gives them an advantage over new devs, while in XP they'd be the novices. The other thing seems to be that LM does a good job at keeping 3PDs in the loop and on board. I have the feeling LR could learn a little bit in that department. (Then again: Austin is constantly optimizing the flight model, which easily breaks stuff that is not easy to fix, while P3D hasn't changed a single thing in that regard AFAIK, making Devs' lifes very easy, but not necessarily improving the sim).

Yeah.  Larger market.  That's it.  That's what keeps FSX developers on the ESP platform.  Larger market = more $$$'s.  MSFS gained popularity much earlier than X Plane did.  With a budget as big as it had, it doesn't surprise me.  

 

[Chock 17,769]

To me it's a no brainer. XP needs better functionality for IFR operations. That is to say, good IFR flight planning, much better ATC and better weather depiction. Some of this can sort of be addressed with payware, but even in doing that the IFR experience pales by comparison to what is available even in MS Flight Sim 2004.

We've got some truly excellent airliners for XP, some of the Flight Factors ones are better than anything you can get for any other flight sim at all, but when you can't operate them as you should, even when spending additional cash on plug ins, then there is no way hardcore airliner simmers will ever abandon other sims in favour of XP and it will always be doomed to be regarded as 'the other sim'. and make no mistake, all those hardcore IFR simmers are the ones XP needs as users in order to see it progress.

[GoranM 3,762]

1 minute ago, Chock said:

To me it's a no brainer. XP needs better functionality for IFR operations. That is to say, good IFR flight planning, much better ATC and better weather depiction. Some of this can sort of be addressed with payware, but even in doing that the IFR experience pales by comparison to what is available even in MS Flight Sim 2004.

We've got some truly excellent airliners for XP, some of the Flight Factors ones are better than anything you can get for any other flight sim at all, but when you can't operate them as you should, even when spending additional cash on plug ins, then there is no way hardcore airliner simmers will ever abandon other sims in favour of XP.

Without getting into a debate, agree to disagree.

[Chock 17,769]

11 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Without getting into a debate, agree to disagree.

Fair enough, but I find it strange that someone would disagree that a flight simulator should have a decent flight planner and decent ATC available since they are fundamental to what the thing is supposedly simulating.

[GoranM 3,762]

ATC

https://www.pilotedge.net/

Flight Planners.  There are several.

[tonywob 4,768]

For IFR operations in GA aircraft, I think default X-Plane is great. When I went back to FSX some years ago, I picked up a few aircraft from Carenado to practice procedures and IFR flights. I had to purchase an additional  GPS from RealityXP (which wasn't updatable) and then also to make it a smooth experience, some gauges which didn't come cheap. Adding to that, I had to purchase a decent camera system. I had a nice setup in the end, but it wasn't easy to do and cost more than I paid for the sim.

With X-Plane 11, the default Cessna and the updatable GPS is something I really wish I had in those days as it easily beats what I used to have, and it's all default. The instruments are much more fluid, and the camera system made it much easier as well.

For realistic ATC, I don't think any particular addon is good enough, and it's necessary to use something like PilotEdge or Vatsim if it's something you are serious about simulating. Anyone who has doubts about just how good X-Plane GA can be, checkout this channel http://www.ontheglideslope.net/. He often uses PilotEdge and has done some IFR flights, and besides the ATC, everything else needed is default (or free), and along with his amazing basement setup, it's quite convincing.

For Jets, it was probably once a different story, but there are some very detailed addons now for X-Plane, and more are coming. I don't often fly jets in either sim, but to me the experience in both has been pretty much the same, but it depends on how much you want to simulate here. 

 

 

[JimmiG 244]

For me, it's actually the VFR environment that needs to improve. In X-Plane, you can fly IFR and get stalked by bombers, but that's about it. There are no GA aircraft on actual flight plans or doing touch and go's, which makes small airports feel pretty dead and abandoned.

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, GoranM said:

ATC

https://www.pilotedge.net/

Flight Planners.  There are several.

Yes, but I said built-in stuff, i.e. in the program, as a part of the cost (which is a not inconsiderable 60 quid, that is to say about the same as a p3d academic licence and three times the cost of FSX-SE, both of which offer all that functionality by default). So, not payware or subscription functions, not least because I am not intersted in a subscription service. Even FS2002 has ATC and IFR flight planning built in for chrissakes and that was nearly 20 years ago.

With regard to payware flight planners and such for X-Plane, most of them are not that great, I know, I've tried them and bought a couple which I thought might do the job. Goodway is about the best of the bunch but one still has to try to get it to gel with the ATC, which ain't that great and frequently vectors you into terrain. JARDesign's functions for ATC and flight planning are severely limited and often won't let you create or file a plan to an airport which isn't on a very limited list of ones approved for it, for example, it will not let me file plans to LEAM, and that is one of the major tourist destination airports in Andalusia, so we are not talking somewhere obscure here, numerous major European airlines operate from there.

Crank up even an old version of FS and simply type in departure and destination airports, choose IFR low or high altitude routing and click 'find route' and bob's yer uncle, it is done and ATC will direct that flight, all built in, takes maybe ten seconds. Now it's not perfect, but it is at least in there and works, easily. What is so difficult about sticking something like that in X-Plane so i can operate my (amazingly impressive, in fact probably my favourite flight sim aircraft of all time) Flight Factor's A350 properly?

Developers such as Flight Factors knock the ball right out of the park and are every bit as good as anything FSL or PMDG have ever done, yet they are stuck in a sim which lets them down massively in terms of supporting functionality. I wouldn't be saying that if it were not true and everybody knows it, for if it were not true, heavy metal simmers would be moving to X-Plane in droves, because it has so many good features too, such as proper terrain following runways etc, which make the FS ones look like a joke.

[GoranM 3,762]

Come on, Alan.  Are you seriously going to tell me that default ATC in FS2002 was...good?  You've got to give me a little more credit than that.  Even default FSX ATC was garbage.  The couple of times I tried it, I was getting vectored into all kinds of zig zag patterns and I still have nightmares about Orbit Airlines.  

Ever since I discovered Vatsim, I never even thought about permanently going back to default ATC for ANY sim.  Now with Pilot Edge, ATC is extremely realistic.  I've even heard some of the guys on Pilot Edge are real world ATC controllers who do Pilot Edge to practise keeping their vectoring sharp.

 

 

[FlyBaby 659]

I recently stated that XP and FSW would be the front runners in the flight sim race, but now I see that P3Dv4 has autogen out to the horizon.

For me, (GA and Heli Flying), the ground aspect is very important. XP's 3D world has been unmatched (IMO) until now.

In an instant, XP (to me) is now seriously falling way behind in the LOD spectrum.

XP does not have autogen out to the horizon, nor do they have clouds out to the horizon, P3Dv4 now has both!

I still only fly XP10 (waiting for a more stable XP11 release) and I have very simple needs (SR22 and helis are all that I fly). I may have to switch back to P3Dv4 before committing to XP11. I think that XP is far ahead in many aspects (3D world, lighting, water etc), but autogen and clouds to the horizon (with smooth performance) is something that can't be overlooked!

 

[Chock 17,769]

I'm not saying it is perfect by any stretch, and personally I use Pro ATC X, EFB etc for all that malarkey in FS, but what I am saying is that it is there, and if one doesn't want to use it, then there are a plethora of payware choices which are excellent alternatives. Not so with X-Plane, either built in or payware, the stuff just isn't there, believe I've tried to find it. If there was some stuff like that for X-Plane, then all those many FS users who have spent years asking the likes of PMDG to make a 757 and a 767 would be over to X-Plane in seconds, because it has a superb 757 and a superb 767, 777, A320, 737, 727, CRJ etc all good to go right now, and most of those blow anything FS or P3D has out of the water.

All it takes is LR to either collar a TPD to make some ATC and planning stuff like that for XP, or do it themselves and they've cracked it, that's why I said it was a no brainer.

[MikeT707 1,181]

For me it would be better generic visuals in terms of having high end regional ground textures supported by a good variety of regional buildings, houses, vegitation and other autogen structures. Orbx would have provided this, but unfortunately for the XP consumer base, Austin had to be a total jerk to John Venema at Orbx and publicly scold him on some prior comments that John had made, to which John promptly ended his plans to work on the much needed enhancements to XP. I feel many people lost out on that, but at least Austin got to proclaim how great XP11 was.