P3DV4 or XP11?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Price did not matter much.  I had more money invested in FSX with my add-ons there.  So far I feel I got what I paid for.  I also found something unexpected.  I had a Coaster Simulation, "No Limits", on my old system.  I emailed the company last night asking if they would give a new upload link on account of my computer crash.  They did, I was amazed they remembered me as a customer after all these years.  So I loaded that sim too and it runs twice as good as it did on my old system.  Vendors really do support you if you write nice and patiently to them, and it is nice to be trusted by the No Limits team, they stand by their small user base.  In the case of Carenado however I will pay for a new license to the small group of A/C that I want.  I am so happy that P3D worked out with no tweaks whatsoever.  It looks like they took interest in giving pp what they want, a path forward from FSX.

John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I repurchased the Carenado Mirage.  It might be the only add-on aircraft I'll have, it just fits in to so many missions and it has good flight dynamics.  I stretched the settings in P3D as far as they could go, minus the AI.  I did not need to apply any Nvidia tweaks, got the look and feel I had in the tweaked FSX using P3D's slider options.

Now I will think about adding at least California, Nevada and Arizona photoreal scenery to the sim.  I expect the visuals to be great given what I have seen so far.

About done with today's research and product deployment.  I'll take a look at the XP11 demo next.

John

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

1 hour ago, Cactus521 said:

I repurchased the Carenado Mirage.  It might be the only add-on aircraft I'll have, it just fits in to so many missions and it has good flight dynamics

That's a beautiful airplane.  Fast and high over the mountains. 

[jcomm 5,920]

Both useless, if you want to "FEEL THE FILGHT"...

Get Aerowinx PSX, for the 744 tubeliner experience, and DCS World and / or IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban, for the unique feel of being there under the controls of a powerful prop aircraft, or heli or jet fighter ( in DCS )...

The rest is kindergarten....  

 

[Britfrog 37]

7 hours ago, Murmur said:

Hi Cactus,

please don't believe those who say that "the only nice thing about XP11 is the night lighting and orthoscenery", it actually has a lot more than that.

In general terms, it depends on the type of flying that you do. For airliners operations, P3D has an advantage for various reasons, among them better ATC and AI. But there are many people who regularly fly airliner ops in XP without issues.

For GA flying, the playing field is more leveled between the two for various reasons. You'll find P3D is better for some things, and XP for others.

One difference is that XP has a lot more freeware available. In other words, it can be significantly expanded and improved using only (or almost only freeware). So if money is a significant factor, that's one thing to think about.

If you're interested in photoscenery, adding photoscenery in XP for every part of the world you like is just clicks away. It can also be easily integrated with 3D buildings from OpenStreetMap.

The rendering engine of X-Plane has some differences compared to P3D. In my opinion, it's much better not only at night, but also during daylight. One difference is that in X-Plane you _can't_ have blurries. Stutters reports are also much rarer in XP.

Its aircrafts feature a realistic GPS 430/530 as default. A realistic G1000 is also expected in the near future.

Some limitations of XP:

.no seasons

.rain and snow depiction is very poor

.sometimes water has repeating patterns visible

.crosswind operations are unrealistically difficult for most aircrafts.

Should you be curious to try X-Plane in the future, you can download the demo at www.x-plane.com. You can even install most addons in the demo (except for scenery outside of Seattle area).

Keep in mind that there is a big optimization work going on behind the scenes for the next year or so, so X-Plane performance (in terms of fps and smoothness) is going to improve during the following releases in the next months.So, should you be dissatisfied with the performance of your simulator of choice at any given time, this is another thing to consider in trying X-Plane.

Have nice flights!

 

 

Nice to see an intelligent critique!! Personally although I have both my gut feeling is that XP will make the most progress in the months ahead driven by the large amount of free software available (look at fs9 , still being used for this reason) neither though are as complete a package as FSX is at the moment, because that does what it says on the label but it is only a matter of time before either XP or P3D fix their shortcomings after which FSX will be slowly retired , much as we did with FS9.

[romangeber 23]

Hi

I use both sims and they both have their own ups and downs. I'll make this quick:

P3Dv4

+ Very reliable sim. I ran it for days on end just to stress test it. No CDT, no error messages, no memory leaks, etc
+ Great add-on market. OrbX, FlighBeam, FSDT, etc. make for a great scenery experience. Aircraft add-ons are a bit thin right now. Only PMDG is really up and running at the moment but FlightBeam, Majestic, etc will follow soon. And then there are of course Carenado, etc. So do your research on planes available that you need.
+ Well supported by commercial products (PFPX, etc).
+ Commercial high end add-ons (e.g. PMDG, OrbX) are well tested and don't cause issues

- Almost no freeware
- Add-ons (especially planes) are expensive. PMDG and Flightbeam for example charge hefty premiums for P3D.

 

XP11:

+ Fantastic freeware scenery available. Thousands of packages are available many of which are quite stunning
+ Much cheaper to run than P3D. I spent more money on two generations of P3D than X-Plane since version 7. And I spent A LOT of money on the sims.
+ Comes with great default aircraft. The C172 and the 737-800 are very enjoyable aircraft.
+ Great development tools. Make your own scenery with WED, use Aircraft Maker to build or paint your own planes/liveries, etc.

- Default weather is a bit simple and even expensive add-ons like XEnviro don't really fix it to the point where ActiveSky can take you
- Payware planes are good but usually nowhere near the PMDG gold standard. Still some are great!
- Autogen can be a bit slow. So I usually restrict it to a lower level which has an impact
- XP11 has dumbed down options. In XP10 one could set a lot more details. Now it's condensed to a few sliders and one can't really make fine tuned adjustments anymore. P3D has more options here.
 

Best Payware aircraft: IXDG (733), FlightFactor (767, 757), Aerobask (Panthera, Ecplise 550NG)
Note on JAR: A330 and A320 have annoying bugs like A/P disconnect issues, etc. One can work around them however. Still not my first recommendation.

Feel free to ask for specifics.

My System: i7 7700K @ 4.8GHz, Nvidia 1080GTX 8GB, 32GB RAM. Both sims run one stop short of max settings.

cu
Roman

[Luis_KMIA 242]

I have both platforms, but since I only fly PMDG, I rely on P3Dv4.  If PMDG does eventually make one of its jets available on XP11, I'd love to give it a try.  

[Paraffin 2,197]

6 hours ago, romangeber said:

- XP11 has dumbed down options. In XP10 one could set a lot more details. Now it's condensed to a few sliders and one can't really make fine tuned adjustments anymore. P3D has more options here.

FYI, most of the previous detailed options (and a few more) are still available to the user and can be automatically set with a LUA script.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/35733-xp-11-advanced-settings/

It's a pain to do it this way compared to the previous UI, but only has to be done once, after you figure out your preferred settings.

The reason XP11's new user interface simplified the settings was basically to ease the tech support for Laminar, so fewer people made settings that dropped the frame rate more than necessary. Laminar is putting a big push on now for performance optimization, partly aimed at the upcoming native VR support, where frame rates have to be really high. With the older settings menu, it was possible to set options that conflict with each other and kill the frame rate. The new sliders are linked in a way that prevents that. But you can still dig under the hood if you really want to.

Here's a more detailed explanation on the dev blog for anyone interested:

http://developer.x-plane.com/2017/01/where-have-all-my-settings-gone/

[romangeber 23]

Thanks @Paraffin that's very interesting. I'll give it a try.

cu
Roman

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I like the XP-11 screenshots I see in the screenshots forum.  Reason I went with P3d is it is a known, comfortable sim.  I cannot find how to manually adjust the wind layers there however, just the cloud layers.  In FSX there was a menu for the wind layers.  I must be missing something, I can't imagine them taking that out.

So far P3d has been very stable.  No blurries, good use of aniso filtering and AA, did not have to drop to Nvidia settings to manipulate those.

I am running max textures, max mesh, max scenery detail, just no Autogen or AI.  Still impressed with performance, much better fps than FSX had on my old rig.  I am surprised that 3.6 GHZ makes that big of a difference over 2.3 GHZ, shows how cpu bound the sim is.  The sim works great with my bundled 1060 GTX even though it only has 3 Gigs memory.   A bit weaker than the older card on my system.  HWMonitor shows it running at nominal temps with the sim running.  My no limits coaster sim also likes the GTX card, has double the fps vs. my old system.  I can run two tracks simultaneously there now.  If you like stunt flying I can't recommend No Limits enough, it's a great sim, constantly given attention by the author.

Those are the only two sims I have, plus Hoyle Card games.  Chose what I use the most.  Also downloaded my own programs, Spirapaint and Mirrorart from Cnet.  They required install of Comdlg32.ocx in the system folder, had to then regsvr32 it as an admin to get the two programs to work.  Written under Win95 in VB they still work on Windows 10 after developing them 10 years ago.  I wrote them as tools to teach children and teens how math can be used to create computer art.  Main reason I want to recover the old PC is to get access to the source again in case I ever modify them.

John

[Murmur 3,941]

9 hours ago, jcomm said:

Both useless, if you want to "FEEL THE FILGHT"...

Get Aerowinx PSX, for the 744 tubeliner experience, and DCS World and / or IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad/Moscow/Kuban, for the unique feel of being there under the controls of a powerful prop aircraft, or heli or jet fighter ( in DCS )...

The rest is kindergarten.... 

The usual exaggerated reply... "useless"... "kindergarten"... Not everyone is interested in having custom flight models or the smalled details of flight model or systems simulated. Maybe someone would "FEEL THE FLIGHT" more using photoscenery, or being immersed in realistic IFR operations with AI traffic, than aimlessly flying a P51 or a fighter jet. And I have the suspect that when I see such contemptuous judgements on other products, the person doing them is actually very unsure and in need of being self-reassured... Otherwise I feel no need to give such a harsh judgement on another product behind which there are people trying to do their best, be it XP, P3D or any other sim.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Interesting, I loaded my Colorado Photoreal scenery from the library here, (Glad I backed it up here) and it shows just fine, the Megascenery demo doesn't.  It may be because their scenery is layered too deep, I created a scenery folder called "Photoreal Scenery", with a scenery subfolder, then copied all the Colorado bgl's there, only difference from my old system is I copied them to a separate partition from the P3D main install folder.  I will try copying the Megascenery bgl's there, since I prefer having all my photoreal scenery in one place anyway for easy backup.  Glad I got Colorado installed again,  hours of scenic VFR flying there.  For those interested, Colorado is here hosted at Avsim, eight files in all to download in keeping with Avsim's library rules.  My trike is there also, just search on "Ultralight Trike" and you'll find it in the library.  I have many different models, with fairings, without, with strutted wings and regular wings.  Flys nice in P3d, takes off at just above 20mph and cruises at 45mph.

John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I tried copying the Megascenery files over to my folder, no luck with those.  Only my Colorado scenery appears in the sim, sad because it means I can't get Megascenery products, won't invest in the full version if they don't work.  Not sure what the issue is, should work but it does not.  I can try reinstalling FSEarthtiles, better bet would be to recover my old computer and get the other files from there, don't know when I'll be able to do that.  I'd have to get a null modem cable and copy the files thru my lan.  Will wait to do that until I have my new PC fully burned in over the next several weeks.

Good news is my Colorado scenery works much better on my new rig.  No blurries and they load much faster than my old rig, seconds rather than minutes.  I bought a gaming rig, not ultra high end but I knew the specs would work based on seeing other's specs here in the forums.  Windows 10 also loads up fast, in seconds from a cold and dark boot.

John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Spent a few hours with P3d now and my Mirage.  Only wierd thing is it seems my trim is not fully working from my joystick, so I just use the keyboard trim controls, less distracting anyway.  My eight year old AV8r was recognized right away by Windows 10.  It just worked.  I first tried it out on Google Earth's crude flightsim, which although it seems untrimable offers great photoreal coverage and fps when flying.  I wish I knew how to lock side view in place, can't seem to do that.

Trying to think which Carenado bizjet I wish to install.  I am leaning towards either the Premier1 or the Citation.  Something to cover ground faster than the Mirage.  Or I might try Eaglesoft's Mustang which is a good aircraft from all accounts.

Enough P3d coverage, back to flying!

John

[JYW 2,980]

Hi John,

You're referring to "repurchasing" your addons but if you were previously using FSX, many of your addons will provide P3D compatibility too - without the need to repurchase.

In fact the Carenado Mirage is one package for FSX and P3D so I'm not sure why you needed to repurchase?

http://www.carenado.com/CarSite/Portal/index.php

^ ^ ^ ...... the product is compatible with FSX and P3D;  you probably just needed to download the latest installer (that includes the P3Dv4 installation).

For your trim - make sure the "repeat" check box is ticked for your button assignment, in the P3D Control settings.