Xplane and my simming future

[CarlosF 1,235]

9 hours ago, jcomm said:

Which woman is perfect ?  Mine :-)

[irrics 1,517]

I'm honestly stunned anyone finds the current XP weather "good enough".

It's awful guys.  C'mon now..

We all love XP, but let's call a spade a spade here..

Both the ATC and Weather situation are way short of where I think one could reasonably hope they'd be in 2018.

[jcomm 5,890]

20 hours ago, CarlosF said:

True, but keep in mind that most sims if not all, just don't do well in this arena, you have to purchase an addon.

For me, xEnviro meets my needs and eventually with the latest 1.08 update coming soon, should look/handle weather even better.

 

 

Seriously considering giving it a fair try... But it's a bit too expensive :-/

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, alpilotx said:

And now ... think  about it ... where does that magical FPS come from ?

My simple magic: there is no such thing as free beer .... You always have to pay one way or another. Even with our fastest GPUs you still have to decide between eye candy or FPS ... (to some degree ... and depending on your poreferences).

That 'magical' FPS comes from a new and modern graphic system. Simple as that. There is no magic here. It's simple logic. Where did you think it came from? With AFS2 I do not have to choose between eye candy and FPS, not even in the Q400 (which is pretty advanced for a default plane) and a very detailed area as Orbx LOWI. I have all graphic sliders on ultra and performance refuses to dip below 100 (when I am not using vsync). (I will check my FPS the next time without vsync.) Yes, I do have a 1080 (no Ti) but my CPU and the rest of my PC is almost 4 years old. In XP and P3D I can't even get the performance I get in AFS2 when I set all sliders fully left. Of course AFS2 is lacking a lot of features (there is a reason why P3D is my main sim) but the headroom it has is gigantic.

EDIT
Just checked: here are some screenshots taken while flying the Q400 over Orbx LOWI/Innsbruck. The fps is in the lower right corner. (Screenshots are posted as links because I don't want to pollute the XP forum with AFS2 screenshots. ) Anyway, as I said, lots of heardoom still. Try this in P3D.

http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/04/05/20180404192127_1.jpg
http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/04/05/20180404192242_1.jpg
http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/04/05/20180404192615_1.jpg
http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/04/05/20180404192248_1.jpg

Edited April 4, 2018 by Guest

[soaring_penguin 428]

1 hour ago, irrics said:

I'm honestly stunned anyone finds the current XP weather "good enough".

It's awful guys.  C'mon now..

We all love XP, but let's call a spade a spade here..

Both the ATC and Weather situation are way short of where I think one could reasonably hope they'd be in 2018.

I agree with you about ATC, but for VFR, the weather is more then adequate, and has not those awfull rotating sprites you see in the "other" sim.

Some add-ons try to mimic that and call it super realistic.  I don't buy it! They are awfull! 

 

Clouds are volumetric, not flat bitmaps.

Clouds, you fly through, it is not some nice painting on a blue wall far away.

Clouds have all kind of shades, they are not pristine white. 

 

I never liked clouds in FSX, most of the time, I turned them off. I could not stand seeing them rotate to face me all the time. Also you could see the paper thin bitmaps while flying through them. 

X-Plane at least makes an attempt to make nice, fluffy, volumetric, clouds. Could it be better ? Yes, for example towering cumulus would be a nice addition. But otherwise, they are a big improvement.

[jcomm 5,890]

20 hours ago, CarlosF said:

True, but keep in mind that most sims if not all, just don't do well in this arena, you have to purchase an addon.

For me, xEnviro meets my needs and eventually with the latest 1.08 update coming soon, should look/handle weather even better.

 

 

Seriously considering giving it a fair try... But it's a bit too expensive :-/

 

[jcomm 5,890]

20 hours ago, CarlosF said:

True, but keep in mind that most sims if not all, just don't do well in this arena, you have to purchase an addon.

For me, xEnviro meets my needs and eventually with the latest 1.08 update coming soon, should look/handle weather even better.

 

 

Seriously considering giving it a fair try... But it's a bit too expensive :-/

 

[irrics 1,517]

10 minutes ago, jh71 said:

I agree with you about ATC, but for VFR, the weather is more then adequate, and has not those awfull rotating sprites you see in the "other" sim.

 

I think why we are at different levels of satisfaction is that I don't even consider FSX/P3D in this comparison.

 

I consider XP to be on a different level all together and, fair or not, I'm comparing real world weather and experiences with XP and that's where my continual extreme disappointment comes in.

[soaring_penguin 428]

17 minutes ago, irrics said:

 

I think why we are at different levels of satisfaction is that I don't even consider FSX/P3D in this comparison.

 

I consider XP to be on a different level all together and, fair or not, I'm comparing real world weather and experiences with XP and that's where my continual extreme disappointment comes in.

ok, in that case, I agree with you. Most people that complain about XP weather, compare it with FSX, and think that is the holy grail. I only assumed you did too.

I am afraid nothing comes close to real flying through real air. If you search that in a desktop sim, I am afraid you will always be disappointed and will become the second uninstaller on this forum.

[Murmur 3,941]

27 minutes ago, J van E said:

That 'magical' FPS comes from a new and modern graphic system. Simple as that. There is no magic here. It's simple logic.

In XP and P3D I can't even get the performance I get in AFS2 when I set all sliders fully left.

AFS2 is still lacking many visual effects:

.) Global lighting (necessitating deferred rendering); it doesn't even have landing lights;

.) Water waves (and water reflections);

.) Terrain self-shadowing;

.) Atmospheric scattering.

All of these effects remain active in XP even with all sliders to the left.

Neverthless, IPACS did a wonderful job in maximizing the "visual return" in common flight situations, even if the rendering engine lacks those effects. All those limitations become more evident for example when the sun is low (no terrain shadowing), over water, at sunset/night (no lights), at high altitude (no scattering), etc.

Now, my subjective opinion is that, even if IPACS would implement all of these effects, AFS2 would probably still have a performance advantage, because max performance has always been their first priority. It's just that the headroom it appears to have, is actually smaller than it seems, even if it's still probably there. Especially considering that the switch of XP to Vulkan should improve its performance.

 

[janbergwall01 10]

On 2018-04-03 at 5:43 PM, costamesa said:

Is it fixed? No. So, people will keep on talking. people paid money for this.

Not all the problems of xenviro are related to LR. No option for custom or historical weather or no option for a flight plan. A weather software without these options are like a flight simulation with no "sufficient" weather model. Come on you dont even get to see destination airport weather data until you get close enough.

Why don't use Little Navigator Map? Here you have a fantastic tool, including moving maps, easy to make flightplans including sid/start, weather from NOAA, all kinds of info regarding com, airways, airport facts and so fort. Flightplans can be exported to more or less all kind of aircraft in X-plane and is represented in Navigraph for updating AIRACS. And it will show you top of descent if you are flying GA.

You can check the weather at destination even before take off.

The best thing?: IT IS FREE!

[janbergwall01 10]

1 hour ago, irrics said:

 

I think why we are at different levels of satisfaction is that I don't even consider FSX/P3D in this comparison.

 

I consider XP to be on a different level all together and, fair or not, I'm comparing real world weather and experiences with XP and that's where my continual extreme disappointment comes in.

It's interesting to see people comparing old FSX or P3D with addons for hundreds or more dollars with vanilla X-Plane. FSX weather in vanilla mode is horrible and for a while a couple of years ago, you could not even get online weather since the servers was broken for a long period of time.

I have done the step over to X-plane about a year ago, and I'm not looking back. I had well over 1000 dollars of addons worth, but was fed up with microstutters and cartoon ground colors. And the absolutely flat runways...

There are tons of freeware from gifted users in X-Plane and the only thing I've invested in is xEnviro and Aerobasks fleet of GA plus FF A320 U. Zibo B737 is for free. And not far from PMDG's B737.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Murmur said:

Especially considering that the switch of XP to Vulkan should improve its performance.

This I am very interested in...!

[ryanbatc 12,814]

Didn't they fix the ability to see ground lights when you're in imc in xp?  I feel like I can still see lights through overcast.  Although some times you can in real life if it's a thin layer.

[tonywob 4,768]

Lights are still showing through the clouds for me. I hope xEnviro 1.08 fixes this as it's a bit of an immersion killer for flying at night in IMC.