Why I can't decide

[John_Cillis 2,406]

In 1984, when I bought my first computer, the "portable Commodore SX-64" with a built in five inch screen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_SX-64), LOL, I dreamed of what flight sims might become.  I bought the computer at my oldest brother's urging for $500, he told me over and over again how important it was to learn computing.  I did NOT want to become a computer nerd or video game Nut.  But my brother insisted.  I had just come home from a month long trip to Europe in 1984, which tanked my bank account leaving about $600 left over.  I made the plunge, and bought the computer simply because of Sublogic's stencil graphic flightsim. 

As time went on I studied simming in earnest.  I switched from a Commodore to an Atari ST, a color knockoff of the Apple computer.  I got the Atari ST for the next version of Flightsim, which had framerates that jumped from the 4-8 fps of the C64 to over 18fps, so "fluid", LOL!

To backtrack, in 1983 I interviewed at a hotel, I wanted to move from a low paying retail, part time job to a higher paying, full time job at a hotel.  I was asked if I worked on computers, I said no, and never heard from them again.  Two years later, after my brother had me buy a computer, I was still fresh and learning, I went back to that hotel.  Once again, I was asked if I worked on computers, to which I replied "I own one".  I was hired on the SPOT.  I became their Rooms manager, and programmed all their sales and marketing data using code similar to Fortran or RPG.

I was not, and still am mostly not, set out to be a programmer.  I became a business systems teacher, traveling worldwide for the tourism industry, and along the way joined Avsim and got to know Tom Allensworth.  During my brief visits at home, and picking up a beautiful bride during my journeys, who worked for an airline (of course but we did not join the mile high club), I passionately simmed and eventually was asked to be a forum mod.  I was given high privleges but due to my work at that time, I just could not handle the dual pro bono roles.  I pleaded with Tom to make me a Muggle again, and he did.  Maybe I will become a mod here again if asked, I believe in fair and open exchange of our community and hobby.

To get to the point, I just love Xplane11 and P3DV4 to death. They both have different approaches, but great hands holding up us student pilots, wannabe pilots, and real pilots in simming.  Simming is not a "shoot 'em up" hobby, although I love the way some warbirds like the Spitfire, Mosquito, Mustang and Lightning are commemorated in the hobby.  The other day, when I saw that Austin was including a FAR 103 ultralight in his sim, I was in sim heaven and rushed to get their beta.  I have already put an ultralight trike out their for FS9, FSX and P3D.  Now both sims have come full circle and they compliment each other.  I think a hard core simmer must try both, even the other sims that are growing and out there.

Thanks for letting me rant about simming and being a bore.  WARNING, DO NOT READ THIS POST MORE THAN ONCE, MY BORING ALLITERATION MIGHT HYPNOTIZE YOU AND MAKE YOU THINK YOU ARE HARRISON FORD, PILOTING THE MILLENNIUM FALCON, AND LANDING ON THE TAXIWAY TO AVOID JABBA THE HUT AND THE BOUNTY HUNTERS...

 

[hs118 707]

Here is an article I wrote almost 2 years ago. I am a relative noob to flightsim but am a 30 year veteran in various technology industries. We are no longer playing in a single, "one to rule them all"  sim world. 

There are factors such as genuine restrictions on money or time that would make a simmer dedicate to one platform. But most hobbyists will find themselves using more than one program.

Exceptions to this might include some of the DCS and XPlane insulars who crow their superiority and dare not deign to indulge in "lesser" sims.

Bottomline; ENJOY! (and don't demean others experience)

https://uchisworld.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/tldr-platform-market-share-directly-correlated-to-3rd-party-development-capability-p-s-no-more-1-sim-world/

EDIT: PS shoutout to @jcomm who, on this site, was the first I read who could discuss/compare the various platforms in a meaningful, objective, and helpful manner.

Edited April 20, 2018 by Henry Street

[ms2 184]

52 minutes ago, Cactus521 said:

Now both sims have come full circle and they compliment each other

When looking different screenshots or videos of the sims level in 2018, this difficult to choice one of the other. The positive mind is to said that they are compliment.

Because I was with apple computers, I choiced first time Xplane as sim but I meet some peoples on PC with P3D and for sharing flights in the same cockpits (Dash 8/400 or A320)... I switched for a computer compatible with friends. After big invest of addon's for p3d, I stay always with a mind for Xplane to complete. 

Ultralights you show me on your precedent topic decide me to upgrade Xplane to 12....thx

Mark

 

[Murmur 3,941]

2 hours ago, Henry Street said:

Exceptions to this might include some of the DCS and XPlane insulars who crow their superiority and dare not deign to indulge in "lesser" sims.

I've seen proclaims of superiority of own sim above other "lesser" sims in any user group. To be honest, the user group that currently seems to be the one where these proclaims are more often made, is the P3D's one.

 

[John_Cillis 2,406]

2 hours ago, Henry Street said:

Here is an article I wrote almost 2 years ago. I am a relative noob to flightsim but am a 30 year veteran in various technology industries. We are no longer playing in a single, "one to rule them all"  sim world. 

There are factors such as genuine restrictions on money or time that would make a simmer dedicate to one platform. But most hobbyists will find themselves using more than one program.

Exceptions to this might include some of the DCS and XPlane insulars who crow their superiority and dare not deign to indulge in "lesser" sims.

Bottomline; ENJOY! (and don't demean others experience)

https://uchisworld.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/tldr-platform-market-share-directly-correlated-to-3rd-party-development-capability-p-s-no-more-1-sim-world/

EDIT: PS shoutout to @jcomm who, on this site, was the first I read who could discuss/compare the various platforms in a meaningful, objective, and helpful manner.

What a great, current and enlightening article?  It just makes me feel with P3d and Xplane, I made the two best choices....

[SteveW 1,792]

When FSX came out I thought, wow, that's going to take some beating.

So FSX is hard to beat. P3D being a nicely extended copy of FSX for the most part.

We are still debating now if other platforms are as good or better? If it's not obvious - then they probably are no better.

I wouldn't say P3D users seem to be overly bothered about proclaiming their sim in a superior kind of way, not that I noticed. However, they do appear to be quite satisfied with it on the whole. Possibly because it serves all comers with a good enough system for extensibility and progress.

[hs118 707]

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

I've seen proclaims of superiority of own sim above other "lesser" sims in any user group. To be honest, the user group that currently seems to be the one where these proclaims are more often made, is the P3D's one.

 

Murmur, you may be right just based on sheer numbers. I, too, have my bias. 

[John_Cillis 2,406]

51 minutes ago, SteveW said:

When FSX came out I thought, wow, that's going to take some beating.

So FSX is hard to beat. P3D being a nicely extended copy of FSX for the most part.

We are still debating now if other platforms are as good or better? If it's not obvious - then they probably are no better.

I wouldn't say P3D users seem to be overly bothered about proclaiming their sim in a superior kind of way, not that I noticed. However, they do appear to be quite satisfied with it on the whole. Possibly because it serves all comers with a good enough system for extensibility and progress.

P3d has generally honored most of the issues and challenges that were inherent in FS9 and FSX.  I introduced Soft Horizons in FS9, Land-class Assistant in FS2002, and extended both to FSX.  P3D seems to have incorporated their fixes to address such issues such as hard horizon edges and inaccurate land-class.  Soft Horizons came from a tip, an email from a Microsoft employee, who pointed to the bitmaps that controlled haze and sky color when I was working on their betas way back then.  I even kept to myself a "Mars Horizons" image file and once posted the Jupiter 2 from Lost In Space flying over very realistic desert vistas that Dr. Smith was bored with and wanted to escape from, LOL....

Right now I have to say that X plane inches out over P3D in the open platform, realistic flight dynamics environment, just by a mere smidgen.  Their atmospheric rendering is more believable, their auto-gen, ground AI and in air AI is fantastic, except for the dark contrails issue that I wish they would address in the 11.20 release, it is not even posted as a known bug.  Their adaptation to photo-real scenery is amazing, but their default cities are not as believable as P3D's in all areas of the world.

So what do I do?  I use both sims, and I use Xplane because I feel crosswind handling and tricks skilled pilots use such as slips to increase descent rate and deal with light crosswinds are spot on.  P3D is more entertaining with more realistic city centers on arrival, whereas Xplane11 IMHO is more realistic in the flight levels looking at the world to the horizon.

As Forrest Gump says, that is all I have to say about that

John