It is safe to say it here....

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I have P3DV4.2 and love my aircraft add-ons I have for it, but also having Xplane11 with its new Aerolight 103 ultralight, my Aerobask Eclipse, the C74 Velocity (http://www.c74.net/xplane/_a_Velocity_XL.html) .....

.....And all the Ortho scenery I have added using USA_2 as my source.  I just prefer flying Xplane11 a lot more, it seems less buggy, seems more realistic in flight dynamics, atmospherics, autogen, mesh and so on.  It is portable, easy to place on any hard drive I want.  It is modular, you do not have to worry about an add-on breaking the sim somehow.

Do not get me wrong, P3D if managed right is also a good sim, one if by land, two if by sea.  But there is just something I am finding about Xplane11, especially after some member here I cannot remember suggested what I should change for improved performance, that it just grows on me like the Days of Wine and Roses.  And you can fine tune it.  For instance I found Flight Models=7 to be the best setting of that tweak.  I do not use any Nvidia tweaks for Xplane11, its default graphics options allowed me to max almost everything, I only tone down AA a bit.   I have five MisterX6 freeware airport add-ons that are just stunning, with higher performance and greater detail than their default Xplane11 airports, I have KSFO, KLAX, KPHX, KSAN, and KPDX.  Get them, they are worth it!  I have a great freeware F50 and another great freeware Gulfstream IV, fun stuff to have.

Watch the movie, "The Mouse that Roared" if you can find it.  Austin, his team, and Xplane11 is the Mouse that Roared in our hobby and keep competitive sims honest and force them to improve.

John

[ms2 184]

Because asking from simmer-friends, I leave Xplane 10 for p3d to follow them in the cockpits, was perhaps a error, yes you are right... Xplane universe is more stable, very easy to use, to upgrade and very well done. 

The multiple acquisitions for P3d make mine return to Xp11 more difficult... But have a permanent tough...

[Dean_EGTC 57]

Now Gary at UK2000 is producing X Plane airports, it's even better 🙂

[Bobu 0]

There is something about XP11. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but i fly so much more in xp and have advanced my knowledge very quickly. Maybe it is the super easy controls setup, or the simple settings that help me avoid constant tweaking. Or maybe just the emphasis on high quality freeware. 

I honestly never gave xp a fair shake in the past, but it is really worth a look.   Rock-solid and runs great on my 4770K / 1070 GTX system. The dev team does so many things right. Two thumbs up!

[ms2 184]

Many developers of sceneries converted their's addons for Xp 11 now. 

I think that the more recent code basis of Xp with a mind of real flight envelop make this soft more clean of bugs and give us more possibilities for the future to this product.  

Yep, sometime I'm tired by Fx and p3d because they exige to many interventions to keep those on the way (or upgrades lost of times).

Keeping a eye on so many disperse folders and register entries became very difficult to follow and backuping when you decide to keep the c: system mostly empty of the simulator files. The only think, for me, in their favours is the number of addons existing for this universe. 

In Informatics, the most present products on computers are rarely the best one that can, but often are the products from major editors permanently  followed by their's clients. Because consumers don't like changing their's habits, a new and best one have less chance becoming the top one... after a existing leader.

 

[jtwhite 36]

There is a chain fast-food fish restaurant near my house. I go there, maybe, once every six months - to remind myself why I go there only, maybe, once every six months. It's the same with P3DV4 ... about every few months I drag it off my storage HD, install it and all my add-ons - to remind myself why I switched to X-Plane 11. I'm not here to start a flame war, but there's just something so much more realistic about XP, a sort of visceral feel - the atmospherics, the extreme ease of creating scenery (Ortho4XP, WED or custom stuff using Sketchup) and creating my own cockpit buttons and switches (if you haven't tried ArdsimX Arduino interface, it'll blow your mind) - that I always end up deleting P3d, again.

Now, if only XP's skies and clouds could look as beautiful as P3DV4 and its enhancements, well ...

Just saying.

 

John in Indiana.

 

[Bobu 0]

Thinking more about this topic today as I mess around with XP 11. I think there is a hassle-free aspect to this sim that just leads to minimal frustration. For example, last night I moved things around on my drives, as my SSD C drive was getting full. Basically copy/pasted the XP11 folder from my C drive to another SSD drive, and fired it up. No errors. It just works. I think it is stuff like this that just makes you have good vibes about this sim. I have never had a crash or even an error in XP 11. And everything seems effortless. Even x-camera was so easy to setup and use. Even though FSEconomy looked like it might be a pain, it was very simple and worked the first time. Maybe as I get older (mid 50's) I am appreciating things that just work without a lot of tweaking. But XP 11 isn't just about being easy. My system runs great and I like how everything looks, feels and sounds in the sim. Throw in some amazing free photo scenery (Ortho4xp) and a committed community producing a lot of free commercial-grade content, and to me this is a winner. 

In the past I didn't even consider XP. I think I downloaded a demo once, but the UI was really bad and I was lost. XP 11 fixed all that and went several levels above what I have seen in P3D and FSX. Controls are so easy to map. It is all visual. I had everything setup in a few minutes. Dead simple. I think all of this stuff just adds up to create a sim that is enjoyable, easy to use, powerful and approachable.

But XP isn't perfect. I run without weather right now, mostly because the clouds just don't look realistic enough. My system also might struggle with heavy weather so for now I just go clear skies. Also, if you have a lot of add-ons for P3D or FSX, the move is a lot harder. I had a lot of add-ons, too, but I figured I would have to spend a lot of money upgrading everything since most are several years old, so I just made the change. But I also get how others would find this move harder to make. 

All in all I am really enjoying XP 11. I think that XP is going to gain a lot of momentum moving forward, as it is the lean and mean sim you would build if you didn't have to worry about backward compatibility. But it is nice that we have two really good options.

[Cargostorm 151]

On 6/3/2018 at 7:38 PM, Cactus521 said:

I have P3DV4.2 and love my aircraft add-ons I have for it, but also having Xplane11 with its new Aerolight 103 ultralight, my Aerobask Eclipse, the C74 Velocity (http://www.c74.net/xplane/_a_Velocity_XL.html) .....

.....And all the Ortho scenery I have added using USA_2 as my source.  I just prefer flying Xplane11 a lot more, it seems less buggy, seems more realistic in flight dynamics, atmospherics, autogen, mesh and so on.  It is portable, easy to place on any hard drive I want.  It is modular, you do not have to worry about an add-on breaking the sim somehow.

I fully agree John. I also like the way XPlane is organized, coming recently from P3DV4.2 (and before P3D - FSX). No installation in Windows is necessary. The registry remains clean. No files are placed under \AppData\Roaming, Program Data folder etc. No hassle with scenery.cfg, exe.xml or dll.xml files. With Xorganizer you can organize all plugins, Lua scripts and sceneries with a few mouse clicks. I like this easy set-up and go approach. If you change the PC, no problem - it is a drag and drop. Couldn't be better.

For nearly every "problem" there is a plugin or script. Great. I still use P3D 4.2 but I find myself more and more flying in XP11. Maybe until winter comes... but hey... even for XP11 there a texture solutions out there for seasons.

On 6/6/2018 at 6:35 PM, Bobu said:

But XP isn't perfect. I run without weather right now, mostly because the clouds just don't look realistic enough. My system also might struggle with heavy weather so for now I just go clear skies. Also, if you have a lot of add-ons for P3D or FSX, the move is a lot harder.

Have you tried FSEnhancer (texture replacements for clouds and lua script for sky) in combination with FSGRW (weather engine; payware)? This combination give me a plausible weather, and I am used to ASP4, ASCA and REX Soft Clouds: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/41411-fse/

The FPS can be improved by a little, sweet plugin (3jfps-wizard11) if necessary: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/43281-3jfps-wizard11/

It works great and you can see the differences with one switch in flight!

Cheers,

Chris

[jtwhite 36]

Weather is not a big thing with me ... I mean, why would I want to fly over really cool ortho scenery or high-def mesh if I can't see them through the clouds. I like general aviation aircraft over airliners, so if the weather were really accurate, I wouldn't be allowed to fly anyway. I use SkyMaxx Pro for the clouds and it's good enough for this flier.

 

 

[hypercide 97]

I've come to X-plane 11 by way of FSW after finally packing up a deeply unstable FSX two years ago.  Like Bobu, I'd tried X-plane demos every few years and decided it wasn't for me--they didn't have the polish of the FSX. But XP11 clearly is a game-changer for the platform. On the strength of its stability, the variety of the hanger, and the visual appeal of a lot of the stock ac and airports, I'm enjoying simming more fully than I've been able to in five or six years.

This enthusiasm is, however, tempered by a number of aspects of the platform that need refining: ATC, an in-game flight planner (sure there are great freeware planners, but surely the click-and-go standard set by DCS and FSW isn't beyond LR's reach), and better default world scenery. The DYI aspect of getting world scenery into XP is fine, I suppose, but life is far too short. It is interesting that one of the main things coming out of Flightsim Expo today was news of a revamped autogen and its associated libraries. Frankly I'd prefer a richly populated hi-res "plausible world" right out of the box to a down-to-the-centimeter accurate world at untold multiples at about $50 a region. 

[Paraffin 2,197]

55 minutes ago, hypercide said:

This enthusiasm is, however, tempered by a number of aspects of the platform that need refining: ATC, an in-game flight planner (sure there are great freeware planners, but surely the click-and-go standard set by DCS and FSW isn't beyond LR's reach), and better default world scenery. 

WRT flight planners -- I think the main issue with including a built-in flight planner is that it's hard to please everyone.

FSW's flight planner was very basic and General Aviation oriented. I don't have DCS, but I assume it's tailored to mil flying, and in limited areas, not a full-featured flight planner that covers the whole world.

If Laminar included a flight planner, it would have to work for "hamburger run" GA pilots, all the way up to full airline operations. The tubeliner guys would scream if it wasn't perfectly suited to flying a Boeing or an Airbus on established commercial routes with SIDs, STARs, and all the rest. 

That's a lot of work for a small developer team. Since we do have some decent free flight planners (I use Plan-G), I'd rather see those developer hours going into things like a better internal weather engine, finally addressing the seasonal terrain, and ATC improvements. 

[Les Parson 99]

I'm also very impressed with XP11 and the reliable performance. However, I wish the AI and ATC options were more advanced. At present, I am using World Traffic 3 for AI. As a GA guy, it seems AI traffic gives preference to air carrier (airline) types as it relates to reviews and YouTube. I understand GA is included but it just seems the focus is major carriers at major terminals. After thirty years with airlines and major terminals in the real world, I'm looking for GA focus in flight sim world. 

As far as ATC, I understand there are a lot of people using the Pilot 2 ATC (P2A) program. Personally, the primary window seems intrusive and overly complicated. I've tried the demo but just can't make the leap at present. Instead, I use PF3 and/or RC4 with the X-plane plugin and these work ok. Unfortunately, neither of these are very suitable for VFR ops. 

[rat7 2]

1 hour ago, Les Parson said:

I'm also very impressed with XP11 and the reliable performance. However, I wish the AI and ATC options were more advanced. At present, I am using World Traffic 3 for AI. As a GA guy, it seems AI traffic gives preference to air carrier (airline) types as it relates to reviews and YouTube. I understand GA is included but it just seems the focus is major carriers at major terminals. After thirty years with airlines and major terminals in the real world, I'm looking for GA focus in flight sim world. 

As far as ATC, I understand there are a lot of people using the Pilot 2 ATC (P2A) program. Personally, the primary window seems intrusive and overly complicated. I've tried the demo but just can't make the leap at present. Instead, I use PF3 and/or RC4 with the X-plane plugin and these work ok. Unfortunately, neither of these are very suitable for VFR ops. 

Try 124thATC, it is pretty good, and is still being worked on to make it better

[JYW 2,972]

I've exclusively flown XP11 for about 3 months now. I spent the last two days re-installing P3Dv4, all of my addons, and then bought Orbx Netherlands TrueEarth.    It's good, but it's not as good as my UK set up in XP11, with Orthos, GB Pro, etc. Really, really not as good.  So after the 2 days downloading and installing, I flew for about 2 hours in P3Dv4 in Netherlands TrueEarth, in an LSA.  'Quite nice' is how I would describe it but after the flight, I took a break them came back and flew the Aerobask DA-62 in XP11 ........   I'm coming to the conclusion that I think I've become a 'XP11 only guy'.   I don't really want that to be the case and wish I could re-bond with P3Dv4 again.   But the experience of flight, the Ortho scenery and the smoother performance of XP11 just makes using P3D less and less likely for me.

Not bashing P3D!  ... and each to their own.  Just an honest anecdote of where I am at the moment with the two sims.

[Glenn_C 135]

20 hours ago, JYW said:

I've exclusively flown XP11 for about 3 months now. I spent the last two days re-installing P3Dv4, all of my addons, and then bought Orbx Netherlands TrueEarth.    It's good, but it's not as good as my UK set up in XP11, with Orthos, GB Pro, etc. Really, really not as good.  So after the 2 days downloading and installing, I flew for about 2 hours in P3Dv4 in Netherlands TrueEarth, in an LSA.  'Quite nice' is how I would describe it but after the flight, I took a break them came back and flew the Aerobask DA-62 in XP11 ........   I'm coming to the conclusion that I think I've become a 'XP11 only guy'.   I don't really want that to be the case and wish I could re-bond with P3Dv4 again.   But the experience of flight, the Ortho scenery and the smoother performance of XP11 just makes using P3D less and less likely for me.

Not bashing P3D!  ... and each to their own.  Just an honest anecdote of where I am at the moment with the two sims.

No need to re-bond with anything. Pick what makes you happy. Yes there are people who enjoy one more than the other out there (I have learn't to ignore them , on both sides! ) and I know people have time and more importantly money invested in a certain sim but it's your enjoyment of flightsimming  what's important, go with the flow! Enjoy X-Plane :) 

Edited June 11, 2018 by Glenn_C