2 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Well, if you're grouping me in this category then you likely have not read the numerous complaints and whining I do about missing features in X-Plane, mesh boundary limitations, glowing trees, bad water textures and lighting issues. No amount of complaining and begging the developers on my part has made any difference and I just have to accept what the sim is and try to work around these problems or ignore them. I'm not loyal to any sim and I'm the first to admit and complain X-Plane has lots of issues, just as does P3D etc.. 

I see this in lots of places about P3D when someone mentions a weakness, so it's exactly the same the other way round. Either way, I don't think you were attacked in this instance. A user France89 covered your points and attempted to prove you wrong with what I thought was good information. The other things you stated are just personal opinions and experiences, some I agree with, others I don't. It would seem you are far more of a forgiving person than me, because as I said, I'd expect more from any simulator out of the box, especially at that price and its target market.

I don't think we'll ever agree on this one. As already stated (and you can even download sceneries such as the Faroe Islands that have it), it isn't a weakness in the sim itself as it can do seasonal textures, it's just that nobody wants to do it, including LR. This is understandable, because if someone releases a winter seasonal Germany regional, but the payware airports remain with summer textures, it will look very weird. If P3D users want seasons in their sceneries, then they'll have to live with the requirement for more storage, however I don't think this solution is going to happen in X-Plane anytime soon, as the developers and addon developers are going down a completely different route.

 

And Seasons can be downloaded for Xplane11 on Xplane11.org, you just have to search for them and have the drive space for them...

 

3 minutes ago, John_Cillis said:

And Seasons can be downloaded for Xplane11 on Xplane11.org, you just have to search for them and have the drive space for them...

BUT should one really have to? Risk messing up the default install and they still, IMO don't look correct. brown snow at certain times? Really? If XP had default season, i believe I would be a 100% user but not until.

Edited January 13, 20197 yr by Adrian123

There is the TerraMaxx plugin which attempts to make this easier, but it has the same problems with compatibility as described above. Seasons I think are one thing that don't seem to concern X-Plane users in general too much, e.g for TrueEarth Great Britain, I don't recall anyone kicking up any major fuss that it didn't have them. There are promises of xEnviro that will do winter nicely (if it ever gets released ;-)), and I'm sure others will copy on after that.

On 1/12/2019 at 8:09 PM, mikevio said:

Hi everyone!  Completely new to Flight Simulation!  Looking for advice on which flight simulator to buy.  Microsoft, Xplane?  I've been trying to read up as much as I can.

Anyway, does anyone have any advice on software to purchase or can you direct me to a beginners article.

 

Thank you!

Mike

Hi Mike,

having some more info would help us  give you the best advices. For example:

.) What are your pc specs (cpu, video card, RAM, storage space)? Do you already have a joystick? If yes, does it have a throttle axis and twist grip?

.) Do you have a rough initial budget in mind to spend in relation to flight simulation? (e.g. 50$, 100$, 200$, 500$, etc.)

.) Whay type of flying are you interested in?

With regard to this last question, you said you're interested in airliners, but you also said you're a newbie to flight simulation. In case you have very limited knowledge with regard to pilotage, air navigation, flight instruments, etc, it would be advisable for you to begin practicing and having fun with a general aviation aircraft (e.g. a Cessna 172), and following a virtual flight school.

Then, after you learned the basics about pilotage, flight instruments and navigation, you could move to bigger aircrafts and airliners.

All flight simulators (microsoft fsx, x-plane, aerofly) have both GA and airliners as default aircrafts. They are almost always significantly simplified with regard to onboard systems and hence easier to use, but could be the right choice for a newbie that is just beginning to learn.

Complex aircraft addons are available for sale, they are extremely realistic in most aspects, but cost (in the case of airliners) north of 100$ each (can reach even more than 150$). But if you're "starting from scratch" in learning aviation, it's unlikely you will be able to effectively use these so-called "study level" aircrafts until you learn enough about the basics.

Finally, with regard to the aforementioned virtual flight school, microsoft fsx has one integrated, so that might be a good choice. Fsx goes often on a brief sale on Steam for 5 or 10$, probably it will go on sale again sometime in the next 30-60 days.

Or you could buy a book/eBook on the subject (e.g. there's one titled "Flight simulator x for pilots: real world training" that goes from basics to advanced).

There are also specific payware products like FsFlyingSchool that you can buy and use with the specific simulator (fsx, xp, p3d).

 

And all this finger pointing, 'mine is better than yours', personality clashes, chest thumping, p_ssing contest...

This is actually shocking behaviour from senior members who should know far better than posting the above rants.

This really tells Mike what kind of people simmers are!

Disgusting behaviour indeed.

Anyway.. Murmour has the best advice in all these postings & has asked the right questions!

Remember, Mike, you are a NEWBIE! 

So, most important is the PC. Mike, do you have one, or are you going to still get one?

P3D & X-Plane needs an above (very) average PC to get good results.

Get back to basics. As you have said that you are a newbie, I take it that you have not 'flown' a sim at all?

You seem to be interested in the 320, so all the Terramax, A2A, 172, GA type comments above are redundant & pretty much irrelevant.

BUT.. again, go back to basics. To really enjoy this hobby of ours, you have to start with baby steps.. read, read, play & learn & ask questions.

By jumping into the deep end, you will be disappointed with possibly a steep learning curve, so my suggestion is as follows:

1. Go for the cheapest sim, to start off with. FSX:SE IS actually a good start, as you can probably get it on special occasionally.

2. To dip your toes into the water, maybe even get FS2004. Yes, it's 15 years old, BUT it will teach you cheaply, & for a beginner, it's as immersive as any other sim.

3. Start off with the lessons, to get some idea of the principals of flight & what the instrumentation is all about.

4. Read, practice & play with the basics first

5. At this stage, a joystick with a twist grip (for rudder) is perfect. 

6. Start off with the Cessna 172 (the lessons start off with that) There will be a passenger jet for you to 'play with'

7. At this stage, do NOT buy any expensive add-ons yet, until you are happy that simming will give you what you actually want... you might even find that you might not even enjoy the hobby.. You never know.

8. Once you are happy with your progess, & want to go further, only then have a look for suitable add-ons.

Just by the way, we had a young lady join us at our virtual flying clubhouse one day. She was a qualified pilot who was going for an interview with DHL to fly in & out of Luton airport.

So, we picked a suitable plane, flight plans & scenery, & she practiced flying in & out of the airport... She got the job!

Here's the crunch!! She was flying FS2004 with freeware scenery & plane.. proving that it's the immersion factor that counts! You do not need the latest eye-candy, scenery, seasons, expensive payware & obviously PC hardware to get immersed in flight simming! We see this with the sims that we have built, when real pilots 'bump' themselves in the seats, anticipating the touchdown bump.

Anyhow, not all of us  are like some of the 'chip on the shoulder' type posters as seen above.

Welcome to our hobby, & have fun.

 Regards,

Robin

 

Edited January 14, 20197 yr by Wobbie

On 1/12/2019 at 7:09 PM, mikevio said:

Hi everyone!  Completely new to Flight Simulation!  Looking for advice on which flight simulator to buy.  Microsoft, Xplane?  I've been trying to read up as much as I can.

Anyway, does anyone have any advice on software to purchase or can you direct me to a beginners article.

 

Thank you!

Mike

If you ask for 5 different people's opinions , you will get 5 different opinions  That is not a bad thing, but it's annoying when trying to make a decision.

You've arrived here because you obviously have enough interest in planes to want to make this a hobby.  It is a great hobby, but how you choose to go about experiencing it, is important.  Your limiting factor will ultimately be how much you are willing to spend on it (like anything else).

If you are finance constrained, then XP11 will be the best option for you initially.  It really is a good intro for the experience and night lighting is particularly amazing when first experienced.  There are also good quality mods (for free) which will be easy on your budget initially.  XP does however have its limitations, which for me are showstoppers.  I am a P3Dv4 user.   It is expensive to get the best from it - but it is the best overall experience if you have the financial commitment, by far.  Like with anything, your budget will be a crucial factor in your overall experience, not only for the software you need to buy - but also the PC hardware.  Not to be neglected (as it usually is) is your controller hardware. (Do not underestimate the added value of high quality controller hardware as part of the overall experience.  It makes a huge difference)

Why people are recommending dead platforms (FSX / FS2004) is beyond me.  There are lots of free mods for those platforms but there is no point getting deeper into an old platform.  

It would be useful to tell the group what your PC specs are and how much you have set aside to invest - at least for the initial part.  Do you have any controllers?    Then you will need to decide how much learning you want to do.  Flightsim is a huge learning curve, especially if you want to venture into airliner type flying - and particularly online flying.  But the rewards are well worth it.

You may not know whether you want to fly airliners or GA yet, but those decisions will ultimately decide which sim platform is the best for you.

Well, if developers are still developing for old platforms, then they are not really dead, are they?

For newbies, it is obviously less costly to go the cheapest route, to find if the hobby is actually suitable.

There is no bad sims, just different ones, each with different cost structures & financially dependant of PC's as well.

So, bottom line..Mike is looking for a sim, suitable for a new entrant into the hobby, cost effective, so if the hobby does not 'grab' him, he can get out without spending huge amounts of money!

8 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

 if the hobby does not 'grab' him, he can get out without spending huge amounts of money!

Then I would recommend XP, with 64 bit, PBR and lighting capability of a modern sim platform.  First impressions are important to new users and FSX/FS2004 completely lack wow factor these days.  Unless you really understand how to generate a wow factor, which he clearly wouldn't 

16 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

Well, if developers are still developing for old platforms, then they are not really dead, are they?

Let me see, so if Microsoft releases an update required to make your system capable of continue working (Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, etc.) and suddenly FSX stops working, who is going to fix it?

Microsoft abandoned the FSX product.. so there is no support for it.

Let's go beyond with this idea, what happens if USER A likes playing Games like Assassins Creed, CoD, etc. and also FSX and a new title is coming out with Ray Tracing support so USER A decides to buy a new video card 2080TI to support ray tracing, this requires the latest version of NVidia drivers, assuming it goes to version 530.32 (made up number, I am just proving a point), and version 530.32 deprecates some functions that are required to work with  DirectX 9c, now FSX will not work.. who is going to fix FSX? please note we are already on DirectX 12, DirectX 9c was released in July 2004, that is 15 years ago....

This is why FSX is a dead platform, it cannot move forward.. however technology is moving forward and it is increasing the speed of changes, so soon or later FSX will not run on any hardware / Operating System current available on the market.

Regards,
S.

Edited January 14, 20197 yr by simbol

With all due respect, MS & others gave us the sim engine, & by now, they are pretty much mature. In my 20+ years of simming, I have never gone back to any sim developer for any kind of support. It's actually the add-on developers that have fleshed out the basic sim engine, & made it exciting.It has gone forward by having new add-ons. So what if we are on DX12? FS2004 still works without any issues with Windows 10 64bit. We have choices indeed.

So, our new simmer is interested in 320's. Purchasing XP11 will cost about $60 & a decent payware 320 will be between $40-$90! Then the debate starts about which one is better?

Personally, I was getting bored with my simming over the years..FS2004, FSX, & P3D, tube liners et al. & I was ending up chasing the golden chalice of simming. I looked at current pricing & decided that I do not need to keep chasing the latest.

I now have 6 different versions of my sim. but that's just me.. I have sloping runways , ramps & a circular runway or 2, running on an i5 laptop, yoke & pedals.

Anyway, Mike should have a google for the best 320 out there for him, then choose the sim that will run it.

 

 

 

25 minutes ago, simbol said:

Microsoft abandoned the FSX product.. so there is no support for it.

Well technically DTG's still support and sell the product, but of course it's very unlikely it's going to get any updates, especially after FSW tanked. However, as Chock already pointed out, you could probably pick up FSX-SE really cheaply during a Steam sale and it will give you a pretty good idea of what the ESP ecosystem (i.e. FSX/P3D) platform is capable of, and what it also lacks out of the box without costing $200 or so. Whilst the available products for both FSX and P3D now are diverging, the vanilla experience is more or less the same (and I'd say a bit more accessible in FSX with the Rod Machado videos). If you enjoy the FSX-SE experience, then of course it would be wise to invest in P3D and not stick with FSX.

Of course there is also X-Plane, Aerofly and FlyInside Simulator. Aerofly is still a basic simulator at this point, but it's relatively cheap and performs very fast, but there is no demo to try out and it may be lacking for users who want a bit more depth to their simulation. X-Plane has the 30-minute demo, which will let you fly around the default scenery using the default aircraft, but the demo doesn't do a great job of showing what the sim is capable off with addons (and the same can be said for P3D and FSX). FSX-SE with the right addons can still look very nice. Even good old FS9 still looks nice with addons (as can sometimes be seen in our screenshots section)

 

34 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Well technically DTG's still support and sell the product, but of course it's very unlikely it's going to get any updates

Well exactly, It seems Dove Tail Games is not supporting the FSX-SE back end platform - as continue developing changes for the ESP platform - they just selling it at the moment and Interesting enough they don't have any flight simulators listed as one of their products on their official website:

Source: https://dovetailgames.com/products/

However FSX-SE is still being listed on Steam with Dove Tail Games as "Publisher", so very confusing.. maybe they are just starting to fade it out?

Regards,
Simbol

 

1 hour ago, Wobbie said:

With all due respect, MS & others gave us the sim engine, & by now, they are pretty much mature. In my 20+ years of simming, I have never gone back to any sim developer for any kind of support. It's actually the add-on developers that have fleshed out the basic sim engine, & made it exciting.It has gone forward by having new add-ons. So what if we are on DX12? FS2004 still works without any issues with Windows 10 64bit. We have choices indeed.

So far yes.. but it is unsupported, meaning you are on your own when something goes wrong and add-on developers would be unable to help you as they do not have access to the FSX-SE source code to convert it to support any new hardware or operating system in the future.

This is what I am trying to explain to you, it is a dead platform because there is nobody behind it to allow it to move forward with the rest of the world.. it is sitting there static like a picture taken long time ago.

FSX SP2 - was released 14/Dec/2007 - 12 Years ago

FSX-SE - was released 18/Dec/2014 - 5 Years ago, however the changes were minimal:

On December 18, 2014, Dovetail Games released Flight Simulator X on Steam titled Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition. It includes content that was provided with the original FSX: Gold Edition which includes FSX: Deluxe Edition, the Acceleration expansion pack and both official Service Packs and repackages them in one bundle and a single installation. The Steam Edition includes an overhaul of the multiplayer support to go through Steam rather than the now-defunct GameSpy, improved stability on Windows 7 and 8, and features minor performance tweaks including a complete recompile using VS2013.

Just to give a grasp of how old this is now, Visual Studio 2019 is about to go live, Visual Studio 2013 extended support ended in October 11 2016. the SDK for FSX-SE is exactly the same as FSX so the SDK is still 12 years old, how this affects add-on developers?

• To create Airplanes for FSX you need to model these on 3DsMax and use the SDK plugins that allow you to integrate animations, textures, etc. the 12 years old FSX SDK plugins for 3DSMax are starting to go wrong with 3DSMax 2018 and 2019, officially you need to use 3DSMax 2012 or older which is also without any official support.

• If you use 3DSMax 2012 you cannot develop PBR content for P3D, not sure if for XP11.
   
• .NET 4.7.2 is the new adopted framework for new modern applications, however this .NET framework is not officially supported for VS2013, so developers that wish to create content for other platforms (no just for FSX) would need to keep multiple computers with multiple Visual Studio versions in order to keep developing for FSX.
   
• You find a bug with the FSX SDK and you cannot get anybody to fix it, you need to either find hacks or give up trying to achieve your goals.

These are just some examples of many complications, as time moves on more problems are being added to the list since the FSX platform is not moving forward, so more pressure will continue to build against developers to abandon it entirely.

Many developers are taking the advantage of using the P3D SDK to develop backward compatible content for FSX and also P3D, but soon or later this is also going to change as Lockheed Martin have a lot pressure from its own customer base to produce better results and for this they will eventually need to drop support for legacy software, some of this is starting to happen already, for example PBR content is much harder to be produced with 3dsMax older than 3dsMax 2014 as the plugin scripts require DirectX 11.

Best wishes,
S.

Why anyone would recommend FSX or even FS2004 is beyond me.  This is crazy talk.  XP11 has a free demo and P3D has a 60 day refund period.  FS2004?? Really??? 

OK, has anyone one else noticed that the OP hasn't posted since the first page??  Ya think he got his answer or does everyone want to continue the "Mine is bigger and better than yours" discussion?