Ohhh my pain, the problem with more than one sim...

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Just tongue in cheek of course, but I wanted to share this.  Just when I get used to flying Xplane11 I get the itch to fly P3D4 again, and it slaps me in the face, in a good way.  It is the add ons both sims offer, which is why I chose to go the two sim route because I am serious about completing my Light Sport license probably by the end of next year once I am fully recovered from the pain of my getting run over a few months ago. 

Simming, especially with aircraft I would have to rent in real life, and over photo scenery which adds immersion, where finding an airport takes a keen eye, is so important as a pastime.  But some days I get so indecisive about which sim to fly, because they both work and perform so well, it comes down to the add on aircraft really I want to fly.  Imagine if our hobby had no add on aircraft, like the days of Sublogic's FS2 or ATP which I really enjoyed in the 80's?  Our hobby would have grown stale, we probably would have lost interest, and the core sim devs would not have built upon those basic sims into what we have today.

Thanks for letting me share, wanted to be brief for a change...

John

[Torsen 492]

Wise words John. I'm coming the same long route like you with starting with the earliest Sublogic stuff all the way down to the recent sims. I'm currently using three sims in parallel. P3DV4, XP11 and AFS2. All of them have their pros and their cons. But I'm so tired of this childish my sim is the only one, your sim stinks discussions going on all over the places. A lot of these guys should sit in front of a monochrome or cga display with adlib sound card or even onboard speaker on a 8088 cpu and fly some time... and then rethink about our current sims. We should all just enjoy the diversity and challenges and options our sims offer us nowadays and be happy. Nice times for sim flyers imho. Expensive but nice times 😉

Recover fast John and good luck with the license 👍

Cheers

Thorsten

Edited June 4, 2019 by Torsen

[HiFlyer 9,343]

2 hours ago, Torsen said:

But I'm so tired of this childish my sim is the only one, your sim stinks discussions going on all over the places. A lot of these guys should sit in front of a monochrome or cga display with adlib sound card or even onboard speaker on a 8088 cpu and fly some time... and then rethink about our current sims. We should all just enjoy the diversity and challenges and options our sims offer us nowadays and be happy.

Blasphemy!! 😋

[ckyliu 1,749]

Much as I would love to run both, I'm very constrained on time (and budget) nowadays; researching and setting up a second sim with a reasonable set of addons just fills me with dread and would rob time from actual flying. I took the decision to go with P3Dv4 but sometimes I wonder if I bet on the wrong horse when I see how great Xplane's VFR scenery is, how smooth Xplane runs, and the crazy pricing of some popular P3D addons.

Edited June 4, 2019 by ckyliu

[Captain Kevin 586]

53 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

Much as I would love to run both, I'm very constrained on time (and budget) nowadays; researching and setting up a second sim with a reasonable set of addons just fills me with dread and would rob time from actual flying. I took the decision to go with P3Dv4 but sometimes I wonder if I bet on the wrong horse when I see how great Xplane's VFR scenery is, how smooth Xplane runs, and the crazy pricing of some popular P3D addons.

I think it ultimately depends on what it is you want to fly. I went with P3D V4 since I primarily fly the PMDG Boeing 747-400, though I do fly the -8 on occasion. Buddy of mine runs X-Plane with the SSG 747-8. He's actually considering making the switch to P3D V4 after he watched me set the brakes on fire after an aborted take-off.

[G-RFRY 1,708]

1 hour ago, Captain Kevin said:

I think it ultimately depends on what it is you want to fly. I went with P3D V4 since I primarily fly the PMDG Boeing 747-400, though I do fly the -8 on occasion. Buddy of mine runs X-Plane with the SSG 747-8. He's actually considering making the switch to P3D V4 after he watched me set the brakes on fire after an aborted take-off.

+1

[petehowell57 17]

I am fortunate enough to have P3Dv4 and XP11.  As many say, they both have pros and cons. I fly GA stuff so the ORBX TEGB software in XP is fantastic.  I also like the way the controls are set up and I have recently discovered Real Traffic in both sims.  What I like in particular about XP is if I simply press Shift + 5 it takes me to the control tower of a chosen airport and I can pan around at my leisure. I use this in conjunction with FlightRadar24 and I can see real traffic coming in to land or take off and find out where they are coming from or going to.   I haven't found an easy way to do this in P3D yet.  However, if I want to fly in more exotic areas then I tend to go with P3D.

So no particular favourite, just enjoying the wonderful choices available to us.

Pete

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I forgot to add, I have a third sim, Wings of Prey, which I do not fly that often, but I do enjoy the graphics in it, they are smooth and they were years ahead of their time, the sim even has cloud shadows which took a long time to enter the MSFS to P3D evolution.  Cloud shadows add so much realism and they are so well done in P3D with no hit in fps.  What really floored me was the introduction of mountain shadows when FS2000 came out, I saw the depth and then FS2002 came out which in my opinion was the best sim until FSX came along, but FS9 was good too. 

I read books on simming and 3d graphics back in my C64/Sublogic days and I even programmed a 767 sim for my personal use, simply because I had no way to upload it to the slowly growing web at that time, I programmed a sim like FS2 using C++, ported from GFA Basic for the Atari ST. 

My scenery was held in an array and stretched in a 200nm corridor from SFO to JFK, with five airports along the way, including ORD and I also had 3d mountains and buildings like FS2.  But the code does not run on modern computers and I lost it long ago, and it would look pretty hokey compared to even FS2 because I did not know how to efficiently flood fill bodies of water, so I just outlined them in blue.  I had to learn more calculus than I learned in college, trig, and how to render in a 3d environment.  It just added to the love of the hobby I have had for nearly 40 years now.

John

[Sethos 4,299]

19 hours ago, ckyliu said:

Much as I would love to run both, I'm very constrained on time (and budget) nowadays; researching and setting up a second sim with a reasonable set of addons just fills me with dread and would rob time from actual flying. I took the decision to go with P3Dv4 but sometimes I wonder if I bet on the wrong horse when I see how great Xplane's VFR scenery is, how smooth Xplane runs, and the crazy pricing of some popular P3D addons.

Even if you aren't constrained by budget or time, running two platforms is still mentally exhausting, I feel. Especially if you're the type of guy, like me, who likes to run a tight ship in terms of updates, have everything look nice, follow the various news updates, troubleshooting the inevitable problems etc. then you'll end up managing your platforms more than ever flying. Hell, I had to start Google spreadsheet just to keep track of my addons, updates, listed fixes for each addon, stuff like that.  Back when I swung as a pendulum between P3D and X-Plane, it almost became a part time job. Plus, when you're not constrained by budget, you buy even more addons that require even more time setting up, learning and troubleshooting. I always laugh when people say you should just run multiple platforms, like it's the most natural thing in the world to do. Must be some anemic setups.

 

[Guest]

I own three civil flight sims and currently have only one of them installed: the others are archived for the time being on an external HD. I just couldn't be bothered with setting up two of those sims (way too much work) and getting them to run fine (in which I never fully succeeded). Also, whenever I fly one sim and switch to another I mainly spend my time missing the things the other sim does NOT have LOL. So I decided to pick the sim that fulfills my current needs (easy to set up (all sliders right and done), great fps, great graphics, quick to get flying in (for short-half-an-hour-fixes) but also offering enough (since the latest beta) to keep me busy). I still miss a LOT of things in my sim but the longer I don't use those other sims, the less I miss them. Of course this all is very personal: I can fully understand people using more than one sim. I just don't have the time for that. And I know that I would go back to my preferred sim in the end anyway.

I'm in this hobby to enjoy myself and not to give myself "pain" and "problems".

(I didn't say which sim I use because "I'm (also) so tired of this childish my sim is the only one, your sim stinks discussions going on all over the places" 🙂 )

[John_Cillis 2,406]

On 6/5/2019 at 2:38 AM, Jerryfly said:

I own three civil flight sims and currently have only one of them installed: the others are archived for the time being on an external HD. I just couldn't be bothered with setting up two of those sims (way too much work) and getting them to run fine (in which I never fully succeeded). Also, whenever I fly one sim and switch to another I mainly spend my time missing the things the other sim does NOT have LOL. So I decided to pick the sim that fulfills my current needs (easy to set up (all sliders right and done), great fps, great graphics, quick to get flying in (for short-half-an-hour-fixes) but also offering enough (since the latest beta) to keep me busy). I still miss a LOT of things in my sim but the longer I don't use those other sims, the less I miss them. Of course this all is very personal: I can fully understand people using more than one sim. I just don't have the time for that. And I know that I would go back to my preferred sim in the end anyway.

I'm in this hobby to enjoy myself and not to give myself "pain" and "problems".

(I didn't say which sim I use because "I'm (also) so tired of this childish my sim is the only one, your sim stinks discussions going on all over the places" 🙂 )

It's funny because I found in having more than one sim, I could no longer be the advocate of one or the other.  I like them both, and I imagine some who have three sims or more like all of them, my third flight sim being Wings of Prey, which I use the least.  For me it is really about the aircraft anyway, it is not "which sim" do I enjoy the most, it is "which aircraft" and those are scattered between the two sims. 

Just yesterday I believe Carenado updated their PC12 for Xplane11 so that got me into flying Xplane11 all day yesterday, just because.  I am choosy about payware aircraft, not due to expense, and I have bought aircraft that have even had negative reviews here.  I pick aircraft that fill the niches of flight--gyros, copters, single engine pistons, dual engine pistons, single engine tprops, dual engine tprops, bizjets, and a little heavy iron. 

Plus weight classes--ultralights, Light Sport, General Aviation, Heavy Iron, and one odd spacecraft I found for Xplane11 that can be launched into orbit, freeware at that.  All of this adds up to hours and hours of challenge for me, which has kept the hobby from becoming stale.  The sim platform is kind of an afterthought, the sims of today compete well against each other, it is the aircraft, the immersion, the look and feel, that sense when you climb in the left seat "I'm home"....

John

Edited June 7, 2019 by John_Cillis

[Paul Deluca 164]

Hey John  I virtual scrapped my PC-12. It is out in Marana  LOL.!!!!!I see Carenado has the ATR42, and 72 for P3D.In reality, I read about Mitsubishi Heavy Industries taking over the CRJ program from Bombardier.There is an uptick in MRJ/ Spacejet sales.Another plane i am watching is the Piaggio 180. There  is an airline buying those in the USA.Happy Flying!!!!!

[John_Cillis 2,406]

12 hours ago, Paul Deluca said:

....Happy Flying!!!!!

Thanks,

Since I started this thread, I purchased direct from Samsung their 2GB T5 SSD.  It has made an incredible difference in both sims' performance, especially in terms of fluidity since I use so much photoscenery.  I now have MSE's version 3 high def scenery, although like all P3D photoscenery it does not support autogen, unlike Xplane11's photoscenery autogen support.  I highly recommend a 2Terrabyte SSD, Samsung makes a great product with bandwidth far exceeding a hard drive.  Consider it a 2terrabyte memory upgrade, unheard of RAM just a few years ago at a price point much better than installing RAM direct to the motherboard, given the limitations of most motherboards.  I am now also considering Aerofly FS2 now that I have the space.

John

[Paul Deluca 164]

Glad you brought that up about 2 terrabytes. My machine has one. With the advance of X Plane, and third party developers, i might have to convert. Thanks for the info John.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Paul Deluca

[John_Cillis 2,406]

On 7/4/2019 at 9:24 AM, Paul Deluca said:

Glad you brought that up about 2 terrabytes. My machine has one. With the advance of X Plane, and third party developers, i might have to convert. Thanks for the info John.

I did not know when I first plugged it in that all of my USB ports in the back of my box were not 3.0 compliant.  I found that odd because my box came out after 3.0 was released.  I found an online manual for my box which said the USB 3.0 port was on the front of my box.  LOL, I never knew I had two extra USB ports there and I was always having trouble finding enough ports for my USB devices.  Saved my sanity and have even faster SSD results now, so fast I have finally been able to max all of my AI, which was being slowed by scenery loading of all things.  Quite happy with what my SSD has done for both P3D4 and Xplane11, best investment, dollar for dollar, of any piece of computer hardware out there.  It also allowed me to reinstall Sagemath, since I am also a math geek going way back to my trig days in college and being a calculus tutor back then.

I wish I had something like Sagemath when I was in college, because it can solve simple and complex single and multi variable equations and computer powers to hundreds of digits, like pi and prime numbers as well.  That is because it has a much higher number precision, like the type sims use, than ordinary program languages.  It is a subset of Python which is also used in Ortho4XP for Xplane11.  Python is gradually becoming the key programming language of today, over Java, over C++, C# and many other tools.  It is due to its extensibility and easy to understand grammar--if you have every programmed professionally as I have in my non-sim, day job until I retired in 2015.

I wish I could get my daughter to use it so she could cheat on her college math, lol, but in college as I knew well in trig and my earlier math classes, Algebra 2, Geometry and Algebra 1, you "have to show your work". It is funny, I hated Geometric proofs in geometry, such as "Prove these two angles are equal" even though it was so darn obvious they were.  I did not ace geometry or Algebra 2, got B's in both, but then in college when I took trig, something just "clicked", even though I had talented math teachers all my life.  I became like Good Will Hunting from that day even to today, except unlike him, I can play the Piano.

However we were both Robin Williams fans, along with Ben Affleck, he and Matt Damon were such talented writers and wrote the role to bring out the best in Robin Williams.  I could relate to Robin William's therapy message in that movie, because we tend when we are younger than a certain mental, not physical age, to pick apart people by applying to much thought into their simple approach to life, their loved ones, and the way they even forgive those who have hurt them--not a religious concept, just one of aging like fine wine whether we learn this at 12 or as we approach the afterlife.  I know that well because my heart has stopped twice in my life for unknown reasons they never diagnosed, since all my heart tests show a strong blood flow and healthy heart.  I think it comes from sudden surprise, or a state of shock, or something our body tries to forget--in my case maybe surgical trauma going back to the 70's and again in the first decade of this century.  But that is "TMI" -- not "Three Mile Island" but too much useless and boring information so I will silence myself, lol....  Until my next screenshot post tomorrow, that is.

Note to self: Stop buying payware, it is addictive to simmers, LOL

John