1 hour ago, leon310 said:

No FSX trolls posting bad things about x-plane.

Noo - more like the other way around... 

Curious as to how this ended up as an P3D vs X-Plane thread - again?  It started off as a simple question as to whether the OP should choose X-Plane or the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator - and yet a lot of the replies in here, are more focused on comparing P3D and X-Plane.

Oh well... 

1 hour ago, HumptyDumpty said:

throw cartoon p3d out the window. even XP simulates the whole world

This is a MFS or XP thread and not "vs' thread.  

As said before , there is not much evidence of MFS would be in terms of flight model etc..  , yes the shots and some videos look amazing but just does not tell one anything.

I would still go with XP

None will beat the accuracy of War Thunder Zulfi!  None!

18 minutes ago, jcomm said:

None will beat the accuracy of War Thunder Zulfi!  None!

accuracy of which accuracy 😀

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

c) Improve the water. That nasty repeating pattern is still there since XP11.0b1... 

The water in XP needs that and a lot more, including a way to produce more color variations in different parts of the world, like shallow turquoise water in the Tropics, muddy river water (Amazon). The water color shouldn't be that same boring slate blue color everywhere you go. 

It looks like MSFS will be using orthos for water color. That will look great, especially in the Tropics. They may not have good images worldwide though. 

Speaking of worldwide; one reason I'm being cautious about enthusiasm for MSFS, is that we don't know whether they're showing carefully hand-tailored images from just a few targeted areas -- basically an extension of MS Flight's approach -- or if  they have some magic AI-driven method to cover the world at that level of ground detail. I know many folks over in the Avsim MSFS forum are assuming the latter, but we won't know for sure until someone outside MS gets hands-on-stick to fly wherever  they want to.

Another thing we haven't seen yet in the MSFS previews has been any hint of seasonal changes. That will be tricky with ortho-based scenery. It might be done with shaders, but it has to look good at ground level and not just at 5,000 feet in the air. Maybe Laminar can come up with a way to do procedural seasons with landclass + autogen in XP12 that looks better near the ground. I know Austin hasn't cared about seasons in the past, but maybe this will light a fire under him for XP12 as a must-have feature.

Edited September 21, 20196 yr by Paraffin

8 hours ago, tonywob said:

Yes, but the issue is that they don't seem to show much interest in doing so. The sim has so much potential, especially since XP11, but it's just sat there in the scenery department and sticking to backward compatibility. Trees and vegetation are very limited and could do with an overhaul, same with the water. It's stuff they could do, but up to this point has been a very low priority.

To compete with what I can see in the previews from MS scenery-wise, X-Plane would need to:

a) Allow much more powerful vegetation that is more procedural. The colours can be changed blended with aerial imagery as opposed to the other way round. No more self-shadowing cardboard cutouts. Grass could blend in with the texture it's placed on, etc...

b) Improve the autogen system beyond placing pre-made houses or flat roofed facades. If the facade system was upgraded to allow custom roof colours (not relying on textures) and not just flat, repeating textures, then it could easily compete on this department

c) Improve the water. That nasty repeating pattern is still there since XP11.0b1... 

I think we'll see clouds that match sooner than we will the scenery enhancements, probably from a third-party. As it stands, we don't know anything about how weather is actually simulated in MSFS2020 and it could all just be eye-candy.

It's obvious that X-Plane is seen more as an actual "flight simulator" than a world terrain simulator, but eye-candy and pretty scenery could go a long way to making the sim more enjoyable.

a) I see no reason why the current-gen terrain engine wouldn't allow for new vegetation classes. Textures are a no-brainer as anybody can change those.

b) As far as I know, facades are customizable as well. And roof colors will always rely on textures.

c) Wave animations can be customized as well to break the repetitiveness.

Isn't MisterX working on a global autogen overhaul?

30 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

a) I see no reason why the current-gen terrain engine wouldn't allow for new vegetation classes. Textures are a no-brainer as anybody can change those.

b) As far as I know, facades are customizable as well. And roof colors will always rely on textures.

c) Wave animations can be customized as well to break the repetitiveness.

Isn't MisterX working on a global autogen overhaul?

a) Not on a reasonable scale. If I wanted to change my vegetation and grass colours to exactly match colours on my orthos I'd need hundreds, if no thousands of the same texture which would tank video RAM quickly. There simply is no reasonable way to do this in X-Plane or P3D at present. Vegetation is currently two planes stuck together which look quite fake when viewed from above. 

b) Yes, but they can't have gabled roofs easily, which means they're not very useful for houses. Roof colours should not rely on textures, colour could be taken from the ortho, with bump provided by a generic texture. 

With just A and B, you could produce very realistic and varied looking scenery, but our current batch of sims don't let us 😞 

 

Here's how I would make the decision:

1) When not on sale, X-Plane costs $60. Assume this is the price you will pay. 

2) Assume the new MSFS is going to come out in October next year, which is around when previous versions were released. Call that 360 days from now. 

3) 60/360 = 0.17.

In other words, the cost of X-Plane if you only use it for a year is 17 cent per day. At that price, even a weak interest in flight simming should make this purchase justified.

And let's say I'm wrong about the release date of the new MSFS. Let's say it's in April 2020 instead of October. That puts the price per day at 34 cents. Don't tell me you don't waste 34 cents per day on something or other. 

The advantage of X-Plane over other flight sims is that you can get a top-tier experience without spending any money after the initial purchase. This is assuming you have the hardware requirements for the game, of course. 

The Zibo 737, and satellite imagery from Ortho4XP are both free, as are many airport sceneries, and other addon planes as well. These will easily keep you going for a year while you wait for the new MSFS.

Not to get morbid, but if you're lucky enough to have another 60 years of life left, is it really worth depriving yourself of a great source of happiness for 1/60th of that time, just so you can save less than 50c per day? What's a years worth of flight simming worth to you, in a life that will go on for another 60 years?

Anyway that's just my 17 cents

23 hours ago, tonywob said:

a) Not on a reasonable scale. If I wanted to change my vegetation and grass colours to exactly match colours on my orthos I'd need hundreds, if no thousands of the same texture which would tank video RAM quickly. There simply is no reasonable way to do this in X-Plane or P3D at present. Vegetation is currently two planes stuck together which look quite fake when viewed from above. 

b) Yes, but they can't have gabled roofs easily, which means they're not very useful for houses. Roof colours should not rely on textures, colour could be taken from the ortho, with bump provided by a generic texture. 

With just A and B, you could produce very realistic and varied looking scenery, but our current batch of sims don't let us 😞 

 

Yeah sorry, orthos is a game I do not play. Autogen or bust.

2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Yeah sorry, orthos is a game I do not play. Autogen or bust.

You can have both at the same time in X-Plane.

21 hours ago, Colonel X said:

You can have both at the same time in X-Plane.

I know. But still...a good autogen system is so much more efficient than orthos.

Edited September 23, 20196 yr by Bjoern

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

I know. But still...a good autogen system is so much more efficient than orthos.

Yeah, I always believed that. But seeing California from FL10 with orthos made me realize that current Autogen tech, even if X-Plane is far ahead of other sims in this regard, just can't compete. It's good at lower altitudes and I always run it maxed out - but adding orthos is essential. Here's a screen to back this up.

The continuing problem with orthos is seasonal changes in the look of the ground. 

I live in northwestern, coastal WA and I've griped before about how the Orbx TE Washington scenery doesn't look right, except during our brief summer dry season. Every open field and grassy lawn is brown in the scenery. I realize that's the only satellite imagery available because it's so cloudy the rest of the year. But it's called the Evergreen State for a reason, and should look green everywhere for 10 months of the year. More like Ireland than African savanna. I'm probably going to uninstall TE Washington and revert to default landclass, at least until next Summer.

I know there is talk on these forums about how shaders can be used to adjust ortho-based terrain for seasonal changes. I'm sure there is potential there, but we need to see someone actually pull it off for realistic vegetation colors, and not just a snow cover effect. 

On 9/21/2019 at 5:15 PM, Paraffin said:

The water in XP needs that and a lot more, including a way to produce more color variations in different parts of the world, like shallow turquoise water in the Tropics, muddy river water (Amazon). The water color shouldn't be that same boring slate blue color everywhere you go.

This data is available. This was one of the last things AlpilotX did for Laminar. But the Shaders had some weird problems with this data.

On 9/23/2019 at 10:27 PM, Colonel X said:

Yeah, I always believed that. But seeing California from FL10 with orthos made me realize that current Autogen tech, even if X-Plane is far ahead of other sims in this regard, just can't compete. It's good at lower altitudes and I always run it maxed out - but adding orthos is essential. Here's a screen to back this up.

Not impressed, sorry.

Back on topic, you should ask yourself what is it that you want? Do you want to simply experience simulated flight today?, how advanced do you want your simulated flight to be? What type of flying do you want to do? And how much do you intend to do it?

The new sim won't be out for many months. If you are a casual flyer, then wait. You can get DCS for free, in which the trainer P-51 is amazing, and practice all you want. If you want more indepth aircraft with FMCs, MCDUs etc. then get X-Plane today. MSFS 2020 may not have the level of depth we have grown accustomed to with many 3rd party add-ons. It may even be years before we see PMDG or other high-end developers.

X-Plane currently offers amazing value at a low entry price. There are plenty of 3rd party devs for planes and scenery, the freeware scenery community is incredible, and the Zibo mod is in a class of its own.  Despite what some people have said here, orthophotos add an incredible amount of depth at no additional charge:

Ortho on the left, default autogen on the right: Pretty awesome right?