...that the XP franchise was on its funeral byre a few years ago,....yep....and look where we are today...and the user base count...and climbing...

Happy New Year, everyone!   XP good times ahead....going to go to VULCAN (metal), and visit Spock....lol!

XP 11.50

Love it!

I for one won't be going any ware anytime soon soon, I love X-Plane to bits, especially using Ortho

It is a real achievement. Far more people are moving from p3d to xplane than the other way around (my perception - I am one of them as well) and the addon producers like orbx and hifisim are opening their eyes to xplane.

I did a flight from Bilbao at dawn to stormy Bergen and it was absolutely stunning. Ortho, world objects set to max, 4k res, zibo 737, totally smooth. Okay I have a new powerful rig but it was great on my old rig as well.

I really like the default airports. They are great and good enough to explore the world.

I really hope they sort out the clouds. That is the only negative for me with xplane.

Edited January 1, 20206 yr by sanh

The other sim is pretty interesting, there are pros and cons. Xplane is still the better sim as of today but that could change. In order to continue to compete they need to improve the clouds and weather like yesterday!  

Edited January 1, 20206 yr by strider1

I agree to Eric. With vulkan coming out very soon,X Plane is the only way to go.!!!I hope aircraft developers would jump on the bandwagon and provide more choice for 2020. HAPPY FLYING, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

11 hours ago, strider1 said:

The other sim is pretty interesting, there are pros and cons. Xplane is still the better sim as of today but that could change. In order to continue to compete they need to improve the clouds and weather like yesterday!  

Totally agree. The "snow" video for the upcoming sim (posted yesterday) was stunning. Love to see that in x-plane. Snow not just accumulating on the ground but on autogen as well. Competition is good. I think x-plane by the end of 2020 will look quite different to today.

Edited January 2, 20206 yr by sanh

37 minutes ago, sanh said:

Totally agree. The "snow" video for the upcoming sim (posted yesterday) was stunning. Love to see that in x-plane. Snow not just accumulating on the ground but on autogen as well. Competition is good. I think x-plane by the end of 2020 will look quite different to today.

I just viewed that video from the up and coming....mind blowing!   You're most right....the heat is on...for other platforms.  I'm just hoping that I can get away with all of them, still running my GTX 1070 FTW G.C.  Vulcan sounds like it will lock that in...as I get around 30 ish FPS, but with some micro stutter here and there, as I only have 12 GB's of total system RAM, available to slot in on my ten year old M.B.  So....here's to modern code and their honing and polishing of it before RTM,  XP11.50 and MS2020!   If I have to...I will totally update my system to meet my wanting and using expectations, with the 'other'....it will be a good kick in the butt to finally do so...but (crossing fingers), hope to keep the wallet in the pants....in that regard, LOL!

17 hours ago, sanh said:

I really hope they sort out the clouds. That is the only negative for me with xplane.

I have been using SkyMaxx Pro and the clouds are really nice!

 

Russ

17 hours ago, strider1 said:

The other sim is pretty interesting, there are pros and cons. Xplane is still the better sim as of today but that could change. In order to continue to compete they need to improve the clouds and weather like yesterday!  

Agreed. With what's happening on the other side of the fence, I think Laminar can no longer leave it up to 3rd parties to improve the weather system.

MS/ASOBO is making a very good argument for having great-looking and reasonably realistic weather in the base sim, and not leaving it up to third parties. They're making the additional point, just now, that seasons and weather shouldn't be generated separately, but considered as part of the same overall world simulation. I'm not sure how far they'll take that, because seasonal weather means more than just snow. It also means dry seasons and dust storms. But at least it's a start.

Nothing as massive as that could happen in XP until the next version 12, but I hope this is a wake-up call for Laminar. 

29 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Nothing as massive as that could happen in XP until the next version 12, but I hope this is a wake-up call for Laminar. 

A question for you (compliant with any hypothetical NDA you might be subject to 😉 ) : disregarding all the unknowns and possible future developments of current and future flight sims, do you think XP will still be your primary flight simulator for fixed wings, say, 1.5 years from now?

27 minutes ago, Murmur said:

A question for you (compliant with any hypothetical NDA you might be subject to 😉 ) : disregarding all the unknowns and possible future developments of current and future flight sims, do you think XP will still be your primary flight simulator for fixed wings, say, 1.5 years from now?

I won't be going anywhere anytime soon, I've got X-Plane 11 with Ortho ZL 20 running so sweet and certainly no need for any plastic autogen!

Phil

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

A question for you (compliant with any hypothetical NDA you might be subject to 😉 ) : disregarding all the unknowns and possible future developments of current and future flight sims, do you think XP will still be your primary flight simulator for fixed wings, say, 1.5 years from now?

Yeah, I think I'll still be flying more hours in XP a year and a half from now than anything else, for two reasons. 😉 

First, about half my sim flying time is in a helicopter, and I'm partial to the medium twins with advanced features like 3 and 4-axis autopilots. So far, it doesn't look like MSFS will ship with a helicopter, and it will probably take a while for anyone to produce something that I'd want to fly. They might surprise us, we'll see. But it would have to be awfully good to match what we have in XP11 helicopters right now.

Second, I do a lot of my flying in the FSEconomy game where I virtually "own" a Bell 412 and a Pilatus PC-12 for flight assignments. FSE will probably support MSFS; I don't see any technical reason why it wouldn't. But it will need a huge aircraft fleet to match what you can fly in FSE using FSX, P3D (unofficially), and XP. It took XP many years to catch up to the variety of aircraft you can fly in FSEconomy using FSX, and the new MSFS is starting almost from scratch. 

For now, I foresee flying MSFS once it's released as a fun sim for low-level VFR flights over areas I'm familiar with. Basically a casual sightseeing sim. And then continuing to get my helicopter and charter operation kicks by flying XP.

Once the aircraft fleet is expanded in MSFS that might change, but I think it will take more than a few years, and I don't think Austin & Co. will be sitting on their hands during that time. 

2 hours ago, philmurfin said:

I won't be going anywhere anytime soon, I've got X-Plane 11 with Ortho ZL 20 running so sweet and certainly no need for any plastic autogen!

Phil

ZL20?! Wow, how much hard drive space is that eating up. I didn't think that level was so readily available. And at what cost to performance? Sounds very interesting. I've been using ZL17, used up just over 7GB for all of the United States.

Performance wise, not a bother at all.

Storage wise, well that's a different matter but storage is so cheap now, I run two 8gb disks, one purely for backup. Truly the scenery is phenomenal without all the silly trees and plastic autogen add ons.

Best Phil

Sorry ,

of course that should have read terabytes!

Phil