I think there is no denying that MSFS is ahead of X-Plane in:

• Scenery and graphics
• Weather depiction
• Multiplayer
• Built in flight-planning
• ATC
• AI aircraft (other traffic)
• Ease of entry for newcomers to the hobby

There is also no denying that X-Plane is ahead of MSFS in:

• VR
• Scope of aircraft modeled (Helicopters)
• Third party availability (complex aircraft)
• Accuracy of airports (except for maybe the 40 handcrafted ones in MSFS)
• Simulator functions (replay, exact weather settings, failures)
• Accessability and modding (aircraft, scenery, community efforts)

The verdict is not out yet on:

• Flight model
• Framerate performance

Of course some of the above points may change within the near future.

I think it is remarkable, though, that all those "MSFS vs X-Plane comparison" videos focus solely on the upper points - carefully avoiding any of the second points. I am not sure if this is "encouraged by MS", "fanboi behaviour" or "click farming" by those youtubers. I haven´t seen any comparison videos that highlight the second batch of points.

I recently made a video to show that the "WOW - THE AIRPLANES CAN TAKE OFF VERTICALLY, NOW THIS IS ACCURATE FLIGHT MODELING!!!" video is - yawn - really something that X-Plane was capable of forever - and that didn´t even get a single comment 😉

Nobody likes rain on their parade, I guess.

Edited August 7, 20205 yr by Janov

25 minutes ago, Janov said:

Scenery and graphics

Not sure I agree, outside of the ~30 airports included, its being reported the MSFS is worse than FSX - at least for now - all grey buildings.

Yes this could be an "alpha/beta" thing

Just as likely its a hook to get people to buy 3rd party scenery.

And Vulkan is more capable than DX11 when it comes to graphics.

27 minutes ago, Janov said:

Weather depiction

yup

28 minutes ago, Janov said:

Multiplayer

VATSIM is as VATSIM does. they are identical.

28 minutes ago, Janov said:

Built in flight-planning

But X-Plane has way more, and better 3rd party flight planning tools - which will never exist for MSFS

29 minutes ago, Janov said:

• ATC
• AI aircraft (other traffic)

Probably a story for another thread. But since these are both "wish list" items for MSFS, I'm gonna say no.

30 minutes ago, Janov said:

Ease of entry for newcomers to the hobby

Not really, no one has a PC, they are expensive. X-Plane mobile (and all its competitors) win this hands down.

My 5 cents

Laminar is only interested in making a realistic flight sim, money is a side thing or they would have charged us for 11.5, MS is only interested in $ and they will find every way to get every cent back they put on this, they have investors to pay. I guess we wait for the payware price comparison and what they will charge for.

 

PS ATC is something we want not teh real market

 

Edited August 7, 20205 yr by mjrhealth

It's pretty silly to compare the sims on many of these factors at this point... mainly because X-Plane 11 is a few years old and is well established and MFS isn't even out yet. 

1 hour ago, Janov said:

I think it is remarkable, though, that all those "MSFS vs X-Plane comparison" videos focus solely on the upper points - carefully avoiding any of the second points. I am not sure if this is "encouraged by MS", "fanboi behaviour" or "click farming" by those youtubers. I haven´t seen any comparison videos that highlight the second batch of points.

Actually, I see that the majority of people outside of the hardcore simmer community care far more about visual eyecandy and how things look as opposed to how well the flap retraction is animated, taxiway numbers or if the stall speeds are correct. The few who do care about these things are often the most vocal on these forums, but pale in minority to the eye-candy (fly inverted under the Golden Gate bridge) crowd. This is likely why these things are given far more weight on most of the reviews we see on Youtube. As a game, the simple truth is that visually, side-by-side, MFS knocks the socks off X-Plane, and this is all that gamers and general majority will actually care about and likely where third-parties and MS will make most of their money from. What do you think the first thing people will be doing when they get the new sim? Likely flying over their home town 🙂

Time will tell in regards to the flight model, but I suspect the one in MFS is more than good enough for most users, and sooner or later there will be PMDG, A2A etc to cater for those who want more. When the NDA is lifted, we can all talk about this and compare.

 

 

 

About time, weather in X-Plane is a complete dumpster fire. Hopefully they knock it out of the park come X-Plane 12.

I think a lot of the things x-plane does better are niche items that only a very vocal minority are interested in. VR, helicopters etc. Not going to excite the crowd there. 

X-plane is a "serious sim" but it also needs the "crowds" Tonywob refers to above because that's who the add-on developers will follow. We are starting to get screenshots of add-ons coming for MSFS from all the big developers and the planes and airports look terrific.

X-Plane could do with more of this.

It will still be a 2 horse race though. X-Plane was already better than P3d but with a lot of the P3d bandwagon seemingly jumping on the new sim bandwagon the gulf between X-Plane and P3d will only widen.

2 hours ago, sanh said:

I think a lot of the things x-plane does better are niche items that only a very vocal minority are interested in. VR, helicopters etc. Not going to excite the crowd there. 

It's one thing, to "excite the crowd", something else entirely to deliver. One thing XBOX studios excels at is.

2 hours ago, sanh said:

but it also needs the "crowds" Tonywob refers to above because that's who the add-on developers will follow

If this were true xbox would already have a market for $50,000 home cockpits. Kinect and Flight 1.2 wouldn't have been cancelled, and Hololens wouldn't have been repurposed

Just saying.

Edited August 7, 20205 yr by mSparks

Come to see some news about the future of X-Plane with high hopes....and by page 3, it once again has turned into a dumpster fire of a thread. *sigh*

...Comparison is the thief of joy, my fellow simmers.

One of my fondest memories of X-Plane is shooting the ILS 19R approach into KSNA (before the runway renumbering) on PilotEdge when the real-world weather was 100 feet or so above minimums. I was struck by just how realistic the approach lighting looked as it became visible just before breaking through the bottom of the (default) clouds. For all of the warts of the X-Plane weather system and those "ugly" default clouds when looked at from afar, the experience of flying through them was hands down the most authentic experience in a flight sim for me to that date.

I'm glad to see Austin putting energy behind a weather system. I have no doubt it will be very well done. My fear based on history is that it will take years before we see it implemented in X-Plane. 

@snglecoil it's based on passion.  Some people are passionate, sometimes to extremes, about their preferred platform.  

It doesn't really matter, anyway.  Asobo have just published a list of issues that FS2020 will have on release, and it's not looking good.  (No NDA's are violated by making this statement.)

 

7 hours ago, Janov said:

I think there is no denying that MSFS is ahead of X-Plane in:

• Scenery and graphics
• Weather depiction
• Multiplayer
• Built in flight-planning
• ATC
• AI aircraft (other traffic)
• Ease of entry for newcomers to the hobby

There is also no denying that X-Plane is ahead of MSFS in:

• VR
• Scope of aircraft modeled (Helicopters)
• Third party availability (complex aircraft)
• Accuracy of airports (except for maybe the 40 handcrafted ones in MSFS)
• Simulator functions (replay, exact weather settings, failures)
• Accessability and modding (aircraft, scenery, community efforts)

The verdict is not out yet on:

• Flight model
• Framerate performance

Of course some of the above points may change within the near future.

I think it is remarkable, though, that all those "MSFS vs X-Plane comparison" videos focus solely on the upper points - carefully avoiding any of the second points. I am not sure if this is "encouraged by MS", "fanboi behaviour" or "click farming" by those youtubers. I haven´t seen any comparison videos that highlight the second batch of points.

I recently made a video to show that the "WOW - THE AIRPLANES CAN TAKE OFF VERTICALLY, NOW THIS IS ACCURATE FLIGHT MODELING!!!" video is - yawn - really something that X-Plane was capable of forever - and that didn´t even get a single comment 😉

Nobody likes rain on their parade, I guess.

Pretty accurate list except for the Weather/Failures . I do think thoguth that MSFS is going to infringe of what X-Plane does better in the coming months.  The game is not out yet so it's not fair to ding it for lack of 3rd party addons. This will take some time before dev get access to the SDK and start producing content.  This is why I always say to people. Don't uninstall your Xplane 11 yet but soon it will be harder and harder to go back to XP11 as things improved in MSFS.

5 hours ago, Sethos said:

About time, weather in X-Plane is a complete dumpster fire. Hopefully they knock it out of the park come X-Plane 12.

Agree, and we can only hope X-Plane 12 has better weather!

32 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Asobo have just published a list of issues that FS2020 will have on release, and it's not looking good.

I'm aware and am not really concerned. What looks good or not is a matter of expectation and perception. I'm also not concerned with bias comparisons between a major version of a title entering its 5th year of maturity to one that has yet to be released. What I am concerned with is that any and all platforms continue moving forward in a direction that challenges the notion of what a desktop flight simulator can deliver in terms of fidelity useful for not only training, but entertainment as well. 

Edited August 7, 20205 yr by snglecoil

20 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

Pretty accurate list except for the Weather/Failures

I stand to be corrected on that - I have heard through discussion that setting up an exact RVR (like 300m) is not possible in MSFS, which would be a required feature for accurate LVO training.

I have no idea about the failure modeling inherent in MSFS - it was just a wild guess that it won´t be as extensive as X-Plane´s.

And yeah - there is always debate on what to compare between simulators. I even had a guy suggest that we compare X-Plane 1 with MSFS because that was the "initial release version". Not sure if that is fair?

I would say that we need to compare what we have right now on the day of the comparison. Not what once was or what will be one day.

Just now, Janov said:

I stand to be corrected on that - I have heard through discussion that setting up an exact RVR (like 300m) is not possible in MSFS, which would be a required feature for accurate LVO training.

I have no idea about the failure modeling inherent in MSFS - it was just a wild guess that it won´t be as extensive as X-Plane´s.

And yeah - there is always debate on what to compare between simulators. I even had a guy suggest that we compare X-Plane 1 with MSFS because that was the "initial release version". Not sure if that is fair?

I would say that we need to compare what we have right now on the day of the comparison. Not what once was or what will be one day.

That's fair. Here's a thing. All failures are turn off by default in MSFS, You have to turn it on. There is an extensive list of failure you can enable.  Whether this matches everythign XP11 has we will have to do on day 1.  

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

But X-Plane has way more, and better 3rd party flight planning tools - which will never exist for MSFS

Not true, at least the ones I'm familiar with using in X-Plane like Little Nav Map and Plan-G.

LittleNavMap already supports MSFS, and Plan-G will be supporting it.