X-Plane 11: Where Have I Been All Your Life?

[jcomm 5,890]

1 minute ago, tonywob said:

I can imagine it.... even for myself, there are many times I've dropped $70 for a game, played it a few times and moved on. Nothing against the games, just better things come out or I find something else to do. The last game I picked up was Red Dead Redemption 2, and that was expensive, but it was a masterpiece, but even that didn't make me stick much to it once I'd completed the main game, or use the online mode with DLC.

 

Brother !  The Uninstaller Ears Ya !!!!   😎

[leon310 26]

I have spent money on games and only played them once or twice and deleted them. I wasted more money on programs or add ons for FS9 and FSX that did not do what they said it would or add ons that did not work. Scenery add ons for FS9 and FSX that cause my sim to CTD because of bad files in the scenery. X-plane do not do that. This sim leaves a note, but does not CTD.

Flight Simulator creators are in business to make money. As is the developers. Right now MSFS2020 is a money maker for most developers, They hope it will make money.

Microsoft and Bill Gates built a big company that knows how to make money. And it looks like they are making a killing on MSFS2020.

This all circles around money period.

For me, I love flight simulation, I love x-plane 11.50, I own my own VA and I spend 5 to 10 hours a day using x-plane 11.50 and flying. And my stats prove it on my VA website. https://airnevada.org/

Why I am here reading this forum, when I could be doing what I love to do, Flight Simulation!!! A good to fly! See ya.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

I said this in the FS20 forum, I'd much prefer to pay $4,500 for something that works, than pay $60 for something that "somewhat works".  The eye candy is nice, but I enjoy sitting in the virtual cockpit adjusting, monitoring, preparing and stuff like that than to have a need to see my house or the street I live on.  I want satisfaction and right now, MSFS2020 doesn't come close to satisfying my simming needs the way XP11 does.

[ILSFREAK 56]

Well to be honest, if i had the money i am sure i would have given it a try in the beginning, but right now, i dont think i will change over.

Even with a new rig I will stay with XP and just upgrade to XP 11

[dmvega81 99]

On 10/6/2020 at 4:41 PM, mikeklimek said:

So I'm EXTREMELY late to the party, but boy am I glad I showed up anyway.  

I started flight-simming in 2012, jumping into FSX.  I've been doing it since then, going several months on, several months off.  Lately it's been nearly a year since I last virtually flew.  I've known about X-Plane, but always stuck with FSX as it was very familiar, like a old, warm blanket. 

Then, of course, MSFS comes out and I jumped back in.  That's a heck of a title with absolutely stunning eye-candy.  But with it in it's infancy, it left me wanting more.  So I thought, "ok, why not try out X-Plane 11 and see what's up over there?"

So I did some research and a few weeks later downloaded and installed some sceneries here, some plug-ins there, etc.  Man, am I addicted:

• Functioning (or at least more fleshed out) GPS units
• Modeled airports (lot of talented modders out there)
• Accurate airport taxiway signs
• Impressive AI traffic (World Traffic 3) 
• Great ATC with Pilot2atc
• Great weather with Active Sky XP

Sure, the eye-candy may not be as impressive as the new kid on the block, but it's so much more complete--which makes sense given it's been around for so long  and has had 3rd party devs create some things for it.  And don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that as the MSFS devs continue to work on it and the title matures, it's going to be even more incredible.

But right now, I'm really enjoying X-Plane, and it's really what I want to fly.

I started around 1996 with FS for Windows 95, have been using Microsoft's Sims since then and never tried Prepar3d or Xplane. When MSFS 2020 came out may be my expectations were too high considering is a completely new sim, the visuals are just incredible and is a huge step forward, but everything else has to evolve as every sim does.

So I also tried Xplane and I am really happy with this sim, I miss some FSX planes like PMDG or FSLabs, but you have really good alternatives for Xplane too, default sceneries are really good and there are some freeware add ons that are like payware quality.

Last weekend I decided to buy P3Dv5.1, I tought "XPlane is really good and I missed that sim for many years, lets give P3D a try"... well, I am not sure if latest version is not ok or what is wrong, but I feel that I need to spend a couple of hundreds of dollars to make P3D look like Xplane, and will need to buy many sceneries because the default are extremaly basic compared with XP o MSFS2020... some aircrafts versions I own are not compatible with P3Dv5.1, and in some cases I have to pay to upgrade... so I dont think I am going to use this sim.

Today I realize that XPlane is such a great Sim out of the box, and with a couple of freeware add ons (HD Mesh and Ortho4XP) you can make it better visually. I don't know why many people does not like it or criticize this product, but definitely until MSFS is ready, this one is the only sim at my PC.

[dolbinau 72]

I am a long-time MSFS user (including MSFS2020) and have enjoyed the years I've spent in FS8, FS9, FSX & the last few months of MSFS 2020. During that time I've noticed in the background that X-plane has had a lot of development and what looks like a range of quality add-ons available (I don't believe it is the same sim I looked into 15 years ago). And X-plane has always been famous for its unique flight modelling capability. 

Recently I've been thinking about issues with FSX/MSFS 2020 such as lack of cross-OS platform capability and gaps in aircraft that I want to fly (e.g. Cirrus Vision Jet & A350) without thinking that the obvious answer is to give X-plane 11.5 a go. So far, I'm enjoying flying the Vision Jet with high FPS, a smooth flight model and decent out of the box scenery and I am kicking myself at not trying X-plane properly earlier. I can't wait to try out some airliner flying soon. 

While I think it's obvious that MSFS 2020 visually is a significant leap forward in desktop simming that Laminar Research would be naive not to pay attention to, I'm happy that I can enjoy FSX, MSFS 2020 AND X-plane 11.5 for different purposes and on different hardware setups. There is room for everything for me.

Edited November 21, 2020 by dolbinau

[EddieB 15]

MSFS2020 will/has ushered in new and older flight sim enthusiast because of its commercial advertising and visual euphoria. This benefits all flight sim platforms because those people that become hooked usually want to see what the other platforms advantages/disadvantages are and will more than likely pay to play those platforms.

In my opinion, any new major flight sim release is good for all current flight sims as it helps new users become aware of the other choices they have in the genre.

They all have their advantages/disadvantages over the other, just like buying cars or bed mattresses. They cannot be compared as equals.

The flight sim community is such a small niche we should embrace each other for the sole fact we love aviation and flight simming.

God bless.

[dolbinau 72]

Just an update after a few more weeks - still having an absolute blast with airliner flying now and have decided to invest heavily on payware add-ons. There is no point waiting for MSFS 2020 to catch up as it will likely be literally years away before we have a comparable suite of add-ons, and I would also require significant hardware upgrades that are not currently necessary for X-plane. What I love about X-plane also is with a few exceptions (by coincidence or perhaps careful market planning by developers) there actually isn't that much crossover between many X-plane payware add-ons and FSX/P3D. For example, as far as I understand the IXEG 737*, FFS 757/767, FFS A350, IniBuilds A300, SSG Embraers***, JRollon J31 are the best examples of these aircraft in any desktop sim (whereas in P3D/FFX you have the PMDG 747 & 777 for example that are probably unmatched with x-plane equivalence). The more competitive areas being the 737NG (ZIBO****/PMDG) and Airbus A320 (FFactor[and others]/Aerosoft/FSlabs) 

* The FeelThere 737 PIC for FSX/P3D is trash compared to the IXEG 737
** LDS never released their 757 for FSX/P3D and my understanding is the QW 757 is more 'lite' on systems
*** FeelThere/Wilco version is trash
**** Hard to compete with free though

A minor one, but perhaps the thing I miss most about FSX/P3D is most airliner add-ons could easily save panel states. This was absolutely necessary because the sims used to CTD all the time...it doesn't appear saving panel states is much of a 'thing' with most x-plane add-ons. Thankfully X-plane has only CTD once or twice for me over 3 weeks so I'm not overly concerned about this yet. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by dolbinau

[Janov 2,383]

6 minutes ago, dolbinau said:

A minor one, but perhaps the thing I miss most about FSX/P3D is most airliner add-ons could easily save panel states.

Hi dolbinau,

being a dev for one of the payware addons you quoted I think your assessment about avoiding crossovers is accurate. With the market being so much smaller than FSX/P3D (and now MSFS) it is even more important to not duplicate work and "share" the market for people interested in one type of plane. In addition - historically X-Planers are used to freeware and shareware and introducing the first airliners with a "fair" asking price (>19.95) was a bit of a shock to them 😉

Saving panel states isn´t so easy in X-Plane...what gets saved when you "save" your flightstate (scenario) is all the datarefs (variables) that Laminar Research decided to incorporate in that save-state.

Since most complex add-ons run a lot of code outside of these variables, all the values for these calculations do not get saved in the process. This already can be seen when doing replays - a lot of addons have to add complex code to "save" the state of certain parameters continuously, so it can be shown in the replay.

It is certainly something that we devs would like to make available - just click F5 to instasave - but unfortunately it is impracticable with the current provisions that X-Plane holds for us.

Cheers, Jan