23 minutes ago, DJJose said:

Sorry for the rant, but I'm using XP 11.41 for refresher training

Hmm - it may be different for your refresher training needs, but whenever we do refresher or other checks in our Level-D simulators we specifically DON´T want the weather to change slowly?

I.e. the instructor sets it (or it is predetermined by the training program) and then it just stays that way, until the instructor changes it again if he sees the necessity. In those cases it usually changes instantly.

What kind of refresher training can you do with randomly changing weather?

If you don´t use "real weather" in X-Plane the weather will stay the same globally, just the way you set it up for your training needs in the weather menu. This is what professional users that use X-Plane for training want.

Cheers, Jan

 

28 minutes ago, DJJose said:

@mSparks is there a huge hit in fps with the latest version of xEnviro?

Not sure, its windows only, I can only go by the screenshots (v. good) and what people say (mixed - but you can never really trust what people say about performance). Everything I said above applies equally to EC and XE - they are both fundamentally equal to that shader toy I posted, just XE has had a lot more time put into it.

28 minutes ago, DJJose said:

A customer needs to spend $75 on a weather add-on because the core sim is broken and the xp11 dev team never took the time to address the issue.

2D clouds get a bad rap.

From 11.00 to now, they were the least of XP11s issues (As @Janov just explained) - not least because XP11 still has minimum hardware requirements from like 10-20 years ago (and still a sizeable proportion of PCs can't run it), plus it was absolutely not worth them trying anything like that before they moved successfully onto Vulkan.

They did do more than MSFS to address the issue tho, dataref /override/clouds - turns off XP clouds so plugins can try and do better, MSFS don't even plan to go that far.

$75?

Yeah, that's high, wouldn't pay that myself, but I understand why - small niche market (flightsim) inside a small niche market (high end machines) inside a hard to develop small niche market (windows high end machines) and way to much time in development.

But step back and see the forest from the trees for a second, yep clouds weather are X-Planes biggest issue now:

"Oi These clouds arn't good enough for me"

For what started as a one man band and now purportedly employs some 30 people.

Isn't really anything for the devs to be ashamed of, is it?

7 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Not sure, its windows only, I can only go by the screenshots (v. good) and what people say (mixed - but you can never really trust what people say about performance). Everything I said above applies equally to EC and XE - they are both fundamentally equal to that shader toy I posted, just XE has had a lot more time put into it.

2D clouds get a bad rap.

From 11.00 to now, they were the least of XP11s issues (As @Janov just explained) - not least because XP11 still has minimum hardware requirements from like 10-20 years ago (and still a sizeable proportion of PCs can't run it), plus it was absolutely not worth them trying anything like that before they moved successfully onto Vulkan.

They did do more than MSFS to address the issue tho, dataref /override/clouds - turns off XP clouds so plugins can try and do better, MSFS don't even plan to go that far.

$75?

Yeah, that's high, wouldn't pay that myself, but I understand why - small niche market (flightsim) inside a small niche market (high end machines) inside a hard to develop small niche market (windows high end machines) and way to much time in development.

But step back and see the forest from the trees for a second, yep clouds weather are X-Planes biggest issue now:

"Oi These clouds arn't good enough for me"

For what started as a one man band and now purportedly employs some 30 people.

Isn't really anything for the devs to be ashamed of, is it?

$75 for weather addon is twice what I paid for XP11. Just saying that it's ridiculous that the xp dev team let this happen to its customers.

I do appreciate your input. That pic looks good. But, we know XP can look good. The only way to know is to take the plunge and buy the last add-on I will ever buy for XP11. 😀

18 minutes ago, DJJose said:

$75 for weather addon is twice what I paid for XP11. Just saying that it's ridiculous that the xp dev team let this happen to its customers.

$105 for XP11 with XE is still $15 cheaper than MSFS Delux, with way more stuff.

P3D is $2,500 if you don't want to pretend you are a kid in school.

If the amazingly low price of XP11 lulled you into a false sense of security that flight sim is somehow cheap, you are in for something of a shock when you start shopping for home cockpit hardware, basic starting prices for a simple set up are 5 figure sums minimum, you can spend $4,000 on pedals alone.

Edited March 31, 20215 yr by mSparks

44 minutes ago, mSparks said:

$105 for XP11 with XE is still $15 cheaper than MSFS Delux, with way more stuff.

 

Steady on there. 😀 You then need a Navigraph subscription - £100 per year. You'll need every OrbX ortho addon plus a couple of new hard disks and a month of your time creating or downloading further ortho's. You can add £500 to the price no problem.😂

Just now, jarmstro said:

Steady on there. 😀 You then need a Navigraph subscription - £100 per year. You'll need every OrbX ortho addon plus a couple of new hard disks and a month of your time creating or downloading further ortho's. You can add £500 to the price no problem.😂

Yeah, but when you get into that level of detail, MSFS airports are ~$30 a pop, and even the "Delux" version is 14,622 hand crafted 3D airports short of XP11, So don't forget the $438,660 you can expect to spend there 🤣

$75 for the decade or more hard work that went into XE suddenly starts to seem quite reasonable is all I'm saying.

23 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Yeah, but when you get into that level of detail, MSFS airports are ~$30 a pop, and even the "Delux" version is 14,622 hand crafted 3D airports short of XP11, So don't forget the $438,660 you can expect to spend there 🤣

$75 for the decade or more hard work that went into XE suddenly starts to seem quite reasonable is all I'm saying.

There are hundred of freeware airport upgrades. Just like XP. But let's not start down this road again.😃 Just flown into LOWI RNAV in X-Plane in the Toliss. Superb routing and flight dynamics. A real joy. And I'm now flying out of it in MSFS in the Working Title CJ4. The snowy scenery and the alps are beautiful and all is good with the world. Both sims are fantastic.

1 AI generated airport by using the Bing Map process is actually better than any of the XP11 community one. Seriously. If you don't have a freeware or payware airport in XP11, they looks like lonely runways in the middle of nowhere with no building. 

7 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

they looks like lonely runways in the middle of nowhere with no building. 

If this is what you are seeing, there is something wrong with your scenery_packs.ini order.

We already demonstrated XP community scenery is generally better than MSFS scenery in another thread.

vs

Trying to

Ref

I draw you attention to the distant object in the MSFS shot - and how the bridge looks more like a dam than a bridge

As for the airport, well, that is what reminded me of that thread, because I took the (freeware) typhoon for a spin in VR when we were talking about it.

 

1 minute ago, mSparks said:

If this is what you are seeing, there is something wrong with your scenery_packs.ini order.

We already demonstrated XP community scenery is generally better than MSFS scenery in another thread.

vs

Trying to

Ref

I draw you attention to the distant object in the MSFS shot - and how the bridge looks more like a dam than a bridge

As for the airport, well, that is what reminded me of that thread, because I took the (freeware) typhoon for a spin in VR when we were talking about it.

 

This is not the case in rural area and I fly a lot in XP11. Please don't cherry pick the one that are decent.  

1 minute ago, fogboundturtle said:

This is not the case in rural area and I fly a lot in XP11.

For example?

https://airports4xp.info/

 

Just now, mSparks said:

For example?

https://airports4xp.info/

 

Let me make some some this week and we can compare. I'll use that link so that I make sure I pick a community airport vs a MS airport.

10 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

Let me make some some this week and we can compare. I'll use that link so that I make sure I pick a community airport vs a MS airport.

So you'll see some airports in the XP database listed as "2D" these are auto generated from the airport map (and there are lots of short grass fields missing - but if you want them they take about 5 minutes in WED).

3D ones are the 14,658 hand crafted gateway submissions (bottom right of the airport page on that link), and will generally have everything exactly where it should be.

It seems to be a myth that MSFS is using "AI" - outside the photogram areas anyway - they both use the same source, the building footprints in OSM, what you may find on 2D airports is the exclusion zone around a 2D XP airport removes the buildings that otherwise should be there, generally easy and a lot of (too much) fun in WED.

But if you are seeing lots of "runway only" airports, chances are there is something wrong with scenery_packs.ini order.

Edited March 31, 20215 yr by mSparks

I'll try to make it fair. I am not here to be bias. I like objective comparison 

54 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

If you don't have a freeware or payware airport in XP11, they looks like lonely runways in the middle of nowhere with no building. 

With this sentence alone you have completely disqualified yourself for any further discussion. With it it became obvious that you don´t even know X-Plane 11. What is the last version you flew, XP9?