What is that "squarish" looking thing past the mountain peaks in the MSFS screenshot?

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

I bet there isn't one instrument rated pilot that got their rating on a study level aircraft...

I bet there isn´t one instrument rated pilot that DIDN`T get their rating on a study level aircraft - every real airplane is per definitionem a study level aircraft - because you need to study to fly it (proficiently) and it behaves exactly like the real one does (because it is the real one, get it?) 🤣

Study level does not mean "complex", it just means "as realistic as the real thing so you could use the simulator version to study for flying the real one".

I am long user of XP11 and previously P3D/FSX, there is no way to visually compare MSFS with XP, even I don't think XP12 would compete visually with MSFS. However, there are things I miss about XP in MSFS, for example the customizability, XP is the most customizable sim I have ever seen (way more customizable than P3D), if you know some lua, you can really easily write lua scripts to do many things as I have done before and I appreciate that. Anyway, I love both XP and MSFS and I really can't wait for XP12. If XP12 turns out to be a disappoinment, I will be like this lol:

Edited March 20, 20215 yr by omarsmak30

15 minutes ago, Janov said:

What is that "squarish" looking thing past the mountain peaks in the MSFS screenshot?

Nametags. The world has other folks flying in a persistent environment. Nametags can be toggled so you can view other users nearby.

29 minutes ago, Janov said:

What is that "squarish" looking thing past the mountain peaks in the MSFS screenshot?

Come on Jan! Why not just admit that MSFS is more than just the "game" you have so long tried to say it is? I'm betting we will see an IXEG in MSFS sooner or later.😀

Edited March 20, 20215 yr by jarmstro

I’ve tried to enjoy MSFS a few times since the last update but every single time I’ve been disappointed by the thing going from 70 FPS to like a choppy, unusable 20 FPS no matter where I fly (new behavior).

I’m sure they’ll fix it soon, but until they do I’m re-discovering XP11 and all of my True Earth regions and $$$$$$ of past purchases some quite recent (!!!) in all of their crisp, stutter-free, smooth as silk glory on my new 10900 / RX 6800 that is no longer capable of running MSFS reliably.

I love both sims and will buy for MSFS again soon but for now (on my rig at least) it’s a very broken sim.

 

 

42 minutes ago, Janov said:

Study level does not mean "complex", it just means "as realistic as the real thing so you could use the simulator version to study for flying the real one".

That may perhaps be, but usages tend to differ and, to my ear, "study level" seems to be more often used as a way of saying,  "I am a serious simmer, and I use serious planes, not toys like the rest of you heathens".

To me, nothing is study level unless you can get real-world paper by using it.  Everything else is marketing and presumption.

4 hours ago, fakeflyer737 said:

Ive been a long time user of P3D Xplane and now MSFS. You can make them all look pretty good and with a little bit of money but you'll never get them to look like MSFS, plain and simple. 

 

Agreed!

 

It's the lighting and natural colors of MSFS that make it photo real!

 

The others always look cartoony in comparison! 

7 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

"I am a serious simmer, and I use serious planes, not toys like the rest of you heathens".

In a way that is why I like study level aircraft 😁. You don´t need a study level C-172 to buzz your house, but you need a study level C-172 if you want to learn how to fly a real C-172.

Cool on the scenery now lets see if Asobo can get the planes to perform as good as in X-Plane or even 15 year old FSX.

I'm not going to release my entire XP11 shots collection here but  with ORBX TrueEarth and xVision are part of a magical mix! And today in some aspect it's look better than MSFS 2020.No problem of tree radius, no problem of buildings emerging from the ground,no blurry problem and quality problem which deteriorates when taking height, no stuttering problem etc...but MSFS's world postcard effect + its weather works.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

This reminds me of the threads that used to pop up from time to time on the P3D forum, where the XP fan boys would start posting that P3D was garbage and XP was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Of course a few people would ask the XP zealots, if XP was so great, why are they hanging out in a P3D forum, which they never had an answer for that made any sense. Pretty soon the thread would get locked. 

Life just goes round in circles.

43 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

To me, nothing is study level unless you can get real-world paper by using it.  Everything else is marketing and presumption.

You might want to try the Reality XP GTN and GNS V2, they are 99.99% authentic to the real devices, and pilots train professionally with them in professional simulators 😉 but there is no "GPS training" paper you could get 😂

4 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

So I tried. I modded the word not allowed out of XP11. I got CYVR payware, tons of orthos, mesh UltraHD,  tree hd, hd runway, skymaxx cloud,  you named It I tried. this is the result. You guys be the judge. 

As for XP11 vs FS2020 look and feel:

It is first and foremost due to the XP11 weak tone mapper and auto-exposure. The latter is not dynamically adjusting, the 2 datarefs controlling min/max are set to 0 instead of their expected values when loading the simulator, and even if set, exposure doesn't work as expected. The former is compressing the HDR render too much and doesn't fully use the LDR display range. This is why most are finding XP11 visuals a little bit dull. In addition FS2020 includes a color-correction post processing stage, which you can think of an auto-white balance adjustment. Without this, XP11 white coating on airplanes are looking too warm/yellow usually.

Here is the link to my post where I was explaining how to manually change the XP11 shaders (you can't anymore):
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/149559-enhanced-rendering-for-free-and-post-processsing/&do=findComment&comment=1422168

Here is some material about the topic of tone mapping:
http://filmicworlds.com/blog/filmic-tonemapping-operators/
http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/courses/15-463/2018_fall/lectures/lecture6.pdf

For those of you wanting to get the gist of this from a pixel shader perspective (starting p50):
https://gpuopen.com/gdc-presentations/2019/gdc-2019-s5-blend-of-gcn-optimization-and-color-processing.pdf

NB: I like his branch free linear to sRGB
max(min(c*12.92, 0.0031308),1.055*pow(c,0.41666)-0.055);

 

PS: It is amazing this discussion surfaces today, because we've chatted a little bit about this yesterday in the XP11 forum:

 

Edited March 20, 20215 yr by RXP

2 minutes ago, RXP said:

You might want to try the Reality XP GTN and GNS V2, they are 99.99% authentic to the real devices 😉

I know this well, I own and have enjoyed both for P3D.  🙂   They're top drawer and I'm very much looking forward, personally, to slotting the 650 into some MSFS planes.

I still respectfully maintain, though, that "study-level" is a near-meaningless term, and might in some cases say more about its user than what it's describing.

1 hour ago, F737NG said:

Speaking of objective, hard facts:
I guess Ortho4XP, TrueEarth and MSE photoscenery users in both XP and P3D (and even in some cases in FSX) must have been imagining flying "true VFR" flights over orthophotograph scenery all this time...

Visually, MSFS is stunning. The daytime lighting, the water and the photogrammetry cities, from a certain distance, look fantastic.
But let's not make up stuff about the older flight sims. You can navigate VFR using freeware or payware scenery when it looks like this:

Are those P3D screenshots? Enhanced Atmospherics mode indeed looks beautiful, which is one of the main reasons I (mostly) switched to P3D from X-Plane. Obviously the other one is airliners.