7 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

So funny ! For years upon years, the X-Planers have come to FSX and P3D forums to preach (yes, preach 😁! ) that their favorite sim was so much better than the sim we, the crowd of the ill-washed, were flying and that XP would soon triumph because of of its marvelous flight modeling. It never happened. The FS family of sims has been ruling the virtual skies without blinking.

Now that it seems many fled to MFS in drove they cannot but still predict the end of times for P3D, with a twist, the XP Second Coming.

Is it a sense of guilt to have left the fold ?  🤣

PS excuse me, my friend, I couldn’t help. No offence intended. Just a bit of tongue-in-cheek teasing. 

I can remember going back years and years, XP always claiming that the next version would be a killer and destroy all other competitors. It never happened, it still doesn't look good and I am not at all impressed with the claims about their "great flying" aircraft either. Doesn't take me long flying a sim, to either think the handling of the aircraft is realistic or not , and I was never impressed with XP. 

Interesting thread! My virtual flying came to a halt some seven years ago due to various reasons, mostly if not all of them job related. I started simming on a C64 and FS2004 many many years later became THE sim. I was flying the heavy iron almost exclusively and I remember what fun it was to fly the Ralph Tofflemire's baby "Ready for Pushback" 747-200  for  Globe Cargo Virtual! The FS2004 was stable and boy, we pushed it to the limit! Landing at Heathrow with more than 100 AI aircraft in the virtual neighborhood for example. With a myriad of add-ons the sim felt so much alive... I never cared for MSFX or P3D or Xplane in those days.

Fast forward to today... Xplane is still here and so is P3D. I was almost ready to bite into P3D a year or so ago but didn't in the end. Now I am keeping an eye on the still new MSFS and boy, does it look gorgeous! But I want more than gorgeous! I want a functional sim, capable of bringing me back the magic of FS2004.  I will retire in less than three years and the flying bug is still very much alive. So, I reckoned, in three years MSFS will be a mature and stable sim. 

However. This...

"This does not mean that I can't enjoy MSFS for what it does well. What it offers right now, it does it better than any other sim."

... is the sentence that made me write this post. And it makes me wonder... why wait for another three years? My computer is capable of running MSFS and just recently I got a broadband internet access, so I guess there's nothing holding me back. Right? 🙂

 

18 hours ago, Dillon said:

The problem is XPlane11 looks like word not allowed also now by comparison.  ATC, live weather, and global scenery are a no go in XPlane11 leaving it as nothing more than a limited area visual/flight dynamics simulator.

How does it fly?  Especially IFR?

Edited May 16, 20215 yr by fppilot

8 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

So funny ! For years upon years, the X-Planers have come to FSX and P3D forums to preach (yes, preach 😁! ) that their favorite sim was so much better than the sim we, the crowd of the ill-washed, were flying and that XP would soon triumph because of of its marvelous flight modeling. It never happened. The FS family of sims has been ruling the virtual skies without blinking.

Now that it seems many fled to MFS in drove they cannot but still predict the end of times for P3D, with a twist, the XP Second Coming.

Is it a sense of guilt to have left the fold ?  🤣

PS excuse me, my friend, I couldn’t help. No offence intended. Just a bit of tongue-in-cheek teasing. 

The difference is, XPlane was not that much more advanced than P3D.

The gap between MSFS and XPlane/P3D is huge.  Graphically, the gap is huge.  Then you have satellite/photogrammetry for the entire world for MSFS, streamed to the MSFS client, at no additional cost, which is another huge gap.

The main advantage of XPlane/P3D over MSFS is the large number of high fidelity airliners.  However, the release of the CRJ proved that commercial high fidelity airliners are also possible in MSFS.  And of course, the FBW A320 is on the trajectory of becoming a high fidelity airliner.  And PDMG  has said the MSFS SDK is no longer a blocking point and that they can make a high fidelity airliner in MSFS, up to PDMG's standard.  Within 2 years, I expect MSFS will have a nice selection of high fidelity airliners.

Can XPlane & P3D close the huge gaps with MSFS in 2 years?  I doubt it.  New XPlane and P3D versions have only seen incremental improvements in the past.  Incremental improvement - not revolutionary improvement.  Without revolutionary improvement, XPlane and P3D are on the path to becoming obsolete (also, MSFS is not stationary either and it will improve in 2 years time as well).

MSFS2020 to finally be fixed is very much like Waiting for Godot...

39 minutes ago, Jure said:

Interesting thread! My virtual flying came to a halt some seven years ago due to various reasons, mostly if not all of them job related. I started simming on a C64 and FS2004 many many years later became THE sim. I was flying the heavy iron almost exclusively and I remember what fun it was to fly the Ralph Tofflemire's baby "Ready for Pushback" 747-200  for  Globe Cargo Virtual! The FS2004 was stable and boy, we pushed it to the limit! Landing at Heathrow with more than 100 AI aircraft in the virtual neighborhood for example. With a myriad of add-ons the sim felt so much alive... I never cared for MSFX or P3D or Xplane in those days.

Fast forward to today... Xplane is still here and so is P3D. I was almost ready to bite into P3D a year or so ago but didn't in the end. Now I am keeping an eye on the still new MSFS and boy, does it look gorgeous! But I want more than gorgeous! I want a functional sim, capable of bringing me back the magic of FS2004.  I will retire in less than three years and the flying bug is still very much alive. So, I reckoned, in three years MSFS will be a mature and stable sim. 

However. This...

"This does not mean that I can't enjoy MSFS for what it does well. What it offers right now, it does it better than any other sim."

... is the sentence that made me write this post. And it makes me wonder... why wait for another three years? My computer is capable of running MSFS and just recently I got a broadband internet access, so I guess there's nothing holding me back. Right? 🙂

 

"... the magic of FS2003" indeed. At the time, every single iteration of flight simming starting with SimLogic's first version in January of 1979 was magic. All of it. Each version brought new life and hope and excitement. Not a one did not. What we tend to kind of forget now-a-days is that Microsoft entered the market with their magic in 1982 and ended with acceleration in 2007. That's 25 years of development and even then, it never really felt done, never "finished" as some decry now-a-days. So why wait? Start up anew with MSFS 2020 now and enjoy the next 25 years of Asobo development. 

United001  

P3D and Xplane are not the same visually, Xplane is way ahead, and as I will restate again, it's not the Xplane engine that's the issue, it's simply the 3D modeling, or lack thereof in places, but there are plenty of good models you can get for Xplane as well.

Just don't expect to load up Xplane without mods like you can with MSFS, Xplane takes a lot of hard modding to make it right. 

As noted prior, if you use the right source for the aerial in Xplane 11, it's higher res than MSFS. The clouds won't look as good, but with the right mods, on a clear day, Xplane can beat MSFS scenery because the aerial imagery can be so much higher res, much less P3D. 

I will say True Earth Washington by Orbx isn't as good as MSFS Seattle area, but True Earth GB South is better than MSFS slightly.
If you fly in Utah, Idaho, or Wyoming, almost all the Google imagery is better quality than Bing. Unless you are just comparing buildings, but then I'm usually not flying that low.
 

 

Edited May 16, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

Just now, Alpine Scenery said:

I don't know how P3D and Xplane can be compared to each other visually, they are really not the same. There are an endless # of mods to change Xplane's graphics. As noted prior, if you use the right source for the aerial in Xplane 11, it's higher res than MSFS. The clouds won't look as good, but with the right mods, on a clear day, Xplane can beat MSFS scenery, much less P3D. 

I will say True Earth Washington by Orbx isn't as good as MSFS Seattle area, but True Earth GB South is better than MSFS slightly.
If you fly in Utah, Idaho, or Wyoming, almost all the Google imagery is better quality than Bing, so there is that too.

 

 

Even on its best day, XP can't compare to msfs. Don't know what you are smoking, and that comment about XP default airports being better because of taxi way is laughable. Most of XP default airports look like jigsaw puzzles 

7 minutes ago, devgrp said:

Even on its best day, XP can't compare to msfs. Don't know what you are smoking, and that comment about XP default airports being better because of taxi way is laughable. Most of XP default airports look like jigsaw puzzles 

They both use PBR textures. It sounds like you didn't mod it correctly. Yes, SOME default airports from the default, you have to mod the taxiways in Xplane, but I never mentioned the taxiways. You can load the same airports in both and it looks the same, with just minor adjustments to the exporting or conversion of the models. 

Xplane is truly modding hell, that's the real problem, it's disorganized. It can take days just to get it setup correctly, or even weeks, if you are after the best graphics.

If you are staring at the exterior of the plane, you may have a point, but then again, it depends which exterior of which plane you are speaking of. I am not sure what you mean when you say Xplane on its best day, considering they both can read the same types of aerial imagery, except Xplane can use it from any provider at a higher resolution.

Water and Clouds are ahead in MSFS by a lot, but it depends how low you are flying too.

 

Edited May 16, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

I only miss one thing from XP, and that's the Zibo737. The scenery was horrid, really horrid in some places that Orbx did not cover and that was a ton. Don't miss that at all. I used to miss the FFA320, but our FBWA320 now rules that roost and does so magnificently. Never saw a freeware group so fervently dedicated to enthusiastic development. 

United001

1 hour ago, Jure said:

However. This...

"This does not mean that I can't enjoy MSFS for what it does well. What it offers right now, it does it better than any other sim."

... is the sentence that made me write this post. And it makes me wonder... why wait for another three years? My computer is capable of running MSFS and just recently I got a broadband internet access, so I guess there's nothing holding me back. Right? 🙂

 

When it was released I tried it and it was..................................... a $1. Then a few weeks later bought the $120 version.

If you don't have an XBOX account try it out for $1 and if you like it, buy it. Don't quote me but I think there could be a discount if you are an XBOX customer.

5 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

Xplane is truly modding hell, that's the real problem, it's disorganized. It can take days just to get it setup correctly, or even weeks, if you are after the best graphics.

 

This is the other problem with XPlane and P3D, and is another huge gap between them and MSFS.  

When Asobo made MSFS, they probably considered the "modding hell" needed for XPlane and P3D, and Asobo said to themselves, we can sell a copy of MSFS to the customer for $60 USD and they don't have to spend hours and hours modding the sim, and hours and hours downloading ortho, and spend hundreds (or thousands?) of dollars modding it, just to make it look good.

It's also frustrating that you have to buy a 2 TB hard drive to store ortho for XPlane.  That costs additional money.  With MSFS, I just need about 110 GB of hard drive space and everything else is taken care of if I have a high speed internet line.

Yes, LR needs to stop leaving all the mods as external and make a built-in installer. They also need to get permission from some of the mod authors and just include it as the default. LR is too stuck on "this is more realistic", when really it's not.

I always hear the argument that the sky is supposed to look hazy in Xplane because it's more realistic, but it's not true because in real life the haze is only noticeable (most of the time) at a far distance. I had to fix all this stuff with mods, but it is MOSTLY fixable.

I don't want the washed out look just because real flying has that look 60% of the time.

Edited May 16, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

11 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

They both use PBR textures. It sounds like you didn't mod it correctly. Yes, SOME default airports from the default, you have to mod the taxiways in Xplane, but I never mentioned the taxiways. You can load the same airports in both and it looks the same, with just minor adjustments to the exporting or conversion of the models. 

Xplane is truly modding hell, that's the real problem, it's disorganized. It can take days just to get it setup correctly, or even weeks, if you are after the best graphics.

If you are staring at the exterior of the plane, you may have a point, but then again, it depends which exterior of which plane you are speaking of. I am not sure what you mean when you say Xplane on its best day, considering they both can read the same types of aerial imagery, except Xplane can use it from any provider at a higher resolution.

Water and Clouds are ahead in MSFS by a lot, but it depends how low you are flying too.

 

You are describing an X Plane I have never seen. I think X plane is going to go the way of the 8 track player in a couple of years. I bet even now, their sales are in the dumpster, compared to MSFS, 

And here is Xplane with some modded pine trees I was working on...

 

 

 

Edited May 16, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery