bad and ugly: sunset with orthos

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by UKflyer

After flying it for about ten hours in FSE now my thoughts:

1.) the lighting is much improved

2.) the overcast depiction is pretty nice

3.) the new clouds are worse than True Cloud in p3dV5 when it came out. Definite overhype by Austin on this one. Hopefully they throw some serious dev time at this.

4.) ground puddles: cool I guess but not very realistic. I do like the look of the fully wet surfaces. The rain on the windshield is pretty bad though.

5.) Performance is not good for me. In 4k with the right side sliders backed off a notch and the left ones turned up (ie no FSR at full res) I'm struggling to keep a consistent 30-40fps. The competition performs much better FPS wise for better image quality. VR is a disaster with the Reverb G2.

6.) Default planes look very bad. They are very much showing their age. The 172 panel could have been in xplane 9 or fsx. The dashpad on the king air 90 glareshield is particularly offensive. Early access isn't an excuse. It is full price at the moment and the same price as the competition who has some very pretty stock planes. Get with the times LR.

7.) Also they never fixed the stupid floatiness of track ir in Xplane. Still needed the ol' X-camera plugin to fix that.

8.) several of my old planes worked fine like the Airfoil King air 350 and the recent Aerobask DA50RG

9.) The AA is bad. Lots of shimmers in the distance.

I'm hoping Austin and LR spend some serious time listening to the general population of flight simmers and not the die hard Austin fans because releasing a new version at full price in this state feels like a cash grab, just like Microsoft kicking MSFS out the door a year earlier than it probably should have.

 

 

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by CaptainNick

23 minutes ago, CaptainNick said:

After flying it for about ten hours in FSE now my thoughts:

1.) the lighting is much improved

2.) the overcast depiction is pretty nice

3.) the new clouds are worse than True Cloud in p3dV5 when it came out. Definite overhype by Austin on this one. Hopefully they throw some serious dev time at this.

4.) ground puddles: cool I guess but not very realistic. I do like the look of the fully wet surfaces. The rain on the windshield is pretty bad though.

5.) Performance is not good for me. In 4k with the right side sliders backed off a notch and the left ones turned up (ie no FSR at full res) I'm struggling to keep a consistent 30-40fps. The competition performs much better FPS wise for better image quality. VR is a disaster with the Reverb G2.

6.) Default planes look very bad. They are very much showing their age. The 172 panel could have been in xplane 9 or fsx. The dashpad on the king air 90 glareshield is particularly offensive. Early access isn't an excuse. It is full price at the moment and the same price as the competition who has some very pretty stock planes. Get with the times LR.

7.) Also they never fixed the stupid floatiness of track ir in Xplane. Still needed the ol' X-camera plugin to fix that.

8.) several of my old planes worked fine like the Airfoil King air 350 and the recent Aerobask DA50RG

9.) The AA is bad. Lots of shimmers in the distance.

I'm hoping Austin and LR spend some serious time listening to the general population of flight simmers and not the die hard Austin fans because releasing a new version at full price in this state feels like a cash grab, just like Microsoft kicking MSFS out the door a year earlier than it probably should have.

 

 

This is similar to what I felt exactly. Which also resonates with my concern about an early release for keeping 3rd party developers on the platform which might easily turn around and cause loosing user base. The strength of the platform is also measured by the supporting 3rd party developers especially in flight sim. No one flies the default aircraft. If their support shifts to the other platform it leaves XP12 with a platform that is said to have better flight and weather dynamics to sit there with no user or developer base than an niche group. I hope this will not turn into that. I enjoy both MSFS and XP11 but I find myself spending a lot more time in MSFS recently than XP11. I want to get the most joy out of my time and investment and it is delivered by MSFS. We will all see where XP12 stands in a couple months after updates start kicking in and hopefully announcements to support the platform from other 3rd party developers other than Toliss and Orbx.

 

 

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by the_simpilot

bad: what XP12 has to compete with 😄

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by UKflyer

I'm not worried about XP. It's been around nearly as long as MSFS (27 years now) and will continue to shrug along.

While it will certainly always be lagging behind MSFS in certain aspects (AM/LR doesn't have $50M-$100M to invest), as long as there are different kinds of people with different wants and needs money will always find it's way into both camps, as it's always been. 

1 hour ago, fogboundturtle said:

I think Xplane 3rd party are no longer selling their addons so maybe XP12 will bring a new revenue stream for them. XP12 is in a dire situation as I think they might just go commercial only in the future. The desktop market has shrunk so much.

Doomsayers predictions are always funny. 2 years ago they were filling these forums with the: "This is the last nail in the coffin of X-Plane!!1!1" at every news or preview from the competitor sim. And yet average number of X-Plane 11 users (as per Steam stats) have been more or less constant, if compared to the pre-pandemic figures (it lost about 1/3 of users compared to the surge due to lockdowns).

Not that it's something new: for decades people have been predicting the "X-Plane is dead!!1!" refrain, many of them maybe even hoping so. Unfortunately for them, they were always wrong. 🤷‍♂️ (It's actually other sims that went down instead!)

Admittedly, XP 11 users have been declining in the last 4-5 months, but my point is that it's reasonable to think that all actual XP11 users will buy XP12, plus new entrant users. And that doesn't seem to be the "dire situation" that doomsayers predict or hope. XP has much less overhead and running costs compared to the competition, so even a 20% market share should be more than enough for its viability.

 

Just now, Murmur said:

Doomsayers predictions are always funny. 2 years ago they were filling these forums with the: "This is the last nail in the coffin of X-Plane!!1!1" at every news or preview from the competitor sim. And yet average number of X-Plane 11 users (as per Steam stats) have been more or less constant, if compared to the pre-pandemic figures (it lost about 1/3 of users compared to the surge due to lockdowns).

Not that it's something new: for decades people have been predicting the "X-Plane is dead!!1!" refrain, many of them maybe even hoping so. Unfortunately for them, they were always wrong. 🤷‍♂️ (It's actually other sims that went down instead!)

Admittedly, XP 11 users have been declining in the last 4-5 months, but my point is that it's reasonable to think that all actual XP11 users will buy XP12, plus new entrant users. And that doesn't seem to be the "dire situation" that doomsayers predict or hope. XP has much less overhead and running costs compared to the competition, so even a 20% market share should be more than enough for its viability.

 

I am not a "doomsayer" . I don't think Xplane is going to die but you will see less and less 3rd party creating content for it because there is less possible buyers. This is when a platform start to get in trouble. Just like P3D right now. There is no more next stuff or very little.

Just now, fogboundturtle said:

I am not a "doomsayer" . I don't think Xplane is going to die but you will see less and less 3rd party creating content for it because there is less possible buyers.

XP has never been the most used flight simulator and yet there have been many 3rd parties creating content for it. 🤷‍♂️ If, as can be reasonably inferred, XP12 will have MORE users than XP11 currently has, I think that's enough for a satisfactory 3rd party ecosystem.

Just now, Murmur said:

XP has never been the most used flight simulator and yet there have been many 3rd parties creating content for it. 🤷‍♂️ If, as can be reasonably inferred, XP12 will have MORE users than XP11 currently has, I think that's enough for a satisfactory 3rd party ecosystem.

a company needs growth to continue evolving. Yes there is some content to consume on Xplane like the CL650 , Toliss of the incoming Falcon 8x. How are you going convince people that are not familiar with the XP ecosystem that it's worth buying xplane 12 for the aircraft. It's a hard sell.  I have to tell you. 

7 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

a company needs growth to continue evolving. Yes there is some content to consume on Xplane like the CL650 , Toliss of the incoming Falcon 8x. How are you going convince people that are not familiar with the XP ecosystem that it's worth buying xplane 12 for the aircraft. It's a hard sell.  I have to tell you. 

It will be fine. 20% market share with the current figures is good enough for a nice 3rd party ecosystem, despite what people say or hope.

 

 

59 minutes ago, UKflyer said:

bad: what XP12 has to compete with 😄

 

Which clouds are more realistic? 😄

 

59 minutes ago, UKflyer said:

Or:

 

1 hour ago, UKflyer said:

Or:

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

 

 

Which clouds are more realistic? 😄

 

Or:

 

Or:

this one ?

4 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

this one ?

Not denying that there are many bugs yet! (Only a stupid could deny that in the first days of an early release! Not referring to you of course). Still, exceptional potential, also considering how the clouds appear in the competing sims 2 years later. 🤷‍♂️

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by Murmur

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

Not denying than there are many bugs yet! (Only a stupid could deny that in the first days of an early release! Not referring to you of course). Still, exceptional potential, also considering how the clouds appear in the competing sims 2 years later. 🤷‍♂️

I was just poking fun a little bit. I was not implying XP12 are bad but they do need more work like the example above.

Edited September 8, 20223 yr by fogboundturtle

10 minutes ago, Murmur said:

 

 

Which clouds are more realistic? 😄

 

Or:

 

Or:

now show us an approach to the airport 😄