Request Comparison shots from MSFS & XP12?

[kananesgi 6]

I wonder if anyone who has both sims (or even if you just have one of them) would be willing to go up over an area I'm familiar with and take a few screenshots so I can see how the areas that I generally fly look in these sims. Both sims claim to have improved VFR scenery and both look very impressive, but all I've seen are popular "photomode" locations where they have understandably dumped a lot of development into to make eye candy to sell the sims. I want to see some of the "fly-over" country that I'm familiar with and see if anything is recognizable aside from road layouts.

Specifically, could someone go up to about 2000' over south KFOE (Forbes Field/Topeka Regional, Topeka, KS) and take some screenshots looking to the northwest, west, and southwest? Maybe a couple of the airport itself as well, and maybe one looking north toward downtown Topeka. I know this area quite well and I'm curious if I can recognize anything from either sim beyond the roads, which have been more or less accurate since FSX or before. From what I've been told by others, MSFS might actually have the ability to generate somewhat accurate representations of random buildings, more-so than previous auto-gen stuff that usually didn't resemble reality in the slightest, beyond being a building (and even that sometimes doesn't jive).

Just a request if anyone is bored and wants to help a fellow simmer decide which sim to invest into. I generally do VFR flying, so low-level scenery recognizability is key to my flying style. Currently in XP11, I have no choice but to use navaids or GPS along the way because most recognizable VFR features (broadcast towers, unique buildings, windfarms, oil fields, etc) don't exist in the sim, at least in my experience.

[spearmint_flyer 579]

There are a couple if you do a Google Search. Here is one from Gibraltar.

 

[ryanbatc 12,865]

Sure I can do this for you.  I don't run any Ortho in XP12 however, it will just be XP12 default vs MSFS with it's standard aerial/sat imagery.

I will crank up the settings to max in both sims.  Gimme an hour or so

[paulb 1,287]

Here is one from the same angle. MSFS with SamScene3D installed

[pmb 5,137]

2 minutes ago, paulb said:

Here is one from the same angle. MSFS with SamScene3D installed

This looks great (as all scenes from SamScene3D do), but I feel the only fair comparison would be between naked simulators, as @ryanbatc suggests.

Kind regards, Michael

[ryanbatc 12,865]

Alright, I did spend about 40 minutes doing this for you.  I can't get the perspectives totally the same.  But the Few clouds layer is very similar and the season and time of day is the same.  I have some comments but I'm going to keep them to myself and just let you see what you want to see.  Please note the city appears to be within Photogrammetry coverage...it is a small area but sometimes I disable PG because it looks out of place with the rest of the imagery.  (I should have disabled PG now that I write about this but alas....)

I also have no weather shaders or weather programs for either sim.  I also run no nvidia CP custom settings/shaders.

MSFS first then XP12 for each comparison shot

MSFS_nw by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_nw by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

msfs_w by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_w by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

msfs_s by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_s by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

msfs_kfoe by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_kfoe by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

msfs_kfoezoom by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_kfoezoom by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

msfs_kfoedwntwn by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

xp12_kfoedwntwn by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

[kananesgi 6]

39 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Alright, I did spend about 40 minutes doing this for you.  I can't get the perspectives totally the same.  But the Few clouds layer is very similar and the season and time of day is the same.  I have some comments but I'm going to keep them to myself and just let you see what you want to see.  Please note the city appears to be within Photogrammetry coverage...it is a small area but sometimes I disable PG because it looks out of place with the rest of the imagery.  (I should have disabled PG now that I write about this but alas....)

I also have no weather shaders or weather programs for either sim.  I also run no nvidia CP custom settings/shaders.

word not allowed man, that's exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate it, and it tells me what I was afraid of. MSFS has actually modeled the area quite accurately (though maybe a little outdated as there is a major building that is missing which was built a year or two ago). I can recognize and pick out a number of structures in the MSFS shots, while the XP12 shots are missing massive landmarks (like "where's the racetrack", lol). All the trees are totally out of place in the XP shots, too. Honestly, if I didn't already know where these are taken, I wouldn't recognize the XP12 shots, but I do see the are in MSFS.

Sucks, since I'm not a huge fan of MSFS, but I may have to go for it after all.

Again, I really appreciate it man. 

[kananesgi 6]

3 hours ago, spearmint_flyer said:

There are a couple if you do a Google Search. Here is one from Gibraltar.

 

Honestly, they both look good here, but this is what I was trying to avoid. Shots like these are all I ever find, and I have no idea what this place looks like in reality, and it's a popular photo spot, so of course they are going to spend extra time making it look great. I want to see just basic scenery that a VFR pilot flies over every day, the mundane small town in Oklahoma or Texas or Kansas. Things that the devs aren't trying to showcase, and see how good those things look. 

ryanbatc hit it on the head with his shots, and now I see that MSFS might just be living up to the hype, at least in the scenery department.

[charliearon 3,025]

10 minutes ago, kananesgi said:

word not allowed

Ya just had to start off your first post here by having the word filter do it's job!  Hate to think what was filtered!  🤨

[ryanbatc 12,865]

2 hours ago, kananesgi said:

word not allowed man, that's exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate it, and it tells me what I was afraid of. MSFS has actually modeled the area quite accurately (though maybe a little outdated as there is a major building that is missing which was built a year or two ago). I can recognize and pick out a number of structures in the MSFS shots, while the XP12 shots are missing massive landmarks (like "where's the racetrack", lol). All the trees are totally out of place in the XP shots, too. Honestly, if I didn't already know where these are taken, I wouldn't recognize the XP12 shots, but I do see the are in MSFS.

Sucks, since I'm not a huge fan of MSFS, but I may have to go for it after all.

Again, I really appreciate it man. 

No problem.  I'll give you some insight about myself and sims I've used in the past.  I'm a real world pilot and ATCer.  I love using mostly general aviation addons with high fidelity of avionics and flight modelling.  Until recently MSFS didn't really have that.  But now we have freeware G1000 NXi, GNS530/430, (payware) TDS GTNXi, upcoming freeware G3000/G5000.  We also have pretty decent flight modelling now but still lacks vs P3D and XP11.  Don't get me started on xp11 tail draggers though (grrrr).  It does seem improved though, in XP12, which I also purchased.   In the past I've heavily (and I mean that!)  flown in FSX, P3D v2-4, XP10/11, DCS and now almost all MSFS.  So I'm phan boi of all things aviation - and all flight simulators!  XP12 has some features right now I prefer over MSFS, but most of the items I'm fine with trading off because of the world presented in MSFS.  I did a real world flight a few months ago (well wow time flies - it was this Summer I guess) - and I did a compare with MSFS vs real world and it was pretty impressive.  I can do a flight in msfs to pre-plan and gain some SA, and then go fly it irl.  I love MSFS - wish I had more time to use it honestly (family etc).

Anyway, that's my perspective and you should enjoy whatever sim you want to enjoy.  If finances allow - enjoy as many as you can! 

Edited November 21, 2022 by ryanbatc

[xxd09 68]

Great contribution ryanbatc -very much appreciated by less experienced simmers like me

xxd09

[pmb 5,137]

11 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

No problem.  I'll give you some insight about myself and sims I've used in the past.  I'm a real world pilot and ATCer. 

It's people like you with a wealth of experience and a balanced view making AVSIM incredible!

Kind regards, Michael

[kananesgi 6]

On 11/20/2022 at 7:37 PM, ryanbatc said:

No problem.  I'll give you some insight about myself and sims I've used in the past.  I'm a real world pilot and ATCer.  I love using mostly general aviation addons with high fidelity of avionics and flight modelling.  Until recently MSFS didn't really have that.  But now we have freeware G1000 NXi, GNS530/430, (payware) TDS GTNXi, upcoming freeware G3000/G5000.  We also have pretty decent flight modelling now but still lacks vs P3D and XP11.  Don't get me started on xp11 tail draggers though (grrrr).  It does seem improved though, in XP12, which I also purchased.   In the past I've heavily (and I mean that!)  flown in FSX, P3D v2-4, XP10/11, DCS and now almost all MSFS.  So I'm phan boi of all things aviation - and all flight simulators!  XP12 has some features right now I prefer over MSFS, but most of the items I'm fine with trading off because of the world presented in MSFS.  I did a real world flight a few months ago (well wow time flies - it was this Summer I guess) - and I did a compare with MSFS vs real world and it was pretty impressive.  I can do a flight in msfs to pre-plan and gain some SA, and then go fly it irl.  I love MSFS - wish I had more time to use it honestly (family etc).

Anyway, that's my perspective and you should enjoy whatever sim you want to enjoy.  If finances allow - enjoy as many as you can! 

Ha, you almost sound like my twin, lol!

I've got a pretty similar background, though I've been mostly out of the sim scene for about 8 or 10 years now, and I'm not an IRL pilot yet (hoping to start my flight school this year). I've been flying sims though since I was about 14 years old back in the 90s with FS5/5.1, and I've flown just about every major (civil) sim since except P3D and some of the early X-Planes (think I started X-Plane with XP8). I've also done a bit with IL2 and Rise of Flight, but never got into DCS (too complicated for me). I wish I'd have kept a log of all my time, because I'm sure I've got quite a few thousands of hours racked up, but I don't know for certain. I'm investing in rebuilding my home simulator rig now, ordering a set of MFG pedals in about two weeks, and a Honeycomb Alpha/Bravo shortly after that. I downloaded the XP12 demo and was astonished to find that it runs almost perfectly on my near two-year-old low-end gaming laptop with full graphics. I wonder how MSFS fairs, but I've got a better gaming rig in storage that I just need to set up that I think would run it no problems.

Again, thanks for the screens. I can even see the building where I used to work in one of them!

[kananesgi 6]

On 11/20/2022 at 5:46 PM, charliearon said:

Ya just had to start off your first post here by having the word filter do it's job!  Hate to think what was filtered!  🤨

the "D" word...which I've never considered a problem, but hey, live and learn I guess. Can think of a **** of a lot more offensive words than that...

[ryanbatc 12,865]

35 minutes ago, kananesgi said:

I wonder how MSFS fairs, but I've got a better gaming rig in storage that I just need to set up that I think would run it no problems.

 

Pretty well actually - with medium settings you can do fine and the looks are decent.