Honestly, XP12 scenery is not looking bad at all.

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

P3D and MSFS have nearly nothing in common from a development perspective.

That isn't what was promised in the very first developer interview. It very much isn't what they or anyone wanted, it is the fundamental reason XP is "light years ahead", because XP12 isn't starting day 1 circa 2021 (around the time everyone gave up on everything FSX/ESP and started from scratch).

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

frankly, utterly immaterial to the people who pay the bills

hence the "stench", as pretty much everyone utterly rejected the concept XP12 is light years ahead.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

"stench" is inherently unpleasant, like garbage or dog farts.

go back to page 1, and tell me it was pleasant, those are the posts that didn't get hidden....

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

my company is a heckuva lot more productive deploying & maintaining solutions based on Windows

There's four big problems with continuing that analogy, firstly, none are remotely "light years" ahead of the other, second it requires to many technical terms to be interesting to virtually anybody, and thirdly the reason for that "lot more productive" has much more to do with the MCP v RHCE v Apple Genius topic than the state of the operating system, and fourthly, you are most definately not more productive than google, who are almost exclusively a Linux only company, save for the few devs doing Chrome for windows.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

So, XP is great for developers, but the addons in DCSW are every bit as good. We just have far more limited choices... 😉 

Well, swinging right back round on topic, scenery to, fire up any other sim you want with the network connection offline, and saying they are within a light year of XP12 would surely be a lie.

Even XP11 was light years ahead in those circumstances:

And XP12 is a quantum leap from that pile of word developers use to describe windows.

Edited January 21, 2023 by mSparks

[The Flight Level 2,114]

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Holy Mother of...

What a FANTASTIC video, Laurie!

(and p.s., I'm glad I'm not the only one who appreciates that little hot rod jet 🙂 )

Hey, hey, thanks again. Real world ViperJet pilot N886AK commented positively, so we did it justice!

[MrBitstFlyer 3,879]

It maybe a placebo effect from the latest release, but I swear the lighting has been enhanced - couple of those 'whoa, what's changed here' moments!

Edited January 21, 2023 by MrBitstFlyer

[ryanbatc 12,865]

16 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

It maybe a placebo effect from the latest release, but I swear the lighting has been enhanced - couple of those 'whoa, what's changed here' moments!

 

I do agree - with hi res Ortho the atmosphere and lighting is better than the sim I'm mostly using.  However it's not feasible to run ZL17+ everywhere in the world - and one would have to have tons of storage drives.  I did finally redownload my Orbx True Earth for SoCal region,  I think they use ZL16 for most areas - overall it looks really good.

For some reason though, my skies are still very dark even with a few clouds present...  I'm not sure if my RTX 4080 is changing something driver level or what.

Oh - do you happen to have a link to the new Ortho program and or a tutorial for how to make XP12 tiles?  I would like to regenerate some tiles for my local flying area.

Edited January 21, 2023 by ryanbatc

[MrBitstFlyer 3,879]

2 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

I do agree - with hi res Ortho the atmosphere and lighting is better than the sim I'm mostly using. 

Yep, that's why my 2000 hours in that sim came to an end 🙂

 

3 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

However it's not feasible to run ZL17+ everywhere in the world

True, but I fly exclusively in Europe and the USA for which I have downloaded ZL17/18, which is manageable. 😁 For tutorials I watched a few on YouTube and then just did searches for each of the options in settings.

 

4 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

do you happen to have a link to the new Ortho program

I don't think Ortho4XP has been updated yet, but a new version is in the works.

[ryanbatc 12,865]

5 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

 

True, but I fly exclusively in Europe and the USA for which I have downloaded ZL17/18, which is manageable. 😁 For tutorials I watched a few on YouTube and then just did searches for each of the options in settings.

 

How any TB's for the USA in that zoom range?  I think just for my SoCal from Orbx it's almost 1GB once you factor in all the overlays and stuff.  I've got got 2x 2TB M.2's and a 1TB storage SSD but not nearly enough for the entire USA (due to other software hehe)

[MrBitstFlyer 3,879]

13 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

How any TB's for the USA in that zoom range?  I think just for my SoCal from Orbx it's almost 1GB once you factor in all the overlays and stuff.  I've got got 2x 2TB M.2's and a 1TB storage SSD but not nearly enough for the entire USA (due to other software hehe)

I have three 8Tb drives with about 2Tb spare (I have another drive for Steam, X-Plane and applications).  I have all of the USA and Europe with a base of ZL17 with ZL18 3.5km around ICAO airports.  Seemed daunting at first, but as drives are reasonably priced and learning Ortho4XP was straightforward I took the plunge.

I like to use Garmin Pilot on the iPad, so flying in just the USA and Europe isn't too expensive - plus those two areas are huge in themselves and contain plenty of flying.

[DD_Arthur 1,065]

2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I have three 8Tb drives with about 2Tb spare 

Wow!

[UrgentSiesta 932]

 

Quote

That isn't what was promised in the very first developer interview. It very much isn't what they or anyone wanted, it is the fundamental reason XP is "light years ahead", because XP12 isn't starting day 1 circa 2021 (around the time everyone gave up on everything FSX/ESP and started from scratch).

I can't quite remember what they promised developers in the very first interview because I'm not a flight sim dev. All I care about is the fidelity of sims & addons.

There are just as many people who look at XP's 30-ish year old code base, and based on direct comparisons between the two sims, claim the exact opposite - that XP is held back by it's "legacy" code base, and that MSFS' rapid ascent to utter dominance is directly attributable to it's "fresh" code base.

And there are plenty of professional Big Iron pilots who prefer MSFS, and since they do the Real Thing day in and day out, we have to give credence to MSFS' fidelity.

All that to say: all these repeated assertions of "light years ahead" haven't yet been backed up by one iota of factual information to support the claims.

X-Plane has always been great (was my primary choice for many years), and v12 is undeniably an excellent flight sim. But "light years ahead" it ain't. As good as, advantages in different areas, etc., etc., 

For X-Plane to be "light years ahead" it'd need to make MSFS look/run/function like FSX. And as much as we'd like it to, that day has not yet come.

Quote

There's four big problems with continuing that analogy, firstly, none are remotely "light years" ahead of the other, second it requires to many technical terms to be interesting to virtually anybody, and thirdly the reason for that "lot more productive" has much more to do with the MCP v RHCE v Apple Genius topic than the state of the operating system, and fourthly, you are most definately not more productive than google, who are almost exclusively a Linux only company, save for the few devs doing Chrome for windows.

Ironically you're (sorta) right: none of them are light years ahead of the other, which is exactly my point.

I've got "some" good perspective as I'm sitting here writing to you on a Pixelbook (one of the best laptops i've ever owned), and not too long ago I was in charge of a 1200 person global network that was 95% Mac OS (never could get the CFO to give up Winders...).

Google's a great shop, and IDK what their end users run (though I've read it's a mix of Chrome OS with Linux VMs and Mac OS for end users. But in the fields I support (engineering, architecture, analytics and design), we never, ever see their products in the hands of end users. And I have and still work with a lot of devs. Though many of them use Linux-based servers, NONE of them (not one) uses Linux desktop. It's running about half Windows and half Macs.

I'd be happy to take on a Mac OS or even Linux based client again. I just can't find any. Must be a reason...

Quote

Well, swinging right back round on topic, scenery to, fire up any other sim you want with the network connection offline, and saying they are within a light year of XP12 would surely be a lie.

You do realize that MSFS works, and LOOKS, just fine with no internet connection? And I'm not even talking about cached data. There's a reason it's 100GB+ for the initial install... I mean, go ahead and hit the youtubes - plenty of examples to show it's just as acceptable as XP.

And I can fire up DCS World right now and even the old Caucasus map looks as good as XP does. The newer more detailed maps look fantastic.

P3D? v4 & v5's skies and water dominated XPs until v12. And the landclass/topography wasn't all that bad either. Even still with v5.3, there's plenty of areas where P3D default looks at least as good as XP. I mean it's rather the inverse of XP where in that P3D airports still look like word not allowed, but once you're up and about? Just search youtube and see for yourself.

So even here, on topic in re offline scenery, XP isn't "light years ahead" by any means. 

 

[The Flight Level 2,114]

@UrgentSiesta Great factual and solid insight!

[MrBitstFlyer 3,879]

1 hour ago, DD_Arthur said:

Wow!

8Tb drives are cheap!

[UrgentSiesta 932]

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

8Tb drives are cheap!

I''ve shied away from hdd's for a long time due to extended load times and in-sim stutters.

You're not having those issues? What type of connection are you running between the drive and mobo?

[mSparks 2,086]

38 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I can't quite remember what they promised developers

I'll never forget it, never have I come down from a high so fast, and I've had some big come downs in my time.

From a little sceptical of just how:

was going to shape up come final release, but otherwise convinced I was probably going to have to "bite the bullet" and install windows again.

To exactly zero confidence it was ever going to be better even than XP11, all over the course of an hour or so presentation. (no VR, less aviation experience on the team than I have, FSX+ flight model with the lead devs having never even heard of BET, helicopters sometime maybe, each new revelation feeling like being repeatedly punched in the nether regions)

They did more or less go completely back to square one on all that post release - but in doing so went back to the very early days of XP 20+ odd years ago with scenery that mostly only looks good from a distance.

Meanwhile team Laminar already had the OP on their dev machines:

And everyone but me thought Laminar were panicking...

Their dev machines are now already 4+ years of hard work better than this....

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

There are just as many people who look at XP's 30-ish year old code base and based on direct comparisons between the two sims, claim the exact opposite - that XP is held back by it's "legacy" code base

That have no idea what they are talking about.

That's 30 years of throwing out the junk ideas and honing it in on the best way of doing things, openGL being the latest to hit the trashcan.

30 years of commercial customers feeding back FAA/EASA etc. complaints

30 years of pure invention and innovation to check every box in the insanely large to do list of simulating the entire world, down to minute details like the flow of water over the windshield during flight.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

And there are plenty of professional Big Iron pilots who prefer MSFS

very sceptical, the last few threads featuring YT videos by "Big Iron pilots" that included a sim additionally to X-Plane in here have vanished after questioning if they really were "Big Iron pilots", or just claiming to be.

Mentour pilot has been spotted using the Sparky744... 

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

even the old Caucasus map looks as good as XP does

roughly the size of Nebraska, ~100% hand painted....

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

You do realize that MSFS works, and LOOKS, just fine with no internet connection?

No, I don't - but also, not that interested anymore, see above.

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

X-Plane has always been great (was my primary choice for many years), and v12 is undeniably an excellent flight sim. But "light years ahead" it ain't. As good as, advantages in different areas, etc., etc., 

For X-Plane to be "light years ahead" it'd need to make MSFS look/run/function like FSX. And as much as we'd like it to, that day has not yet come.

There is a pretty strong argument to make that in pretty much every aspect other than the downloadable scenery, its not even matched FSX yet. Why doesn't that count?

"light years ahead" is more than both just bundling OSM data, re-purposing your OS analogy, saying its not is like saying Android isn't light years ahead of windows CE because they both have a file system and good looking icons.

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I just can't find any. Must be a reason...

Linux developments mostly find each other and collaborations via github and linkedin, with a general primary focus on the startup market, are you being looked for there? 

[dbw1 445]

I'm quite happy with the XP12visuals. I added the flyawaysimulation mesh and it adds to things quite nicely. It's ahead of P3d in most respects and while msfs is very good to me it seems a little cartoonish and I'm back to having CTD on almost every flight that a reinstall did not fix. I'm running 3440x1440 and a 20 gig video card, I9-9900k cpu.

[mSparks 2,086]

got a nice one today while testing stuff