Like many others, i had made the move to MSFS (I was actually a beta tester) and didn't touch XP11 for a year or more. I picked up XP12 when it went early access, but didn't do too much with it. I could see some definite improvements over 11, but nothing really blew me away. Then I saw a Youtube video that mentioned Sim Heaven's X-World scenery enhancement. I had never heard of it before, but, since it was free, I figured what is there to lose. Loaded it up and proceeded to be very impressed! It was kinda like back in the FS9 days when I discovered Ruud Faber's FScene! This, coupled with XP12's general improvements in weather and lighting, it was darn close to MSFS level, as far as I was concerned. The final selling point was the fact that I could once again use my favorite airliners, the X-craft ERJ's! Haven't touched MSFS now for at least two weeks! I'll probably use it for VFR and stick with XP12 for airliner flights.

 

Russ

1 hour ago, b1bmsgt said:

I'll probably use it for VFR and stick with XP12 for airliner flights.

The pros and cons of trying to manage multiple flight sims (and addons) considering how robust the major players are these days. I am trying to keep it to just one now...and that's one for civil and one for combat.

1 hour ago, b1bmsgt said:

Haven't touched MSFS now for at least two weeks! I'll probably use it for VFR

I have only opened MSFS a few times since the XP12 early release.  I have downloaded Ortho for the places I fly, so XP12 is my goto for VFR flight too.  Together with SimHeaven, plus XP12's excellent new lighting model, it is unbeatable imho.  The latest 12.04 beta has really improved the clouds and atmosphere to the point MSFs looks like it needs to catch up.

53 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

  The latest 12.04 beta has really improved the clouds and atmosphere to the point MSFs looks like it needs to catch up.

 

Edited February 21, 20233 yr by jbdbow1970

Why is it, whenever a positive post is made about X-Plane, it get's shot down by someone within an hour?  

And usually by someone who doesn't even have X-Plane.

In this case, it's coupled with a comment about the eye health of the poster.

🤦‍♂️

24 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Why is it, whenever a positive post is made about X-Plane, it get's shot down by someone within an hour?  

And usually by someone who doesn't even have X-Plane.

In this case, it's coupled with a comment about the eye health of the poster.

🤦‍♂️

Ok I will delete my comment then OK I did try X-Plane but don't run well on Windows.

Edited February 21, 20233 yr by jbdbow1970

12 minutes ago, jbdbow1970 said:

Ok I will delete my comment then OK

I didn't mean to come off as confrontational.  Feel free to critique, but at least back it up with details.  

At least when Krakin criticized them, he mentioned why (Low resolution)., even if most of us disagree with him.  

It's at the point now when a positive post is made, everyone is waiting for the first negative counter-post/bash.

Just now, GoranM said:

I didn't mean to come off as confrontational.  Feel free to critique, but at least back it up with details.  

At least when Krakin criticized them, he mentioned why (Low resolution)., even if most of us disagree with him.  

It's at the point now when a positive post is made, everyone is waiting for the first negative counter-post/bash.

Sir don't take this seriously I'm just poking fun at you. If I had the budget I would fly your plane in XP but its not there yet. 

1 hour ago, jbdbow1970 said:

1 hour ago, GoranM said:

I didn't mean to come off as confrontational.  Feel free to critique, but at least back it up with details.  

At least when Krakin criticized them, he mentioned why (Low resolution)., even if most of us disagree with him.  

It's at the point now when a positive post is made, everyone is waiting for the first negative counter-post/bash.

Sir don't take this seriously I'm just poking fun at you. If I had the budget I would fly your plane in XP but its not there yet. 

I beg to differ, it is far enough to be usable for all types of flight.  I agree there is still more to do, but rather seeing that as a negative I see it as exciting to see how XP12 develops 🙂

Welcome back.

For me - and I should point out that I never tried Aerofly FS 4, so I can't judge it's quality in that respect - X-Plane is the most plausible general purpose FLIGHT simulator, and indeed for me the "feel of flight" and the coherency of the response to control inputs, weather effects, aerodynamic effects, etc... are in the very first place when classifying flight simulators.

IRL I only fly gliders and unfortunately I don't like the gliders in XP11 or 12. They have some strange limitations, but are still more plausible than in MFS.

Weather is the 2nd feature I look for in a FLIGHT simulator. MFS is closed for 3pds, and while presently there is yet no SDK for weather in XP12, LR hasn't closed 3pd access to their weather engine like MS / ASOBO did, so, again, I opt for XP12 because:

- while MFS has access to huge resources and could contract a major weather product provider (Meteoblue), truth is their weather engine has as much quirks (all taken into consideration) as XP12, if we do not count some aspects of the rendering of clouds... XP12 s going through a significative update of it's weather engine and the last ( 12.04 b2 ) release has brought features and fine tuned aspects that users were complaining about. Turbulence effects were overdone, just like in MFS where they can actually in some aspects become even more flawed and unrealistic, but this latest XP12 beta release has fine tuned the turbulence, and in some way modulated different types of turbulence in a way that really pleases me. It also has pushed forecast (GRIB) data to the upper levels of the Troposphere, and above into the Stratosphere, at least up to 50,000 feet, as well as apparently now simulating the variations in the height of the Tropopause. This were features I asked for and were initially considered by Austin as not important at all 😕 but somehow someone from somewhere made them re-think and accept that proper higher level modelling of the Troposphere and part of the Stratosphere where many flights take place IRL, were important enough to get modelled properly! Great!

While MS/ASOBO talks about many weather effects / features getting implemented, and I do acknowledge their good intentions, truth is they appear to really not understand what these phenomena are all about,  and simply "drop" into the sim effects and that aren't coherently implemented, resulting in useless modelling, a waste of resources IMO. XP approaches, for instance, convective weather in a much much more simplistic way, but at least it gives back effects in a more plausible form, IMO. I talk mostly from the standpoint of someone who works in the area and flies gliders. 

ATC and AI Traffic are areas I never really invested in on previous versions of all of the flight simulators I have used, with the remarkable exception of ATP-Rev D and Airline Simulator 2, which both included a rather "advanced" for it's time ATC system. 

While I like VERY MUCH the AI traffic in MFS, and it made me feel for the first time in my long simmer life the realism of flying with traffic all around me and interacting with the same ATC agents I also interact with, and coordinating the traffic around the zones of its responsibility, truth is the system is still rather basic and flawed. Same applies to ATC in XP12, and in XP12 we do not have, natively, the same kind of AI traffic we can have in MFS. This is an area where IMO, XP12 lags behind MFS, and I hope LR and the programmer behind their ATC robot, can change course and try to offer something more complete / complex / consistent than what we have at present, although, I must say, there are features n XP12's ATC robot that are even more detailed and interesting than those available in the default MFS ATC robot.

But, picking a taildragger, being a modern GA one or a WW2 fighter, a DC-3, an Halifax bomber, etc... gives me a unique experience in XP12 that MFS is far far far from being able to reproduce due to it's very limited and wonky ground physics... Then, as I pick prop or jet or rotary wing aircraft to flight phase, they all respond to control inputs, weather effects, and most flight conditions in a much more plausible and lively way than in MFS, to the point of MFS no longer being able to conquer my interest any longer (it's UNINSTALLED (weeeeeeee!!!!!) for good, and associated MS account, the one I created in 2011 for MS FLIGHT, Deleted !!! 🤪) , albeit it's gorgeous and detailed World scenery 😕, and I will miss the PMDG 736 and Real World AI Traffic, but Zibo 737 800x is fast replacing the PMDG, and I look fwd for AI traffic and a more complete ATC for XP12 🙂... 

Edited February 21, 20233 yr by cagarini

1 hour ago, cagarini said:

While I like VERY MUCH the AI traffic in MFS, and it made me feel for the first time in my long simmer life the realism of flying with traffic all around me and interacting with the same ATC agents I also interact with, and coordinating the traffic around the zones of its responsibility, truth is the system is still rather basic and flawed. Same applies to ATC in XP12, and in XP12 we do not have, natively, the same kind of AI traffic we can have in MFS. This is an area where IMO, XP12 lags behind MFS, and I hope LR and the programmer behind their ATC robot, can change course and try to offer something more complete / complex / consistent than what we have at present, although, I must say, there are features n XP12's ATC robot that are even more detailed and interesting than those available in the default MFS ATC robot.

 

AI Traffic Pack XP12 0.1 Beta

4 minutes ago, flying_carpet said:

 

AI Traffic Pack XP12 0.1 Beta

Thanks for the hint @flying_carpet.

Yet, in MFS I did have real world traffic, based on ADS-B and other sources, and pretty much matching what I could observe for instance in FlightRadar24, or simply looking from my window and checking the arriving / departing traffic to from LPPT 02... This also applied while enroute, and was really immersive.

The a.m. mentioned plugin doesn't show you the real world traffic, but as I understood, the AI traffic interacts with the builtin ATC. OTOH, if you want real world traffic: Livetraffic (which for obvious reasons 😄) doesn't interact with X-Planes internal ATC.

On 2/21/2023 at 6:27 AM, MrBitstFlyer said:

the latest 12.04 beta has really improved the clouds and atmosphere to the point MSFs looks like it needs to catch up.

that's what he said. for atmosphere: yes. for clouds: no, hopefully no catching up to the OMG black clouds. there is a lot of catching up to do for xplane12. But we discussed clouds already, let's not get started again.

Edited February 22, 20233 yr by turbomax

On 2/21/2023 at 9:00 AM, MrBitstFlyer said:

I see it as exciting to see how XP12 develops 🙂

I currently generally expect

XP12.1X to be bullet proof in terms of getting the last of the glitches ironed out

XP12 2X to be legendary in terms of visuals/VR

And the rest of the run to be the usual bumpy road with the odd "OMG I didn't see that coming" thrown in for good measure.

In the meantime every time I fire XP12 up its a pleasure. So much so that any motivation I had to even try any of the other sims has evaporated into nothing, my XP11 was ruined from day 1 of testing XP12, I still barely have time to try all the things I want, just today I saw it now has visual references for ridge lift, (ctrl+m after wake turbulence), and realised I still haven't gotten round to giving the gliders a run.

Today a couple of their new(ish) hires helped me with a couple of my bugs, and how all this was possible became clear.

A single LR dev is worth an entire team of any of the other sims, and it is glorious, when PMDG is being held up by simple bugs for months on MS, and little ol me can get fairly complex problems by any measure resolved in hours non of the competition will be able to compete.

So I'll have to disagree with an earlier comment that said xplane is not going anywhere.

Nah man, its going to the moon, this is not just next gen x-plane, its a whole new era of flightsim.

Im just not sure if thats a calzone moon or 100% cheese.