So, I've spent better part of the past week-end to try to iron out performance and trying out some new and old stuff I have for XP. I caved and bought the ToLiss A340 and I love it to bits. In order to get some more life into XP I realised I had purchased World Traffic 3 several years back and installed it into XP12. Running the sim locked and backing off from setting to much stuff in Nvidia settings I believe helped with the performance part. Now I am using WT3, XPRealistic, Avitab (with my Navigraph sub so nicely integrated), Better Pushback for my immersion and I am really enjoying my time in XP again. 

Simzilla had just about made me stop entirely buying addons for XP but it seems I'm back juggling two sims now.. 😉

... now I am F5-ing a thread at x-aviation regarding upcoming news about the IXEG 733 for XP12.. 🤪

Ditch WT3 because of the FPS hit and use LiveTraffic. You'll see every airliner, ga and helicopter in the real world in XP12.  Much more FPS friendly.  You'll also get aircraft vapor trails too.

2 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Ditch WT3 because of the FPS hit and use LiveTraffic. You'll see every airliner, ga and helicopter in the real world in XP12.  Much more FPS friendly.  You'll also get aircraft vapor trails too.

Oh, have to check that one out as well, then! 

That said, WT3 doesn’t seem to be that big of a FPS hit for me. 

Oh, LiveTraffic is a free plugin?!

No reason not to try it, then. 😅 Too bad I am on 3hr flight in the A340.

 

Actually just purchased XP12 - last time I tried XP must have been over 15 years ago.

Got it really for the Challenger - but just to make sure that it ran Ok on my system I tried a test flight in the Citation X - pleasantly surprised how well it went, sure the FMS LNAV forgot what it was doing a couple of times, but other than that for a "default" aircraft it was far better than anything I have purchased from Carenado over the years.

Followed up by a purchase & flight in the Challenger - that thing redefines "Study Level".....

Will definitely be two sims for me 😉.... although the massive (non existent) viaduct as you are taxiing for runway 24 at EGPH is a bit off-putting !!... 🙃

 

G

LiveTraffic install of Aircraft is a PITA🤮👎

44 minutes ago, Swe_Richard said:

Oh, LiveTraffic is a free plugin?!

Mind the data feed subscription fees though.

2 hours ago, Beerz said:

LiveTraffic install of Aircraft is a PITA🤮👎

No, not if you go here - easy install and easy to maintain.  It may look like IVAO only, but works fine with with Livetraffic - just add the path to the csl models in LiveTraffic settings.

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by MrBitstFlyer

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Mind the data feed subscription fees though.

There are free options available in LiveTraffic settings.  I choose to Subscribe to RealTraffic for a couple of reasons...

1.  Historical traffic.  Flying at 1am, no problem, you can have traffic for any date and time from May 1st 2020.
2.  The date and time you set in the sim is sent to Realtraffic, so you always have the traffic for the date/time/place you are flying.

RealTraffic consolidates data from multiple international ADS-B and multilateration networks, so you are guaranteed great coverage.  Not cheap, but the increase in immersion and options is well worth it in my eyes.  If you only want live traffic only, just go for one of the free options in LiveTraffic itself.

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by MrBitstFlyer

5 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

 

... now I am F5-ing a thread at x-aviation regarding upcoming news about the IXEG 733 for XP12.. 🤪

I don't believe it.... we'll see it in a decade lol

Interesting how different features of XP12 pull us into becoming fervent or should I say committed XPlane users. I installed XPlane once the XP12 Demo came out but I had long been a secret admirer of XPlane from my participation at DC-3 Airways events etc. For me it was the scenery, it left P3D for dead and honestly in a side by side comparison with SimZilla (like that description) I thought it was better in a lot more places and comparable in most others - that was the game changer. I parked all of P3D onto a spare Hard Drive and effectively decommissioned SimZill as well. 

The spread of scenery addons is amazing and quite suprisingly even though the stock scenery is in a lot of places word not allowed good there is a warehouse full of XP11 stuff that moves across without any issues. 

I like the lighting and atmospherics, better that P3D much vaunted EA and yes there are some niggling little issues but no complaints from me - the weather rendition just gets better and better and boy to have working rain effects again (Remember MS2004?) is superb! Not to mention rain drops splashing in puddles on the tarmac or water that you can see through at the edges of shorelines. 

And I cannot forget to mention real undulating runways and strange slopes beautifully handled and recreated (night and day) something I have never seen done properly in any sim before!

Aircraft or models - well a mixed bag at the moment and I stress at the moment - the default aircraft are stunningly good and if you want even better then you can go payware or bless them the dedicated amateur groups that produce work like the Zibo B737 or the AWX DC-3. I have picked up the Rotate MD-11 and a few others (dare I say Caribou?) Thanks to tools provided to the XPlane community there are some payware (actually better really) quality models arriving and improving (Shensee B720, Soul Simulation Beaver, the latest Tiger Moth. However some languish because in my ignorance of the impact of XP12 v XP11 design programming I bought into a couple of XP11 models to find they need serious updates to be workable - I would be happy to pay for an update but some just seem to either be forgotten or are in the too hard basket maybe) I do not have much military stuff but that is fine always more interested in civilian models anyway and not dissapointed there have a superb Cessna 206 and 172 a fabulous Aerostar and even the one off Aerostar Jetm no B200 King Air yet but the Laminar C90 is word not allowed good anyway! Sure I miss a few old favourites particularly the old flying boats but who knows what is in the works!

If there is one thing that has really impressed me is how people with no real sim development experience have launched into designing and building an aircraft for XPlane and produced unbelievably nearly payware quality aircraft (Have a look at the Shensee B707 with PBR etc - his first ever model OR Flyintak's Lockheed Electra or YS-11 or StarvingPilots Metroliner, the Manky1 Dash 8 Seriies (100,200 and 400) and there a lot more - the fact that this is happening without them being bludgeoned with NDA's or being charged through the nose for software tools is the very thing that drew me to Flight Simulation a long long time ago, the enthusiastic core amateurs who made the simulation community.. The way Laminar have the scenery Gateway facitity, give you scenery tools and add in a huge amount of scenery developed on little PC's all around the world is sheer genius - have not bought a single piece of payware scenery since going over to XP12 why bother!

I also love the variety of plugins and freeware that hits the boards in XPlane that make a world of difference and work fine, AVITAB for sure but the winner for me has been LIVETRAFFIC what a great little program and once you get a good library of models it works a treat and I do not mind paying a measily $5 a month for a live traffic subscription to have more traffic than you could ever want and in real time - it there is lots there is lots if there is none there is none- fantastic! 

Now performance no issues what so ever, I run an Intel CPU 8 cores with SSD and sufficient RAM 32GB and the NVIDIA Super RTX 2070 8GB GPU Video Card, no stutters no lags no anything it runs smooth as silk, load time from intialisation less than 45 secs and from there to a flight ready to go less than 45 secs.

Oh and one final note - you can run XPlane on a Mac or Linux so there!

So yes I am supremely impressed as well! How could you not be!

Edited March 21, 20233 yr by coastaldriver

As a flight simmer since 1997 when I spotted boxes for the upcoming “Flight Simulator 98” on my honeymoon (and could think of nothing else the rest of the trip!?), here is my opinion of XP12....

Basically, I love it!

It seemed not that smooth even at 40-50 FPS until I locked via some code in the command prompt at 30 FPS, now it’s like SILK! (10900K, RX 6800, 32 GB memory).

I have the other major sim and have spent $$$$ on it, here’s why I love XP12...

- The lighting and clouds and water and vehicle traffic below are amazing, especially at diusk/dawn

- The scenery isn’t photoreal, but with OSM data it’s real-ish...as in I can recognize my small Wisconsin town and Lake Michigan snd my neighborhood streets etc.  Photoreal scenery is possible and I’ve tried it,,,both Ortho4XP and Orbx payware...but I prefer the the default.
 

- Airport runways and ground scenery are actually clear and crisp from altitude, not an impressionistic painting-like, blurry mess.

- Default scenery has no “clouds”, isn’t puke green just south of Chicago Midway, doesn’t have clouds or Too brown textures or melted photogrammetry buildings or other odd things - and isn’t dependent on an active Internet connection to servers

- Default planes are fantastic, default airports are well done and very convincing. This weekend I flew the Citation X from Milwaukee to Detroit with all default except the NetJets livery and it was amazing and convincing and smooth...when I came into KDTW the default statics were mostly Delta, how I don’t know but it was cool.

- I’m not a pilot, but the planes “feel” more real...”heavier” maybe?

In summary, for $60 plus hard drive space and a few freeware liveries, I think a flight sim buff can have a wonderful time.
 

I have some XP12 compatible aircraft (X-crafts ERJ-145 and VSkylabs C-47 and others)...and I plan to buy the CRJ-700...but freeware/default is enough to experiment.

I do like that other sim...and have Prepar3Dv5 as well...but only fly in XP12 these days.

Would be interested to hear others’ impressions, and what they love about XP12?
 

Steve

 

I agree Republic. The only thing spoiling XP12 for me these days is I get constant freezes everytime I try to change an aircraft or airport, very frustrating.

13 hours ago, Gazzareth said:

 

Followed up by a purchase & flight in the Challenger - that thing redefines "Study Level".....

Will definitely be two sims for me 😉.... although the massive (non existent) viaduct as you are taxiing for runway 24 at EGPH is a bit off-putting !!... 🙃

 

Yeah, I am eyeing that one myself. Told myself I wouldn’t but we all know I’ll cave sooner or later so why even try to fight it. 🤯🤪

yeah, there sure are some interesting finds to be made in the scenery. Overall, though, it can look quite good, especially with the Simheaven-stuff. 
 

My Main gripe, however, has been the anti-aliasing. Sometimes it looks ok but at others quite bad. The second gripe is the light popping in at night (is there a plug-in or anything for that?)

16 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

I don't believe it.... we'll see it in a decade lol

Yeah, there is that risk of course.. 

However this thread has my hopes up a bit..

https://forums.x-pilot.com/forums/topic/25599-ixeg-for-x-plane-12-status/?page=3