The thing about MSFS for me is that it is so realistic it feels "off". It's a diorama, a model; it doesn't feel alive even though it should.

I think it's because it is so realistic my brain tries to shut off its imagination, but that only causes everything that is incorrect to be highlighted compared to the real world equivalent. With X-Plane it's like my brain knows to use its imagination so I find the world more engaging; I can get into it because I'm not looking for things to be incorrect - I just accept them as-is.

I may be talking out of my backside (it has been known!) but I'd be interested in other peoples' thoughts on this. Austin's "plausible world" seems to work for me better than the "digital twin" from Asobo so while they may never have satellite scenery per-se I feel like using ortho to seed the data that places autogen might be a fantastic step forward.

3 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Its a flight sim not a world sim. 

🤣

7 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

The thing about MSFS for me is that it is so realistic it feels "off". It's a diorama, a model; it doesn't feel alive even though it should.

I think it's because it is so realistic my brain tries to shut off its imagination, but that only causes everything that is incorrect to be highlighted compared to the real world equivalent. With X-Plane it's like my brain knows to use its imagination so I find the world more engaging; I can get into it because I'm not looking for things to be incorrect - I just accept them as-is.

I may be talking out of my backside (it has been known!) but I'd be interested in other peoples' thoughts on this. Austin's "plausible world" seems to work for me better than the "digital twin" from Asobo so while they may never have satellite scenery per-se I feel like using ortho to seed the data that places autogen might be a fantastic step forward.

I've flown in all kinds of environments in XPlane, and my personal feeling is that Austin's "plausible world" works very well in only one place: cities.

Sure MSFS has a very nice autogen system. But when you are flying an helicopter and you're an old-timer who has been a great fan of SimCopter, you want some more consitency in the cities. Despite the very good autogen and the photogrammetry tech available in some cities, flying low over or landing in the middle of an urban area in XPlane continues to look way better than anything available so far in MSFS, may it be 2020 or 2024. This is due to this artificial additional level of details that XPlane injects from its "plausible world" tech. We get streets and nicely animated cars, we get excellent night lighting, and my personal pleasure is the police cars speeding here and there 🙂 When I land in the middle of an urban area in MSFS, it feels off.

Interesting thing is, as soon as you get out of the urban areas, the situation is exactly inverted. It's XPlane that starts looking off. Even more so with MSFS 2024. So my feeling is that I'd like Austin's plausible world tech to exist in the MSFS 2020/2024 cities (and MSFS 2024 "not-city" tech to exist in XPlane 😄 ).

17 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

The thing about MSFS for me is that it is so realistic it feels "off". It's a diorama, a model; it doesn't feel alive even though it should.

That's a general problem with its photorealism, I guess. Not much need to fill in blanks, but the illusion quickly crumbles when things deviate from expectation.

X-Plane handles art style consistency well and its approach to create a plausible illusion of reality instead of a copy makes it easier to overlook some deficiencies. It also helps that it does not take itself too seriously (just read any advertisement or signage).