6 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Entirely agree with your overarching idea

I was wondering how it would be received.  😆

It was late, and I spent about half an hour helping a customer with support, so I was still in "support response" mode.

6 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

DCS addons top out at $80 rather than hundreds

Fair call.  In AUD, some would be over $AUD100.

6 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

finally, since the simulator itself is free, Eagle Dynamics takes 30% of ALL sales right off the top of every dollar spent. 

which has both strategic and tactical downsides, but on balance, I’m quite satisfied with the value provided by DCS devs. 

I'm actually surprised they could sustain that model for as long as they have.  I've been a huge fan of Eagle Dynamics since I bought SU-27 Flanker back in 1996, which ran on DOS.  

6 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

like those crazy guys who run Hot Start

Those guys are nuts.  I wish they'd hurry up with their TBM.  😉

22 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

(that honor goes to PMDG’s 747-8i at ~$215😁)

At first I was shocked, but I figure Boeing is leveraging some licensing fees from sales in order to save their bottom line.

 

16 hours ago, GoranM said:

I'm actually surprised they could sustain that model for as long as they have.

They're from the former bloc, a Dollar goes a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way there!

 

 

😉

I'm sharing this video that perfectly illustrates the overall immersive atmosphere that XP12 offers in its entirety. Even though it's a month old and version 12.3.0 hasn't been released yet, it's for me and for all airliner enthusiasts, a perfect visual and emotional description. I feel exactly the same way .A masterstroke from the X-Plane team

 

"X-plane 12"

#Pros#

-Nightlighting

-Weather Radar

-Runway textures

-Replay and camerasystem

 

#Cons#

-Scenery

-Lack of 3thparty Airports

-Bad Vr performance

-Weather rendering

 

"MFS2024"

#Pros#

-Scenery

-Weather rendering

-Alot of 3thparty Airports

-Great Vr performance

-Dlss and framegen support

 

#Cons#

-Nightlighting

-No weather radar

-Camera system

-Lod problems

-Runway textures

 

I could mention physics, but for me the physics are good in both sims.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Cyrex1984 said:

-Lack of 3thparty Airports

This is actually a double-edged sword.

Some people actually like X-Plane better for the fact that you don´t NEED 3rd party airports, simply because the default airports are so good. 

This is open to debate, of course - if you are the kind of pilot that needs to be able to see walking passengers in the terminal to feel "immersed", then yes, you need 3rd party.
But a lot of people are happy with the Gateway airports of X-Plane and cherish the fact that you can just hop into a plane and go wherever you want - without planning ahead for your flight by downloading and installing a ton of airports.

1 hour ago, Litjan said:

Some people actually like X-Plane better for the fact that you don´t NEED 3rd party airports, simply because the default airports are so good. 

This is open to debate, of course - if you are the kind of pilot that needs to be able to see walking passengers in the terminal to feel "immersed", then yes, you need 3rd party.
But a lot of people are happy with the Gateway airports of X-Plane and cherish the fact that you can just hop into a plane and go wherever you want - without planning ahead for your flight by downloading and installing a ton of airports.

This is awesome when you are speaking about smaller airports. Choosing a random field and having a close representation is great. However, as you get to larger airports, I do think xplane's 3rd party developers need to produce more quality 3rd party airports. This area is lacking in my opinion.

I know in the case of MSFS, they said that they could do many more custom airports natively, but also that they don't want to step on the toes of 3rd party developers. But the defaults could surely use a lot of improvements.

 

2 hours ago, Litjan said:

This is actually a double-edged sword.

Some people actually like X-Plane better for the fact that you don´t NEED 3rd party airports, simply because the default airports are so good. 

This is open to debate, of course - if you are the kind of pilot that needs to be able to see walking passengers in the terminal to feel "immersed", then yes, you need 3rd party.
But a lot of people are happy with the Gateway airports of X-Plane and cherish the fact that you can just hop into a plane and go wherever you want - without planning ahead for your flight by downloading and installing a ton of airports.

While I prefer X-Plane’s default airports over MSFS’, I don’t believe MSFS’ are unrepresentative to the point of needing payware. 

I say this as I frequently fly to airports where there aren’t any options other than default (in both sims)  

An interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed has been the incredible collection of high quality freeware airports available  for MSFS, e.g., those hosted on flight sim.to. 

many times more, and IMHO, generally of a higher quality/ fidelity than freeware available for XP. 

This isn’t meant to slight XP in the least; it’s just surprising since freeware is freeware, etc. 

12 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

many times more, and IMHO, generally of a higher quality/ fidelity than freeware available for XP. 

I think this is again easily explained by the larger customer base of MSFS. It fosters both more people willing to make scenery and also provides more audience to those that do.
One could argue that "freeware does not need an audience", but the truth is that a strong driving factor for those making freeware is the gratitude and praise they get from those using that freeware.

So in a way this is the same effect as "why do small countries rarely have good soccer teams?". They have a smaller pool of potential players and since the audience (= potential to earn money with playing soccer) is smaller, there is less incentive to pursue the career. 

16 hours ago, Cyrex1984 said:

#Cons#

-Scenery

-Lack of 3thparty Airports

-Bad Vr performance

-Weather rendering

Weather rendering in XP is a con?  Seriously? 🤔

 

17 hours ago, Cyrex1984 said:

"X-plane 12"

#Pros#

-Nightlighting

-Weather Radar

-Runway textures

-Replay and camerasystem

 

#Cons#

-Scenery

-Lack of 3thparty Airports

-Bad Vr performance

-Weather rendering

 

"MFS2024"

#Pros#

-Scenery

-Weather rendering

-Alot of 3thparty Airports

-Great Vr performance

-Dlss and framegen support

 

#Cons#

-Nightlighting

-No weather radar

-Camera system

-Lod problems

-Runway textures

 

I could mention physics, but for me the physics are good in both sims.

 

 

Weather rendering???????? You are either beside your shoes or you don't know XP at all. For Physics Landing with the Toliss compared the Fenix is Day and Night...

 

 

32 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Weather rendering in XP is a con?  Seriously? 🤔

 

We're getting to outstanding VR support now to, few of us are now exclusively flying VR after

Although i still do a lot of testing in 2D.

Main problem for XP VR is that perf is the top priority for a good VR experience, and there is a long history of "25fps is enough". Even when LR eventually get to giving VR the extra love it needs that legacy is going to haunt aircraft that believed it was.

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Weather rendering in XP is a con?  Seriously? 🤔

 

Sure. The rain effect is still from X-Plane 9 and looks like a spacewarp when flying at night, the lightning effect also from X-plane 8-9. And you cant see rain in the distance like you can in mfs, and lastly i think the clouds in X-Plane 12 are to low resolution.

Edited September 17, 2025Sep 17 by Cyrex1984

32 minutes ago, Cyrex1984 said:

Sure. The rain effect is still from X-Plane 9 and looks like a spacewarp when flying at night, the lightning effect also from X-plane 8-9. And you cant see rain in the distance like you can in mfs, and lastly i think the clouds in X-Plane 12 are to low resolution.

I don‘t have the same opinion. Seeing the rain drops on your windshield when taking off and the drops whipped out by the whippers is fantastic in XP. And the clouds look amazing to me (in 99% of the cases) and have a lot more variation. Even in the official MSFS-forum, many take XP as example and wish Asobo would offer the same. I would give a clear pro to XP when talking about the weather. And not to forget that clouds impact the flight behaviour way better than they do in MSFS, where you can even fly into a CB and nothing happens.

1 hour ago, Cyrex1984 said:

Sure. The rain effect is still from X-Plane 9 and looks like a spacewarp when flying at night, the lightning effect also from X-plane 8-9. And you cant see rain in the distance like you can in mfs, and lastly i think the clouds in X-Plane 12 are to low resolution.

If you’re going to make a claim, back it up. It’s obvious you don’t have X-Plane 12, because the rain system has been completely reworked. I know because the dev who built it is the same one I worked with on the TBM and CL650, and he donated that code directly to Laminar.

 

Edited September 17, 2025Sep 17 by GoranM

5 hours ago, filou said:

Weather rendering???????? You are either beside your shoes or you don't know XP at all. For Physics Landing with the Toliss compared the Fenix is Day and Night...

 

Amazing screenshots! 

are you using any particular mods to get it looking that good? I don't feel like XP12 looks as good as that on my system