3 hours ago, avhpilot said:

Still don't know how and why,  but X-plane's world scale strikes me as much more real and plausible than MSFS's.

Completely agree.

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

REP is The Bomb!

Just installed and updated through the Skunkcrafts Updater (standalone).

Made a first test flight and it made me recall why I had really liked it in Xp11 times 🙂

Not that I don't like even the default C172S, but indeed this REP is good!!!

Edited September 15, 2025Sep 15 by jcomm

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Not really sure what this thread is about anymore … the video gave MSFS the win.  I posted data that the majority of flight simmers what photogrammetry.  I never suggested XP should be exactly like MSFS … I was pretty clear in suggesting a “better photogrammetry”.

If Austin didn’t care about visuals, then why improve the lighting and weather?

Perhaps a better question … Does Austin want any feedback at all?  Or does he only want selective feedback from specific people?  

I think at the end of the day, I want a better XP.  Is that a “contrarian” position?

 

just to be clear I wasn't talking about anyone in particular, just describing forums in general 👍sorry for any confusion.

3 hours ago, GoranM said:

does care about visuals, but his approach is incremental and within the context of flight simulation first. That’s why you’ve seen big pushes in lighting, weather, seasons, trees, and atmospheric effects. They directly impact immersion while flying, not just while sightseeing.

I think the method Laminar are reported to be taking has the potential to be "better" in the sense that they control assets going forwards. 

By using autogen (rather than photogrammetry) they retain control over the assets directly and what happens to them. Same with the scenery.

One of the problems with photogrametry and streaming tiles for scenery is that it is "fixed" to a specific time of day, season, weather etc so you find yourself with shadows in the wrong place, artifacts from clouds - even down to traffic being on the roads that doesn't do anything. Sure you can use AI to get rid of a lot of it, but it isn't foolproof and can end up looking quite artificial despite being photorealistic.

You can see this now - get up and close with some of the scenery in MSFS and it's very blurry and looks poor. They do a good job with the procedural grass and terrain etc but Laminar could also do that, with the benefit of having razor sharp autogen assets that can be controlled directly by the sim without worrying about stretching textures, weird shading etc.

While it might not look real, it will certainly look plausible - and that's what Laminar want. A plausible world. For me, that's good enough because if I pick a random place in the world for all I know it may or may not look like how MSFS presents it - so what's the difference if the assets are autogen and "cleaner"? And with no ongoing streaming costs - I can see the benefit.

I'm excited to see their work.

5 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Yes, just read the threads here and on other forums.  Perhaps not directly or those posts don’t understand how their desires doesn’t improve market share … example:

• I don’t want photogrammetry (even though 70-90% of MSFS user do).
• I don’t want pebbles under the water, ok but what about those that do (Bush flight folks love that).
• It’s for serious enthusiasts.

All of these are market share reducing comments.  

"Market share" is relative. If a million people buy XP because they're intrigued by a some feature, but 90% of them ditch it after a few hours because feature x or y is not as good as they thought it was, Laminar may ultimately not retain a lot of market share, but gets to keep the money, which in turn funds X-Plane's continued development. Same as for any prduct that is a one-time purchase with a limited or nonexistant return policy.

 

 

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

I think at the end of the day, I want a better XP.  Is that a “contrarian” position?

Absolutely not. But you must understand that Laminar is a professional outfit and thu runs a very tight ship with a long term development plan. The request for a native, "official" photogrammetry or ortho solution is absolutely not new, but licensing issues and server hosting costs are unsurmountable roadblocks for any company that is not one of the biggest tech players, who can afford the licensing and hosting and drive cost down by means of synergy effects from using the data in other products.

However, X-Plane's next gen scenery might just make it easier to inject terrain related data from third party sources. So if somebody wishes to write a plugin that pulls photogrammetry or ortho data from a server to display it in "live" in X-Plane, they are likely going to have the means.

2 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Or wasps making nests on pitot tubes.

I can positively picture Austin wanting to add this feature in the failures screen of X-Plane. 🙂

6 hours ago, Franz007 said:

Hmm…I personnally find it more difficult than in real to be honest. Not sure if that is a yoke-setting or simething else 🤷‍♂️

Really? I grease landings in that thing whenever I try it (which, admittedly, has been awhile...). When I use the "study level" AFL C172, I have to focus to get a good landing, same with other addons with custom FM's etc.

I have plenty of IRL time in the Piper Arrow (years back, now... 😞 ), and IMHO the JF Arrow+REP handles very close to how I remember. Which is more difficult than the Default C172...

But I don't have even a single IRL hour in a 172, so I'll have to take your word for it 🙂👍

 

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by UrgentSiesta

5 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Really? I grease landings in that thing whenever I try it (which, admittedly, has been awhile...). When I use the "study level" AFL C172, I have to focus to get a good landing, same with other addons with custom FM's etc.

I have plenty of IRL time in the Piper Arrow (years back, now... 😞 ), and IMHO the JF Arrow+REP handles very close to how I remember. Which is more difficult than the Default C172...

But I don't have even a single IRL hour in a 172, so I'll have to take your word for it 🙂👍

 

Interesting…it has also been a while for me now with the C172 but I remember having had the same thoughts back then when I was training for my real flights using XP. At least the flare is way easier in real than in the sim 🙂

22 hours ago, flying_carpet said:

Didn't you download it already earlier? 😄 And didn't you write earlier stuff like "the C172 in X-Plane flies like sh.t"? How could you judge that 😂?

Bob - despite showing a picture of him in some Cessna airplane - flew a Cessna himself for the last time (by his own admittance in the official MS Flight Simulator forums) decades ago (I don´t remember, but I think it was like in the ´80s) - correct me if I am wrong.

He has a history of controversial posts, even among the MSFS users in the other avsim forum, and I would consider this an example of how even "real pilots" don´t hold the high ground when it comes to judging the quality of a flight simulator - this includes myself (29 years flying various airliners).

If find it indicative that he claims the XP C-172 flies like "s**t", when the general consensus is that the 172´s in MSFS and XP fly "mostly the same"?

It would also surprise me if he - after having tried the XP demo just over a month ago - now comes to a different conclusion - the last time he said that "he needed to delete it from his HDD and take a couple Tylenols to feel better" - much to the applause of abrams_tank and his fellow "No XP" club members.
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/676756-msfs-is-it’s-own-worst-enemy/page/4/#findComment-5541112

It is very hard to separate the chaff from the wheat when there are self-proclaimed experts that wholeheartedly tell people about "prop planes bugs" in X-Plane (while having never flown a powered aircraft themselves) and users that have no flying experience hang on the very lips of these "real pilots" and decide that they can´t enjoy a simulator (be it MSFS or XP) because "that pilot said its not realistic and has bugs, therefore why spend time with it?"

Form your own opinions, there are free (or mostly free) demos for all of the options available, don´t let some YouTuber or other "expert" decide for you what to like or not. 

There is also nothing wrong with having many simulators and the "one can only maintain one simulator" is only true if you have tinkering OCD - I spend exactly 0 minutes each month "maintaining" my flight simulator of choice, I installed it and set up the controls ONCE, and occasionally it installs (by ITSELF) a new beta or final version. That is all the "maintaining" one has to do - obsessing with downloading third party stuff and then pulling out your hair while fixing everything that you just broke with installing it - is optional (but half the fun for many! 🤣)

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by Litjan

Further to what @Litjan wrote above I would like to add that such sentences shouldn't be void in terms of support for whatever one thinks "feels like s**t...

What exactly @Bobsk8 do you find wrong or so badly modeled in the Xp12 C172 ?

OTOH, it puzzles me that pilots flying simulators sometimes fail to identify basic glitches, stuff that is so inaccurate that it should be easy for them to identify, like for instance the fact that as you lean the mixture in the MSFS 172, and all other default reciprocating aircraft with manual mixture control, above around 3000', if you check your instruments you'll see something really weird happening... @Bobsk8, can you notice it? Are you aware it's been there since ages, never fixed?

Do you really feel that, even with their now much better ground physics, some aircraft in MSFS still behave weirdly on ground, reacting too aggressively to rudder inputs? Yes you can tune your rudder in the Control settings, but I do feel the inertia and overall response to control inputs way better modelled in X-Plane.

And yet I usually play FS 2024 a lot more because, as I explained at another post in this thread, the scenery is so realistic around the areas I fly over IRL, just as a task I made in my LS1-D that I reproduced it in the sim a few times, and was positively surprised by the "feel of being there" that unfortunately X-Plane can't ( yet ) provide to that level of detail...

But at the same time, visibility, for the weather scenario that reproduced the same RW flying day, was a lot more accurate in X-Plane 12, without that "80 nm+ visibility" typical of FS 2024. IRL there surely were limitations, mostly due to inversion in that day and the altitudes I was flying at, and I felt it much better reproduced in X-Plane 12...

I can't or at least I shouldn't criticize those who claim they can only play one game at a time, because it's been the way I played flight simulators for decades, but in the last 6 + months I was able to share the pleasure of playing both sims, plus Condorsoaring 3, enjoying the best each one has to offer.

Writing something like "the default C172 is s**t" is not fair, I'd say not even valid unless very clear points can be made, identifying exactly what feels so wrong about it, and giving factual data to compare it to the RW C172s (which all fly a bit different from each other ... but respect their POH ) or between simulators, like performance, stability, etc...

Edited September 16, 2025Sep 16 by jcomm

3 hours ago, Litjan said:

Bob - despite showing a picture of him in some Cessna airplane - flew a Cessna himself for the last time (by his own admittance in the official MS Flight Simulator forums) decades ago (I don´t remember, but I think it was like in the ´80s) - correct me if I am wrong.

He has a history of controversial posts, even among the MSFS users in the other avsim forum, and I would consider this an example of how even "real pilots" don´t hold the high ground when it comes to judging the quality of a flight simulator - this includes myself (29 years flying various airliners).

If find it indicative that he claims the XP C-172 flies like "s**t", when the general consensus is that the 172´s in MSFS and XP fly "mostly the same"?

It would also surprise me if he - after having tried the XP demo just over a month ago - now comes to a different conclusion - the last time he said that "he needed to delete it from his HDD and take a couple Tylenols to feel better" - much to the applause of abrams_tank and his fellow "No XP" club members.
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/676756-msfs-is-it’s-own-worst-enemy/page/4/#findComment-5541112

It is very hard to separate the chaff from the wheat when there are self-proclaimed experts that wholeheartedly tell people about "prop planes bugs" in X-Plane (while having never flown a powered aircraft themselves) and users that have no flying experience hang on the very lips of these "real pilots" and decide that they can´t enjoy a simulator (be it MSFS or XP) because "that pilot said its not realistic and has bugs, therefore why spend time with it?"

Form your own opinions, there are free (or mostly free) demos for all of the options available, don´t let some YouTuber or other "expert" decide for you what to like or not. 

There is also nothing wrong with having many simulators and the "one can only maintain one simulator" is only true if you have tinkering OCD - I spend exactly 0 minutes each month "maintaining" my flight simulator of choice, I installed it and set up the controls ONCE, and occasionally it installs (by ITSELF) a new beta or final version. That is all the "maintaining" one has to do - obsessing with downloading third party stuff and then pulling out your hair while fixing everything that you just broke with installing it - is optional (but half the fun for many! 🤣)

THIS!! Exactly my words.
Even if he (Bob) would still fly a C172, what does it tell? And thanks for letting us know about what he admitted in the MSFS-forum 😂👍.
There are other users in this forum (I won't name names - everyone knows who I'm talking about) citing the YT-channel of a certain - allegedly? - RW airliner pilot, thus they claim what he tells is the truth (the ONLY truth 🤣).
The popular old conman trick: "He is an expert!! So he is right!!" Uummm ... but what do the (tens of thousands) other experts say? Everyone knows that trusting only one source, is dangerous. It can even threaten your life, if you trust only the one pitot tube ...

13 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Or wasps making nests on pitot tubes.

 

It's refreshing to come into (another) scenery thread, but instead, people are actually attempting to "spec out" the scope of features and feasibility.
Again, nothing is impossible (and I've seen incorrect statements about the tech on both sides), but reality and practicality first.

 

At the end of the day, no one is exposed to the simulator... more than Laminar. We know every single pedestal and flaw with our own product 😄

3 hours ago, Litjan said:

is only true if you have tinkering OCD

Not really, just couldnt be bothered trying to figure out why i like one over the other. Not that i have very little respect for MS on anything like that (sounds like a disease). I have hardly flown xplane last 3 months being too busy updating FAOR for gateway. Bought a new thandra plane havnt even looked at it yet

Please keep this topic civil. It started out well, so please don't be the person to get it locked. Thanks

4 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Not really, just couldnt be bothered trying to figure out why i like one over the other. Not that i have very little respect for MS on anything like that (sounds like a disease). I have hardly flown xplane last 3 months being too busy updating FAOR for gateway. Bought a new thandra plane havnt even looked at it yet

Are you using the new assets?