Hello,

First of all, I feel a little out of my depth on this sub forum. I’ve only ever used MS or P3D. Most recently MS24.

As time goes on, I’d prefer realism over anything else. 

1. Performance wise, is XP12 harder on my PC than 24? (13900k & 4070Ti)

2. Will my WinCtrl hardware just work? 

3. Is buying scenery a thing for this sim or is it just a case of default and enjoy good fps?

4. Do external things like ChasePlane exist?

I really do apologise for my laziness in asking these questions, but, it would be really good to hear from people who have made the switch from one platform to another for realism reasons, and if it has actually been worth it and easy.

Thank you, 

Mike

1. You should be fine

2. Should do

3. Freeware like simheaven will take you a long way. Not sure I would recommend buying scenery right now, there is some great payware for sure, but it will all be obsolete soonish, some older scenery has serious performance problems with XP12, and for the most part default is now good.

There are some very very high quality airports coming out, but all the default airports are already very good thanks to the scenery gateway (nothing to do on your part unless you want to contribute, ships with the sim)

4. Xplanes addon ecosystem is enornmous. If you want it, its probably already been done, well 

 

Edited March 26Mar 26 by mSparks

40 minutes ago, MikeV1 said:

Hello,

First of all, I feel a little out of my depth on this sub forum. I’ve only ever used MS or P3D. Most recently MS24.

As time goes on, I’d prefer realism over anything else. 

1. Performance wise, is XP12 harder on my PC than 24? (13900k & 4070Ti)

2. Will my WinCtrl hardware just work? 

3. Is buying scenery a thing for this sim or is it just a case of default and enjoy good fps?

4. Do external things like ChasePlane exist?

I really do apologise for my laziness in asking these questions, but, it would be really good to hear from people who have made the switch from one platform to another for realism reasons, and if it has actually been worth it and easy.

Thank you, 

Mike

Welcome to the other side of the flight sim fence, Mike.  No apologies necessary.  

1. Your 13900K and 4070 Ti is a solid rig for X-Plane 12. XP12 is generally more CPU-bound than GPU-bound, so that 13900K will serve you well. 

2.  Almost certainly yes.  If WinCtrl hardware works in P3D, it should work in XP12.

3.  There's a vast library of freeware airports and scenery you can get, but the big one is map enhancement.  There's a free version, but the paid/pro version is really something else.  I recently subscribed to it.  $40/year is pretty good.

4.  Yes.   The equivalent in XP12 is mainly Flywithlua scripts combined with CameraPlus or Better Pushback, and there's also XCamera and FlyAgi options. It's a slightly more fragmented ecosystem than ChasePlane, but the functionality is all there. You won't be without good external and interior camera control.

If realism is your primary driver, X-Plane 12 is worth the switch.  When you add Map Enhancement to the mix, I doubt you'll want to go back to MSFS.

Hello Mike,

If you are a not a big fan of orthophoto (like me), I can highly recommend "Simheaven X-World". This would be a big step up over the default scenery. And there are good thinks comming...X-World Pro will be released within the next weeks (hopefully). I am eagerly waiting for this product.

You can take a look at this topic:
simHeaven X-WORLD Pro - SimHeaven - X-Plane.Org Forum

Patric

Edited March 26Mar 26 by pscharff

2 hours ago, MikeV1 said:

Hello,

First of all, I feel a little out of my depth on this sub forum. I’ve only ever used MS or P3D. Most recently MS24.

As time goes on, I’d prefer realism over anything else. 

1. Performance wise, is XP12 harder on my PC than 24? (13900k & 4070Ti)

2. Will my WinCtrl hardware just work? 

3. Is buying scenery a thing for this sim or is it just a case of default and enjoy good fps?

4. Do external things like ChasePlane exist?

I really do apologise for my laziness in asking these questions, but, it would be really good to hear from people who have made the switch from one platform to another for realism reasons, and if it has actually been worth it and easy.

Thank you, 

Mike

It’s great the you’ve got such a broad background in flight sim. 
and because of that, you probably already know at least a few of these answers. 

X-Plane is not as performant as FS24. I.e., you can run higher graphics settings on 2024 than you can on XP on the same hardware. 

That said, I regularly run both sims and don’t have any problems. For reference, I run a 4070, Ryzen 5700x3D, 64 GB ram, and a few nvme & ssds. 

Further, with the recent XP 12.4 update, XP got a HUGE performance increase! It’s at least as good as the step up from Prepar3D v4.5 to v5.0 (which gave me a roughly 50% boost!)  

re WinCtrl: no idea. But all the hardware I use (mainly HOTAS, pedals, and trackIR) work seamlessly across all my sims. 

Re Scenery, XP 12 is far better than any version of P3D, but worse than FS24.  The biggest discrepancy is ground textures and buildings and such. 

I run Orbx TrueEarth and similar in XP for the same reasons I ran Orbx in P3D.  It’s just a much better looking sim that way. 

In terms of performance, again, with the recent 12.4, I can run XP graphics on very high settings with very good smoothness, including TrueEarth. 

Chase Plane? Never heard of her 🙃

best thing for you to do is to download the free XP 12 demo and give it a try. You can load it up with addons if you want, and fly for up to an hour at a time. Plenty to get a really good feel for the sim. 

FWIW, I haven’t “switched”. I run several sims depending on my mood. They’re each great in their own ways 🤙

ETA: the term “realism” is highly subjective ! 😁

IMHO, XP offers significant advantages - in general. E.g., I still generally prefer XP’s physics/flight model to MSFS. And there are other things”under the hood” as well.

BUT, a tremendous amount of “realism” comes from the addon developer. 
 

i.e., there are crappy addons in X-Plane, and magnificent ones in FS24. And vice versa 😎.

Edited March 26Mar 26 by UrgentSiesta

Also a suggestion to pay a visit to X-Plane.Org from where you can get a worth of great free addons for Xp12, from the huge Library they have there.

There Forums are also filled with interesting discussions about the X-Plane Ecosystem, and are actually fully dedicated to X-Plane, so they are also a bit "temperamental" when other platforms are brought to the discussion 🙂

Edited March 26Mar 26 by jcomm

As a "pilot" and not a sight-seer, I fly with default X-Plane scenery.  There is a large group of volunteer artists in the Gateway site constantly updating airports to realistic standards (within the rather limited but growing default scenery items) so many airports are extremely accurate with respect to runways, taxiways, buildings, etc.  In addition, constant updates to the X-Plane scenery engine renders 3rd party scenery problematic or obsolete and can be a waste of money as things constantly improve.  Default scenery is updated automatically when developed within the allowed parameters of the WED editor.

In addition, X-Plane is expecting some major scenery updates in upcoming versions or even with the possibility of a new X-Plane 13 sometime down the road.  For that reason, I don't bother with trying to improve X-Plane 12 scenery except for my work on the Gateway, all of which eventually becomes default.

And when you are up and running and you want realism regarding aircraft go and have a look at Hotstarts 650 Challenger and Flight Factors 777....2 of the best ever in a desktop sim..not to mention Toliss Airbuses....theeeee best......the Challenger will blow your mind if biz jets are your thing....I fly it every day.......love it!!

31 minutes ago, Captaintull said:

And when you are up and running and you want realism regarding aircraft go and have a look at Hotstarts 650 Challenger and Flight Factors 777....2 of the best ever in a desktop sim..not to mention Toliss Airbuses....theeeee best......the Challenger will blow your mind if biz jets are your thing....I fly it every day.......love it!!

Let’s not scare @MikeV1 away with the absolutely most expensive X-Plane addons available (each of which is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than their respective counterparts in MSFS).

Heck, even the ToLiss/Aerosoft A340 is cheaper in MSFS!

@MikeV1, there are plenty of realistic addons for X-Plane that are fully up to par with similar addons in MSFS. AND they are reasonably priced.

IMHO, the frequent sales for X-Plane addons bring the prices down nicely, with >30% discounts on many. 

If you want truly high fidelity addons at reasonable prices, look into SimCoders Reality Expansion Packs, Airfoil Labs, et al  

and like MSFS, there are a few exemplar freeware aircraft available of just about every type: 

the Zibo 738

the Blackhawk King Air C90 G1000

the EC135 helo

and others. 

anyhow, XP and its high quality addons are a great complement to all the other sims available. 

I’m positive you’ll find some new favorites, and I’m sure you’ll keep some from the other sims, too. 🤙
 

5 hours ago, mldavis2 said:

constant updates to the X-Plane scenery engine renders 3rd party scenery problematic or obsolete and can be a waste of money as things constantly improve.

This simply isn’t true. 

I have quite a few “outdated” addon sceneries that work just fine in XP12 AND still look better than the Default scenery.

5 hours ago, mldavis2 said:

X-Plane is expecting some major scenery updates in upcoming versions or even with the possibility of a new X-Plane 13 sometime down the road. 

This is irrelevant. Same thing as talking about how great MSFS 2028 will be. 

@MikeV1 besidea what @UrgentSiesta said. Only addons useful, are freeware betterpushback and payware xcamera for views and also useful if you usectrak ir, and xsaitek panels free plugin if you use any saitek panels, radio etc

Edited March 26Mar 26 by mjrhealth

For what it's worth i am quite new to xplane 12. I didn't mind spending some cash on the Toliss A320neo/ceo and also the A321neo/ceo. Like others I use Map Enhancement and Sim Heaven. If you don't mind spending cash on airports I really like the stuff from Nimbus, Taimodels, AirField Canada. DD KEWR is pretty darn good too.

22 hours ago, MikeV1 said:

As time goes on, I’d prefer realism over anything else. 

1. Performance wise, is XP12 harder on my PC than 24? (13900k & 4070Ti)

2. Will my WinCtrl hardware just work? 

Try the free demo (time and area limited) and you can gather a good impresssion of how well XP12 will run on your system and with your hardware.

 

22 hours ago, MikeV1 said:

3. Is buying scenery a thing for this sim or is it just a case of default and enjoy good fps?

Default airports all the way. They're at minimum good enough and at best pretty darn good. Really shows what people can do with a relatively limited pool of building blocks and some creativity.

Edited March 27Mar 27 by Bjoern

MikeVI - I rebuilt to Linux - from WIN. Default scenery (Gateway etc) and texture all the way now. No Sim Heaven or Global Forests. Out of 30000 poss airports the scenery addons I have put in amount to 211 thats it. Performance has got better and better - real time weather is real and lighting is as well. Details - depends what you want. What you like to fly - again completely catered for bar a few - but there is stuff in the pipeline as the model ecosytem picks up. You can get excited about study level this or that but there are some superb light aeroplanes covering almost the history of aviation - spoilt for choice really.

Peripherals - all will be good. Try the demo see whats what they get to work - few hours of download and setup and your off - whole new experience.

18 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

This simply isn’t true. 

I have quite a few “outdated” addon sceneries that work just fine in XP12 AND still look better than the Default scenery.

This is irrelevant. Same thing as talking about how great MSFS 2028 will be. 

First, it depends on the scenery, and you never know when you purchase add-on scenery if their libraries will contain objects that violate X-Plane geometry.  The internet forums  are full of complaints of scenery incompatibility, much of it built for XP11.  Some works, some does not.  It's a word not allowed shoot because X-Plane is constantly being re-coded for things like multi-threading, atmospheric layers, terrain mesh, etc.

Second, LR is updating scenery constantly with each update for the current version.  I'm not expecting XP13 any time soon, so we can forget that.  Constant Gateway updates are being filtered into each and every new update, and scenery artists are being afforded new and better objects for inclusion in their work within XP12 with each update to XP12.