Geofa

In the geography cloud department Xplane is finally showing its' stuff and has gone to new heights for any sim. I always only have one criteria in a sim-how well does it duplicate every aspect rw. In these departments we have reached a new high. Two compare shots below-both taken today at 10am. This has been an extremely exciting week for simmers. Congrats to the developers and thank you for your incredible work!

Yep-turning off the rays helps. I just wish I could get a little more contrast in the sky.

Yeah-it may be an xplane limitation. With a gamma around 2 the ground color looks perfect. To get the sky/cockpit brighter I have to set the gamma at a level that the ground then looks washed out. I'll keep experimenting-the clouds look so great I want to see them better!

Yeah-I have tried them all...

I am finding the "shadow detail" in the rendering settings has a lot to do with looks. I felt like despite different sky settings I was always flying at night and the clouds looked washed out-turning down this setting to the minimum gives me better results and even a little more fps. Still tweaking looking for a sweet spot where the clouds are as vivid but the "darkness" is gone. This is starting to get there. Any ideas for tweaking the sky to be "brighter"? The ground looks perfect-but the cockpit and sky look still dark considering it is twelve noon! However, it looks pretty darn good-and the clouds are great now that I can see them better. <edit> I am also finding little performance difference between most of the sliders being maximized on my rig (maybe due to a lot of video memory?). However, the crespular setting seems to do nothing except make the clouds look more pixilated the further to the right it goes.

Lol-I found the real bird more irritating....about $250 US/hr to run (may be more now-avgas has only gone up since I sold her 3 years ago). Then those nasty annuals/engine replacements/logbook entries (especially the gps entry every 28 days) etc. What a bargain to get the true feel and looks at such a low price. If only the prop tips had been the most irritating thing in the real bird! Now that I am retired I find flying the sim version a lot more trouble free-and certainly more cost efficient-and actually almost as satisfying!

I restarted my system many times-thought it might be the same-even running Google Chrome/Internet Explorer-no joy here.

If you are spending all that time looking at the clouds when you fly thru them you are gonna be in trouble-just sayin... You should be watching the instruments-watching the clouds gonna give you vertigo...

Yep-my clouds look look like your last shot...I can't run HDR on my setup -1-2 fps if I do.

But don't those colors look like a color moment in the 60's with kodachrome? Hiflyers looks more realistic but haven't been able to get that yet on mine...and Hiflyers last shot looks like mine-kinda abrupt cuts in the clouds like cutting them out with scissors..

Agree about the colors-some time needed but much potential....

rays on-but I just turned them down. Again-I don't care that much about HDR and it seems to run fine without it.

Intel Core i7 920@2.67 ghz, 12 gb ram, windows 7 64 bit, Geforse gtx 560, running 1920x1080res. New HD mesh installed... <edit> confirmation-no HDR on my setup-works great otherwise. Unfortunately can't do more tonight-but looks like a great add in-look forward to experimenting more...

I was getting 47-now 1-2, long sim starts and crashes.

At least on my rig-a 15 minute sim load and then wierd stuff and 1-2 fps. I thought my whole sim was trashed-but accepted finally the default settings on startup-then tweaked them back to what I had had. Turned on HDR and all the trouble started again...not gonna do that again... Not a great fan of HDR anyway so I am good with that. Wish I had lots of time to try it out but promissed a movie with the wife and kid. Have to say though-between the new High res mesh and this add in- an excitement factor for xplane. Look forward to putting it thru its paces.

Just bought and downloading!

Seems some are forgetting (and never realized) the huge rw training potential of the mission system on fsx. I even did one (here in the avsim library) which recreated a rw mountain training flight I once did-except in a twin with a engine failure when one least expects it, and coachings on Baron technique the whole way thru. Very valuable stuff-too bad most viewed it as gamelike-but then how one uses the sim makes it gamelike or not.

I will use and support all available sims...period-and use the one at the present moment that gives me the best experience for what I want to do-at that moment. I've never found just 1 yet that covers everything.

I am exporing more and Alpilotx-you have not only imho resurected xplane sim but got me excited about flight simming again after a long hiatus. Some litmus tests I always use is exploring Mt. Lassen National Park in Northern Ca. which is usually poorly done in sims, and Yosemite National Park, also in California. This is the best I have ever seen in a sim! When skymax pro comes out-this sim will be amazing! Off to explore the backside of the Sierra's now! Thanks for your amazing work!

Great news!

I spent all day downloading my little square of the world-wow is it worth it. A stunning,stunning difference, thanks so much for your hard work! A few compares-before, now, and reality. Now if I can just get some houses in my city I'd be real happy-but the geography is very stunning. Can't wait to explore those mountains tomorrow! Can't wait till the sky with a future add in looks like my real shot! Congratulations for your hard work!

In addition to the above great list I'd like to add a feature I have been asking for since the early days of xplane-better stability. Interestingly even since version 9 which I basically scrapped because I found the aircraft so uncontrollable, stability has been improved with every version-and the torque bug will be a further improvment when fixed. This is the main reason I have stuck with xplane 10 for an extended period. However, (and other sims suffer from this to a degree)-I would really like to trim a plane and not have to make such continual corrections as needed now. For instance-when I level out at altitude, se tcruise power/prop settings and trim the plane-not much later it will start quite a powerful climb. Trim again for level flight, and a little later the same climb starts again. Just too much retrimming going on all the time. For me, this can be the most frustrating thing about flying sims on a flat screen monitor-but the effects here still can be quite exagerated. Again, there are very specific stability tests the faa requires-perhaps at some point they can be accomplished.

The Milviz Baron is in my opinion the best Baron for any flight sim. True-the entire thing is based from rw pictures of my former aircraft (not just the livery-everything!)-every detail down to chipped paint on the yoke where I would often clunk it on the seatbelt during a crosswind landing. It simply not only looks, but performs and "feels" like the real thing. The Carenado is nice (and is also a B58) but it does not come nearly as close as capturing everything the Milviz does.

I don't really have the financial resources for all that. I'd just like to be able to use a current real working gps as I have on both FSX and xplane the last 6 years or so. There is a huge need. I am hoping if enough people express the need one might appear-either in house or by a third party developer. Seemed to finally work on the torque bug:) I am sure any flight schools that were using xplane with garmin 430 hardware are asking the same. It is possibly the hugest training need in today's ifr environment.

Practice on rw world approaches on a sim has little rw transference if the gps used does not work anything like the one used rw-in fact negative transference can occur. For a gamer this will not be a factor but anyone using a sim for rw training it is. I do hope this hole will be filled. I don't really care about 64 bit as much as I do usefulness of a sim-I'd happily use 32 bit with reality xp but 32 crashes constantly on my setup.