Murmur

Legit! I do instead. 😉

So if you think MSFS is better and you are exclusively using it, why are you here saying only negative things about X-Plane? It seems people like you are triggered when someone prefers X-Plane over other flight simulators. Is that some form of insecurity? 🤷‍♂️

I like the fact that in X-Plane the failure system can be used on every aircraft, not only on specific aircraft that implement their own failure system. Also, I like that one can trigger "failures" related to external environment (some that come to my mind: runway lights, navaids, birdstrikes, downdrafts, etc.).

X-Plane failure system is certainly one of its strong points, it obliterates (to use a word I've recently read on another thread) other general purpose flight sims. A legacy of X-Plane focus as a professional training tool. Also, the MTBF option allows for a "real pilot" mentality and experience: be always ready for possible unexpected failures (and beware of unnoticed failures, like a failed instrument) and apply the correct decision making.

Your scenery is probably not installed. Or, your X-Plane for some reason is running in demo mode. Run the installer and make sure to install the world scenery.

I don't think there's a function to toggle sound levels with a key, but you can change the relative volume of sounds (interior, exterior, radios, etc.) in the sound settings menu.

I usually watch YT videos at 2x speed. When I watch a video where Austin is talking, I think I have the video at 2x speed, but then I check and it's playing at normal speed.

Well that's disappointing! But why should a sim be ruined if a specific aircraft addon is unrealistic? Does it invalidate all the other good aircraft of that sim? I think if we wait for the perfect sim, we'll wait forever. 🙂

Including a real life flight test (well, a ground test actually).

How can it be done?

Not the bloom of light around the sun, but the glare/blinding effect on the objects around. XP11: XP10:

It was already missing in XP11 though. The sun glare in XP8, 9 and 10 was better.

Hmmm... I wonder if it would be accepted as a bug. Anyway, good idea, will do!

After further testing, in XP11 there are writable datarefs for tropopause temperature and altitude, and they indeed work. The variables are still there in XP12, but they are now deprecated and not writable. That's weird, maybe it's still a work in progress related to the new weather modeling.

Your PC specs are way too low to get a good experience in X-Plane 12. You will get a better experience with older versions (which have lower hardware requirements), as was stated by X-Plane developers themselves in some blog posts. I don't know if I can make it more clear than this.

Rather than an inconsistency I'd say it's a choice/limitation, XP12 is modeling a fixed altitude and temperature for the tropopause. Depending on the set sea level temperature, the lapse rate is changed to have fixed -56.5 C at the tropopause. So it is modeling physically correct atmosphere properties, but there's the limitation that atmosphere lapse rate and tropopause altitude cannot be manually changed. As far as I tested, the temperature reaches -56.5 at a geometric altitude of 36000 ft (as it should be, barring a small error of around 150ft) if conditions are ISA. The strange thing is that if there's any temperature deviation from ISA, the tropopause level is changed to 39000ft. I assume data on tropopause altitude/temperature could be available from real weather providers? That would allow more accurate modeling when using real weather.

Sometimes some features get worse instead of better. XP10: XP12: Hopefully they will reintroduce some sort of sun bloom and more glare. That would be more realistic, like in XP10.

Some FPS imho have a more realistic sun glare than flight sims. I know many people would judge these too strong and unrealistic and disable it if it were used in sims (just as people try do disable them in FPS!) The problem is, as has been said, that the limited dynamic range of a monitor does not allow for a complete reproduction of sunglare. But for me, they acceptably model the most important effect of sunglare, which is not the bloom of light (which indeed appears unrealistic due to monitor limitations), but the loss in detail and contrast of a limited field of view around the sun. I think these reproduce that effect nicely.

Maybe you have the "Mean time between failures" enabled. Something that real pilots can't turn off! It's one of those features that makes flying in X-Plane especially realistic.

Hmmm... I just tried and I don't see any effect of strobes on either small or large aircraft, either in clouds or with very low visibility. The only diffuse light is the one from landing/taxi lights. What am I missing?

Although, your photo doesn't seem very different than what I experience when looking against the sun when the sun is low. I'd say it is not too far from real sun glare.

Yes, I already knew that. But I was referring to illuminating clouds from above. It doesn't seem to be modeled in any sim? Anyway, something similar to what you're referring to was also modeled in past X-Plane versions, with strobe lights causing dazzle in fog/clouds. I don't know if current XP versions is still modeling it though.

I understand why many people find the glare effect in sims overdone, but for me it is actually underdone. In real life, low sun glare can effectively blind a portion of the field of view, and even the silhouettes of the objects against the sun become no longer visible. I think the issue is that the effect is not so easy to reproduce in a realistic way on a monitor. Most realistic reproduction of sun glare I've seen in DCS years ago, it was exactly like real life. There are YT videos showing it but I can't find them right now. I don't know if the effect is still present in the current DCS version (I don't have it installed), they changed a lot of things in the graphic engine so I don't know if it's gone or not. Sun glare is very important in aerial dogfight, so I guess that was an important push for them to recreate it in a realistic way.

Volumetric lighting sure has potential, getting it to also illuminate clouds would be the icing on the cake:

It's about time we get illuminated clouds as default in mainstream sims! 😁