Murmur

Clouds do not react to lighting, this is also the case with the (still experimental) volumetric lighting. So landing lights do not illuminate them. Indeed, I don't know if there's any flight sim in which landing lights illuminate clouds. Not that I know of, but I might be wrong.

What do you mean? A top down view? If you mean that, press SHIFT + 4 and then keep the UP arrow key pressed, the view will become top down.

No, just make its lighting even more realistic. Gone are the days of the unrealistic and flat lighting of FS2004.

I think there's also a physical limitation in a monitor compared to real life, i.e. in real life your eyes adjust to the amount of light depending on where you're looking at, inside the cockpit vs outside through the windows and against the sun. So in a fixed view, if the exposure is done for the outside view, cockpit will be too dark, and if it's done for the cockpit, outside view will be too bright. Maybe using a different tone mapping would resolve the issue, albeit producing a less realistic image in terms of lighting. Using TrackIR or VR would be a different story, because in that case you can effectively look in different directions, albeit still not as naturally as in real life. I think Ben mentioned all of those issues I described above in a comment in one of his blog posts about cockpits being too dark in XP12.

XP already has a sunglasses option, but I think it's not beed updated to work correctly with the new photometric engine. The sun visors on various default aircraft should work instead.

I agree with the OP. The other day I was in the car with the sun very low above horizon, the worst possible time for glare. I really had trouble seeing the road ahead and the traffic, and the effect was worsened by the dirty windshield. I think XP is doing the best job here. Probably even XP is underestimating the glare compared to RL! Hopefully they will not dumb down realistic features as other sims are doing. On the contrary, they should add MORE glare effects, as those listed in the linked aviation article: wet asphalt, bright snow, dirty windshield, etc.

For a 16:9 monitor, formula would be: FOV = 2 * arctan ( 0.4358 * (monitor inches) / (screen distance)); Or use this chart: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/gqnctwgrrj (e_d slider is the eye distance in inches, x axis the monitor diagonal, y axis the resulting FOV).

Does it disappear in external view?

Yeah I remember finding out the same "cheating" in that old XP model (I don't remember if it was an Edge 540 or a Sbach 300) and being disappointed. What gets me excited here, is that this Edge 540 seems to be built pretty much to specs, including the airfoils, and absolutely no "cheating" is used. And it apparently performs very very close to the real one, even in the most exotic maneuvers! An incredible display of X-Plane capabilities. Given the attention to details (evident in Plane-Maker and Airfoil-Maker) and the end result, IMO this author is one of the very best among X-Plane designers. The link to download the aircraft can be found in the YT video description, or you can search for the "Zivko Edge 540 Classic" by ThomW on the .org.

Oh no, I only deactivate the return-to-center when flying helicopters. With fixed wings, I leave it on, because without return to center it would probably be harder to fly them. In other words, it acts like a normal springy joystick when I fly fixed wings.

Well I don't use FFB in XP (requires a payware plugin), so a quality joystick with a twist axis should be enough.

Apart from the trees, there's something in how lighting is done in XP that I love. It's often realistically "drab". It does not look like a fake dramatic painting, but more like real life.

I think I nailed 90% of the maneuvers, 10% came out a bit different. In a couple of cases I inverted them (positive/negative, left/right). But really XP flight model is incredible. Blade Element Theory can get the most realistic results! Also, another incredible thing is that while flying the various maneuvers, I felt the turbulence when passing through the same spot again, e.g. after a loop. Just like it happens in real life. Unique!

Uh?

I'll let the video do the talking. 😉

Payware XPforce plugin, but I am not using it. FFB is supported by DCS and, as I remember, Condor Soaring. I don't have IL2, but maybe it's supported as well. FF would be able to recreate stall effects, ground bumps, control stiffening, gun recoil and of course "real" control trim, but it depends on how well the implementation is done in a specific sim. Although the forces in a FFB joystick are not as high and realistic as in more expensive FFB hardware such as Brunner etc. Ironically, I find it mostly useful for realism in helicopters because you can deactivate the return-to-center.

A precious MS Sidewinders FFB2.

Uh? What misinformation are you talking about? It was established in that same thread that pitot icing is incorrectly modeled in MSFS. And also that icing effects in MSFS have been dumbed down due to gamers request. 🤷‍♂️

Nice RL video. It is uncannily similar to the attempts I tried in X-Plane in the same situation: some went well, others less so. X-Plane really can be very realistic and close to RL operations, even without any addons!

For comparison, I found out the professional training software ELITE XTS (which you know well 🙂) has 2 pitot failure modes, called respectively "pitot inlet" and "pitot system". Do you know what type of failures they correspond to? I imagine "pitot inlet" is ram port clogging, and "pitot system" is ram port + drain port clogging?

Also interesting, can you explain it better? I think I've not understood what you mean.

That's interesting, are those payware addons?

Clogged ram air / unclogged drain is not modeled indeed. That could be one suggestion for Austin, but I think he's already quite busy with other things in this period, and wouldn't probably consider it high priority...

Honestly, just because things went like that while I was testing, and I just shared my sentiment of the moment. But you might be right, in hindsight. Although, from the first day XP12 was released, I remember other threads here which were basically just "I really like the way XP does this", and which often went the same way.

👆 Aaaannnd Q.E.D. Definitely ran its course.