davew_uk

Steady on, put down your handbag I guess I like value for money and I also have to consider how much time to invest in new software.I'm a married man with two young children and a business to run. I have very few hours in the week to relax, so if I'm going to invest hours and hours to learn a new flightsim it had better be *good*.

Calling something advertising is not an accusation. That would suggest that its bad for a developer to advertise their new software on a special interest forum that relates to their product. I don't think that it is bad at all, I was very curious to see screenshots of the rest of the world. And seemingly here, a special rare few just simply cannot stand any reasonable discussion of their favourite software. You just can't win.

It's a new product that very few people have in their hands just yet. It's also pretty much the only alternative to FSX. The screenshots were posted by the person that worked on the scenery to promote interest in buying the product. This post is an advertismentSo of course we're going to discuss whether or not it's worth buying What else is there to discuss? do you believe that computer game screenshots have intrinsic artistic merit and we should be discussing the composition and choice of colours? Sadly, Seattle seemed to be missing from my demo download - all I could see was green fields, a few suburban houses and roads that went nowhere

I've only replied when I've been replied to. The length and number of my posts is directly correlated to what I've been asked to respond to. You're absolutely right, of course. I should come back at some point in the future and give the demo another try.Till then, there is Flight, Prepar3d and this new AeroflyFS to look into to see if my civil flight sim itch can be scratched.

Are you calling me a whiner? come on mountain man, don't mince your words

That sounds to me like a straightforward attempt to silence criticism and stifle debate. I don't agree with your views on the Seattle scenery, but nowhere did I say you were whining or tell you to go away.

If I cared about dogs I'd be in a dog forum

And in X-Plane 10 the auto-generated objects plopped down all over the place look better? I'll have to remember that when I'm wondering as to why the electricity pylons march across freeways and railway lines, roads and railroads appear in strange formations etc. etc.Now I know you really are trolling me.

A big pity then that he didn't hire 1.5 million dollars worth of scenery artists!

No

Not hard to believe at all. It's a product, on a shelf, I can take it or leave it. I'm fully up to speed on that, thank you.The problem we have though here is that our shelf in the global software supermarket is very, very small. It isn't really possible to overlook a major release from the main franchises because there are ONLY TWO main franchises in civil flight simulation.From my perspective, XP10 is a missed opportunity. They had years with the market to themselves since FSX was released, and even with the knowledge that the Aces team had been canned they failed to capitalise on that opportunity and deliver a sock-blowing-off moment. I read the pre-release hype, drooled over the pre-release screenshots and now right at the point where I can buy this thing, I have found out that actually it isn't actually anything like the hype promised. That is what I mean about the "emperors new clothes" - Laminar promised the best thing since sliced bread and delivered the empty green fields of Seattle. Surely I'm not the only one that sees that? Oh please, it looks fine from 5000 feet. The top-down view was to be consistent with Google Maps, that's the comparison you should be paying attention to.

I must apologise then for clogging up the forum. I had no idea that in an internet forum posts relevant to the topic were actually discouraged.

Oh, that's a shame. I was waiting to hear why it should be that I need much more powerful hardware to get the same FPS when I'm seeing less buildings in scenery depicting the same location. Is that not related to efficiency then?In all seriousness I have spent far more time on the demo than I should have done because there are precious few flight sim products on the market and I like to check out all of them. The minute someone delivers a half decent sim I'll buy it and fly it alongside FSX. I have no loyalty, love or hate for any of the main franchises, I don't care, its just a piece of software.But you guys, seriously, it's like I'm sitting here and saying "the emperor has no clothes" and you're sitting there saying "no seriously, the scenery is better, can't you see??". That's the only reason this conversation has gone on as long as it has done. I just don't get where you're coming from at all.

Actually, I can. Realistic depiction of Seatlle at 20fps in FSX, fully maxed out (I just checked).Poor depiction of Seattle at 0.15fps in X-Plane 10 (fully maxed out) as per screenshot earlier.FSX is able to deliver a better depiction of the same real world location for less CPU/GPU resources. I don't love FSX, its a product that I paid for. How can you actually physically love a piece of software? similarly, how can I hate X-Plane? it is a piece of software I don't even own yet but I was considering buying it.I'm here to find out what I'm going to get for my $80 if I buy it. I'm also interested in the new AeroFS flight sim, should I love it or hate it or just coldly evaluate if it will improve my simming life and then plunk down my cash? I think you're kidding. This is what they call trolling, right? is there a hidden camera around here somewhere?

It's a shipping product, I can buy it right now. If I buy it right now, I want to fly it right now.Are you saying I should lay it down like a fine wine while it matures?

Hmm. When I pay my 80$ I don't want to be depedent on Austin's whims either.What I want is a good enough sim in the box to start flying right away.

Sorry, are you saying that HDR lighting and volumetric clouds are essential to the accurate depiction of the urban sprawl of Seattle, or the skyscrapers in the downtown area? I might agree with that IF the buildings were actually there on screen to be lit and offset against a nice cloudscape, but they're not there.Let me see if i can state my perspective on this more clearly so you can grasp where I'm coming from.Seattle is a place in the real world, and although I've never been there I can call up photographs, maps, satellite images and 3D representations of the city from the comfort of my chair. In FSX I can fly over it smoothly at 30fps+ and it looks close enough to the photographs, maps, satellite images and 3D representations of the city that I've seen for me to navigate entirely by eye around the area.In X-Plane 10, I have to dial back all the additional features like HDR and volumetric clouds to get acceptable frame rates so even if they did impact on the building density they're not available to me. Furthermore, there are no tree/road/object density settings that deliver a realistic or even "plausible" depiction of Seattle's urban sprawl. At the settings which deliver the best balance of frame rates for me I don't actually hardly see any buildings at all where there is supposed to be a major US city.With my limited budget of CPU/GPU power I get more "bang for my bucks" if I want to fly over Seattle in FSX than I would in X-Plane 10.Forget Seattle for a minute, how does Manhattan look? can I do a helicopter flight around the various sights in X-Plane 10? I get the feeling that it would be optimistic of me to hope it would look any better than what I already have even if I went out tomorrow and spent $$$$ on an overclocked i7 with a top-end graphics card.

No, they maybe prioritise other features. Are you saying that the people who prefer FSX to X-Plane 10 are wrong? Nonsense, the evidence is in the FPS visible in the screenshots for all to see.

So "beta" in the Google sense of the word rather. I can understand that, I get the idea of continuous improvement. But on the other hand I have no assurances from Laminar that the product will improve in the areas that I would want it to. There's no public roadmap and it seems rather a lot of these improvements rest on the goodwill of the X-Plane community.

Are you saying that for you the depiction of Seattle in the demo with fully maxed out settings is a plausible representation of a major US city?I cannot agree with this. FSX does a better job of depicting urban scenery with a fraction of the CPU/GPU resources.

...and roughly the same view in FSX (extremely dense scenery, dense autogen) and in Google Maps.Now I am sure that there are rural areas or mountain areas that look a thousand times better in X-Plane 10 versus FSX - but as far as I can tell, for urban areas, even with the settings fully maxed out, X-Plane 10 does not deliver even a bare approximation of a city.

Cherry-picking screenshots is fun.Seattle, XP-10, all settings on max (see attachment)

I've looked at those pictures, and Barcelona looks like a village. I've been to Barcelona twice and it is dramatically more dense and urban than that as other posters have pointed out. If I was flying over that landscape I wouldn't know where the city was supposed to be. Do you really want to show those city images as demonstrable proof of X-Plane 10's graphical superiority?I agree that FSX autogen is oversized, and I agree that in many places you have a misalignment between the photoscenery and it doesn't look all that great. However, FSX is able to deliver, out of the box, a more realistic depiction of Barcelona's urban density on less powerful hardware. Overall, the impression of a flying over a city is dramatically better.I have tried the demo on maxed settings and, if I overlook the FPS issues, Seatlle still does not look as dense and urban in X-Plane 10 as it does in FSX - so even if I bought more powerful hardware just to run this sim then I'm STILL not going to be getting as good results as what I've already got in front of me now.

Obviously, that's not what I meant. I have been told on numerous occasions here on this forum that the demo is a beta and not representative of the final product. If the demo is updated in tandem with the final product as you have said then that is not really the case. From what you are saying then what I see right now is what I will get if I buy the product.On top of that, there are some vague promises that it will get better. You guys *really* know how to close a sale ;-)

Put simply I'd love to try the demo. Been googling since I first read about this and turned up nothing yet. I'm going to email them and ask them for more info.