J.P.

Well, actually, in real life, VFR flying is done mostly by roads, railways, rivers, urban shapes (especially at night, which X-Plane 10 does much better than anything before) and antennas. What you want, I think, is sightseeing. X-Plane 10 does a really good job for VFR. As for the devs adding more custom scenery, I hate to disappoint you again, but that is highly unlikely. In the past Laminar has always focused on improving the base product while leaving most of the artwork to 3rd parties (private and commercial). Don't worry, you're not cheating. Any real life pilot does the same thing. Improving VFR accuracy with available Navaids (even GPS) is common practice in aviation.

To the OP:To be completely honest, I'll have to tell you it doesn't get any better than the demo area unless you are willing to enhance the Software with 3rd party scenery.I like to fly in weird locations (Africa, India, Nepal) and often see urban road grids with no buildings. Autogen Density set to maximum (whatever that setting is called since 10.04b6). X-Plane scenery is generated from OSM data. That means plausibility but no landmarks. I'd still highly recommend the sim, just don't want anybody to have a disappointment when they buy it.My advice is to go out and look for some custom scenery. There is tons of really good free stuff available...Okay, here it goes: ...especially at the .org :(

The almighty Lord works in mysterious ways... :(

Aw... man! Silly me! Looks like I forgot my wallet at home this Sunday...

Well, I am not a pro, but I would think that the game-engine as a whole (not just graphics engine) including the way it is setup (favoring a certain play style) would need to be changed heavily to accommodate serious simming. I agree, the graphics-engine in terms of performance and looks is marvelous. No, I fear not (as in I agree). I was merely giving personal advice as to what one could do. Obviously, FSX and previous versions down to FS'95 remain an option. I thought it was quite "arcade-gaming" like. Maybe just my impression...

After checking out MS Flight today I decided to get in touch with my religious self - here on the forum! :Praying:We should all realize how lucky we truly are. We have a wonderful simulator which is designed from the ground up to cater to the needs of the serious flight simming enthusiast. It has:- Worldwide scenery down to the roads.- Effectively every Airport and Navaid available in real life.- Beautiful visuals.- Great flight physics modeling giving the dynamic, lively and almost realistic impression of controlling an aircraft.- An honest, fair and straight up business model.- Ongoing and very dedicated support with significant improvements almost weekly.So, I want to publicly praise the Lord for X-Plane and thank Laminar for providing such an outstanding piece of software!If you feel so good about X-Plane that you want to get religious (especially in the face of MS Flight), join my thread. :(

Well, after checking it out today I will say that, apart from Flight displeasing me overall as a concept, I can put my finger on the following issues.- Flight dynamics. I'm not usually one to complain about flight models and get into the nitty gritty, but Flights aerodynamic behavior is ridiculously simplified.- Flight is built from the ground up to be handled as a game with silly missions. It is not a simulator with the option of doing missions, it is a platform for them.- Microsoft said it would please both casual users and simmers. They lied! Flight will not please serious simmers without major modifications to its engine.However, there are some things I like about the game:- Performance. It looks real nice while running silky smooth on my Core2Duo 2.7 GHz and 460GTX with highest settings.- Really, there only is this one thing I like about Flight...Overall, I think it is safe to say that Microsoft is going "softcore" with Flight. To me, this resembles the general trend in entertainment software. I have seen many excellent series go down the drain because Corporate Commander wanted to make more dollars by expanding a franchises target audience, effectively gutting the poor game from everything that gave it character and made it popular to start with. Here are just a few examples, perhaps some of you will recognize them:- Operation Flashpoint - Silent Hunter Series- Comanche Series- many more...This is why I fear that Microsoft is not seriously planning on satisfying the core audience which has been following the Flight Simulator franchise for over 15 years. I think they will keep saying: "Sure, our product pleases even true flight simmers", gladly taking their money but causing nothing but disappointment.So, don't get your hopes up. My advice: Try X-Plane! Its here to stay and to evolve while Flight in all likelihood won't change.

Hi,I have ported Jaques Braults nice DC-6 from version 8.64 to v.10 by first letting v.9 Planemaker convert the file from 8 to 9 and then letting v.10 Planemaker do the rest. Had to do some minor stuff manually to make it work but its good now... for the most part. I still have one problem:The landing lights won't show up. The switch is present and there is a slot assigned to the landing light in the appropriate menu in planemaker, but it won't light up. Strobes, Beacon and NAVs do work, although they won't light up the fuselage (should they not do that automatically with version 10's global lighting?).Any ideas. Appreciate any help :-)Thanks

Hi, while I do agree that the UI is perhaps not the *most* pressing issue X-Plane 10 should be improved on, I would like to give my 2c's.Here are a few items which I have been missing from the UI.- An out of sim flight setup screen. I would like to be able to choose Aircraft and Airport prior to firing X-Plane up. That way one would avoid load screens which appear every time you change something in sim.- An auto-generated moving map which plausibly mimiks VFR and IFR charts and can be viewed without pausing the sim. Perhaps even on a separate monitor. It should be optional to not have any indication on aircraft position on the map, so one could use it to practice navigation. The map could be auto generated from the X-Plane terrain and nav database.- A flight planning tool!!! It should be able to spit out the usual stuff (ETE, Fuel, etc.) for each leg and could easily compute these things by looking at the X-Plane nav database and the .acf selected.While this is really more an addition of features rather than a streamlining of the UI for the most part, I do think those things would make sense to have. Agree?

Sure man, no need to beat a dead horse. :(

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Here you go:http://www.x-plane.com/downloads/dvd-installation/

Interesting! From reading around the Linux forums I did get the impression that there is a general consensus amongst the Linux crowd to stay away from ATI cards. My understanding is that, while ATI cards are catching up, they still have a lot to improve on as some problems continue to persist. I can't personally comment on it, but the issue does seem to pop up into discussion rather often.

From my experience, the difference in V.10 is much more noticeable than it was in V.9. I didn't touch the driver settings. I just had Ubuntu grab what it said was the most current NVidia driver it had access to on its software server. Perhaps choosing drivers in a more intelligent manner will give better performance?Which alternatives are there to choose from, how do I get them and which are you using?Also, would you give us more detailed information on your settings and your system specs?Thanks

No, both OS'es in default konfiguration. Windows Aero and whatever Ubuntu does by default were active during the test. Overall, nothing fancy was done here. No tuning of either of the OS'es, no customization. Everything "out of the box".

No, I used GPU effects galore in both tests. Due to personal convenience. As I said, I had trouble transfering the situation file. I would have had to exit windows, reboot Linux,... , find out which airport it was, shut down Linux,... you get the problem. Yes, using the same airport would have been optimal. However, after having compared a lot more than just what I've done in this particular test, I feel confident that the results posted are representative of the overall performance difference.

Rob,coming to Linux from Windows is a little bit like going from FSX to X-Plane. Takes a little bit of effort to get used to a different concept. However, current Linux distros are quite user friendly.A few tips I can give from my experience are:- Googling how to get stuff done will often lead to threads giving instructions for using the terminal (a command console) by typing instructions DOS-style. I did that at first, drove me mad. But anything you need to do can be done using the mouse as one would do it in Windows. I installed current NVidia drivers and X-Plane just by mouse-clicking.- Do a little research first. There are more Linux distros out there than I can count on two hands. However, I will recommend Ubuntu, as it is convenient to use. Haven't tried any other distros either though.- Download it, burn it to disc, boot from the disc. It will boot right from the DVD so you can try it before you go through the hassle of installing it.Get Ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntu.com/As for Track IR, I do not know. You should try it and let us know how it went, as I am curious myself :-)- J.P.

Yes, clouds are a performance eating monster. I turned them down to 0% and it still looks nice (as seen in the pics) in my opinion. What video card do you use? Perhaps you could post some pics like I did (settings, scenes with fps output) to give linux users or X-Plane users in general more references.

Hi,I have taken the time to run a quick comparison of performance. As I have noticed before that X-Plane 9 runs much better under Linux than Windows, I decided to put X-Plane 10 to the test. The results where even more significant as they were with version 9.Windows Vista 64bit vs. Ubuntu 11.10 64bit!My sytem specs are:nForce 680i SLIIntel Core2Duo E6750 @2.67GHzNVidia 460GTX 768MB (latest drivers installed)4 Gigs of DDR2 G.Skill Ram (dual channel)My X-Plane is version 10.04 Beta 1My method: At first I wanted to use the save and load situation feature, but X-Plane under Vista wouldn't read the situation file created under Linux. I ballparked the weather and put the plane in the same area (not exact same airport though). I tuned settings under Linux to give goog performance and copy/pasted the preferences to my Vista installation, so settings are identical.These where my settings:(As mentioned, the weather settings where replicated out of memory for the Vista trial, but I am confident I got relatively close.)Here goes Windows Vista 64bit SP2:As you can see, my system struggles to hold 15 FPS. Overall, it was barely doable, with long (sometimes several seconds) pauses when actions, such as changing views, where taken. To get X-Plane 10 running smooth under Vista, while very possible, I do have to turn those settings way down. When it loaded the Aircraft at KSEA at first, it took almost one minute to open the menu (or do anything, as a matter of fact) as high density urban sceneries bogged frames down to less fingers I've got on one hand. It took 03 minutes and 45 seconds to load the sim under Windows. (Time from clicking the .exe to switch startup screen to cockpit view)And now prepare for some magic! Ubuntu 11.10 64bit:Wow! Rarely ever drops below 30 FPS. Very enjoyable performance with nice visuals. However, when going to KSEA (high density scenery) FPS will reside around 15 FPS. But, for some reason, the overall experience will still be smooth, with much less stuttering as compared to Windows when running at comparable FPS. If 15 FPS is to low for some, I do recommend lowering the detail distance when in certain areas, as changes in that particular setting are quick because it does not require X-Plane 10 to run its load-screen. The time (same criteria as above) to load the sim was 01 minute and 52 seconds.Conclusion: As performance for X-Plane 10 more than doubles with Linux compared to Windows and load time almost halves, I think it is safe to recommend Linux for anybody serious with X-Plane 10. I got me a relatively cheap, used Harddrive from ebay, put Linux (doesn't cost a dime) on that sucker and will likely never use X-Plane 10 again on Windows. As far as X-Plane 10 is concerned (for me at leat) the party only really starts when you use it with Linux.Hope this was helpful.Greets,- J.P.

Alright, found the info. Please delete :-)

Yeah. Definitely try the Demo. Coming from FSX, however, it is important to not expect MSFS #2. Keep an open mindset and be mentally prepared for something different. A lot of things will not make sense at first, but once you've gotten accustomed to them you might find them a more sophisticated way of handling flight simulation. Also, XP10 is still not very polished. If XP 10 gives you serious grief, I would strongly suggest "demoing" XP v.9.xx, as it is a polished gem in its current state, while XP 10 is still a raw diamond.

Yeah, I can understand. There are! a lot of good folks over at the other site. Whether or not you have a good experience there depends largely on your personal views and who you run into. It is, however, possible to make perfectly viable and factual points and arouse spiteful, sarcastic replies from the kind of forum member which sits on the longer end of the lever. Once that has happened once or twice to you, it kind of kills the overall enjoyment.

Very nice vids indeed. Is that glacier X-Plane 10 default scenery?

Yeah, I've noticed that. ^_^But to be honest, I'll rather put up with the FSX breeze than to interact in an enclosed cocoon where everybody slightly critical of any of X-Planes features (or the cocoon itself), gets treated like an "X-Plane su*ks go FSX!!!" troll. Because, at the end of the day, X-Plane can only benefit from new followers with high demands. It is a commercial product and it has not reached its full potential.And thanks for the nice welcome guys.

Hi,I'll post this here because I am an X-Planer and want to primarily reach the X-Planers frequenting this site.I read your forum and some of the posts in the following topic really spoke to my heart:http://forum.avsim.net/topic/267918-is-x-planeorg-site-hurting-the-x-plane-franchise/page__st__25Some of you may know me as a somewhat long (not super long, just about 3 to 4 years) time member from the other site. I do not like to badmouth anybody and shed bad karma, but I really started to feel the need to be reorienting myself to find a new home for my X-Plane community interaction. I am pleased to find an alternative here and already feel like there is a "fresh breeze" on these forums. There's just so much negative energy on that other site, it is starting to be unpleasant over there. I found myself posting less and less over there because conversation was always dampened. I stopped having fun interacting with the community.So here I am, looking for new horizons :-)- J.P.