glida

How do you do that? Especially the cockpit shots look very crisp. Do you have to do something special, to achieve this?

Nice shots, especially the 4th one above the water. Apart from that, the colors in the other shots seam a bit flat. Have you toned them down?

Absolutely no irony here, but deadly serious. X-Plane is not mainstream, because the majority of flightsimmers aren't real world pilots and even don't know what makes a real flight. They let themselves blind by "outer splendour and pomp", i.e. superfluous gimmicks, as e.g. de-icing vehicles with no effect, catering trucks, baggage carts and the like - as they know from viewing the apron once a year, when they fly on holiday. Let’s have a look on some essential and basic “features” of real world flying: When it’s cold outside, high humidity (clouds around you) – what happens? You may fall from the sky due to icing. Not so in P3D/FSX, but in XP. Oh, I understand … P3D/FSX have automatic anti-ice switches - XP is inferior :lol:, you have to turn them on manually. Additionally, you have icy runways in winter, with much longer braking distance. Not so in P3D/FSX (seasonal textures don’t help), but in XP. There are birds flying around, they can damage your engines and you may fall from the sky. Not so in P3D/FSX, but in XP. Flying right through the middle of a thunderstorm is very dangerous in real life. Not so in P3D/FSX (have you tried flying the trike through a thunderstorm? What happens?), but in XP. Windshear – dangerous in real life. Not so in P3D/FSX, but in XP. Wake turbulences from other planes. Not in P3D/FSX, but in XP. And even more … ATC is not good, neither in P3D/FSX nor in XP, if you want “real” ATC you have to fly online. AI traffic is not this good in XP, but even full flight sims don’t have AI traffic (at best static planes) and no ATC. So, X-Plane is much closer to professional simulators (that’s why it is FAA approved, with the according hardware) – although P3D is claiming to be “professional” for $199. So, even the basic and essential features for flying are missing in P3D/FSX, instead there are some superfluous ones implemented. I dare to say, P3D/FSX are like a car with gimmicks like spoilers, alloy wheels, … but wooden tires and steam engine. Finally, you won't get P3D in a supermarket/electronic store/... near you, so (very) few new flighsimmers will be aware of it. And one more aspect - when you rely on large companies, in the long term you will be lost. They change their mind every few years (e.g. when the new CEO wants to show that the things his predecessor did, where totally wrong, and only himself is able to do it right, or for other reasons). We have seen it with Microsoft and FSX, we see it every day in other areas too.

It isn't THIS good to have only one "industry standard", see what happened with the Windows "industry standard" - a lot of malware, viruses etc. Apart from that, P3D might be the next FSX, but the next FLIGHT simulator will be XP10. As long as P3D lacks a lot of essential features (the same ones like FSX) and development is so slow (nothing new since months and also no release date for P3D V2 yet), for me there's no chance to switch to P3D.

As a "as real as it get's" fanatic I rate it with 8.81657 , especially after I've read about the "seasons" and the icy runways (I didn't know about this). I also like the behaviour of the aircraft within the clouds (I was aware of this, though). Not to mention flying at night with HDR and a lot of other good features. I bought XP10 around half a year ago, and also tried FSX afterwards, because "everyone" says, it is far superior - but I was disappointed about its lack of realism regarding the flying features/parameters.

The ORBX Pacific North West scenery looks quite nice, but I'm less the "scenery watching" guy, but the one who's primarily interested in FLYING. I have seen some comments from MSFS guys that (even) XP10 looks like FS2002 or even FS98. So I made an experiment - I turned the table , downloaded the X-Plane 6 demo to have a comparison of the impression of flying XP6/FSX. And I must say that even XP6 feels more like really flying in a fluid than FSX (no joke!). Comparing both in thunderstorm they are approximately on par. As it seems, I have to spend a lot of money for getting (in some regards) the same results in FSX as I have in stock XP, eg. mesh, roads, street lights, ... But ok - before spending (too) much money on payware (I already have invested a lot of time and money into X-Plane), I would like to test some really good freeware GA's and also helicopters. The stock Bell 206 from FSX is (sorry again) a joke. You increase thrust (actually called "collective") and the helo takes off vertically without any torque effect. Any recommendations for good freeware aircrafts? Regarding land use data, I found the following post (coincidentally only 3 days old). I didn't know myself that the land use data in X-Plane is this correct, as I haven't seen a similar post on x-plane.org or elsewhere.

Around half a year ago I bought X-Plane 10 and found it quite good, especially at night and particularly it felt like I am really flying. I'm not a real world pilot myself (but a friend of mine is) and I often had the opportunity to take control in the planes of his club - of course only in the air, not during takeoff and landing. Now, as many people are stating that FSX is a superior flight simulator, I bought it (fortunately it is cheap these days ) to test it and have a look myself. Being registered at x-plane.org until now, I found this forum, I think/hope it is the right one for my questions. On the one hand the colors in FSX look quite nice and bright (although I think a bit overdone), but there are some aspects in which the (mind you) stock FSX lacks compared to stock X-Plane. In particular I mean the following: the mesh is horrible, the streets are not as detailed, the night lighting, the turbulences inside of even a thunderstorm are (sorry for the expression) ludicrous. In X-Plane I have to steer clear of thunderstorms, like in real life, even with an airliner. And what I've read so far, you have to do a lot of tweaking in text files, what I also find annoying - is it still and really necessary even nowadays with so much horsepower under the hood (I have an i7-2600K and a GTX660)? Imagine, you would have to tweak Excel or Word through text configuration files before they run well . Oh, and by the way, is icing somehow simulated? I didn't find anything yet. Ok, enough ranting :lol:, are there ways to eliminate my above concerns with addons (and, if possible, which ones are the best for the task)? Thanks lot for your help. Regards, Jörg