Search the Community

A quick VFR flight from Bowerman to Portland with my shiny new Vision Jet Untitled-1 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-2 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-3 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-4 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-5 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-6 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-7 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-10 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-12 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-14 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-15 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-16 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-17 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

London Sides.....Part I of many, this time to the east. Thanks for viewing

A smooth flight at 17,500 ft (and then lower later) from Oceano Co, CA (L52) to French Valley, CA (F70). This is one of the most stunning addons for XP11 to date - the Aerobask Legacy RG with user paint of reno racer N913MP. I effortlessly cruise around 250 knots while still being very fuel efficient. I depart L52 SE, towards Vandenberg AFB, then onto Gaviota VOR to the shoreline of Santa Barbara CA. I continue east towards Ventura, pass the Point Mugu NAS and then east towards Malibu and the Pacific Palisades. I fly by LAX, pass downtown LA, starting a slow descent beyond Santa Ana. Finally I'm passing Lake Elsinore, and flying overhead Murrieta where I cross midfield at F70, for a tight right downwind RWY 36. Untitled-1 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-2 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-4 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-5 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr The powerful GTN 750 by RXP Untitled-6 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-7 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Vandenburg off my right wingtip Untitled-9 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-10 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Nearing Santa Barbara and Pacific Ocean Untitled-12 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-13 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-16 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-18 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-19 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr City of Ventura Untitled-20 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-22 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Still using oxygen... Untitled-23 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Malibu CA Untitled-25 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-29 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-31 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Near Santa Ana (SNA) Untitled-33 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr A hazy Corona (the city!) in the distance Untitled-34 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-35 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-37 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Lake Elsinore Untitled-39 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr That's our destination off the nose Untitled-41 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-42 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-43 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Untitled-45 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Quite the undulation! Untitled-46 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr Ready for the next adventure! Untitled-48 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Hello, scenery is duplicating itself... Not sure what's the deal. Any Ideas? Thanks! Pictures: https://ibb.co/k8xhKds & https://ibb.co/CH6fQCG Scenery Config: https://ibb.co/gt47v5J & https://ibb.co/7ShwbGB -Derek

Last batch for today. Out of a rather fine freeware Palm Springs (XP11 but ok) en route for KONT, the XP version of their recent and very splendid MSFS product. Actually the XP version is the original and is supposedly XP11, but again, works fine here. All over the very fine TrueEarth SoCal, along what has always been one of my favourite routes in any sim. This first set takes a look around KPSP and then heads off towards KONT, but the arrival will follow in a later set. We start waiting to go on the runway, but than have a look round the airport And this is freeware (on the .org forums) And away. I've been to Palm Springs, but not the airport. One year we gave ourselves a treat and had a few days in San Diego, then drove to Tucson stopping for one night each in Palm Springs and 29 Palms. That was one fine trip. Just to prove I do go inside sometimes! Just up ahead there used to be a couple of life sized dinosaurs at some kind of attraction, but I guess they've gone now (but I have some great shots of them from P3D) I really do think the True Earth stuff was the absolute pinnacle of Orbx's scenery business, which pretty much made it the best anywhere before MSFS came along. Shame that version of the company apparently no longer exists. And as we approach San Berdoo (as I believe the locals might call it?) that's where we stop this segment of the trip

In the A2A-182 somewhere near Mount Hood from TrueEarth Washington by Orbx on my way to Felts Field. I'm not even sure I had my graphics maxed out either.

So, inspired by @filou's recent posts, I thought I'd have a play with XP12. I had initially tried it out when it went live, and at that point just symlinked it to all my old XP11 aircraft and scenery folders. Generally seemed to work ok from what I remember, but thought maybe I'd start working on it as a new install, and just add stuff in one bit at a time. No real idea what's supposed to work and what isn't, as I'm not really sure of the differences between XP11 and XP12 in terms of how things are handled internally. I shall certainly keep trying various of my XP11 addons as firstly I have a lot of them (surprise surprise) and secondly I had some nice environments going in XP11. At this point I plan to experiment with all the TrueEarth stuff I have (which is most of it), and possibly the Spain UHD package. But I won't bother for now with all the ortho4XP stuff I created - I wasn't that impressed with a lot of it anyway. I'll check out some of the airports I had within the TE regions as well, once I've re-familiarised myself with how to do stuff. And that will take a bit of time, for sure. Struggled a bit just on thes first few test flights. It seems like a lot of the scenery stuff might work ok in XP12, but the aircraft less so, which is both reasonable I guess, and a shame, as the aircraft are a big part of why I'd like to have a workable system again. The four aircraft in these shots are all certified XP12 capable. Overall, I quite enjoyed this exercise today. I am not planning to abandon MSFS by any means, but XP continues to excell for me in one main area, and that's the roads and railways. And I like to be down at that level - it's why I sim. MSFS just can't cut it (yet?) in terms of the ground transport stuff for me. I was also quite aware of the lack of pauses in XP, whereas I was having one of those stuttery spells yesterday in MSFS - but then I often find that over the weekends - server side stuff I suspect. So this is not a "one sim better than the other" kind of post. I just felt like I wanted to re-connect with XP. Personally, I think it's pretty unbelievable that we've got both of these sims available now at the sort of quality level they are. And I'm not forgetting AFS2 either (but I am ignoring AFS4!) Anyway, here's a bunch of randomish shots testing out in TE So-Cal and No-Call. All 4k as ever, everything set to max, no other tweaks. Generally well pleased with the look of it, apart from the sky and cloud environment. I may have to investigate further in that area. First few with the A350 out of KSAN and up towards LA. I got an email telling me a free XP12 upgrade was available for this and that is what triggered this whole exercise. And then I just picked up this A319 in a sale yesterday for around 11 dollars, some 70 plus dollars cheaper than normal. Pretty impressive JustFlight emailed that the Duchess was also just updated for XP12, which is good as it is one of my favourites and is perfect for my "I Follow Roads" thing in XP KSQL just out of sight! And thinking of "IFR", I picked this up as well. It drives and flies so I shall be having some real fun with this beast And lastly, a stock aircraft but a favourite too

from a couple of trial flights around Heathrow. First in the Duchess, out of Southend, up and across London into EGLL, and second out of EGLL in the cub and off towards Reading. All pretty much out of the box, no tweaking or even proper setting up (still haven't mapped my controls again - shows how much I use the aircraft's systems!). Scenery around Southend is from an older XP11 package, not sure where the boundary with TE is. London itself in the XP/TE package is not as good as MSFS for me (even with the what I feel is the awful London PG at the moment), but it's the light and atmospherics I'm finding addictive. Plus, oddly, I actually enjoy the flying a bit more - maybe it's the lack of stutters and pauses. Visually, I shall start playing with re-shade/Gshade in MSFS and see if I can get any sort of approximation of the XP hazing/distance effect. Beginning to think that's one of the major things that is appealing to me here. Wish I had a magic wand and could just somehow merge the two systems and keep the best of both. Hey, maybe if I set up my own company to do that - Laminobosoft? How's that sound? These pix are a bit darker than I'm seeing on my actual system. Feels like the XP screenshot mechanism takes them a bit darker than the X-Box Game Bar capture that I use for MSFS

Definitely one of my favourite places in the sim, been several times in RL (we had a training facility in Orange County), enjoyed every visit but wouldn't want to live there. And in sim terms, I've always felt XP and TrueEarth, plus many and various little freeware VFR addons, just can't be beat, and I still think that's probably true for me, even though the MSFS version is very nice as well. You won't be surprised to hear that it's the road and track network that makes it so special in XP for me. Anyhoo, a few from a flight that I had to stop for time reasons, but I will be back to explore a lot more. (excuse the annoying little menu arrow on the left of the screen - it's for the Duchess and I haven't checked how to hide it as yet) Oooh! Oooh! freeways! This is such a sad thing in MSFS. I can see that getting the roads and bridges is not a priority for MSFS but if XP (well known for its "we're a serious sim and we don't care about looking pretty") can do it this well then MS/Asobo ought to be able to do it in MSFS. Heading towards downtown And that's where I ran out of time. Saved the flight though so I'll pick it up again later sometime. As Randy Newman never quite said "I love LA (in the sim)"

To say Hello from my new world - Hello, Florida! My flight sim is officially back to it's glory. I just received my pc with upgrade of the GPU - RTX 4090, upgrade of my RAM memory from 32 GB's to 128 DDR4 on 3200 MhZ and new PSU 1300W, 80+Titanium class. I am in the process of making new video and decided to share with you guys a screenshot from True Earth Florida with my departure from KVPS to direction KMCO. Few Photoshop filters, but I am happy for the performance, because, now my sim does not go lower than 27 frames per second on max detail. I am happy and I believe this year on the world trip of myself I will have amazing time flying those beautiful Prepar3D sceneries.

just the default Palm Springs, Used to be a favourite in the old P3D days with all the Orbx stuff, so I thought I'd see what it looked like in XP12. Possibly inapprpriate weather to start with, no idea if it ever gets like this around there but hey . . Weather clearing now I am getting spoiled by the lighting and atmospherics in XP12. If I could port these aspects to the MSFS world I really would have the absolutely perfect sim. I think I shall start experimenting with filters and the like in MSFS, as I'm finding it a bit bright and harsh now I've gotten back into XP12.

A quick tour round one of my favourite places (sim and real life) in the default S-76. Have just found that there's a free XP12 upgrade version of one of my other helis so I'll try that later. Meanwhile - enjoy! Waiting to lift, at the cargo terminal area Actually a payware KSFO, but I'll come back and do a tour of that later Off to the city As you know, I'm a big fan of IFR flying in XPlane <grin> The roads and particularly the traffic are streets ahead (can I say that?) of MSFS Yeah, yeah, I know it's a flight sim, but c'mon! I assume that's TrueEarth's SF city stuff down there. Thought tthat must be dodgy modelling in the sim at first, but I guess it's actuall dodgy architecture instead. Coit Tower - one of my favourite places in the city It's a cliche, view wise, but there's a reason for that! I've always been taken with this little patch of Earth, it looks pretty much perfect to me. Plonk me down on a few acres of land there and then b*gger off and leave me alone and I'd be a happy boy. But then, where I do live is very much like this, but on a much smaller scale, so I guess all is well with my world I mean, what's not to like? Heading back now I probably took four times as many pictures as I've shown on this trip. A lovely place and extremely well done in True Earth. Such a shame Orbx lost the plot with its sceneries, they really were the absolute cream in their heyday.

So, let me share my QW 787 on departure from KLAX. Enjoy the views!!!!

I'm beginning to feel distinctly unfaithful at the moment. I'm really having a ball playing with XP12 right now. I symlinked to a couple more bits and pieces from my XP11 scenery, and took my new 319 out for a circuit around KSEA. Got my Traffic Global working, so lots of activity around (although nothing particularly grabbed in these shots), and I'm actually enjoying the 319 immensely - even if I haven't even got my controllers re-mapped yet. I'm used to ignoring all those switches and gauges but at the moment I can't even set the flaps! (see, you really don't need to be a pilot to enjoy simming) So, out from KSEA, off to Mt Pointy, and back in and down at Boeing Field (is that what it's called?) Great fun! I really can't believe how good these two sims are today. And for my purposes and tastes, XP12 with TrueEarth and MSFS when the PG is being served up unmelted are pretty much equals. As Mr Perry might say - "could it BE any better?"