The XPlane 10 demo version is now available !

[Daube]

Hi guys,

Just a quick news to notify you that the demo version of XPlane 10 can now be downloaded from the main page: http://www.x-plane.com/

Cheers.

[Lionheart]

I saw this! Dare I? Oh man... I want to see some city scape with detailed streets and back yards.

[Daube]

Well, that demo version won't cost you a single penny, you know :)
I was thinking about downloading it too, but the servers are quite slow for the moment, so I'll wait a bit.

[VPL Paolo Lao]

Thanks for the HU Daube, I was thinking of switching over to X-plane, but.. well I can have both sims :jump:

[flaminghotsauce]

Servers are slow, you say? Na. I'm nearly 2/3 the way through the download, and it's only been 22 hours. :sleep:

[Ferry_vO]

I'm using the torrent client, and right now I have about three hours left, so total time should be less than four hours!
And the great thing about torrent downloads is that you can always quit and resume later. I used it to download the entire 37 Gb (!!!) NL2000 scenery for FsX without problems.

[Lionheart]

Dang, Ferry!

I wish I had known this. I have feared the Torrent sites.

So far, I have let it run all night. Started at 11PM, now 8:30AM and its 40% done. Maybe tonight it will be finished.


Bill

[Ferry_vO]

There's no need for a torrent site Bill, just a torrent client (Like uTorrent) and a small file which tells the client what to download. Once you open this file with the client it starts to search for 'seeds'. Usually at startup torrents seem slow, but the more seeders they find, the faster the download becomes. The system is great for sharing large files, but has gotten a bad rep as a tool to share stuff illegally.

[Ferry_vO]

Done, and that includes a break went my ISP went down for a bit.

[Naismith]

Servers are slow, you say? Na. I'm nearly 2/3 the way through the download, and it's only been 22 hours. :sleep:

I gave up after 2 hrs as it was at about 3%. Life is too short.

[Lionheart]

2:31PM, at almost 50%, says 27 more hours to go but I think it 'might' be done by midnight, I hope. We'll see.


Ferry, what do you think of it? Any screenshots?



Bill

[Ferry_vO]

Bill: FsX flies better, looks better, loads much faster, is easier to set up and has better framerates. By far.

With slightly higher than default settings I got about 15 fps..

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[txnetcop]

I've been pretty disappointed too...go take a look at the latest Microsoft Flightsim pics from Nov 18th
Ted

[Lionheart]

Bill: FsX flies better, looks better, loads much faster, is easier to set up and has better framerates. By far.

With slightly higher than default settings I got about 15 fps..

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Thanks Ferry.

Just got uTorrent and am downloading it now. Presently already at 18%.

Framerates sound similar to FSX. I just need to see it for myself. You guys understand.

A Lancair? ACK! lol....


Is there the chance that people can download things off my computer with a Torrent? I didnt see a way to lock out things, but perhaps on uTorrent, you must place them in upload? or is it called 'seeding'?

I would hate for my newest bird to be uploaded to the world before its done, lol..

Bill

[Meshman]

Unless you're going into places you shouldn't, there is little risk to using a torrent system. It downloads specific files and makes those same specific files available to others.

Go somewhere and get some hacked POS torrent client and then things can be different.

[Ferry_vO]

Did a bit more testing, this time in daylight. I turned the settings down a notch, mostly to default with 2xAA and 8xAF. Still would get only 8-15 fps all the time, and that on a i7 920 @ 3.2 Ghz, 6 Gb ram and a GTX560Ti and a screen resolution of 1680x1050..
One nice thing missing from Ms sims are the cloud shadows on the ground, but I suspect those are also a framerate hog. Can't seem to turn them off though.
Tried a few different aircraft too; the King Air is the best one I've seen so far and flies OK. The Lancair is an empty shell (No interior) and flies like it's completely weightless. Weird!
The Phantom is actually pretty good and handles OK. (Still feels too light.) The Sea King helicopter is a very low res model, even without a VC! The smallest touch of the throttle and it went ballistic, completely out of control.
Elevator trim seems to be an issue; no matter if I assigned a set of buttons to it or an axis on my stick, all aircraft couldn't be trimmed down to a level attitude.
Wish I could say it was a good sim Bill, because I would like to see some decent competition for MS, but this just isn't it for me..

Some more uneditted screenshots:
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[txnetcop]

I went over to TechCorp today and put this on their i7 980X on the X58 MSI Big Bang XPOWER 1366 motherboard with dual Zotac 50101-10P GTX580s and 6 GB of Corsair Vengence DDR3 2000 mhz Triple Channel memory...I am not allowed to publish all the specifics because we are only allowed to report to mfgs but OMG IT FLIES!!! WOW and looks SWEEEEET! I will never be able to afford a setup like this to fly it but it was impressive with everything turned all the way up! I was getting 60fps in every circumstance.

We need to remember you guys this is only the demo before we start making harsh decisions. I did have some trouble setting up the Logitek G940 Flight system but got some help from Laminar Research techs and it worked perfectly! They are going to include some help in the final product to set this flight system up.
Ted

[Lionheart]

We need to remember you guys this is only the demo before we start making harsh decisions. I did have some trouble setting up the Logitek G940 Flight system but got some help from Laminar Research techs and it worked perfectly! They are going to include some help in the final product to set this flight system up.

Ted


Thanks Ted.

I hope that this is truly the case and the production model, or first update will be void of the bugs. Glad to hear it was running good on a super computer. That is light in the end of the tunnel.




Wish I could say it was a good sim Bill, because I would like to see some decent competition for MS, but this just isn't it for me..

Ferry Vo

Roger that Ferry. I gave it many tries this morning and last night. Not for me either. Put it this way, XP9 runs much nicer. Some of the models textures were horrible, grim. But maybe its a setting that was on. For me, nothing looked like the screenshots. The homes had missing lawn items, the clouds were not there, etc, etc. It was a let down for me. Trim also didnt work.

[Lionheart]

Some more screenshots.

One of the bugs from last edition that XP10 has here is the odd 'pivoting/turning' of the plane when parked on the tarmac ready for takeoff. Idle seems to 'vibrate' the plane in a turn on its Y axis.

[Ferry_vO]

We need to remember you guys this is only the demo before we start making harsh decisions.

If you pay, the demo becomes flyable for more than ten minutes so it is basically the same product. But like previous versions I'm sure there will be plenty of updates.


One of the bugs from last edition that XP10 has here is the odd 'pivoting/turning' of the plane when parked on the tarmac ready for takeoff. Idle seems to 'vibrate' the plane in a turn on its Y axis.

Noticed that too. Even the 747 does that. Also the control surfaces seem to have a life of their own on the ground.
The empty cockpits are a bit odd too, when looking at the exterior model.

[Lionheart]

The empty cockpits are a bit odd too, when looking at the exterior model.

Ferry vO

If only Austin knew that he could be using Poser to make simple Mark IV people to place in the interiors, super low polygons and they look great!

Oh well...

[Daube]

On another forum a user made some extensive tests on this XPlane10 demo, trying to find the good balance between graphics and performance.
He first of all disabled the AA and AF (set them to low levels) and forced them via NVidia Inspector, exactely like we do for FSX or FS9 for example.
Then he carefully increased the settings. At the end, he managed to get some good visuals and smooth FPS, well above 20's.

The fact is that XPlane is not like FSX, the settings are not the same, the way to adjust them and the consequences are not the same either :)

I will not judge XPlane10 from this demo, I know it's a very basic version and I know XP usually receives quite a lot of updates for each version. Focusing on the features, I'm very pleased by what I can see in the various posts here and there. The perf issue is temporary. The airplanes are early beta versions too. I'm still in the "wait and see" attitude, I'll decide much later if "this sim is not for me" ;)

[paiken]

It's nearly unusable on my rig. Some really strange things happening with the graphics. Noticed on the xp site that there are some pretty big issues with graphics engine and they are "working on" fixing them. I'm somewhat baffled that they didn't have some sort of beta program to catch the big things before they released the demo version. Then again, Austin and company never did things in a "traditional" manner.