X-Plane VS FSX/Accel

[falcon409]

"FlyingsCool" had some interesting observations about his first foray into X-Plane and I think they're worth restating away from the screenshot thread. So here goes:

It does look good, in some ways much better than FSX, in others much worse, but I am figuring it out.

I agree, I always thought that the ground traffic in FSX was pretty cool, but X-Plane has really expanded that by adding street lights, highway signs, bridges where the traffic actually travels over the bridge rather than under it, lol

My biggest pet peeves so far... Flight dynamics, I'm not finding as being any more accurate than FSX, unlike what I was expecting. Granted, I'm not looking at edge of the envelope stuff. This is merely standard take offs, turns, landing, taxiing, approach, etc.. Too me, controlling in flight is "game like" for most of the planes I've tried. Hopefully I can fix that by changing the sensitivity curves of my controllers? When I fly, a lot of the planes I've tried bob like a bobblehead and react to the slightest input immediately. The planes I've flown (Cessnas, Pipers, etc.) tend to react with some resistance so you have to anticipate when to stop with control input ahead of where the plane is. The planes I fly in FSX react closer to this than what I've seen so far in X-Plane.

I cringed when I read this part, lol. Not because I disagree, but because that statement would curl the hair of every hardcore X-Plane user and the owner especially. It is their belief that the system they use for constructing the flight dynamics is far more accurate than FSX and any statement in the forums to the contrary will get an immediate rebuff. I was told more than once that X-Plane is the "only" true flight Simulator. FSX and to a smaller extent P3D are games.

Handling in the water is horrible. Weather, haven't even touched that yet, but seems it's not there yet really, at least not without a bunch of work. The shore lines look HORRIBLE. Worse than FS out of the box, and that's saying something.

Yep, pretty accurate and water handling is something they continue to work on. As for the shorelines, there have been scenery artists who have done nice work in many areas to improve the shorelines.

I did try and get the Ortho4XP stuff working, but my computer crashes when I've tried to process the jpg's, so I'll have to figure out what's up with that, and that'll likely fix that problem? (My desktop is circa 2010 overclocked to 3.8 GHz, 2GB GTX 1050, 18 GB memory, Windows 7 Pro).

My understanding was that Ortho4XP can be very taxing on some systems and requires a pretty beefy setup to handle it. I've stayed away from it for that reason.

Point is... I've been using flight simulators for over 30 years, X-Plane is NOT plug and play if you have expectations similar to what you can get with FSX. There's very few planes where I trust the flight model to be accurate. I know I'll get there, but, for me anyway, it's not easy or straightforward, or ready out of the box, and figuring out what's compatible with my version (11.32) and getting it all working. It's a lot of work. Hopefully someday we'll get to a point where there's a standard setup so newbies can get up and going quickly.

I had hopes that X-Plane would mimic some of the setup requirements we see in FSX, but there's nothing similar about them at all and never will be. I wouldn't say they are Anti-FSX but they are their own entity and proud of that fact and even discussing "how you do it in FSX" will elicit more than a few chuckles. As you have shown in your statements, if you expect an easy go of it when moving over to X-Plane or simply adding it as an additional Sim, don't expect the transition to go smoothly (this varies of course depending on your expectations as a sim pilot or true certified pilot).

[Priller]

There is of course a superior sim which is called Prepar3D. Lockheed Martin is behind it, X-Plane can and never will beat that.

Just MHO of course.

Priller

[edakridge]

In the Flight Sim world nothing is ever perfect. (And never will be.) I have both P3Dv4 and X-Plane 11 loaded in my computer. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. P3D being built on the FSX platform has many of the same issues as FSX. Namely it leaks RAM almost as bad as FSX did, the default scenery is terrible, you can't update the default Airac (Still on 2005), and many of the default aiports and coastlines are as much as 200 yards off from the real world. Over the years we have found ways to work around these shortcomings, but basically it's still just a 64 bit FSX. X-Plane on the other hand has it's own shortcomings. Lack of AI Traffic and pitiful ATC just to name a couple. In my Opinion X-Plane11 is a much more stable platform than P3D and has far superior flight dynamics. The default scenery is "Head and Shoulders" above P3D for most areas. It also runs better on my computer than P3D. (I7 4770,32 gb RAM,GTX970,3 Monitors) P3D being built on the FSX code has a hard time utilizing RAM and more than 1 core of the processor. It also struggles with a multi monitor setup. It just boils down to what you are looking for and what works best for you.

[Bjoern]

The "our flight dynamics are better"-attitude often exhibited by the XP crowd is idiotic. Its main advantage is that you can get away with basic geometry, airfoil and performance data to construct a convincing rendition of an aircraft's handling and performance characteristics, whereas in MSFS, you'll need a complete aerodynamic analysis with all sorts of polars to get it right.
It also speaks volumes that some of the most sophisticated XP11 add-ons require an external plugin to overcome limitations or bugs in the general flight model and that ground handling is one of the most popular complaints.

What I really like about XP is its strightforward organization. No installer, terribly easy to install add-ons, runs on other operating systems without any hassle, most things can be interacted with by means of a LUA script, two tools to create sceneries, one tool to make aircraft, one repository for updated default airports and a centralized updater.

And the out of the box amount of options to make aircraft are much more extensive than in MSFS. No more XML BS to simulate more than a single aircraft battery, fake mixed propulsion or jettisonable stores and certainly no more aforementioned digging and begging for aerodynamic data.


Yes, there are things that I hate about XP11, such as the pretty much sterile, lifeless environment (lack of AI, ATC and detailed weather) and the slow development pace, but at least I can hate them at 60 FPS on hardware that runs FSX on 30 at best at comparable levels of detail.


Will I stick with XP? I don't know.
Will I go back to MSFS? Unlikely.
Will I switch to P3D? Only if I want a warmed up MSFS.

Heck, I might just end up with FlightGear once they sort out their scenery.

[b52bob]

I love XP-11. That’s a personal statement and by no means implying that it is superior to other flight sims.

There are people running FSX, P3D and even those who fly in FS9. To themselves they have the “best” sim out there. Probably some of this has to do with extreme amounts of $$$ spent on add ons over the years. There is no best sim, only the ones that you enjoy. I have FSX and P3D v4 and every time I crank it up, the textures make me turn it off and go back to XP. Every time I run XP I miss ATC, AI aircraft and most of all, easy flight planning. There is no clear winner here, just your preference.

i do like the involvement of XP community and the designers that continue to provide more and more updates to the sim and some outstanding freeware aircraft, airports and sceneries. P3D needs to move on from the old MS FSX code but if they do, look at what happens to thousands of dollars of add ons that won’t work anymore. I think that the FSX code has probably reached the limit of what it can do. That’s why many people believe that XP is the future.

Just enjoy the marvels of digital flight no matter what program you use.

[warchild]

i have seen video's from every flight simulator, that have pulled my eyes from my head and glued them to the screen while dropping my jaw to the floor. Whether it was realism or artistic style didnt matter. These people regardless of sim, had a real talent the likes of which the rest of us only dream about. I applaude these people.I hope they continue to make more videos as they provide inspiration for so many of us..