Need Help Deciding...

[Tom Clayton]

Long time no see!!!

I got out of virtual flying a few years ago when real life got in the way. Now that those issues are no longer issues, I'm looking to get back in. I have a new gaming rig that's just about ready out of the box, though I want to upgrade the RAM from 8 to 32. So that now leaves me to one last quandary - which Sim do I buy? I'm torn between P3D and X-Plane.

I know about the sloped runway feature, and that's a definite point in XP's favor.

My main concern is the weather engine. I like to fly in real time with real weather. In FS9, I had the option to download and run a real weather snapshot and go flying. Is this a stock option with P3D?

Thanks for the help!

[b52bob]

Welcome back Tom, I remember you from a while back.

I changed from P3D to Xp-11 a while back and am really glad I did. The whole xp world was more vibrant, easier to add scenery and aircraft, and realistic flight dynamics. That said, there are some things in XP that P3D has and Xp does not, talking about a terrible ATC and lack of seasons.

there is a vibrant xp community that will give you a leg up when you need it. If you want to try before you buy there is a free demo that you can use. Also look at the screen shots here to get an idea of what it looks like.

Again, welcome back.

[ratty]

Hi, Tom:

To answer your original question, no, P3D can't do real weather. Most of the people I know run Active Sky, I use FS Global.

[Bjoern]

P3D has better weather rendering and I say this as an exclusive X-Plane user. Heck, even FSX and FS9 have better weather rendering. And FlightGear, which is open source!

[Daube]

As Bjoern said above, P3D (like FSX and FS9) has a better weather rendering than XPlane11 for the moment.
However, for getting this nice weather rendition, you'll need an external, payware weather engine. Active Sky is for the moment the best choice.
Also be aware that P3Dv5 now also has real sloped runways, altough that's not automatic: the scenery creator has to use that feature. So older and default sceneries will still have flat runways.
P3Dv5 also features some new atmospheric effects with real 3D clouds, but that basically an early beta version for now. Quite limited for weather rendition (again, for now. Nobody knows where this is going...).

XP11, despite its limitations (weather sucks, ATC is worse than FSX/P3D, fewer addon planes), has some very strong points and I would strongly advise you to take a "serious" look to it.
You can download a demo.
Contrary to the FSX demo that was available many years ago, the XP11 demo is always updated with the actual engine of the complete sim... In fact, you DO download the complete sim, but the scenery is limited to the area around Seattle, and the flight time is limited to 10 or 20 minutes before you need to quite and restart the sim. It's more than enough to make experiments and study the "feeling" differences between the two sims

[warchild]

Leave it too me for not being satisfied with simply throwing a spanner into the works and instead opt for the entire toolbox..
Everything here is free by the way,, Doesnt make it bad, in fact, the first is frikkin awesome seeing as it doesnt come from the horses mouth, it IS the horses mouth..

https://x-plane.joanpc.com/plugins/xpgfs-noaa-weather

Next up, you may wish to look into two little plugins that I find very wonderful.. The first is Cloud Art.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php...952-cloud-art/

and the second is Vivid Sky..

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php...315-vivid-sky/


Those three alone will put you very far along weather wise.. I wont advise on Payware weather injectore, As there is no REX for X-Plane they are all merely weather injectors like Active Sky, or full Graphics packages that Eat up your resources like mad like Sky Maxx+.

I personally use Active Sky with Cloud Art and Vivid Sky. My ONLY complaint is that I fly light and medium twins these days and even a ten knot cross wind can be a major pain in the patooty..

Check them out.. They're all free so you cant go wrong, and installation and uninstallation are so bloody easy its not funny..

May I also recommend "Fly with Lua". You;ll find it to be the perfect little swiss army knife of plugins and a great friend when used wisely..

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php...1-win-lin-mac/

Pam

[warchild]

As Bjoern said above, P3D (like FSX and FS9) has a better weather rendering than XPlane11 for the moment.
However, for getting this nice weather rendition, you'll need an external, payware weather engine. Active Sky is for the moment the best choice.
Also be aware that P3Dv5 now also has real sloped runways, altough that's not automatic: the scenery creator has to use that feature. So older and default sceneries will still have flat runways.
P3Dv5 also features some new atmospheric effects with real 3D clouds, but that basically an early beta version for now. Quite limited for weather rendition (again, for now. Nobody knows where this is going...).

XP11, despite its limitations (weather sucks, ATC is worse than FSX/P3D, fewer addon planes), has some very strong points and I would strongly advise you to take a "serious" look to it.
You can download a demo.
Contrary to the FSX demo that was available many years ago, the XP11 demo is always updated with the actual engine of the complete sim... In fact, you DO download the complete sim, but the scenery is limited to the area around Seattle, and the flight time is limited to 10 or 20 minutes before you need to quite and restart the sim. It's more than enough to make experiments and study the "feeling" differences between the two sims

I cant help but wonder at just how that demo will change with the advent of Vulkan/Metal and the realities of Ryzen. Ryzen with its obligatory parallelism and vulkan/metal with its much more efficient graphics processing have changed the world foundation just enough.. before, if you couldnt get thirty frames per second, LR would cause the haze to close in around you till you did. This was especially prevalent in the demo where it pissed everyone off.. But now, Ryzen is giving us smooth graphics all the way down too 24 FPS ( the rate used in movie theaters btw ) and Vulkan/Metal have kicked up frame rates to almost double in some cases.. My little Ryzen 7 is getting upwards of 53 FPS over Tokyo with the Carenado Waco. Thats nearly unheard of.. So yeah, Its a real curiosity for me..