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  1. #26
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    PilatusTurbo's Avatar
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    Hey, Tom! Long time no see, from me as well! I was like you. A very extended hiatus or sabbatical from FS, if you will.

    I got back into it a year ago now. Flew FSX for a month. Took a look at XP, and was like NOPE. Then, got tired of photo real scenery in FSX with ZERO autogen. Took XP out again, and started studying it a bit. Joined the X-Plane Org forums, and got involved.

    I have made high quality photo real scenery for 5 entire states that I fly in, and they have varying and intensifying levels of detail closer to airports, as I custom designed my photo real scenery settings in Ortho4XP. It has a bit of a learning curve, but not too bad. You'll mess tiles up a couple times, re-make tiles a few times, and then you'll really have the hang of it. And not to mention, gorgeous autogen and Terrain Mesh with Ortho4XP. It does the terrain meshes as it generates the photoreal tiles. I would've paid hundreds for the scenery in FSX or P3D.

    Yes, it does have the aforementioned limitations. Weather kinda rough unless you mess with some things, and ATC kinda sucks, unless you mess with some things. I've kinda left those by the way side a bit.

    Tons of GORGEOUS freeware scenery. You have to learn to add the correct scenery libraries, and learn your scenery.cfg orders, but it's NOT that bad at all. I have links for master libraries on a page at the Org, and a great tutorial video for Ortho4XP, as well. As mentioned, it's very easy to add scenery once you have the libraries in place. None of that weird, convoluted crap that FSX and MSFS had in past.

    I have not touched FSX since I nuked its installation a month into X-Plane. X-Plane just got the Vulkan/Metal API update, and my frame rates nearly doubled on my predominantly AMD/Radeon system.

    No seasons, but soon hopefully they will implement that. I usually FS mostly during the summer, and that season has just begun.

    MSFS 2020 does look neat. It's also being very strongly hinted at being a subscription service type game. It's also got MS backing it, which MS has a long and known reputation of ruining everyone's expectations. The minimum and recommended requirements have always been dubious from MS regarding their FS titles. The way 2020 looks, as gorgeous as it does, it'll probably require systems ten years ahead of realistic computer averages out there now, just as their sims have since like 2000.

    YMMV, but I almost didn't go back to XP, but curiosity got the best of me. I put some good time in, and now I have well north of 1.5 TB of photoreal scenery that I made for FREE, with a little work. The XP community at the Org has some serious heart, and developers are beginning to develop more and more for XP. I just got the HotStart! TBM 900, and it's insanely detailed and the most in depth simulated GA on the market. For any simulator. Period.

    Anyway. Good to see some names from back in the day. If you need help or have questions, PM me, and I can help fast track you through some of the small but inevitable headaches of learning. I'll also PM you my bookmarks for the scenery libraries and some tutorial videos to get you going. X-Plane is truly gorgeous compared, even with its limitations. Also, lighting is real in X-Plane. You have to see city night lighting to believe it, and landing lights and other various light sources are actually rendered and light projects and is dynamic. Very cool stuff. Freeware scenery for Flagstaff here, and those global apron and taxiway textures are too realistic. And FREE.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails TBM900 - 2020-06-29 17.26.43.jpg   TBM900 - 2020-06-29 16.55.29.jpg   TBM900 - 2020-06-29 15.46.04.jpg  
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  2. #27
    SOH-CM-2021 warchild's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Clayton View Post
    That will definitely be something to look at!
    I own it. If you can get around X-Planes notorious Q ( P Factor ) Its a seriously great plane..

  3. #28
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    One great thing xp has going for it is the scenery gateway. Users spend lots of time upgrading stock sceneries and uploading them to this website. Before the release of the next xplane upgrade, the really nice ones are integrated into the xp release. In other words, the xp community is constantly upgrading the sim. Don’t have the url handy but there is a site with a map of every upgraded scenery, if it’s a 3D upgrade, and when it was incorporated into the last release of xp. To make things simpler, it also shows those airports scheduled to be integrated but not yet.

    XP community really rocks

  4. #29
    SOH-CM-2021 warchild's Avatar
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    not to mention theres some extremely fine scenery being made that can be found with a simple search. I Have the entirety of Japan and its airports now, all free, and simply gorgeous ( Qualifier: Hiroshima is one I dont have so i dont know if its correct, looks good, is fun, or not.. ))..

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