Hi, been an xp10 user since may 2012, finally dumped my buggy stuttering FSX drive, for the perfectly smooth flight of XP.

 

Perfectly smooth flight................to where? That's the problem I see. I was never one to be content to flying around my local airport. I was always off on a real life cross country adventure. Since I don't get a thrill with plausible scenery, and don't care to populate the world myself............I'd never be content with just using X-Plane, as a one & only sim.

 

L.Adamson

Perfectly smooth flight................to where? That's the problem I see. I was never one to be content to flying around my local airport. I was always off on a real life cross country adventure. Since I don't get a thrill with plausible scenery, and don't care to populate the world myself............I'd never be content with just using X-Plane, as a one & only sim.

 

L.Adamson

 

To any of the great freeware or payware airports available for X-Plane???

Perfectly smooth flight................to where? That's the problem I see. I was never one to be content to flying around my local airport. I was always off on a real life cross country adventure. Since I don't get a thrill with plausible scenery, and don't care to populate the world myself............I'd never be content with just using X-Plane, as a one & only sim.

 

L.Adamson

 

We get it. Move on.

We get it. Move on.

 

And just who, is we?

 

For all I know, I've probably owned X-Plane much longer than yourself. Sure wouldn't want to make it the only sim, though. I still believe in using others too. In the meantime, since you've joined in 06, feel free to wrack up a few more posts.

What had me about XPlane was a descent from cruise alt down to the landing in overcast conditions. You go from a beautiful Sunny atmosphere to a groggy overcast sad looking atmosphere below base clouds and into the city. It left a very deep psychological impression on me that made me forget about a lot of XPlane shortfalls.

 

Getting into FSX after to do my usual Vatsim run, the atmosphere felt plastic and shallow. It's a bit tough to describe, but it felt like there Was no atmosphere that I could relate to. Even with PMDG NGX, FTX and REX I felt like that immersion is simply impossible due to limitations of FSX- 24000 feet almost always felt like 3000. The times I catch my self enjoying FSX, I also feel like lying to myself trying to ignore the very unrealistic "overcast" ceiling or lighting, or shadows or many other things.

 

There is so much work to be done for XPlane that sadly I just can't fly IFR point A to point B with the same depth just yet. But for the sheer feeling of "being there" FSX is like some big frozen dinner food with all the right ingredients but nothing compared to a fine Italian restaurant that is XPlane environment. You really don't get a lot but the taste will blow you away.

 

Having said that, I finally ordered XPlane 10. Could someone share their experience with Carenado models? How close do they match to real life flying compared to FSX?

your post made me hungry :lol:

Easter almost here yeppie. Xplane could have Easter egg surprise. Got FSX, FS2004, Xplane believe use them all. When it snows use FS2004 to fly in. Nice out FSX, want to learn how to tweak a plane Xplane.

What had me about XPlane was a descent from cruise alt down to the landing in overcast conditions. You go from a beautiful Sunny atmosphere to a groggy overcast sad looking atmosphere below base clouds and into the city. It left a very deep psychological impression on me that made me forget about a lot of XPlane shortfalls.

 

Getting into FSX after to do my usual Vatsim run, the atmosphere felt plastic and shallow. It's a bit tough to describe, but it felt like there Was no atmosphere that I could relate to. Even with PMDG NGX, FTX and REX I felt like that immersion is simply impossible due to limitations of FSX- 24000 feet almost always felt like 3000. The times I catch my self enjoying FSX, I also feel like lying to myself trying to ignore the very unrealistic "overcast" ceiling or lighting, or shadows or many other things.

 

The clouds in XP10 I think are the weakest feature of the sim! Unless you like smoke from forest fires! The addon v2 clouds look better but still not close to real life clouds. Go ahead bring up XP10 then look outside, can you honestly tell me you see clouds like in XP10? Then at night they are way too bright. It's almost like they got the textures reversed night for day and day for night. As for FSX Overcast issue, that is correctable by setting the Cloud Density to 12 in the FSX.cfg file. Rex clouds on the other hand is comparable to real life clouds. I'm hoping REX comes out with a XP10 version like they did for XP9. Although because of the different technique used by XP10 they may not, be able to do so, without creating a whole new product. Which they may not choose to do!!

Ok, well that's your opinion.

 

I do like XP clouds and how volumetric they feel when you go through them. They could use more clarity from afar and look a bit more picture "perfect", but IMO they do a better job of reproducing the environment as water vapor by feeling Volumetric instead of cartoon cutouts that REX can look like very often.

 

I'de imagine any future XP addons could make them even better, including at night.

 

Anyway, my point was about atmosphere. No matter what you do to FSX- you'll never get this:

 

 

I was talking more about the atmosphere, when you fly into a city that is under dark overcast you are submerged into their atmosphere of this city and become part of 'it'. It's part of immersing the pilot that you have actually travelled somewhere. That is a huge part of RL flying experience for myself. It's like if you depart from Northern Canada on a cold morning in a snow-storm and land in Sunny New York a few hours later.

 

I find that FSX a lot of the time feels the same everywhere.

There is so much work to be done for XPlane that sadly I just can't fly IFR point A to point B with the same depth just yet. But for the sheer feeling of "being there" FSX is like some big frozen dinner food with all the right ingredients but nothing compared to a fine Italian restaurant that is XPlane environment. You really don't get a lot but the taste will blow you away.

 

Wow, that's an interesting take. Sounds promising!

I agree with Vteckick. Anyone can pick out a feature of X-Plane and pick it apart, be it scenery, flight models, or weather. Valid arguments can be made across the board. I prefer to take the total package in, and atmosphere is a big, big part of it for me. Granted, I'm not a pilot, so I can't tell a bad flight model from a good one. I either fly hands on and just make minor corrections with the stick as I go, or I'll let the autopilot handle things. I very rarely use the trims. Realistic? Eh, well, maybe not, but I view all PC flight sims as entertainment software, first and foremost, that emulate simulators. To me, a real simulator sits on hydraulics, has a faithful reproduction of a real flight deck, and is used to train pilots to fly real airplanes.

 

For me, it's what I see out the window that counts. Take the clouds, for instance. I never knew how they were modeled in the program until Murmur's experiments. All I know is what I see out of the cockpit, and I like it. I know nothing of mushrooms or burnt edges or any of that stuff that's been brought up before. I figure rendering tricks are done as concessions to "trick" you into believing something is a certain way. Kind of like how FSX only models rain immediately around your aircraft. As long as you're looking from the inside out, you're none the wiser.

 

This is why I never want to see behind the scenes of Disney dark rides. I'd rather experience it from a rider's point of view and believe those are dancing ghosts in the Haunted Mansion's ballroom instead of projections on a sheet of glass.

There is so much work to be done for XPlane that sadly I just can't fly IFR point A to point B with the same depth just yet. But for the sheer feeling of "being there" FSX is like some big frozen dinner food with all the right ingredients but nothing compared to a fine Italian restaurant that is XPlane environment. You really don't get a lot but the taste will blow you away.

This one really made me smile B) Good point for sure...

Gotta compromise I figure want snow, rain, wind, old planes fs2004 way to go. Want eye candy and nice photo scenery, and planes fsx is the way to go. X-plane good for learning physics of wings, and planes 101. X-plane downside is well know they just got to improve on it. Still, spending 3k to get fsx purring is useless when fs2004 can do what FSX does 80% of the time anyways. Guitar Players that are the best can play on fender squire or les paul and still sound great its all about techquie. Still, if Obrx and MSE around no need to leave the FSX. FSX, its looks and runs good most times, its the under the hood that a problem with its OOM and CTD get those from time to time dont sweat it as it humans that design computer programs.

One of the things I really like about X-Plane is the fact that bad weather truly means bad weather. Although I don't like how the clouds look, when it's clouded over and raining, it really does feel like it. In FSX, you can fly though a thunderstorm in a piper cub, in X-Plane, good luck with that :-)

 

One of the best visuals I've seen in a flight-simulator was breaking through thick turbulent clouds above Seattle in X-Plane at night, and seeing all the lights and cars below. Really adds to the immersion and alive feeling.

I stumbled across this video just now, and the first thing I thought of was the Redpiper vid Vteckick posted. Other than the way the lightning lights up the sky, it's pretty close to real, imo. Even the bright clouds.

 

 

Erm... off topic, but am I going nuts? I swear I'm hearing the synthesizer riff from Pink Floyd's On the Run from Dark Side in the distortion of the engines when they're throttled up for takeoff. lol!