What Sim shall we use today??

[britfrog]

It is interesting to note that after years of us all using the same sim (FSX) in as many months we have all changed sims and gone our separate ways

 

Whilst I have fsx gold, fsx SE, with masses of photoscenery and I guess around 100 highly detail airports, and I also have P3Dv4.1 but only transferred the scenery and a/c that would work in it from FSX as I could not decide whether to invest money in what is after all just a slightly modified FSX.

 

I have been intrigued at the differences that X-Plane offers. Like P3D I have not invested money in it yet being happy to create and /or download photoscenery as there are precious little high def European airports available (but they are coming) . Normally i prefer to fly large a/c like the PMDG 737 or Airbus and although there are a few quite reasonable a/c available, the offerings of the big boys are just around the corner which will change things.

So I have been poodling around in smaller a/c in XP and keeping myself happy with photoscenery at level 17 , plus getting to know the XP interface . I have to say surprisingly that I have not missed fsx/p3d even though I do not have anywhere near the stuff in XP as I do in them.

The flying experience in XP is simply so much more realistic already (even with the bare bones setup that I have ) that I dont want to go back to the old sims even though I know the all round experience would probably be more enhanced in fsx/p3d.

so what makes such a vanilla sim as my xp with a few addon a/c and only photoscenery so good/ so realistic?

 

The flight dynamics are certainly better than FSX/P3d but that was not difficult, but they are nowhere near as good as Aerofly!

 

However the way that scenery is portrayed is simply stunning, everything is always in focus ,it doesnt pop into focus like FSX or fizzle into focus like p3d a few miles ahead, it is sharp 20 miles away, and that in itself makes a huge change in how reaistic the sim appears, well it does for me , and the way mountains are portrayed is so much more realistic ! even though we are using the same imagery that we use in FSX/P3D !

when it comes down to ctd's or memory shortages , we all have experienced what can happen in fsx you have 3.2 gigs of memory (VAS) before the sim goes tits up, P3D, now 64 bit is a bit better, but still grinds to a halt as the memory usage gets high. In xp I regularly see my memory at 12 gb's !!! and I am still getting 72fps!! so it is also the smoothnes of the sim that makes it seem more realistic, and my P.C is NOT as some people will make out a NASA one, the cpu and motherboard are 5 years old!

 

None of us know what LM have up their sleeve for P3D in the future as they keep that secret , maybe there will be a huge update which will turn our world on its head again, who knows? but Laminar do keep the world informed on what they are working on, and knowing that is very interesting, as you can see where they want to go , and if that is the same way that you do , then you are tempted to invest further in the sim.

 

So in short these are some of the reasons I have not fired up any of the old sims for a couple of weeks now , the new toy on the block is very promising.

[stinger2k2]

Hi,

A very thought provoking post here. I, like you, have stuck with fsx (accel) but feel there must be more on offer ten years down the line.

 

With this in mind I attended this years flightsim show in the UK in order to compare. To date FSW looks like FSX without a lot of the content. P3D looked promising until i visited the Prosim stand where they were having to turn back their settings due to performance issues.(may as well stay with FSX)

 

Although I've never tried XPlane I thought that this was the sim that looked the most realistic on screen.

 

For realism, what really blew me away was trying out the Occulus Rift. This was odd because the visuals were poor in terms if definition. It was the immersive feeling which did the trick. The only trouble was the fact that you are unable to see your physical game controllers once the headset is on, and after only 10 mins of use i was feeling nauseous.

 

My conclusion was to stick (for the time being) with FSX but watch developments over the coming months.

 

Cheers

Stinger

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[britfrog]

hi stinger,

have to admit that up to about 2 months ago I had resigned myself to having to live with p3d, but i wasnt about to rush in and buy loads of stuff to replace what I already had in fsx . So I was looking for a cheap way to see how p3d compared with XP. I amongst a load of other friends at simhaven , have been making our own photoscenery for some years, in fact we have the whole of europe in HD , so it was a wrench to try something new , especially as the XP interface is so different. I did try the XP free demo , and to be honest found the performance of my p.c. was pretty marginal, so put off buying it for a few months. However another member of simhaven made the plunge and we shared skype screens and he also posted photos on the site and I have to say I was so impressed that i made the plunge to buy xp.

What surprised me most was how much quicker my p.c. was with the main prog than it had been with the demo, I had seen videos on YT which talk about fluidity etc , but I thought that was because they had top notch p.c's.

so i thought i would do a direct comparison as i use photoscenery that I download from google of my region here where i live in France, so using the same images of the mountains etc here and the med, i carried out a flight at 3000 feet sightseeing the first in fsx , then I did the same in xp and i have to say there is no contest. I have used msfsim for 30 years now since the very first version so like the product but xp is another level. It is not perfect , it is not finished but when you go back to fsx even after a short period everything seems blurry , as if the pixels they use are larger. At the moment Xp shows the most promise, next year they finally bin open gl graphice and will go with Vulkan this will enable a huge boost in performance so we have that to look forward to .

LM have said they are not going with Vulkan , in fact that is about the only thing they have said about p3d so who knows what there is to look forward to?

just my thoughts

[JSMR]

I haven’t really seen anything to make me move from fs9. P3d is just FSX rebranded and looks as bad as FSX did. X-plane I never took seriously. After trying the demo, my views stay. I don’t really rank it as a serious sim. Arcade style for the kids. Although p3d is kinda the same. WIth the avatar it lost all credibility. I won’t be surprised if they add a police chase and give him a gun soon.

 

I’ve heard some good things about aerofly but it’s still in early stages I suppose. Not much on the horizon it seems for flight sim.

[britfrog]

I must say , when i tried the demo , it was grim, i was lucky to get 20fps no matter what i did, but like you although I have p3dv4 it is blurry and is arguably an improvement over fsx, it ceratinly is nowhere near as good as fsx if you use photoscenery. , so I though i would give xp a go, just for the heck of it, and if it got better as time went along then i would at least understand the new interface. I have posted some pics at simhaven in the xp section, and i am blown away. since writing the first thread this afternoon i went back to p3d, and i Have to say it cannot stand in the shadow of xp , yes there is a way to go yet, but as i use photoscenery it is miles better than the old school, give it a try at 50 bucks it isnt expensive, and you just might be impressed.

[ColR1948]

I'm of mixed feelings, I like FSX and got used to the file structure, I can swap panels, edit the aircraft cfg, change the air files, and I have painted aircraft textures.

I bought the boxed version of XP-11, the first thing I liked was the scenery, as mentioned above it is sharp and crisp, always in focus and it doesn't look like carpet tiles repeating all the time.

I did get some photo real scenery of where I live and it was fairly accurate, that too made it even better.

The aircraft models are very good plus the ground models too, but, there are some things in XP I personally don't like. I like to tweak a bit and if I have an aircraft with a not so good panel, changing it in XP isn't that easy, well for me any way.

I struggle with an attached program called 'PlaneMaker' that come with XP, you can edit the aircraft using that but I can't get my head round it.

 

I know it can't be done but I wish I could take the good bits from both FSX and XP and put them together, then I would have a great sim.

[W2DR]

Here's my take on comparisons.....

 

Ford is better than Chevy

Ferrari is better than Lamborghini

Sofia is better looking than Gina

 

So there.....................

[Skywatcher12]

I haven’t really seen anything to make me move from fs9.

 

Same.

 

FSX: marginal advantages in some areas over FS9, major disadvantages in other areas over FS9. (eg VAS monitoring)

P3D: may be the future but right now it's still very much the present with nothing groundbreaking over the 14 year old FS9.

XP: doesn't it have either no AI/ATC or very bad AI/ATC? It's like a sports game with no career/season modes, people want career/season modes. A racing game that doesn't give you manual shift. Then there are the addons, it's lagging well behind.

Aerofly: maybe some possibilities, haven't tried it nor looked deeply into it. Development as far as I know is snails pace and community support is lacking.

Anything else: Not even close to establishing itself as a contender.

 

FS9 is still the most complete and efficient package. I can't change for the sake of change.

[TightGit]

It is interesting to note that after years of us all using the same sim (FSX) in as many months we have all changed sims and gone our separate ways

 

Not true!

 

I'm still happily using FSX and I know I'm not alone.

[britfrog]

Same.

 

FS9 is still the most complete and efficient package. I can't change for the sake of change.

 

It is ineresting to read some of these responses, when FSX came out i have to say it took some time for me to warm to it (and a couple of updates) but I still felt that it lacked some of the best points of FS9, however i persevered and FS9 melted into the sunset , especially once I used steves fixer which made FSX fully useable. However I have always had a great respect for FS9 especially as so much freeware is made for it.

It would be interesting to hear where you guys think FS9 wins over FSX.

However XP is in so many ways like FS9 , in that there is so much freeware being made by the community. In fact if it wasnt for the community and a few devs XP would not be worth trying, But it is and whilst it is not finished by a long chalk the amount of devs now coming online are quickly filling in the missing pieces. The graphics are without a doubt , for me , the one thing that nake it stand out over anything else there are some pics on the xp section on simhaven. I must start posting some here.

I still have FS9 I may well be tempted to install it again to see how it stands up after the passage of time

I still have FSX on 2 drives with over 100 HD airports, and I know I can fly from say Dublin to Athens with no fear of a ctd, my fsx does what it says on the label, it works perfectly, however my eyes are amazed at what they see with XP11 despite its current shortcomings.

[ColR1948]

In XP there are some errors which is true, the AI isn't very good, but saying that there is one feature of it I do like.

If you want you can select the AI to fly the plane, it takes over and flies plus you can sit in the cockpit and/or watch external if you wish. If you do select this mode the AI won't fly to any route you have selected but it flies a random route, it lands ant an airport, waits for a short while then takes off again to somewhere else, after a few random airport it goes back to the airport it took off from.

The ATC is bad, I don't have it selected, but I believe it is being worked on, so it is watch this space.

 

There are more models being made, some payware some freeware, also lots of new textures for the aircraft already made, I have done a few myself.

 

Col.

[rooitou]

britfrog, i had a very similar journey to yours. Also had FSX for a long time with tons of add-ons. Never liked X-Plane 9 or 10, but instantly liked X-Plane 11. I have dabbled on-and-off with the $10 monthly versions of P3D, but was never convinced that it was a big enough upgrade to justify the full purchase price. Even with P3D v4 I'm just muddling along with the occasional monthly subscription and while it is nice not to have to worry about memory anymore, it just doesn't feel like the quantum leap X-Plane 11 represents.

 

Having said that, XP11 is not perfect. The ATC is horrendous and flight planning non-existent, but everything else is in another league. The freeware available for XP11 are of such high quality that I've hardly had to purchase any addons. By the way, the Steam version of X-Plane 11 goes on sale every now and then for much cheaper than the standalone version.

 

I do still spend a lot of time in FSX, simply because it is the better all-round package, with ATC and flight planning, together with my hundreds of add-ons. I also find that the FSX version of FlyInside for VR (which is the only one I purchased) is far better in terms of frame rates and visual quality than the X-Plane or P3D versions.

 

I therefore still rank FSX tops, followed closely by XP11, with P3D4.1 a more distant third and then even further down P3D3. I'd put AeroFly2 in fifth place. While its VR experience is the best by far, it is simply not a well-rounded product with many lacking features and only a minuscule portion of the globe available to fly in, taking up a mammoth chunk of hard disk space. FSW is a joke and I seldom enjoy flying in it. I think Dovetail should just drop it and focus on FSX Steam and their train sims. I don't have FS9, XP9 or XP10 installed anymore.

[britfrog]

i agree with you rooitou, that fsx is the best alround experience at the moment, but XP11 provides more WOW!! moments nowadays i also posted some pics in britfrogs library today

[ColR1948]

I like to dabble at repainting aircraft, I have done a few for XP but found them a bit harder to do because the fuselage isn't elongated it is a bubble shape, and a lot of times putting lines and icons on isn't that easy.

I have had to go in the sim each time to view and make sure, most times it is wrong and had to do it again, a bit frustrating, whereas in FS9 and FSX I use FsRepaint and I can see exactly how it looks before I save anything and put it in the sim.

[britfrog]

we have a guy on simhaven who is very good at repaints, in fact he is very good indeed he is called jaydor and his repaints can be found on aerosoft or an aussie site i am sure if you touch base with him he will give you some help

 

N

[ColR1948]

Thanks will do.

 

Another thing with XP, you can pause it if you wish to do something else on the PC, as you can with FS, but also with XP you can shrink the screen and do something else and XP will keep running, so if you were on a long flight you can keep flying while doing other things.

[britfrog]

xp at the moment can be frustrating because it does so much but misses a few important things, for me I want some european airfields as I fly in europe , so am busy creating photoscenery, but at least that is much more realistic than fsx or P3D , we just need to be patient. I remember when fsx first came out everybody was up in arms and shouting at M.S. , they did make it much better , but it was never finished properly