Whoah!

Hi all. I have been a member here for a long time but seldom post. I have been a user of the Microsoft product since it's inception and am still a fan of FS9 due to the tremendous amount of third party add-on material available. This site routinely pops up a window saying I'm one of the top downloaders of all time, lol! I actually never did move up to FSX as I had read that FS9 was really a better simulator than FSX. Having said that, I just recently purchased Xplane 11 and loaded up all 60 gig of it last night. Now this is a different animal. Although I have just been up in the air about three times I can already say I am very impressed with the execution of this sim. Very nice clear detail all around. The cockpits are outstanding although I am still learning the view controls to be able to see and activate the needed switches, etc. I had read that the flight physics were more accurate than the Microsoft product and, although I am not a real world pilot, I do notice that the characteristics of the aircraft in flight do feel different---hard to put a finger on yet. The scenery I have seen so far is really nice--especially the better looking mountains. I live near Calgary, Alberta in the foothills of the Rockies so I want the mountains to look right. Xplane has achieved some very nice mountain terrain from what I have seen so far. I am about to download some scenery libraries and some custom scenery to see what can be had with this very intriguing flight sim. Anyone who is hesitating making the jump to Xplane should just go for it. It's very cool. My machine is an i7 6700 @3.4 Ghz. 64 bit, 16 Gb of RAM. I am using a Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 video card. So far things are running smooth although I have no traffic yet. I'm just getting my feet wet at this point but will probably post again.

I bought X-Plane having seen some videos on YouTube. I imagined that it would be a kind of supplement to FS9, which I have flown since it came out and which I love. Suffice it to say, since buying XP11 back in August, I don't think I have flown FS9 once! Funny, FS9 has given me so much over the years, I feel like I am kind of cheating on it, but the 'guilt' hasn't been enough to bring me back. It takes a while to get used to XP, especially after becoming quite good at tinkering with FS9 (I have, but have never got on with FSX), but after several months, flying most days, I have hardly scratched the surface of the possibilities and am still loving it!

Hi Martin. I agree completely. Over the years I have rebuilt FS9 several times due to computer failures, etc and I did learn my way around it's files quite well. I became quite "at home" with it. In fact, after a computer change-over a year ago I only recently rebuilt it once again. Of course I knew what it needed for it to look it's best--Ultimate Terrain, FSGenesis, Sandmann mesh,etc but as great as it looks right now X-Plane looks better. Much better. It will take me a bit to learn my way through it's different controls but I am already getting better every day. I am actually quite surprised and impressed with the simplicity of adding scenery libraries and scenery. Much easier than FS9. My newly rebuilt FS9 will stay on my drive for now but at some point I can see where it will disappear. I agree that it feels like cheating. I have had so much enjoyment from FS9 over many years. Progress.

I left flight sim for a few years and want to fly again. I am not a pilot and usually fly small planes for scenery viewing.

 

Before installing FSX, I did some study shall I go for FSX (which I have already) or X-Plane 11. There was one comparison on scenery I read saying that there was not much different the two. So, I decided to go for FSX.

 

However, reading these comments, it make me wonder shall I consider X-plane 11.