Flight sims Prepar3D and XPlane 11

I know this has been mentioned to death, but I had to throw my 2-cents in. I've been flying sims since subLogic had Flight Simulator. I went through all variations of Flight Simulator all the way up to X, sometimes with Tileproxy, and, because of this forum, I purchased Prepar3D v4. I even purchased Rex clouds and the GSX ground procedures. They look great and it basically brought me back into flight simming regularly. I was thinking of purchasing a slew of Orbix add-ons, but the cost is making me pause.

 

I downloaded XPlane 11 and have been trying out their 15 minute demo. It looks great, realistic at times, in fact I just did a flight to Mt. St. Helens with a 747 and up close the mountain looks great. The clouds look awesome, even at 40,000 feet. My question is, does the unlocked version have all the cities and outskirts as detailed as the Seattle/Tacoma region? I've looked at numerous Youtube videos and I haven't seen the answer.

 

So, I'm not sure whether I want to have another flight simulator to spend my time with. For those that have both, do you spend more time in one over the other? For realistic scenery I've just been using Google Earth. I know it's not realistic in any way, shape or form, but it gives me updated scenery. For example Candlestick Park in San Francisco is gone in Google Earth but not in any other sim. Apple's spaceship building is in Google Earth but not in any scenery package available for Xplane or Prepar3D. So, should I just stick with that?

 

Thanks in advance!

Not sure of your age but you mention the cost of Orbx, if you are a senior you can get a discount, it isn't that well published but I had to send proof of my age then I got it.

 

I also have XP11 boxed version, the default scenery is good but I must admit I haven't seen the difference with the demo and the paid version to compare if there is a difference.

 

Col.

As far as I know, the demo download includes the whole sim, which can be unlocked after purchase. XP11 is technically impressive, scenery (which is important to me) looks pretty decent, as long as it covers areas you don't know. Apart from a few major cities and airports, the rest of the sceneries have no semblance of reality. If you want to improve on this, there is a ton of add-ons available, but facing endless downloads - covering limited areas here and there - and making sure that you also download the right scenery libraries looks daunting to me. I don't think I will be happy with XP 11 until Orbx comes out with world scenery and continental land class scenery as I had with FSX and P3D. That combination was the best scenery-wise, that I have seen in any sim!

 

 

Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.5GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5X; ASRock Z270 K6 Gaming MB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD; Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 34" 21:9 curved 4K Monito

Thank you for your candor, Johnost and ColR1948. I'm not quite at the senior age just yet, but soon. That's an interesting tid-bit though about the discount.

 

It's good to know that Xplane 11 looks good in certain areas but not all and from what you said, Johnost, it would be quite daunting to me as well to download all those areas. I was just thinking that the grass was greener with XPlane since it looked so good, especially at night.

 

I think I'll just stick with FSX/Tileproxy, Prepar3d and the occasional Google Earth. I really appreciate your help.

Oh and BTW regards ORBX, all of your purchases translate freely from FSX, FSX SE to P3D seamlessly without additional cost through FTX.