[Lightplane]

I joined the x-plane community about two months ago. I am a long time FS9 and FSX user and was quite happy with that sim. But something about x-plane drew me to it. I had to wait until I bought a new hard drive before I could load the sim - 60gb was more than the space I had on my old drive.

So what do I think?
1. Word. Outstanding. By far in my opinion, the flight model blows the competition right out of the water.

2. Not only the flight model, but the weather realism is much better in x-plane. I went back into FSX a few days ago, and I found the stutters, the slow refresh on instruments and the painting like sky textures to be a turn off. In x-plane the cluds and fog had more volume and felt like they were moving.

3. I bought Inside Passage and Canadian Rockies and I have to say these packages are outstanding too. I'm really enjoying flying into small detailed airstrips. As a fan of Ice Pilots NWT reality show, flying into Yellowknife in a DC-3 and parking at Buffalo's Hanger was a real treat. I highly recommend this scenery payware package. As I live in BC, it's a n extra treat for me.

4. I find in x-plane I'm using the instruments more. I like the basic GPS to plug in way-points or airports, or NDBs, VORs etc. I find it best to pre-plan the flight on-line, take note of frequencies and then in the sim, program them - in some ways more realistic. In FSX I found I relied too much on the moving map GPS.

5. I like the simple folder system and easy means to add scenery. I've already added buildings to CYYJ (as it isn't yet included in Inside Passage scenery package) using fs2xplane and overlay editor. Couldn't be easier to do - it took me about 2 minutes, including clean up edits, to get the buildings into the sim at YYJ.

6. I'm running on a Core 2 Duo Conroe, E2160 with an 8600GT card - certainly ot high end today. In fact, the Conroe was rated at 1.8ghz. It's a nice overclocker, so I'm running nice and stable at 2.7ghz. Watching the cores under x-plane load, both cores are used and settle around 85% of the processor, so x-plane 9.45 is using both cores well. It looks like fps have improved with each update to Version 9 and I'm able to run Extra High textures, medium distance and still getting 30-45fps. Of course, this is in general aviation, so more detailed cockpits might be a problem for me.

7. Coming from FSX I've operated in 3D cockpits from the start. I've never flown in 2D. I have a head tracker and love it - I don't know how anybody can fly in a sim without one. I just wish we had 6DOF with x-plane (as we do with FSX) - the head roll is nice when banked and trying to look out the window to the airport. I use Sandy's plug in Pilot View. The force feedback is great too. At first I wasn't sure, but now I find it strange not having it on.

8. The fact x-plane textures are largely uncompressed is a bonus. There is no popping of scenery when flying - just the short1-2 second delay when loading the next tile. But that decision, while taking up a lot of hard disk real estate was the right one. In FSX on my system, the CPU is struggling to feed the GPU and the result is textures forming in front of you as you fly. Same for the in-place objects over autogen. Takes up more disk space, but less trouble loading in the sim and easier to edit when customizing. And with Hard drives ar less than 10 cents a gigabyte and SATA controllers, disk storage is not an issue anymore.

9. I'm a PC user, always have been from days of DOS 3 and probably always will be. But I appreciate the cross platform approach to x-plane. It takes nothing away from me as a windows user and if anything, adds to the experience by learning from other platforms.

10. I would like to see an active ATC - not too worried about loading the CPU with AI traffic, but some form of interaction with ATC that is more realistic than the default or the plugin would be great.

11. Having said the above - there's something immersing about waiting behind other aircraft in line for take-off, or being told you're number three to land, etc. This is my number one wish for x-plane is ATC.

12. Great product with a great future. Glad I'm here. Yes, I still fly the other sim, but until I get my i7 system, it's not fun to fly - x-plane on the other hand, works well. A lot to be said about the scale-ability of the program's design.

This post has been edited by Lightplane: 16 February 2010 - 11:22 PM

[daveduck]

Lightplane, on 16 February 2010 - 09:04 PM, said:

3. I bought Inside Passage and Canadian Rockies and I have to say these packages are outstanding too. I'm really enjoying flying into small detailed airstrips. As a fan of Ice Pilots NWT reality show, flying into Yellowknife in a DC-3 and parking at Buffalo's Hanger was a real treat. I highly recommend this scenery payware package.

Buffalo facilities are accurately represented in the Canadian Rockies package? Cool.

I have mixed feelings about the show (the hyped drama gets a little tiresome) but it's great seeing those old propliners in action.

[Lightplane]

Totally agree on the hyped drama, but I love the old prop-liners - the C-46, DC-3, DC-4, Electras. And Buffalo Joe - look beyond the annoying voice-over and I love the show.

I flew Joe's sched. run from Hay River to Yellowknife in a DC-3. I imaged Joe giving me a hard time on every aspect of the flight.

BTW - the package has static models of the old prop-liners in Buffalo's livery, and the CL-215 water-bombers.

This post has been edited by Lightplane: 17 February 2010 - 12:07 AM

[daveduck]

Lightplane, on 16 February 2010 - 10:06 PM, said:

BTW - the package has static models of the old prop-liners in Buffalo's livery, and the CL-215 water-bombers.

Well, well. So it does:

Buffalo Hangar

Tom, you reading this? The Ice Pilots show would be a heck of a good marketing hook for this package,
at least for Canadians. And apparently negotiations are on for it to be broadcast on a US cable network.
Season 2 already greenlighted for Canada.

This post has been edited by daveduck: 17 February 2010 - 06:09 AM

[cessna_man]

Nice reading, I to used MSFS since FS98 and also the old Atari Flight Sim.
I agree with you on the conparsion between MSFS and X-Plane. As a matter of fact I was giving FSX a try last night because of the system functions of the super 80 that I have, and although it was nice to be able to simulate startup, ect. in this aircraft the fact that fsx with it's stutter and visual effect as you were talking about, made me shut down fsx and I said to myself that although the super 80 is a fine aircraft maybe when x-plane 10 comes out with the md80, hopefully we will be able to simulate all systems. I also noticed when takeing off in fsx the aircrafts (to me anyways) did feel like flying on rails. Also with x-plane I'm able to feel the airplane in ground effect. This is something that I wasn't able to do in MSFS, using the C172 in MSFS the plane would always fly right down to touch down, when flaring. I wasn't able to float the plane in ground effect to bleed off speed. In x-plane I can acheive this.
I'm sure you know this, but if you want to save on disk space you can install just the scenery areas you want to fly in. I just install usa,alaska, and the bahamas. If I decide to fly in another part of the world I'll install that scenery then. For now the U.S. will be good enough, and with being able to download photo scenery textures make the experience of fling x-plane even more of a pleasure.

This post has been edited by cessna_man: 17 February 2010 - 06:18 AM

[chuckhig]

i was given x plane for a gift from my son. i was really afraid of it { iam 66 years old ) but what fun. i am not real versed on computers, so i am finding my way as i go. i just love this simulator, especially the f4 phantom, which i worked on years ago. as i go along, i want to learn how to download additional aircraft that look interesting, just do not know how. really looking foward to this forum. chuckhig...new york state mountains

[Lightplane]

Cessna-man - yes Iw as aware of that, but good to remind people. For me the disk space is not an issue - I have a 1tb drive with lots of room on it. And at $100, no problem if I ever need to buy another one.

Chukhig - to install an aircraft it is really easy. Just go to the downloads section of this website (you'll see the link) and when you find an aircraft you like, press "download" (top right of the screen usually). Save it somewhere you can find it, like in downloads or on your desktop.

This will save a file with a zip extension. Double-click this file and then tell it to extract to x-plane, airplane directory. That's it. Start the simulator and your plane will be there.

[Bamboo Cougar]

Aside from the bleeped out dialogue, the wasted 10 minutes looking through the Yellowknife dump for furniture etc., I too like Icepilots. I consider it a warm up for "The Aviators" TV series coming this fall. That looks to be 'the real deal'. I have a lot of respect for the production and direction team, and Jim Lovelace (pilot, producer of 'Wings over Canada' and 'host' to the coast to coast 100th year celebration flight last summer) is a top rate general aviation enthusiast.

Flying the Rockies package is great fun, in the fine tradition of I.P. and F.F. Its noteworthy that a well-developed City Centre airport in Edmonton is vital, as it looks like the airport will be closing sooner rather than later, in favour of corporate land interests and short-sighted city politicians. If you're interested in tracking these developments, COPA (Canadian Owners and Pilots Association) has been publishing regular updates in their monthly news and it has even hit AVWeb at least once that I can remember.

Remember, visitors... they call them the "Rockies" because if you could land on them they'd be called something like the "Gravellies"
bc

[chuckhig]

Lightplane, on 17 February 2010 - 11:58 AM, said:

Cessna-man - yes Iw as aware of that, but good to remind people. For me the disk space is not an issue - I have a 1tb drive with lots of room on it. And at $100, no problem if I ever need to buy another one.

Chukhig - to install an aircraft it is really easy. Just go to the downloads section of this website (you'll see the link) and when you find an aircraft you like, press "download" (top right of the screen usually). Save it somewhere you can find it, like in downloads or on your desktop.

This will save a file with a zip extension. Double-click this file and then tell it to extract to x-plane, airplane directory. That's it. Start the simulator and your plane will be there.

[chuckhig]

thanks,i did save it to my desktop, as you said and extracted the files. i get message to show extracted files and i see them, do i drag it to xplane or just go from here. thanks for you help[. chickhig i just extracted another aircraft file to the x plane folder and started x plane and the plane is not there. should the x plane disk be in or what do i need to do? sorry for my ignorance, computers,etc, are new to me. any help is appreciated. chuckhig

This post has been edited by chuckhig: 17 February 2010 - 12:25 PM