I always thought that “serious” “study level” simmers were not that interested in the quality of external visuals.
Their happiness comes from programming flight control computers and flying real world SID, airways & STARS in complex 3rd party add on planes.
The advent of MSFS has shown that I was wrong. Even most of THEM place world visuals very high on their list.
In most discussions I see that the majority of people are addressing the world visuals - no surprise there , we are after all visual creatures and realistic visuals increase immersion.
However, comparing XP11 & MSFS visuals is like comparing apples with submarines.
On one side we have a sim with a small team and where all the terrain data is held locally. On the other is this mega company that is MS with the added might of Azure, Black Shark AI & Asobo generating a 1:1 virtual earth streamed from a global sat map database straight to users.
Laminar can never match this, ever. So i feel the comparisons for visuals is a bit unfair. In another universe maybe Laminar partnered with Google to stream down sat scenery but not in this one. I highly doubt Laminar can ever come close to what MSFS is doing. Having said that I look forward to XP12.
I am btw a very happy user of BOTH of them. MSFS is excellent for low level slow back country GA flying while XP11 excels for the tubeliners like Zibo.