Haha… naturally, besides the emergency exit (extra leg room), looking out at both engine inlet and wing flaps…indeed a strategic position!
1 Like
forget for a moment study level commercial airliners, the flight model being used is arcane and sub par across the board. flight modeling is not important to systems managers who sit for hours in front of a sim watching the autopilot, but for real pilots who actually use the stick and rudder it is a far different experience. X-plane has the definite advantage (in that area) and it has little to do with third party aircraft.
2 Likes
And the ability to set a control profile per plane.
Did you see X Plane have a whole pile of upgrades coming ? Hopefully this will push MSFS to get their upgrade to DX 12 underway!
1 Like
…and it still looks nowhere near as good as MSFS does.
1 Like
Have to agree… looks decent, but MSFS is in a league of its own visually.
1 Like
Couple of things here:
- Comparing MSFS with XP is like comparing a newly launched electronic vehicle - ev- (pre-tesla times) with a say, petrol variant BMW of that time
- While ev is has lots of room for improvement, it is moving in the right direction and will mature to the tesla level in a short time
- Petrol variant though may have been quiet stable and awesome, it is not the same generation as the ev which puts it at a disadvantage on multiple counts like
- Room to grow leveraging contemporary technologies like AI
- Coming from close to 2 decades in s/w development I can confidently say cloud is the future, it takes a lot of load off the PC which simply does not have enough resources for storage and computation that AI requires.
- Getting xp to harness cloud will amount to rewriting it - how easy is that & how much invest does it require? They certainly wont have the deep pockets to finance it the way MS did
- MS has the added advantage of leveraging in house stuff like bing, cloud platform, Azure etc on which considerable invest has already been done and are pretty mature
Bototmline - we are just about seeing a glimpse of what is possible on MSFS and with published roadmap of world updates giving, free content and sim updates, improving the stability, I dont see any challenger anywhere close to them a year or so from now. I am not even talking about the 3rd party developers that will further build on strengths - PMDG is on record saying this platform givens them capability that no other does.
4 Likes
yes, I would agree, in theory, except that Asobo marketed this in a high handed way and obviously put most of their energy into scenery, however, a decent flight model, weather and things like autopilot should work out of the box, it’s disappointing in those more practical sim aspects, and I’ll be dead before it matures at the rate they are going, far too many bugs and issues and obviously a premature release. X Plane can’t compare in overall feel and look, but with ortho tiles it can come close.
1 Like
I believe, they have a policy of 3rd party developers doing heavy lifting for flight model and they focus on the platform itself - It is a conscious decision. Native flight models across sims are pretty basic to say the least and it is the 3p devs that made the real, difference. THis is a brand new platform that pushes the limits of technology and shared infrastructure which will take time to stabelise and mature. My exp states that time isnt far off, hopefully I am not wrong.
Back in the day even our comparatively puny 1st releases used to take time to stabelize that ranged from a few weeks ot a couple of months.
1 Like
I switched over from X-Plane 11. (I also own FSX and DCS, but didn’t really care for them) I put a ton of money into X-Plane 11, some of which was for aircraft, but a lot was to make the sim usable. All the improvements I relied on 3rd party developers for in X-Plane came stock in MSFS. (Minus ATC…I still use Pilot2ATC)
In X-Plane, my flights were all about the destination. In MSFS, I find the journey to be the enjoyable part.
I recently deleted X-Plane from my PC because I’ve established that I’m staying with MSFS at this point. That said, I’d love to see Laminar Research team up with Google or something and make a huge comeback. Competition is good for the consumer.
I’ve never really understood the “my sim is better than your sim” attitude. It’s childish. X-Plane 11 has a free 30 min demo, and MSFS can be tried for a month at $1 if you sign up for GamePass. Try them both and make your decision on the base sims, without any add-ons. They’re both a $60 base price.
4 Likes
Me neither!
From the earliest of FlightSim days it’s more about: “I’m a proper pilot, and your sim is just a game…” attitude.
Childish indeed.
2 Likes
These comparisons need to stop.
EV to Petrol automotive technology comparisons now as compared to MSFS and XP11?
No…
This is getting out of hand😒
2 Likes
I use X-Plane 11 as my primary sim for airliner flying (B737-800) and MSFS for low and slow bush flying.
To me these two are not rivals on my computer. In fact they compliment each other and I happily jump between them.
I will be Captain Obvious is Obvious but lets get one thing clear - XP11 can never ever touch MSFS when it comes to visuals. I still like the XP11 visuals but MSFS just steamrolls it. It is an unfair comparision I know because they use such different technologies.
On one side we have XP11 with a small team and with all its world data right on the drive , on the other a massive multinational behemoth company with the $$ might to recruit Asobo & Black Shark and its own Azure+Bing Maps to give us this stunning virtual Earth, No contest there.
I cannot comment on the whole flight model thing because (I speak for myself here) I honestly cannot tell the difference between the flight characteristics of the C172 in XP11 and the same plane in MSFS. I have read that many people CAN tell, Im just not one of them.
The GA planes in MSFS are excellent - Im really enjoying them. The airliners not so much, they feel too “light” and look like pristine plastic toy models. In this respect I much prefer the Zibo but for GA MSFS any day, love how they look.
One area where X-Plane 11 eXcels (did you see what I did there) is file management. The ENTIRE sim is contained in just ONE folder and that ONE folder is ALL you deal with. Plugins, scenery, airplanes, scripts…all in that one neat folder. In essence its a giant portable installation you can just cut-paste into any drive which I have done several times. Nothing written to the reg to complicate such things.
In contrast in true Microsoft style the MSFS installation is messy with stuff buried in Appdata and whatnot. I was hoping MS would take a leaf out of Laminars book and make a neat single folder install an option.
We all enjoy a very small niche genre in a gaming world dominated by first person shooters, RPGs etc.
ANY flight game/sim is very welcome to our world and competition is always good and healthy. Austin has kept X-Plane going since 1995. Yes Laminar will ALWAYS be in the shadow of the mighty MS but it will keep going. On the other side we have MS which will only make MSFS better and better as the years go by and we see updated Bing maps more optimization etc.
We should all enjoy flying our pretend pixel planes no matter the platform. Ok I gotta do a hop in the Zibo and then take the MSFS Carbon Cub for some Alaskan bush flying and then maybe jump in a Sukhoi SU25 in DCS 
3 Likes
Never understood that either. Its like music. I never get people who hear what you are playing in your car or home and are “How can you listen to this ___t ?”
What does it matter to them?? Its what YOU like in YOUR life. The arts are so subjective, all our brains are wired differently.
Coming back to your topic - whats the point in people saying that lol. Its likey they feel if they say “My sim better than your sim” that the other person will immediately run home and uninstall their sim wahahaa.
Very well said, agree strongly!!
I always groan when on some forums I see the odd jaded grumpy user “correct” an excited newbie. I actually saw this on another forum:
“BTW this is a SIMULATOR not a game. A game is COD or Fortnite. Please correct this”
The newbie actually apologized. I still regret not defending him and telling Mr. Grumpy to rein it in. Its this kind of snotty elitist “IMMA STUDY LEVELZ SIMMER” attitude that will drive away some newbies.
I agree with your overall point that people can enjoy what they want, but you can most definitely judge these sims by objective standards over which one does certain things better. Flight models, accuracy of sounds, graphics etc. But yeah whether you prefer one over the other is subjective.
For sure, that is undeniable. I did that very thing myself in my post.
I used to enjoy GA in XP11 but once I got MSFS oh it was a no brainer - I removed every GA plane from the XP11 Aircraft folder leaving just the airliners.
I find the XP11 scenery intolerable now from a C172 - but from a B737-800 it doesn’t affect me. Most of the flight is high up and from high alt I dont really see a massive difference. The Zibo is so good , its sounds and sys simulation so good that it totally envelopes you. Same way I feel about the Cub in MSFS.
There won’t be a white flag, there will be a lack of buyers.
XPlane lover here, but…
That popular opinion that “MSFS” is just for visuals. Like “visuals are not important, I want good physics (ah that word…)”.
Meanwhile big bucks are spent on XPlane scenery. That scenery pilots don’t really care about.
I have the feeling that too many virtual pilots say different from what their subconscious actually think. Other too many just repeat what a pilot said, as if it was any relevant for them.
This is just an opinion. It should matter to you as much as you should care what others think of your simming. That is, next to nothing.
Please allow me to add my input to this post. Currently the scenery in MSFS and X-Plane 11 are over exposed resulting in a washed out look during day time. However, I have noticed that Laminar Research is working on an all-new lighting model that looks very promising (Thresholdx website) I believe MSFS will also benefit from similar improved lighting technology.