No worries. The world is certainly big enough for two flight sims.
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Have you tried spins recently?
I agree with you on ground handling. That feels much nicer in XP.
I donāt really use Reddit, but it made for interesting reading. I liked the Vancouver comparison.
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That is a very narrow view. Real pilots can judge based on the feel and behavioural feedback of the flight characteristics but the majority of them no nothing about the inner workings of aerodynamics, aeroelasticity and general fluid mechanics principles; unless they also majored in Aeronautical Engineering. Therefore they are unable to explain the reasons behind why the flight model ādoesnāt feelā as they know it from real life experience.
So since the flight model in all the desktop PC products is determined by a very approximate, and not detail enough, method the inconsistencies of what feels real and what doesnāt are many. And that is clearly reflected by real pilotsā feedback in both XP and MSFS forums where their opinion many times, about a specific aircraft they know well (usually Cessna 152,172), differs.
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Generally MSFS blows it out the water, however i do think XP12 does a few things better. Theyāve always been things Iāve wanted to see improved in MSFS but seeing XP12 do it, Asobo whilst they donāt need to, would be smart to improve on them.
- Ground handling seems much better.
- Road traffic, just with XP11 is so much better.
- A variety of tree types & vegetation (mostly in the right places) that MSFS severely lacks.
- Water trails behind the aircraft.
- Honestly think the cockpits look better which might be due to a lighting engine or texture resolution.
- Windshield rain is far from perfect, a little over the top & wipers have no effect but i think its better then MSFS.
Be nice to see these improved in MSFS.
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I canāt disagree in theory, but this is a pretty moot point considering how quickly GPUs become obsolete.
The maximum usable lifetime of a GPU is about 6-7 years and then itās technologically obsolete if you intend on using it with modern titles with reasonably high graphics settings. And thatās assuming you buy the high end model near launch. If youāre buying entry level stuff or towads the end of the product cycle, you get about 3-5 years before your GPU is too slow to run anything modern at anything but lowest settings.
As long as your GPU is operating in its regular parameters and isnāt undercooled or overclocked to the limit, it will easily last a decade or more - far longer than its practical lifetime. That makes the whole ārun it coolā argument a bit moot.
Youāre not wrong in your assertion that cooler temperatures make electronics last longer. Itās just not really applicable in the case of hardware with such a short technological life cycle.
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Exactly that!!
Modern semiconductor processes, like the 5nm TSMC one (or anyone else really), are quite resilient when it comes to normal operating temperatures. And normal operating temps are all temps you can achieve without modifing the GPU BIOS. The GPUs do have dynamic clock scaling and prevent the GPU from reaching temps above the junction temp for longer periods of time.
So āoverheatingā will not decrase the GPU lifetime to anything shorter then the time it needs to become obsolete.
The thing with the to high temps is back from the time where CPUs or other ASICs didnāt had the clk scaling, and therefore could overheat and will eventually be destroyed.
Nowadays the only negative thing you will encounter with a GPU runing at its temp max is unstability - but the GPU will not be damaged ā¦ remove the thermal load and you are good again.
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I agree that the FS 2020 flight model will get to where it needs to be. The basics are mostly there, itās just that some of the parameters need refinement (like the hyper-sensitive yaw after touchdown). The one oddity that does drive me a little crazy is the weird ābouncingā in pitch that occurs if you change pitch too quickly. FSX, upon which FS 2020 is based, had the same problem. I am a real-world pilot in both sailplanes and powered aircraft, and no aircraft Iāve ever flown has behaved this way. No real aircraft causes its nose to bounce up and down several times just because the pilot makes a pitch change. Some aircraft are more sensitive in pitch than others, but they react to control inputs smoothly and in a linear fashion without the simās weird bouncing. I canāt image most real aircraft even being able to pitch up and down as fast as the sim does just because aerodynamic forces and inertia would damp that out. The sim acts like thereās no inertia at all.
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Iām really curious, what exactly are the aspects of ground handling in MSFS that everyone wants to see improved?
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A slight crosswind on takeoff/landing roll tends to be greatly exaggerated, to the point where it feels like youāre rolling on a runway made of ice. Jetliners, particularly the bigger ones, should track roughly straight with minimal rudder input until high speeds. With the current ground model, you start feeling the effects of even the slightest wind at around 20-30 knots.
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Iād like to see my glider towed back to itās hangar/parking spot
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I still believe that unlike P3D, XP still holds a fair amount of āloyal usersā. These people are not going to switch to MSFS, no matter how much better it gets in every way. Some of these people legitimate donāt like aspects of MSFS or have problems with them, while others have basically been brainwashed by Austin and everything he says will believe it.
In the worst case scenario, X-Plane could still have a future as a professional tool, being licensed to flying schools for pilot training. I even venture to say that a significant part of income for Laminar today comes precisely from this licensing.
Prepar3D is pretty much dead, and for an obvious reason. There is almost no significant aspect in which P3D stands out from its main competitors, not even X-Plane. Today the only thing that holds P3D users is the aircraft addons. However, almost all the developers of these aircraft have already brought or will bring them to MSFS. And along with them, will come its users.
MSFS today has no real competition and will not for many years to come. The only form of real competition that MSFS could have in the future is with an all-new flight simulator, made from scratch, with photogrammetry and live scenery and made by a company that has deep pockets to invest in it. Flight simulator has never been something that major developers are interested in. Long and expensive development and limited sales potential. I find it almost impossible for a new flight simulator of this level to emerge, at least not in this decade.
It doesnāt have to be a competition. Thereās room for both.
Xplane has always been about the fidelity and the āfeelā of the aircraft first, graphics second.
It looks good in itās current iteration (I had a go of the demo) and will probably get it in a few months as I like the complexity of the ToLiss Airbuses, and thereās a fantastic Dash 8 that will be available in due course.
Itās a good thing for flight simming, if both up their games in response to the other. It will benefit us as consumers.
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Iām convinced Austin and crew just donāt care for water textures nor masks at all! 
FSX has better water than XP11 & XP12ā¦
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Their focus has always been whatās on your side of the windshield, not whatās outside.
Fortunately with the technology at our disposal now, it doesnāt have to be an either/or thing any more. After reminding myself of how XP works over the last few days, I can see some of the benefits of it. But for my type of flying its not enough to make me switch back.
If I were currently doing a PPL, I think I would use XP12 more perhaps, as I would care less to what the scenery outside looks like as long as it was representative of the region I was doing my training at, and the airport if was flying out of, and it would more than suffice.
Asobo have some key areas to improve upon, and once those are nailed down, I think XP may be done for in the long term. A lot of developers have started to move over, and for those that remain you have to wonder whether them developing products for XP12 is a viable prospect, if a lot of XP11 users refuse to pay full price to upgrade.
A small subset of an already small user base doesnāt sound very profitable to me.
I can remember the days when XP had no addon developers, save for those who put content on the org store or freeware. You know, back in the day when MSFS was king and most of the addon developers that did exist only created content for MSFS.
It seems many here either werenāt around back then or conveniently forget that for the majority of XPās life, it sat in the shadows of MSFS until MSFS went away.
XP isnāt going anywhere. Thereās room for both simulators.
If eye candy is your thing, stick with MSFS. Thereās nothing wrong with that.
If there are only features you can find on XP12 and that makes you happy, by all means, thereās nothing wrong with that either.
Like both? Awesome, install and make time for both.
There isnāt a law that requires us a choose, nor is there some requirement that we must all choose sides and bash the other.
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All - I did test flight in XP12 last evening, you can search forum to see my results. The 737-800 worked fine, and my home-grown checklist from cold and dark worked exactly as it should in that plane. XP puts some systems on by default when battery is enabled, and some other stuff when avionics are enabled. However, my implementation of my simbrief flight plan and inputting into the FMS did not go as well as I had hoped. I got more to learn, and hopefully it will work out better.
Both of these are about flying, hmmm, as one person said, we are on the inside of the plane, and what on the inside is what we should be learning about, not what is on the outside except the WX and other planes.
MSFS Has a great little plane the Icon something or other, once in great while I take it and fly over our house, the development below us, and just around to see what is happening with the pictures/database. From the get-go, our house has never looked like it really does in RL. We are moving, I will take off from Lake Burton, and fly over our new home and see if itās a better representation than our other one near Lake Nottely. YES, scenery in MSFS is Steller, but Iām on the inside flying plane. However, I do use chase plane view, to see the house, harder to control plane that way.
MSFS has one feature which I really, really like. In settings you can get gauge readouts to show when you are outside plane, altitude, heading/course, airspeed, engine power, angle of attack, that stuff. For me, when analyzing my trim, this is a great option and I truly like this feature.
MSFS has great things, XP has great things and I like parts and pieces of each. XP has feature, I can choose airport, and runway, and then choose a 10 mile out approach to practice landing or check my navigation skills, and that is a great feature too. MSFS has nothing like that or if it does its buried.
XP has key combo, Alt + T, which speeds up sim, MSFS also has similar thing, but since release, it has NEVER worked for me, and I have reinstalled this sim at least 4 times. I have not tried it with the laptop keyboard, just the Claymore II keyboard on my USB-c connection, hmmm, maybe that is why.
I can talk here as developper, once MSFS was reveiled 60% of 3rd party sales dropped after that, not even released, that happens to everyone out there. Now with addons get released, no one will catch MSFS and will only get better on many parts.
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Thatās a really useful feature, and one that would be nice to have natively. I did find a kind of approximation of this in MSFS. It involved spawning in the air, setting the cruise altitude to spawn at that height, then IIRC specifying the destination airport as well as a waypoint in between, which I think is what sets your orientation. It kind of works. 
I have both. XP 12 and MS FS.
Used to be i had to pick between fidelity of feel and the outside scenery. Not anymoreā¦. itās good enough for the main job, which is flying.
I buy PMDG /Carenado and other products for both platforms and enjoy what they are able to do with what they have.