How will msfs compete with xp12?

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And to your point, it was a bit tragic that led by some strongly opinionated people, the core XPlane’s player base collectively wrote off MSFS as merely a game with fancy visuals, not acknowledging any of its other merits. Over the time, some people changed and moved over but whoever stayed became an even stronger believer right now.

To be honest, with the release of XP12, I was a bit intrigued by their offering because I have an Apple M1 laptop and would like to test it out. However, I was just completely turned off by the core community which does not regard MSFS at all.

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Exactly… And I hear many mentioning that Ortho is missing hence it is inferior… But as you said, it is the engine itself, that is from a previous era…

MSFS Engine is way more advanced and it is not just the Ortho… yes Ortho is a boost in realism but let’s take the trees for example… In XP, weirdly, they decided to go for a scientific literal approach and got 3D trees that look very 3D from the ground but do not render at all the dense and natural effect of a forest especially from the air… How many branches and leaves are needed to do that :slight_smile:

Not only the tree tech / strategy is more efficient and smarter in MSFS but some might not know that the MSFS trees adapt to the hues and tones of the underneath textures as far as I noticed… Hence they look natural and blend in… It is one example of the engine strength…

In XP12, the 3D trees look detached from the ground and clearly like artificial plants placed over flat ground…

MSFS has a top notch highly immersive world engine that no flight sim can match in the near future… It opened finally a flight sim experience to VFR, Bush flying, helicopter and all the low and slow immersive experiences… Like a sim should be in 2022 :slight_smile:

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LR Matra has been we are better than MS. Turn out the lights the party is over. MSFS

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On xplane.org forum it is practically impossible to have a civil discussion about MSFS. I can even respect a different opinion, but most users there, even the mods have severely biased opinions without any technical basis and without rational analysis of aspects of each simulator. Most of the time, they prefer to laugh or bash MSFS rather than discuss technicalities.

They’re all stuck in a mindset, that MSFS is an arcade game, with arcade physics, made to please casual XBOX gamers. They won’t get out of that mindset anytime soon, maybe never, no matter how much MSFS improves over time. It’s impossible to have a civil discussion with people like that. If several comments said here in this thread were said there, surely the reactions of laughter would be predominant.

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To be honest I have thought the same thing for quite some time. I don’t think it matters how much Seb explains new physics they are adding, or how many new developers bring planes over and say things are good or whatever happens really. There are going to be people that keep saying “MSFS is a game, X-Plane is a simulator” forever. Tribalism in hobbies is really quite funny to me, we see it in fishing, just try ask which is better between Daiwa, Shimano, Penn etc and the handbags will start swinging in just a few posts. PC building with AMD/Nvidia/Intel, it seems to happen in every hobby.

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So true. You should see the photography forums. Canon v. Nikon v. Sony. Pitched battles to the death. It’s such a waste of energy. Do what makes you happy.

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Not to mention performance out of the MSFS graphics engine, Asobo really have turned up to the show on this. XP seems to be half the fps at the moment when adding in orbx ortho scenery.

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I find myself in agreement with most of the posts above (since my own post 422) but won’t comment further because I don’t want to go down a negative path of ‘sim or forum bashing’ or to go too far off thread.

However, having tried the XP12 demo I will say that after a period of reflection I am left feeling a bit underwhelmed even though I recognise that it is very much in beta. I wish that I could feel otherwise. I ws hoping for more.

With the greatest of respect I think that a better title for this thread would be ‘How will xp12 compete with msfs’.

I think that msfs is now on a roll and with a few improvements to the flight model and ground handling I wonder why a lot of simmers would look elsewhere.

Just my thoughts FWIW.

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I’ve now looked at the whole thing again with Ortho and Co. pumped up. I didn’t expect miracles from the visual point of view, especially since the new autogen has hardly been integrated so far.But it is ok.

So yes, FS2020 as expected the winner.

But, everyone compares an online with a vanilla offline program.
So looking at the whole thing again, from the point of view of players with little or no online opportunity.

Switch the FS to offline mode and compare now! Also Vanilla …and… Oups
So, even in terms of appearance, both programs have their right to exist.

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I don’t think the trees in MSFS are as good as you seem to think they are. They don’t move particularly naturally in wind, there is no light visible through branches either unless you are very close to them. They are solid blocks of foliage, not particularly convincing. There is a lot of room for improvement in MS trees, both in terms of how they look and how they move, and I think XP has made a better job of animating trees than Asobo have so far.

Not just trees either. I was struck by the movement of blades on turbines in XP, it’s so smooth, in MSFS, the blades rotate is a slightly jerky manner by comparison.

Many have probably not seen turbines, they don’t have the full XP package, just the very limited demo. Similarly, they don’t see the difference between orthos quality across the sims. I have both sims, have invested in both sims and can see clearly where the strengths lie in each one. It’s not all roses in either sim to be honest, each has something the other lacks and visa versa.

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I bought XP12. I found it a little “bland” in comparison to MSFS but I’m still glad I bought it. I’ll revisit it from time to time and watch how it progresses. Competition is good for the progression of both simulators.

I appreciate that in comparison to most other computer games, simulators are expensive and one may be concerned about which one you should buy, but to my mind in comparison to the amount of money you probably dropped on your hardware, it’s practically nothing. Buy both, Try both!

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I eventually bought it since the A340 is working and the FFA320.

To me XP12 offers something different to that of MSFS. A year ago I would not say anything good about MSFS. Now however it is main sim and most probably will be.

However I am pleased with XP12, I can live with the autogen, I am done with Orthos etc and I won’t be spending much if any money on it. I might get the 767-400 with the back ported 777 avionics.

I did a few flights in the a320 and the Zibo 737 and you know where the PMDG and Fenix deliver in MSFS they also fail in other areas just as their counterparts in XP-12 do.

XP12 offers a different neich experience. But all in all MSFS will be king. Well done Asobo and well done XPlane it is a great time to be a flight simmer.

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I haven’t bought XP12 and didn’t really want to, but there’s just a few things that annoy me about MFS, the main ones being control input and the strange landing feeling. These two things are great in XP and if MFS did something about it I probably wouldn’t bother with XP but since it’s been out two years and nothings changed here, I feel like I’m going to have to buy XP12 just for the more enjoyable flying and use MFS for exploring.

As for other things MFS could do, well they are working on the helicopters but they need to sort out the water physics for seaplanes as this is something XP has worked hard on ( with Bridger Aerospace ).

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The best statement posted yet!

I agree with CBCDES. There are subtle nuances in XP12 that look amazing. The environmental effects, and precipitation on the wings, are a thing to behold as well. The metal surfaces on the airframe - particularly the A330, although may be a tad lower res, look more realistic, as do the rain effects.

I too prefer MSFS at this point, however there are many good arguments to be made for XP12. A sim which is still pretty much Alpha early release. I had all but abandoned XP11 with the advent of MSFS. But it was my goto sim FSX and P3D looked so outdated to me, when XP 11 was released.

But when MSFS 2020 came along with Proper orthos, photogrammetry, I was hooked.

I did buy XP12, as I am a sim fan overall, and I want to see how it will evolve, as I have been doing since XP8. Also you just cant’s say no to that Zibo 737. Had it not been for ZIBO, we may have not had the FBW A32NX, as the FBW team by their own admission, were inspired by the Zibo, and followed his example.

There are some glaring issues with XP12 however, the most obvious for me- ground textures, not-so great anti aliasing with distant objects that cause shimmering, and not crazy about the new cloud textures. But time will tell. I’m running all graphics at full, with a 3090ti FTW3 and an i9 12900KS.

Right now MSFS is performing better than it ever has-at least for me, and we all know that overall it is the better sim for the time being. Flight models on both have been argued to death, however, this alone does not make a sim great, as most of us only get flight model feedback from our eyes alone. MSFS has come a long way in that regard since FSX, which makes the flight model argument moot on either side.

As a flight simmer fan, I’m glad I can choose either/or at any given time, and flight simulation has never been this good. Ten years ago we could only dream of having streaming terrain of any kind of high res map true to earth itself, as an example. Cheers!

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What? MSFS had a head start? Asobo got into the sim arena recently compared to how long Laminar have been in flight sims.

I still don’t get why people try defend Xplane 12. It’s becoming funny now. It’s 2022 it’s a very exciting time to take advantage of modern graphics, hardware and technology… something Asobo has done.

MSFS is openly working on the flight model and to be quite fair the flight model is quite good, but yes extra love is welcome. After they ace that, what need is there for Xplane? The only thing MSFS is lacking big time is the night flying environment. It’s unrealistic visually.

X plane 12 doesn’t look good and $60 ain’t a good look. Has to be said.

Anyone come at me!! I’m ready to take anyone on with this whole MSFS Vs Xplane thing. The puddles look like garbage too in Xplane. Can’t believe they used that soo much in marketing LOL puddles :joy:

The whole X plane has better dynamics is garbage too, FAA etc etc. Go look what requires and FAA approval for the sticker lol.

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I think the FAA approval is irrelevant, the fact that several companies are using/going to be using XP for training tells you the FM is pretty good. I’m not saying it’s FM is any better than MFS though ( except helicopters and water at the moment ) and I think MS/Asobo just don’t have any interest in that market.

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Asobo have everything they can use, they have superior stuff on their others software, there is a reason why are using these trees, they could probably using them, but with 50% less coverage and you will see grass patch gap between trees, 2d trees from above, the 3d trees only are rendered and pop up in short range of your the aircraft like xplane12, and from above are 2d triangle sparse trees, you gain details on close to ground but loose others aspect on the rest, there is con and pro.

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I’ve been watching a few Youtubers previewing XPlane 12. They keep making comments the look of MSFS is oversaturated. As a real world pilot this needs to be discussed officially (the point of this thread). To me MSFS is ‘NOT’ Oversaturated and looks amazing just the way it is. I for one don’t want the look of MSFS tampered with to look like XPlane 12. With all the work over the last two years to refine what we see in MSFS, Asobo please don’t monkey with the looks of MSFS to move more towards XPlane. If we need a poll let’s do it but I can see this becoming an issue with the vocal minority which could ruin the sim for all of us. This happened in the past with tree size and comments by a few. It took a couple of Sim Updates to resolve the issue. An example of what I love is looking down in the cockpit and back up simulating your eyes adjusting to the brightness outside is perfect. That’s what I experience in the real plane. Too many people aren’t pilots and the ‘GAME’ tag distorts what should be expected of the experience. Keep the sim looking amazing as is. Asobo you’re moving and have moved in the right direction, stay the course.

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i dont think you have to worry, the people that claim its over saturated are just jealous

they take screenshots with Max special effects to make it Look over saturated and then compare it to the over bland scenery in xp saying xp is ‘better’? think about that for a second …

‘over saturation’ is something you can Easily fix with graphics and shader settings, filtering out something that IS there is EASY
what we Cant do is improve bland graphics, we cant Easily add something that IS NOT there to start with
sure it Can be done with 3rd party addons and mods but thats ‘apples and oranges’

i seriously doubt ms/Asobo intends to move backwards in this aspect

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To be fair I have the Nvidia software reduce saturation by 10%. That makes grass look more realistic to me.