Sorry, but after 21 years of flying GA planes the way eye adaptation is shown in the sim is nowhere close to what is happening in a real plane.
MSFS simulates a camera, not the human eye. You can find numerous threads discussing this.
4 Likes
From what Ive seen most of Bing maps isnt as high res as ZL18/19, sure it might be streamed at that but that doesnāt mean its gojng to look any better than ZL 15/16 so Google at ZL18/19 generally looks far better, but hey weāve got what weāve got and like you say beats spending ages downloading orhto and storing it.
The most important thing about the FM is how the aircraft behave not how they got there, but we will probably nevr know the full details that go into each FM.
1 Like
You need to increase your terrain lod to 400 to get zl18-19 textures.
Somehow Asobo linked it to that slider, donāt ask me why i still canāt wrap my head around it as well.
Nice bait. In that first pic, the author has clearly used the lowest possible graphics settings for Xplane. The dude literally turned off shadows and AO. Secondly, you do know that the water in Xplane 12 also reacts to wind ? In that comparison pic, there seems to be no wind in Xplane 12, hence no waves. In the second pic, msfs looks like an oil painting.
Kindly donāt copy paste stuff if you havenāt even tried Xplane 12.
2 Likes
Iāll continue to copy and paste. However, youāre more than welcome to post your own comparisons if you feel this isnāt representing correctly.
Iāve tried it. The thing I donāt get is that the X-Pane 12 image below is running at a lower framerate than the MSFS one above it. Forget settings, how is that even possible? Is it mining coins for Austin or something? 
Anyway, both sims have something to offer, but choosing the scenery graphics hill to die on is probably not the way to go. I like how the ground handling feels heavier in XP-12 for sure.
11 Likes
XP12 seems like the way to go if you just donāt care about world scenery/terrain accuracy at all and want to focus on cockpit simulation only. MSFS just feels like a richer much more varied world and atmosphere. With XP12 there isnāt any mood to a totally different atmosphere, Washington State looks like Rio De Janeiro same bland colors same atmosphere. Africa looks just like Australiaā¦same tan,blue, green and gray colors on the entire XP12 globe.
In MSFS even flying over individual states have a different feel and vibe ie Florida looks totally different than California.
4 Likes
Are we actually getting ZL18/19 quality though from a lot of areas? Some areas might be this high but there seems plenty on Bing that look more closer to ZL16.
1 Like
Not sure if we are looking at the same sim concerning MSFS. āWashed out lookā is far from the truth. That being said we all want XPlane to succeed if nothing more than to have an alternative should new management bean counters at Microsoft switch gears and destroy all the gains Jorg and Asobo have done. Itās happened in the pastā¦
3 Likes
I saw a few videos of XP12, it looked reasonably good but not at the level of MSFS, I also noticed the frame rates didnāt look smooth. The video creator explained it as video compression or āYouTubeā. Some bits did look good like the low visibility weather and lights on the runway.
Has anyone any more detailed views of the A330 systems on XP12? The video I watched kind of skipped over that bit very quickly (it was a pro XP video).
We are fortunate here to have a group of developers working on an excellent A320 which we have for free, same with an A380.
yes we do but obviously not in all areas, the WU ones and USA is pretty much ZL19 if you have enough bandwidth and TLOD is at 400.
but other places have low ZL16 ish textures streamed even tho if you log into Bing from the browser those areas have the ZL19 ones available.
Asobo probably did not add them cuz it has to be fixed by hand for clouds and other anamolies.
We still have more than 8 years support for this title, weāll see some nice improvements down the line 
Msfs trees are generated as octohedral imposters which are a modern take on the 2d billboard trees from the mid 2000s. Basically a bunch of pre rendered views of a high quality 3d tree that display depending on what direction you view it from. Itās an amazing use of modern rendering techniques to create dense realistic looking forests with very low overhead.
There is absolutely no way what Iāve seen from xplane compares, you get sparse patchy vegetation close by and scattered fields of flat imposters in the distance. Who cares if you can see high detail trees on the ground?
Also regarding draw distance, from what I saw xplane has a terrible draw in boundary, you can literally see clouds rendering in. There is nothing to be impressed with here.
3 Likes
Downloaded the X plane 12 demo out of interest. It still has the best replay system although that is a carry over from 11 so nothing new. Also the rain effects on the windows is nice as well. 2 areas that MSFS really need to improve.
However aliasing whilst better than 11 still needs improvement. The nuclear apocalypse sunrises are totally OTT. Configuring or trying to confiure control settings was beyond frustrating. The mix settings was moving back and forth on itās own on the SR22, cessna etc and despite setting the throttle it didnāt want to know.
Performance I can set everything on ultra on MSFS and get for the most part excellent performance. With everything on max on x plane moving the view around felt more sluggish. Itās clear that better optamisation is needed.
Dude, XPlane 12 doesnāt hold a candle to MSFS for the look of the real world, lighting and allā¦ Itās not even close. 
2 Likes
What I donāt get is if youāre heavily invested in FS2020 and have spent a lot of hard earned money on gigabytes of add ons why would you want to start over again with a different platform that may or may not have marginally better flight physics and whatever else it may or may not do marginally better?
I get why some flight simmers also invest in something like DCS, after all its doing something that FS doesnāt do. But what is XP12 going to do thats going to be worth all that extra investment? Iām genuinely curious.
I suppose as a platform XP12 will build and build and in time have lots of amazing features but Iām guessing now thereās a bit of an arms race on Asobo will now fight back and match it pretty much feature for feature.
2 Likes
It depends what the person wants in a flight simulator. I looked at xp12 and it is pretty nice and I assume it doesnāt require connection to a server. But I use PMDG so msfs would be my choice over XP. But MSFS is still missing way too much stuff for me. That will change over the next few years.
hmm,both Vids from Flight Sim Deck looking amazing
@Mobias7 Some people invested in XP long before FS2020 and still have full harddrives.
Furthermore, the FS is great online, but not so nice in offline mode (Travelling, low Datarate etc.). Here, a slight pimped XP looks much, much better.
Why are posts deleted here without any info after 5 seconds? ahh, ok, not a FS Vid, i understand ā¦ Lets wait another hourā¦
Several posts have been made to this topic:
3 Likes
Yes its clever and the shadows cast using that technique are really good, a lot better than the 2d tree shadows in xp which look terrible.
But the 3D trees in xp are a lot closer to the way a tree looks close by which is what the xp 3d trees are used for and i would like to see something similar in msfs.
As for draw distance, I get more trees on the mendip hills in xp viewed from eggd than i do in msfs.
1 Like
Well, that is the thing, isnāt it.
I bought XPlane 12 besically because I liked the water handling better. I wanted to be able to play around with that. I really really really wanted to like XPlane 12 and buy the A330. Iām not a tubeliner pilot, I mainly fly bush trips, etc. So when I do a jetliner flight, part of the job would be the arrival and the sights. Fidelity wise, we have PMDG, and the BAE 146, and Fenix A320. So we have jetliners that has fidelity of flight. So when it came down to looking to see what a JFK or OR Tambo airport were like, they were ok, but not the fidelity of the MSFS versions. And lets not forget the surrounding area. My reward for flying the jetliner just wasnāt going to be as good in XPlane 12. So with the seaplane/bush plane I did buy, I can do water in XPlane. I can do the new rain and the new snow. I can see the weather effects. Basically, I can with just what I have experience what I wanted to see. If MSFS is down, I have a backup to use while it is down. But yeah, I just couldnt figure out a good reason to justify putting money into more planes and scenery. It still wasnt going to meet what I like.
3 Likes