I daresay XP12 will sell well due to the huge extra interest in simming that MSFS has brought but I doubt AM will be claiming the better flight model forever and there’s always likely to come a point where big fish eats little fish
Not. Because they don´t make study-level aircraft but the scenery and landscape. We need more development teams like Fenix and PMDG to bring on all the great stuff!! 
Visual-quality wise we already have won. I don´t think the graphics quality can get much better.
I agree. Sadley it’s like a 200lb Tuna eating a anchovy or sardine.
X-Plane has all the airliners.
Their new A330 is of special interest by me. Let´s see how the X-Plane A330 will compete with the allmighty Fenix Airbus 
common sense says that NOTHING out there will be able to beat the perfection and system-depth and study-level of the Fenix Airbus.
Mod hidden off-topic content
(Oh and there is also an A300 Beluga cargo plane, and a really nice 757/767 available for X. Really looking forward to fly that iniBuilds A300 Beluga.)
Uuuuh nice!!!
https://store.inibuilds.com/products/beluga
- MS Flight Sim 1. 0 released: 1982
- X-Plane 1.0 released: 1995
Ever since then both have co-existed. Neither is going anywhere (despite the demise of XP being predicted many times).
As far as I’m concerned - MSFS and XP12 (just like FSX & XP11) compliment each other well. I have them both and enjoy them both in equal measure. Some Zibo hops in XP followed by some A320neo fun in MSFS! Lets go!
When it comes to gaming the virtual flying sector (thats us!) is tiny in number compared to the juggernauts that are Fortnite, COD Warzone, PUBG, Battfield and numerous other combat games.
So whether you enjoy the virtual skies in FS9, FSX, MSFS, P3D, DCS, XPlane11/12, AeroFly - lets all be happy. Competion is good for us. Every one of those titles have their issues but at the same time all of them can learn from each other. Examples:
- Asobo will do well to look at XPlanes excellent replay & camera hotkey system (you can have far more than 10)
- Laminar in turn can look at Asobo’s implementation of the Community Folder - a one stop shop for ALL mods. Instead of going to multiple folders (Resources, Plugins etc). This one feature is a master stroke by MiSobo and makes applying mods so easy.
Far from seeing them as rivals I view them as friends on my hard disk, each with their own strengths and their own unique feel.
Actually I think it should be:
XP12: Hows it going, Im going to be released not too long from now!
MSFS: Going ok, I got an anniversary update coming this winter along with some world updates
XP12: nice, I cant match your scenery
MSFS: hey you have a cool replay system and your helicopter flight is on point! Your scenery doesnt look that bad.
XP12: lets fly
MSFS: yes,lets!
Thats just it. Users of XPlane (me included) do not buy that sim “for the graphics”. No one will dispute that nice visuals are always welcome but its not a deal breaker for me and XP. Its graphics have a charm all of their own and when I DO want photo-real I’ll jump into MSFS
Trust me, I am well aware. I own both and I’ve been simming for 15 years. I was just answering the hypothetical question posed by the OP.
i have both xplane and fs2020 the two can coexist. its nice to switch back and forth. each has their strengths. In 10 years time I hope the 3 of us are still around
All - I have XP-11 and MSFS. I prefer to fly in XP because 95% of the planes work. I do like the PMDG 737 and F–14 in MSFS. I don’t care on graphics or photogrammetry, why, it is a huge, bandwidth hog, XP more than likely will get more use because even mostly low-end machines can fly in it, since it’s not tied to internet, the files are local to the machine, meaning, huge amounts of processing power won’t be needed to handle all the back and forth. I do hope the ATC has been fixed, as it’s real hokey in XP, but MSFS one is also not great either. XP comes with a manual, MSFS aint got no documentation. I hope both survive, here is another thing, any planes you now own, in XP-11 will port over to 12, how do I know, Austin Meyers told me directly in an e-mail when I asked the support people that question, it’s easy, you copy the directory into the airplanes folder, done. It took two years for PMDG to get their plane released into MSFS, I would wager, both Quality Wings and PMDG have planes for XP12 within 6 months or less. I also suspect the public beta will be for couple months, and the game will release on December 15, 2022, and guess what else, DVD’s will be available instead of the week to download MSFS. I rest my case. I will however still fly in both, but XP will be primary I think, it’s coming with an F-14D model as well.
I used to fly X-Plane a lot but seeing I’m a VFR pilot too so I’m not going anywhere.
I always laugh at many of the X-plane is more realistic crowd. Especially when the often compared payware X-Plane aircraft with stock Asobo aircraft. It took third parties to make aircraft, weather, graphics quality decent in X-Plane just like it does in MSFS. And right now I get may better and more fluid FPS in MSFS then the current X-Plane, even with Vulcan.
I might still pick it up but with Fenix, PMDG and the 414, I’m not feeling much of a need. Fortunately Asobo have made good strides with weather recently because that is my biggest gripe besides outright bugs. I had a lot of moderate turbulence in MSFS yesterday though none was forecast in the Metar or other real aviation weather forecasting sites so it seemed a bit over the top. Especially when I was over water for 60% of my flight. But at least it was there and didn’t feel too bad in quality. It is hard to translate real life in a static sim so it is a very subjective opinion.
That reminds me, I needed to log that feedback…
Looking forward to checking out X-Plane 2012 when it’s released.
Always good to have some choice.
For whoever started flight simming through MSFS in the last couple of years, they probably had much less (vested) interest in other sims which require significant upfront cost to being on par with what MSFS is able to offer. And this new blood is likely already the predominant majority of the user base now and for ever 10 new joiners to the flight simming, I guess 9 would start with MSFS
Now think about this, if you only have MSFS and $60 laying around, would you buy XP12? Why not spend on addons like PMDG 738 or Fenix in MSFS instead?
I cannot think of a reason why a new comer would find better value of XP12 than MSFS other than some niche cases and therefore the market for XP12 is mainly for people who have already invested in XP11 which is a dwindling share of the overall market
It’s nothing wrong to keep you past investment as relevant as possible but I just don’t see it has much appeal to the new generation of simmers.
You have to search with the magnifying glass, not only type in a title and see if any suggestions comes up.
I really don’t get where people come up with this theory that MSFS has to compete with Xplane. In reality, it’s Xplane who has to compete with MSFS. And based on what I’ve seen so far from XP12, it’s basically XP11 V2.0. Is so embarrassing that Laminar has to hide almost every background of scenery during their trailer videos. For months they just been showcasing water reflections and snow as if that is their main marketing strategy.
Then you have folks that say XP flight physics is more realistic when in reality a vanilla XP feels like every plane is on rails. It’s only 3rd party addons like active sky etc. that make it more realistic. I have PPL and flying a Cessna 172 in MSFS feels more realistic than XP. We are just now getting major 3rd party planes that are blowing out of the water anything that XP has. Just imagine how MSFS will be in 2-3 years from now.
And please, don’t bring up that “XP FAA Certified” junk. If you read that requirements to have an FAA certification on the sim it asks for steady fps and some hardware stuff. Something I’m sure wasn’t too hard for Laminar to get and then use that as a marketing strategy to make folks believe their stuff is the real thing. Went through flight training for one year to get my PPL and not once did I ever see any flight simulator being anything from Xplane. All the instructors I went through didn’t even know what Xplane was. Just cuz Xplane is FAA certified doesn’t mean it’s what every flight school uses it. In fact, I bet almost no school uses.
The only thing that would have made Xplane closely compete with MSFS if they some how struck a deal with Google to stream scenery and even then, it was a long shot. Nothing comes close to what MSFS has achieved. Can’t wait to see MSFS when it’s fully matured!
To be honest I never liked the graphics quality of X-Plane, it always looked like it got stuck in 2003 forever with pure black shadows inside the cockpit making it necessary to switch on all floodlights just to see something inside the cockpit during broad daylight.
The shader and shadow quality and these extreme jagged shadows that looks like a black saw is jittering and glimmering over the airplanes and airplane parts were the main aspects that turned me away from X-Plane.
But from the trailers one can tell that these shadow problem is probably be fixed in the newest version, and weather and clouds look way better now.
And of course there is this Airbus A330 and so many other airliners yessssss that A330 alone literally forces me to buy the new X-Plane. 
But I hope that a demo is available my computer had some significant CPU downgrades and still no graphics card since last christmas, so I need to check if it will run.
(Because imagine buying X-Plane 12 for I don´t know what it will cost 89€ or so, and maybe getting back to desktop with an error message cuz my graphics chip is not supported, oh how unfortunate it could take probably forever until I find a proper graphics card. Therefore a demo version just like XP11 would be great.)
Ahhhhh there is no chance you will ever see PMDG make a plane for Xplane. Bank on it!!
For me, there is just a limit where realism and immersion stops to matter. There has to be a good balance between both aspects.
When MSFS 2020 was first released, I have to say that I’m quite disappointed with what was promised and what we get. But impressed with the visual quality nevertheless, and Asobo never stops improving. And 2 years later, here I am back at it, with FBW, Fenix, and PMDG in my harddrive.
If you were born back in the day, there is this game called:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/airline-simulator-2
It is “very realistic”, more realistic than FS98, or even FS2004. Basically there is no way ESP platform can compete with its ground-up made for realism engine.
It is pretty pathetic in graphical and effects terms, but some people just couldn’t care any less.
Let’s just say this about realism junkie: ever since FS95, I only started to become hardcore serious about realism around 2008. But then again, I grew up and learned through my hobby friends at IndoFlyer.net community, about what can really be achieved with desktop Flight Simulator. We have a lot of friends who joined the community and played the game since junior high school, are now real world airline pilots, including my cousin.
From their stories, MSFS / XP or even AS2 can only do so much to teach them about flying - you can’t replicate real life flight even in XP. Seriously. There are winds blowing, gusting, and updrafing in real world, in XP, it is just plain straigth wind tunnel environment. No mountain or terrain changes will affect the weather. You might as well learn to anticipate such weather phenomenon using MSFS’ “arcadey” planes, which will teach you useful lesson all the same. You know, XP can claim that they can replicate FCOM or airplane handbook performance table more closely or give you the closest handling characteristics of the real thing. But these are all moot point, when considering how they interact with the real environment - there is no realistic world in XP, only realistic planes. And that’s where MSFS come in, and why XP12 primarily addresses this deficiency. I hope they do well on that department.
But what do our former desktop pilot friends do better than their non-simmer cadets, is in terms of familiarity. PMDG, Leonardo, FSLabs, ToLiss, FlightFactor, iFly, or Level-D really prepared them at transitioning to jets. It is much quicker for them to locate and work with the instruments, learning the procedures, and this kind of process. During simulator sessions, they shared a story where multi-engine PPL cadets were struggling to keep up with the speed of the jets during approach. But not our friends who have been simming for years. The instructors were bemused and asked if they were a jet pilot in previous life, and don’t believe them when they say it is their first time handling jets in actual 6-axis Level-D proper simulator that trains real airline pilots. Again, I am trying to be less dismissive about “gimmicks” or “eye candies”, but more immersive graphics means better familiarisation for would-be pilots. Our Airbus pilot friend listened to the buttons and switchs clicking at FF A320’s BSS soundpack - and he says “yes, that’s the exact sound of it, just like I heard it a couple of hours ago.”
And then there is me, a home entertainment user of MSFS / XP11. For me, I simply want better immerssion to satisfy my demand for virtual travel, be it with jets or piston engined crafts. I can role-play airline pilot in sim, but in most cases, I don’t use all those gimmicky features of PMDG besides doing a full IFR from LHR to FRA or SYD to MEL. It is too hard for me to just fly over non-orthographic textures of XP world.
Why is PMDG not selling their planes for X-Plane? I always thought have seen some older looking PMDG737`s in X-Plane tutorial vids (but this can be P3D videos too - not exactly sure about that).
Is there a specific reason for PMDG not making X-Plane versions of their creations?
Soon I am going to fly the HotStart Challenger ultra-realism and that Airbus 330 and the Fenix will get an update I am not sure if I will survive the oncoming two weeks (and if yes my friends are surely going to kill me off when never stopping nerding around about trains and Airbusses and Boeings day and night…)
I think people forgot about that time PMDG released DC-6 for X-Plane 11:
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/forum/283-pmdg-dc-6/
Both do not compete each others as you can think, X-plane is for niche crowd, you can basically use XP-11 with many add-ons you will get XP12, it will be released as beta and unfinished on many parts, scenery mostly all generic, weather, atc… Frame rate will not be optimized at release, it will take some time before it get optimized like any sim out there.
You just turn off photogrametry or use local cache, did you ever tried before saying this. If you think XP12 have better frame rate, beta now are 20\30 fps, with 70% less trees than MSFS on scenery, green texture patch gap with 2d trees sparse above 4000 feet, generic texture\scenery most of the planet. You can match it, reduce trees to low, turn off photogrametry, even you can turn off photo real to get generic ground.