I don‘t see a problem with that. Why would I buy a GPU with 16GB or more if I don‘t want a SW to make use of it? Doesn‘t make sense to me. I expect maximum use of my resources to get the best visual experience.
Side note: X-Plane 12 has much less fps on my system compared to FS20 and 24. In VR X-Plane is really bad, only playable with all sliders left giving me like 30fps.
X-Plane 11 is a bit better but aiming for 40-45fps, the visual experience is much better in MSFS.
It‘s not that X-Plane just runs smoother on EVERY system. Very individual.
Well you all inspired me to buy a copy of X-Plane (used to have one) and I collect flight simulations. IMHO, the thing that X-Plane gets right is that it flys smoothly out of the box. There is no stutter. It would seem to me this is the basic requirement where MSFS 2024 fails. It does, however, look a bit like a cartoon with the graphics, but not that bad.
I can see where MS is going here since it seems that the majority of the posts are now about the “game” of becoming a pilot. Wonder how long that lasts with a poor aircraft.
wow, tempted not to touch this endless topic but would really like to add a personal perspective. My background in a summary, IRL pilot with PPL and my experience with flightsims started with FS1 back in the the Apple IIc (RIP). Used most of the popular GA flightsim available since then (and some combat sims). X-Plane was my “go to” sim for quite some time, especially after FSX but since MSFS2020 I can’t go back , as much as I try every now and then.
In a purely subjective POV, here are some key aspects I would like to add:
XP has a much more “down to business” flight sim approach, prob both a pro and con.
XP has a much more “open” philosophy, i.e. sim variables and developer scripting. MSFS is catching up and but we still see the long standing list of features still locked since MSFS2020 - i.e. weather/radar NA and locked, and some simulation aspects that can’t be overridden, sometimes causing significant workarounds from developers.
XP is more “polished” and realistic and detailed in some simulation aspects such as turbine engine simulation etc.
XP is much more accessible to exotic yet critical sim hardware - multiple/projected displays, Force feedback controls - exposes control forces, etc
MSFS turbulence, especially mechanical turbulence is a game changer to me! The feeling that the surrounding environment impacts the air especially when closer to the ground is truly a must, and I simply can’t fly without it any more.
XP feels twitchy for me - Sorry if this annoys XP fans. In some scenarios, i.e during taxi, some flight conditions and closer to the stall , handling and behavior feels more harsh. At least with the airplanes I’ve tried (including payware) . Again speaking from a personal IRL experience with GA aircraft. Can’t point out the specifics but something involving the inertia / mass.
XP turbulence modeling - at least still true for the last time I’ve tried, is truly unrealistic and plain bad.
MSFS avionics is truly Top Class with the efforts done by Working Title.
While addons can improve many aspects MSFS, some features are either locked or not properly implemented. I find it really painful that that MSFS is seriously lacking in some fundamental realism aspects - Weather and especially severe weather, cloud turbulence, icing, (still improper) wind gusts, no variable winds, and many weather aspects are still missing. Better control of aircraft systems and exposing ability to model realistic damage and wear modeling. While MSFS2024 bring some of it, it’s mainly targeting career mode at this time and still not exposing enough to allow developers to freely model this realistically.
MSFS and especially now with MSFS2024 is stretching “too little butter over too much bread” as Bilbo says. It’s trying to reach more and more and yet in every corner there are some glaring issues, missing features or some too long standing bugs.
Is there a perfect sim out there? probably not. But each sim is probably will fit better to each to his/hers own priorities, use-cases and perhaps even a very specific flight profile. Each will see the sum of all of the important pieces in his/her perspective. It’s always important to have an option and never to rule out the other blindly. And even more important for us, having competition will drive both sims forwards and benefits us, the users.
The reason XP12 (or XP11) do not have performance challenges and they should not on the actual / latest hardware, is very simply because the engine technology is last decade’s world engine type of technology.
The bar raised by MSFS 2020 and even more 2024 in the world rendering tech is just light years ahead .
I hear about MSFS 2024 sim performance here and there. I am really surprised , on my system it is performing way better than 2020 with similar graphic settings. The only upgrade I did is adding 32 more RAM (64 in total now), the rest of the specs are in my profile…
So all in all, XP12 or 11 that are similar engine tech with some refactoring here and there, considering the older engine gen that they are based on, they have no excuse but to run smoothly on today’s hardware…
I have had to really degrade my image going from 2020 to 2024 to get any decent frame rate… plus a lot of “other” things… I have a 3070ti but if you look at that VRAM thread many have high end cards with problems.
Yup! I don’t think XP 12 is rendering near as many polygons as MSFS 2024 is. If anybody has ever taken an introductory computer graphics course, most of what you see in a 3D game is made up of polygons. In a nutshell, MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 look so much better than XP 12 because they are rendering more polygons per frame. XP 12 has to cut back on polygons in certain instances, like the clouds. The clouds in XP 12 are often blurry but it’s not because LR can’t make the clouds sharper, it’s that if they try to make the clouds sharper, it will eat up more polygons (I think Ben Supnik from LR made a comment about this, but I wish I had kept a link to his comment, I can’t find it anymore).
MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 clouds look so much better than XP 12 clouds because the engine is way more efficient, especially with respect to modern hardware. It looks like LR did some refactoring in XP 12, but they probably need to do an entire engine rewrite if they want to catch up to MSFS 2024.
I honestly don’t think XP 13, the next version of XP, when it comes out, will be able to match the graphics of MSFS 2024, especially at the ground level. Heck, I don’t even think XP 13 will match the graphics of MSFS 2020. That’s how far behind XP 13 graphics are.
There is a 20 KM CFD around the plane in MSFS now. In effect, MSFS is attempting to simulate the air flow in the atmosphere up to 20 KM from your plane.
My understanding is that XP does not simulate air flow anywhere close to 20 KM far from the plane, and the air flow simulation around the plane is much shorter than that.
So what you’re saying to me, is that for XP12 to compete, I’d have to turn off features on MSFS that come out of the box then add them to XP12? Thank you for proving my point. It really does look two generations behind. As for all that other nonsense you spoke, you’re clearly ignoring all of the strides MS have made with MSFS in the simulation department, avionics and more fleshed out aircraft to name a couple.
Yes, the CFD for both environment and aircraft makes a huge difference. The airflow simulation is what really ramps up the atmospheric simulation to me, at least the huge potential that it brings. AFAIK, in XP there is no 3d atmospheric modeling related to every 3d object.
XP seems to calculate mainly the immediate air in the current weather parcel and it’s layers and interaction with ground is more or less limited to ground effects. Based on what I’m familiar with in XP11 and as I’ve seen so far in XP12. AFAIK local phenomenas such as albedo thermals, ridge lift etc are calculated in real time in MSFS. In XP, if provided at all , it depends on the global weather engine to provide as a precalculated data, again might be wrong here if things got changed deeper than what I’ve used to know.
The CFD simulation both for the aircraft and the environment is a huge improvement that gives MSFS a real edge for me, even though there is still much to be improved.
No, what I’m saying is that without the “pretty factor”, MSFS is lacking compared to X-Plane. We’re talking about a flight simulator, not a world simulator - and since you can “turn on” the prettiness with X-Plane with cheap addons (and the fact that it will continue to improve out of the box) means it’s a better foundation for the things that actually matter.
See above in this thread:
You can demonstrate this quite regularly by performing a flight in MSFS 2024 and not having the textures load in … never happens with X-Plane.
That’s a desperate argument if I ever heard one. Planes fly in the world. Making the world more realistic makes the flying experience more realistic. You are still ignoring many of the simulation aspect 2024 implements that XP12 simply doesn’t have. You are pushing an overused and outdated narrative. I prefer to use the sim that occasionally has a server hiccup over the one that NEEDS an add-on and still looks like it was made in 2015 consistently
And you’re making things up again or can’t seem to read. MSFS Doesn’t also need Xbox. Xbox is not needed at all.
In fact the way we even got Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is through a tech demo.
Quoting Jorg directly:
" Using data of Microsoft’s home city of Seattle, which Bing Maps has rendered down to five-centimeter resolution […], Asobo took a few weeks to put together a demo of a Cessna flying downtown. Neumann then showed it to Phil Spencer"
““He just looked at me and said, ‘Why are you showing me a video of […] a plane?’” Neumann says. “And then the plane turned, and we flew over the Microsoft campus where we were [… right now]. And he’s like, ‘Is this real time? Is this running?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, it is!’ And we knew then we had something special.””
I Suggest you read the “Development” section of the wiki article.
Also do i have to remind you that the Xbox Version released a year after the PC Version? The reason MSFS is even on Xbox Series S/X is because, while it undoubtedly serves as an additional income stream, the shared APIs and tools between PC and Xbox, like DirectX and UWP, made it relatively easy to port the game over. This common development ecosystem significantly reduced the effort needed to adapt the game for the console, making it a no-brainer for Microsoft to expand its reach.
So stop making up things and inform yourself before you try and make up an answer next time.
I just tried MSFS2024 again and it was a stutterfest on takeoff and landing. Plus for some weird reason it looks like an oil painting? (Best way I could describe it). 4090, 4K, 64Gb RAM, 9950X. So, no, it’s not my system.
MSFS 2024 runs incredibly well on my system and I play maxed out. I look around with TrackIR and it’s butter smooth all the time. It runs much, much better than X-Plane 12.
It runs super well on my system too, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t stutter upon landing and takeoff. I mean I can hit over 100FPs easy, that’s not an issue. Smoothness is. And simply put 2024 isn’t smooth. No matter how high or low the fps get.
World simulator (Terrain , weather and immersion) is an integral part of any human simulated activity and it takes advantage of the available technology to become more convincing for the human brain who must go through the simulated activity… It is not a technology that should be stuck in time (i.e: 90s, 2000s etc), it evolves.
but would really like to add a personal perspective. My background in a summary, IRL pilot with PPL and my experience with flightsims started with FS1 back in the the Apple IIc (RIP). Used most of the popular GA flightsim available since then (and some combat sims). X-Plane was my “go to” sim for quite some time, especially after FSX but since MSFS2020 I can’t go back , as much as I try every now and then.