Just did a 2h flight in XP12 and was pleasantly surprised when my 737 flew into a cloud and the plane started to bounce :).
I switched again to Beta and ATC is miles better comparing to Stable version. I haven’t tried vectoring yet.
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- It includes all the features of the home-use version of X-Plane 12 Global.
- It licenses your simulator for commercial use (that is, any use of X-Plane outside of your own personal use in your own personal home.)
- It provides hardware and frame-rate checks required for [FAA certification] of the simulator.
- It unlocks features of the simulator not available in X-Plane 12 Global. Specifically – the ability to use cylindrical and spherical projection (as found in large simulators).
What I would like to see in a flight sim :
- The system integration DCS offers (plane and helicopter)
- Flight and weather dynamics on X-Plane level
- MSFS 2020/2024 graphics.
- It won’t be able to run on a playbox
- It will never happen.
Yet one can dream…
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I with MSFS had particle effects like x-plane does
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I doubt any of that would be hard to do in MSFS, it’s just an extension of the particle effects that they have already modelled, whether MS want to simulate engines on fire is a more pertinent question.
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I think XPLANE physics are better
seriously, xplane is better than msfs in term of weather realism, clouds depiction, night lightning and it’s more dynamic
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I can’t really compare the two environments. I DO own a license for XPlane, but I haven’t flown in it.
There is a difference in communities. The MSFS community is pretty helpful when it comes to beginners needing help. DCS recognized the influence MSFS had on the genre, and they welcomed beginners and grew.
XPlane on the other hand,. XPlane comes with no default mappings for your devices. So I had to configure my HOTAS. I didn’t understand what I had to bind, since there were lots of things as your scrolled through. So I went to seek help from the community. There is no official game forum. There is one that is probably the most widely used. So I went there to ask my question. However, when registering, they didn’t want MSFS users poaching their community, so there was a 30 day period between registering and when you could post of the forum. So I went to the most used Facebook page. And there I was met with hostility and the attitude that if I couldn’t figure it out on my own, I shouldn’t be using the sim anyways, that XPlane was for “smart people” (yes, I actually had someone tell me that).
MSFS did a lot for the flight sim genre. DCS welcomed that change and the new users. The XPlane community on the other hand became insular, suspicious, and generally hostile. They didn’t recognize the blessing they had available to them to seize on the interest in flight sims and grow their community. Instead, they closed themselves off to not lose any of their existing community. And that was a tragic mistake.
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THAT is really a good base for decision making. This is really subjective and I like that you write „I find, my brain“ etc. I am somehow not so affected to uncanney valley. For me, MSFS is the more immersive Sim. For people who are more receptive (if you can say it like this in English) to uncanney valley, I totally understand, that MSFS is just not the right thing.
Sorry, but the people who say things like „XPlane is better because it is certified“ and implicitly try to say they know the objective truth, are wrong in my opinion.
Both sims can be game and sim.
Exactly!
Not a certification makes the „quality“ of any product, it‘s just proven that it‘s good enough for a specific purpose.
I bet that you could certify a sim with MSFS2020/24 without any changes to the product itself if just someone would be interested to do so and especially if MS decide to define and prove their development processes with the legal requirements that come with this certification.
tl;dr
Enforcing certification is about documenting the software and define and test it on a specific hardware and ensuring AND PROVING processes in the software development. That does not mean, that the certified Sim is the better or more realistic one, just that the dev company decided to go through the „pain“ of certification to serve a different market and target group. That also doesn‘t mean that there is no hardware where the sim runs even better with higher average and minimum fps with the same stability.
And even though I do not know that, but my guess is that it is not only about the certified SW and the certified HW but also about the certification of the sim operator and supervised operation and - also just guessing - most important the intended use.
I bet that there‘s no certified X-Plane sim where you just fire the thing up in your C172, fly around a bit and log some VFR SEP PIC hours in your RL logbook (at least not legally).
Sims are training devices IRL. They have a very specific intended use (IFR procedure trainers, system trainers for specific aircraft types, …).
Again just guessing: If you just step in in a level D sim and fly around a bit, even as a type rated pilot for the aircraft type, you cannot log any time in your log book (no mission for what it is certified, no certified trainer monitoring and documenting the session, …) whereas you can have a training session with a trainer in an FNTP-1 that not even replicates a real plane nor have any visual system (therefore, flight model realism might be questionable), where you can log your flight hours.
Does that make the FNTP-1 the better and more realistic sim in that case?
Honestly, I know some guys that bought a „certified sim“ that is powered by a PC with, idk, I think an 80386 or sth like that (MEP procedure trainer without visual system). In their hands, that certification of the HW and SW is worthless, they’ll never log hours legally on that one. Would any of the „but X-Plane is certified“ gamers here really say that a trainer like that is any better than MSFS?
In my job I have nothing to do with aviation - for the aviation part I am just a single engine VFR private pilot. My professional experience is from medical and automotive industries and there, certification has nothing to do with product quality itself but with documented processes and development and production records.
More tangible example: In the past, I developed screws (among more complex things 
) for automotive applications that are safety relevant but no end user ever see them. They look like they cost a fraction of the cheapest DIY store screw you can imagine . But they were engineered with a documented development process, there is a specification what the screw needs to do, there are FMEAs for that screw for design, production and the production of the assembly group, there are calculations that they are suitable for their purpose, there are tests proving that incl. safety margins and the records are stored for a defined retention time. In the production of the part and the assembly, process capabilities are defined and monitored and the parts are traceable at least to batches. Only „certified“ raw material is used. I am a German „Ingenieur“ - compared to engineer, this is a protected title - who is qualified to develop parts like that.
You see, a lot of things all around certification that do not make the cheap screw any better, just proven to work for a specific purpose. Hold it beside the screws that you bought at your DIY store. The latter ones might appear better and it might be that they are even better and it might be that they are really better for your home use - the DIY store and the manufacturer just don‘t have any cause to prove that their screw could be automotive certified for safety critical application.
Take that certified screw and put it in another application - you will more or less just go through the same pain again (maybe save some calculations and tests): You‘ll need to specify your new intended use and prove that this already certified screw still fits.
Other tangible example: I have an ICAO Level 5 English proficiency and the pronunciation part of my exam was rated with level 6. Am I, with my German accent, the more authentic and better English speaker than the fictional guy that was born and grew up in Oxford UK but never took an ICAO English proficiency check and has no pilot license? I‘m allowed to talk English on aviation radio, that fictional guy is not, unless he goes through the necessary certification for the English language proficiency (that in this case is easy to achieve).
99% sure that this is similar for simulators in aviation, correct me if I‘m wrong if you have more insider knowledge.
Sorry for extending my post but I cannot read the whole „but X-Plane is certified“ nonsense anymore. No, it‘s not just as easy as this to decide that X-Plane is any more realistic and better than any MSFS version and I‘m really really sure that you do not get a certified sim where you legally log any RL hours by just buying the „certified“ X-Plane with the certified HW and because it‘s just that easy your home sim X-Plane has the same „quality“.
If you find subjective reasons that is fine, if you fly a plane irl and the same one in one of the sims is more accurate, that‘s a fair point, but there‘s no general truth about one of them being generally better than the other and also just the flight model is not generally better in one of the sims.
The general flight models of both X-plane and MSFS2020/24 are both on a very high level, the aircraft implementing that is the more important factor.
I don‘t want to say that MSFS is better, I just want to say that it‘s subjective, if you make any of the available softwares a sim or a game is subjective and the most important is I hope to bring a little bit more light into that certification myth.
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MSFS does not have default mappings for my HOTAS either. You map what you need, not what others tell you to map. Everyone has different controllers and requirements. You want a gear lever mapped to your throttle, you map it. After 3-4 flights you can figure out what switches you need the most on your HOTAS.
XP12 night lighting, road traffic and weather effects are way ahead of MSFS 2024. And I also believe their engine is better too, Vulkan, compared to DX12. There is ZERO pop in of objects, plus its pretty smooth most times. (especially when using losless scaling).
Of course the scenery is better in MSFS2024, and one could argue the atmpspheric lightning (during the day) is better. This can be slightly mitigated in XP12 using Ortho. (Which incidentally looks way better from Altitude in XP12 too).
The planes are way more numerous in MSFS2024, and for default are mainly very very good!
I mean we could go back and forth all day long, the end result is always the same; if only we could combine the good bits from each sim, we’d be laughing!
PS, the controls system in XP12 is something Asobo should have looked at, its so intuitive yet so simple!
I find myself using XP12 more and more these days, especially after the disastrous launch of MSFS2024.
However, one can’t say one is better than the other. They both have pro’s and both have negatives.
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2020 had default mappings for the HOTAS. It worked immediately in MSFS after plugging it in. 2024 on the other hand did require me to map my HOTAS. And even after I did it, there was a bug with the rudder mapping that wouldn’t allow it to map (fixed as of last week).
Could I map it now in XPlane? Probably. Do I want to try? No. If a new users experience for the first time is so bad, they lose all appetite and motivation to give it a try later. That is where I am with Xplane. And I fear that is where we are as a community with any new users we may have tried to get with 2024.
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MSFS is just better for the type of flying I want to do and there’s a weird, evangelical, arrogant vibe from the x-plane community
I don’t care if x-plane is FAA certified, there’s probably a tiny fraction of a percentage of people that can meet the conditions to take advantage of that.
I’m sure there’s some people practicing approaches or preparing for type ratings etc but really, most of us are just doing this for the craic and it can only ever be so realistic anyway
Ultimately I’m not actually flying a plane, and neither is anyone on x-plane.
We shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. We’re just big kids sitting at a desk and pretending.
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For YOUR hotas, not for mine.
If someone struggles with such a simple thing like mapping controllers, then I am not surprised you find xplane community unwelcome. So far, I am only browsing their forums but don’t see anything wrong. I am able to find answers to all my questions easily because others have asked them in the past and received thorough responses.
2020 included profiles for a small number of popular peripherals. 2024 includes a similarly small list.
I’ve probably spent… jeez… maybe 12 hours total setting bindings for my Virpil gear, and I’m not even done yet. The UI in FS24 is so terrible that I’m considering breaking my hard rule on external binding programs to get it right.
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I’ve been simming for 25 years. If a significant part of your sim experience involves the enjoyment of simulated flight in a feature-rich simulated world, X-plane is simply not for you.
X-plane had its brief moment of glory after the ACES studio was shuttered and Laminar “caught up” for awhile. I actually used (resorted to) X-plane 11 for a few years before MFSF2020 was launched, but always felt like I was having a second class experience. If your introduction to this hobby has been through MSFS2020, X-plane will probably feel like a (big) step down.
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I too have used XP going back to v9. V11+ was very good, but before MSFS 2020 arrived on the scene. XP 12 is very disappointing (so far) mainly because VR is so very poor compared with v11+, and VR was better than MSFS 2020 for quite some time, but both are still outstanding compared to the VR mess in MSFS 2024. Regardless of VR, I consider XP to still be ahead in the set up of controls/peripherals than MSFS 2024 as well as flight modelling/dynamics. Nonetheless, your advice to a newcomer is sound given the visual experience and his being able to avoid frustration when comparing MSFS2024’s poor control settings UI implementation and obvious missing axes settings as well as hard (always on/off) switches.
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Hi,
Recently I revisited XP 12 and XP 11.
Although XP cannot compete with the eye candy of MSFS, I was blown away by the complete smoothness of XP.
Absolutely no stutters or pauses. Even in VR, unlike MSFS 2020 or 2024. What a nice flying experience.
Guess I will spend more time with XP again.
Another ex XP11 user here, I enjoyed my time with it, it’s a decent sim/game. However, the amount of time I spent setting up and generating ortho tiles, just to get it looking half decent, there’s no way I’m going back to that!
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I don’t think we can make judgements on XP/FS based on the mathematics of blade elements and CFD.
Without analysing the C++ code of each sim we won’t know how accurate each sim is likely to be in multiple scenarios.
Austin certainly didn’t like the old FS flight model, based on his real life pilot experience. That prompted him to use blade elements to genereate a more accurate model…eventually that led to the creation of XPlane as a product “because I didn’t like Microsoft’s modelling”.
Consider that Asobo has 250 employees and Laminar Research has about 10 times smaller in head count, give or take (losely based on web reports and team photos)
The model’s accuracy on a certain CPU is important. Russ Barlow was a military pilot before becoming an airline pilot and is well respected. He said that if XP had better scenery he would switch back to it.
So the challenge for Austin Myers is a step change in scenery. He’s the kind of guy that will be driven 24/7 with great enthusiasm towards that goal.
XP 12 has recently improved lighting and added 3D volumetric clouds. So it has the tech investment to leverage better scenery. Roll on XP13!