I have over 900 hours in X-Plane.
X-Plane out of the box is incredibly ugly, with Orthos it gets much better but even does not get anywhere near MSFS visuals. And it’s a ridiculous amount of work and download time.
Another problem for X-Plane is that MSFS has a completely superior lighting model. Sunshine really looks like sunshine, whereas X-Plane just looks depressingly dark and grey.
A comparison also depends on the airplanes, if I think of Zibo or FlyJsim level that kind of simulation is still in a league of it’s own right now.
But the good news is that I have the Just Flight Piper Arrows in both sims and I would say the MSFS version is superior. Maybe they are roughly even in terms of realism but the immersion is completely superior in MSFS. With that in mind it might be possible that the next generation of airliners completely kill X-Plane as the king of airliner sims.
We have to see, right now I have them both installed because of their mutual strengths and weaknesses but I see more improvement in MSFS right now.
The fact that I can fly the whole world with a good estimation of every building present and not spending weeks preparing the scenery myself is a big factor that I see much more future in MSFS, but it still needs to be realized.
