Okay, so show me another screenshot where you are clearly in the air, with airspeed shown, and also “No wind data”. I’d love to myself, but I cannot at this time.
The G1000 in X-Plane will also not show you wind speed, or direction, while parked.
oh wow. I will do it for you. Please pick a location
It shouldn’t matter where as far as I know, unless you count “Up” as a location. 1500ft at 100kts?
Also, let me know the aircraft type, and I will attempt to replicate this evening.
Try Biar, or Birk. Mostly windy.
Here’s my take on it if I may. In order to offer an opinion on the subject we need to define exactly what ‘X-Plane’ actually means. Does it mean Laminar Research, the sim itself, the X-Plane ecosystem, the fortunes of those making money off of it or something else? I think the answer is different for each one.
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Laminar Research directly have in my opinion little to worry about. They have their established commercial, sim user and mobile markets. They have my money along with anyone else’s who bought the sim so the cash is in the bank. There’s nothing more financially they can get from me because they have nothing else to sell. So in this regard, no X-Plane has nothing to worry about. Whether new people to the sim ‘hobby’ go for them over other options is an ongoing thing with MSFS adding to the mix, but I have no information on sales figures or market share so won’t comment on that.
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The sim itself. Here I think they do have reason for concern purely because in comparative terms, it’s getting old in the tooth and showing its age, so the value proposition to new simmers is a harder sell. The whole ‘flight model’ and ‘engineering tool’ straplines will only get you so far, especially when other parts of the sim are distinctly and obviously lacking.
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The X-Plane ecosystem in my opinion has a lot to be worried about, and some of this can be laid at the door of Laminar Research and the decisions they have made along with the vision they have for the product they want to sell. People argue that the whole addon roadshow that drags itself along with that sim is one of its strengths. In part that maybe the case, however without it X-Plane is a hollow shell. It’s not a case that the addons are a selective enhancement but more that some, even a lot, are a straight out necessity. Everything about that sim is entrenched in the commercial requirements with the reluctance to do much about decent and accurate scenery being a prime example. ATC is another. Graphical presentation isn’t a priority to them, nor does it seem dealing with issues that affect the sim outside of the commercial framework. The whole scenery gateway could arguably be called a stroke of genius. Knock out a bare bones sim, then sit back and watch lots of minions jump over themselves to make 1000’s of airports to then put in the sim. Sell a nickle and dime sim, and save a lot of hassle as others get to carry the torch beyond it.
The other issue is that LR have basically just sat on their laurels for the last couple of years with their blinkers on and been lazy, and have been happy to take peoples money but less inclined to listen to what their consumers want and do something about it. I firmly believe that Vulkan has been shoehorned into the sim primarily because it keeps the commercial product viable and not so some random can get better FPS from their FF A320.
The sim has become so reliant on 3rd party addons to keep viable that it’s just become a dogs lunch of random addons all lumped together from different sources in the hope that it will all play along together. Add to that the addons that need other addons to even function and it’s a soup sandwich. Change one, it breaks the other. But the people who made it are nowhere to be seen. Update the sim, a bunch of addons then stop working or the sim throws a fit and crashes. The other addon you paid good money for flat out won’t work at all because LR have programmed it that way with the LR response basically being ‘unlucky’. It’s a mess. The tinkering crowd might argue otherwise but spending hours and hours getting a sim to work should never become a second job.
- The addon market really has something to worry about. It goes without saying that the whole addon circus that happily feeds that sim is a joke. From the Org store with its no refunds policy that will sell you utter garbage without batting an eyelid to the developers peddling the most amazing ‘complete’ ‘full systems working’ ‘most realistic in a sim’ addons at not insignificant prices. The same ones that get abandoned by the devs literally for years (Flight Factor, IXEG and SSG for starters) amongst promises that never materialise. You get the sympathisers sticking up for them dishing out a half baked product ( that’s hypocritically topical in here isn’t it!) and the hard luck stories of 'I’ve taken your money but we’re part time and the other dev’s run off with the wife etc) to justify it. It’s the sim that lauds itself on realism, yet has developers selling improved versions of the aircraft provided (which apparently are the best ever), followed by other developers making realism packs for the improved planes. Different developers release the same aircraft and are ‘highly realistic’ but fly differently. The words ‘study level’ are thrown about like confetti, yet nobody seems to be able to provide a definition of what that means. I asked what study level planes were in the sim once and got one reply with one aircraft offered as an example.
What they really have to worry about is that as an ex X-Plane user, I’ve spent a lot of money on addons for that sim in the past going into the hundreds. Yet I havn’t bought anything since the release date for MSFS was announced. X-Plane has been dumped on an old external storage drive somewhere and I’ve not touched it since then and one day I’ll just wipe the lot. And I can’t be the only one. So for those devs that are X-Plane only, or the garbage ones from there that are now sniffing around this sim, they aren’t getting any more of my money as I’ve moved on. Once bitten, twice shy. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me and all that. So less sales = less revenue = either prices go up to meet reduced demand or the effort making addons doesn’t justify the reward and the plug could get pulled.
I doubt very much whether I’m the only one that’s just got jaded with LR’s reluctance or willingness to make a concerted effort to update their sim in a meaningful way, or playing the whole spinning plates game getting the whole sim/addon minefield to actually work. Neither can I be the only one to have had a guts full of the sloppy half baked expensive addons that the sim is infested with, and the complete indifference to doing something about it especially seeing as the sim depends on them so much.
So there you go, a few personal examples in response to the OP’s question.
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Many thanks for your excellent and structured analysis. I fully agree in all points and I would also like to have a detailed analysis written, but since I am not a native speaker, I would certainly need an hour despite the orthographic errors for this long input 
Thank you very much for your time.
Hundreds? I have invested ~1600€ in software Ok, I can afford it, so I’m not crying a tear and I also have 11.41 banished to a backup disk.
P.S. There is nothing more to say on this subject. Let us look into the FS2020 future and look forward to this great hobby. The only chance I see for X-Plane is open source on github. Wait, this belongs to Microsoft 
Not needed. Austin already has the Ex-Plane community working for him, for free…LOL. Buy Ex-Plane, and then you can scrub off court ordered community service hours.
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Sure. Only that the XP numbers droped about 35% during the ones of MSFS went down im freefall -80-90%. So nothing to worry about 
May i ask you if you are new to aviation? What don’t you understand about what « live weather » means? Metars are being updated all hours or 2-3x an hour. What do you think it means if the actual simulating conditions are completely different than the actual metars?
Yes, please: try to ask a real pilot about what he thinks. It will be funny 
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Where is your pic? Again fairy tales?
Good analysys. Actually, when we talk about something else than just the graphics, MSFS has nothing to offer compared to what we had. Too many broken features and they forgot the most important thing: the aviation-part. But since it has been announced as a flight-sim, hey, no problems
I hope they will be able to turn that world-explorator-game into a sim one day. When we look at the users i am not sure their interests are any others than only a graphical-game. See above the guy that don’t even realized how inaccurate the metars are. And MS got the money even if 90% already stoped using it after 1 month…PMDG seems to have issues as well, the SDK being not ready.
A bunch of half-baked things that only a few of the overhyped kiddies did expect. The amount of disappointed users is impressive. No wonder that disappointment makes them bash XP. They had so many hopes…and MS could not deliver.
My guess is that XP12 will already be final when MSFS becomes a real sim (even if it’s not clear yet if it will be one)
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Guess sounds good. You always guess without facts or basic knowledge. You got homework yesterday. Still not solved?
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You promised this one hour ago.
“oh wow. I will do it for you. Please pick a location”
Dunning-Kruger?
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As as said Did you got your own point now?
Are you sure that these airports are modeled? Because the next gen simulator did forgot some.. ah yes they are there. We got lucky! One of them was famous for having made crash your PC. But again: we got lucky because these airports are at least there. Now, with MSFS i discoveref a new kind of excitation i did never experience with XP: before i land i am never sure if there will be a runway at the destination. It gives you a new thrill. I love that! Really 
It is an interesting discussion. Some are showing a little bit too much personal feelings against others and I think this is expected: we’re all passionate about this hobby and have strong expectations.
In my opinion I think there are a few things which should be taken in account before shutting down on X-Plane a little too fast/soon.
First, X-Plane ecosystem also include professional customers and there are also 3rd party developers addressing these specific customer needs with their add-ons. Some of the features which are also implemented in X-Plane are first and foremost tailored for this market too.
Microsoft or Asobo have clearly indicated in the past they won’t address this market with FS2020 which will remain an entertainment product only. They could decide otherwise in the future but for now I suspect they won’t for the same reasons they didn’t with FSX back in the days: legalities and customer support. This is one of the reasons they’ve forked the product into “ESP” at the time in order to support the professional simulation market with both structural and technical offering necessary. ESP was brought by Lockheed Martin and became Prepar3d, FSX was shut down.
Secondly the whole discussion mainly revolves around how XP11 is out dated compared to FS2020 in many ways. However, I believe this is short-minded for the following reasons:
- FS2020 was just released and its development started when XP11 hit the market, 4 years ago.
- XP11 was released nearly 4 years ago which means its development started at least a couple years before.
In my opinion, It is certain XP12 development is already started at least for 1 or 2 years and I suspect Vulkan was the last major remaining item needed for making it a viable modern product. Vulkan release on XP11 might just be the proof of concept needed for them and they can validate their model among a large XP11 user base prior shipping XP12.
Should they’ve have already started investing in XP12 development since 1 or 2 years, nothing is precluding them to start anew on many fronts including scenery and visuals and they are certainly capable to offering a very modern rendering engine with all the bell and whistles, if not internally, in recruiting the talents capable of bringing this to fruition.
I believe debating between FS2020 and XP11 is meaningless for these reasons and the real contender is XP12 instead.
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Thank you very much for your detailed comment. Do you have a forecast on when XP12 will be released? To release XP12 they must rewrite the code from stretch to be competitive. I would use at least 3-4 years. Budget?
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