Yeah. Everything is set on realistic. I even tried the legacy flight model instead of the “Modern” one and it was no better. Vmca and Vmcg are not modeled well at all. You can put your feet on the floor and run one engine at max power and the other at idle, keep pulling back on the stick and the plane will just mush straight ahead. Just a smidge of bank into the operative engine will keep your heading steady. Not too encouraging on that front. I filed an observation with their team about it.
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Man, what is with this franchise and turboprops? Never did get them right even in FSX.
I know x-plane had the rubber-banding issue awhile back, but that was more a ‘bug’ than a lack of fidelity.
Especially concerning when you figure the TBM seems to be the poster child for the sim.
Also, are you saying that Prop RPM in general can’t be adjusted, or just on the PT-6 birds?
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Agreed on ‘only room for one’; especially when you consider that in civil sim land they “all do the same thing”; let you fly planes that don’t shoot at each other from one point on earth to another. They each have pros and cons, but it’s not like, say CloD vs BoX where there are mutually exclusive theaters of war and aircraft.
Not so sure X-plane even has ‘another year’ though, at least for newcomers. Interested in thoughts from all those who have early access to FS2020, but if someone were coming into the hobby fresh, it’s looking like MSFS represents the better platform to go in on right now, as the out-of-the-box scenery generally looks great, as does the weather engine; two areas that you’d need to spend time/money upgrading on Xplane to have parity with.
Thoughts?
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Honestly…all it would take is for Laminar to sign an agreement with another imagery source provider. That would make a huge difference in perceptions I think.
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Considering that there is a process to building the Ortho, there is no reason that Laminar can’t partner with a source and have a tool that allows you to select and build offline. Improvements to that tool could make it compete somewhat with what MFS (MSFS, MSFS2020, whatever we are going to eventually call it).
But short term, I think that newcomers are going to go the MFS route until X-Plane can adapt. I mean, when you think of it, X-Plane has likely made the majority of the money it was going to make off of the current version. They are almost in a position to start in on X-Plane Next … so lost newcomer sales for a year likely will not amount to much. This is probably going to be harder on the X-Plane 3rd Party devs in the short term.
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Yeah…a simplified ortho tool would sure be useful. What would be interesting would be that since X-Plane ortho is largely built with Bing data…and who owns Bing? LOL…sticky situation…
As the build stands today (MSFS) - the default planes in X-Plane (the ones Laminar includes) are way better than those offered in MSFS. I mean…a LOT better. The MSFS G1000 representation is probably only about 25% as good as the Laminar G1000 in terms of functionality and usability. MSFS looks great right now out of the box…but I think you are going to hear a collective wailing here in a week that isn’t undeserved. Hopefully the 3rd party developers are poised to quickly fill the quality airplane void.
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The other shoe to drop will be X-Plane.org and all of the vendors. In terms of an X-Plane economy, I can only guess that the business attached to X-Plane is much larger than the sim itself–including the professional version. The plane- and airport makers will migrate to MSFS. Dot Org will just slowly whither. As some of you are saying, this doesn’t HAVE to happen. There might be a way to compete using public satellite data, OSM and a cloud host. But somebody needs to be panicking, like, yesterday!
So…E3 2021 announcement of Google’s first flight sim using Google Earth data, Xplane 12? 
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From Microsofts standpoint, not sticky at all. Figure the team that runs bing is different from the team building MSFS, and the bing team would just wind up selling ‘ammunition’ to both parties. From that stand point, it’s a win-win.
Plus, from what I gather so far, the ‘secret sauce’ in MSFS isn’t so much the bing ortho data, it’s the Azure powered Machine Learning AI behind laying down autogen scenery on top of it. In fact, the MSFS dev team would likely view that as a chance to compare apples to apples and show off said tech.
One factor I’ve yet to see commented on either way, is how much work can cross over between Xplane and MSFS. The PMDG guys were saying behind the curtain it’s a whole different sim than FSX, so it’s possible there’s more parady between the two platforms for devs.
Figure right off the bat for aircraft: 3D models, many of the textures, much of the general documentation (checklists, manuals, etc.), and all the general gathering of research/reference material will be straightforward to port over. Not totally ‘drag and drop’, but not ‘start from scratch’ either.
It’ll be the programming of all the systems that will be most telling, but even there, the (presumed) reams of developer documentation, and general intimacy with the planes functionality gained coding it the first time still amortize.
Point being; I think it’ll be more ‘a foot in each platform’ for quite a while.
Well…the problem is MSFS MUST succeed if it is to remain viable. It must become profitable and long-legged or it will be axed just as surely as Flight was. Whereas X-Plane…small development crew with arguably a fraction of the overhead and sprawl that a big production has…so there is way less pressure on them…and also way larger margins to be comfortable with I presume. Austin is already a multi-millionaire…he doesn’t necessarily need to do it for money any more…but rather an interest in providing something different and perhaps better in some ways.
I spent all day today wringing out various parts of MSFS…particularly those things I’m familiar with (King Air, PT-6 engines, Citation)…and…well…it is what it is at this point inside of a week to go. I will be very, very curious how the community (both the wider gaming community and the sim community) react to this once it is let loose into the wild.
Was fun taking a look at some of the terrain that one of our planes is going down to today (Honduras)…
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The DR-400 is absolutely lovely. This is the kind of aircraft that will save the franchise because the cockpit detailing is so good. The lighting rheostats provide nice lighting (huge improvement over FSX and P3D) - which comes in handy because it brightens up cockpits that can get rather dark from the graphics engine forcing some pretty dramatic HDR. It flies really nicely…maybe a bit underpowered despite leaning…and the rudder on all of the planes is way too effective…just the merest tap on the right rudder is enough to make all the left turning tendencies go away. This plane will be absolutely fantastic in VR…
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Now we’re talking. Forward slipping the DR-400 is great…loads of extra drag on the side facing fuselage…the VSI pegs full down. At idle I’m not so sure that the plane isn’t a little too draggy without the slip…but I love it. Took a short jaunt from WX53 over the ridge to WACY - another fun strip to land at. Just fantastic.
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Hey Beach … that little VFR Map window … can you drag that to a second monitor by any chance?
“AUS flight simmer” said in a video that you can.
What I’m gathering so far, is that aerodynamics simulation=good, systems simulation…attempted
In any event, maybe I’m too drunk on koolaid, but I’d rather the terrain and weather be well set at launch, and the planes and assorted systems needing post-launch attention, than the other way around. If nothing else, the after market has proven it can fill that gap in quickly.
Put another way, it sounds like she has “good bones”, it’s just a matter of getting the rest of the house in order at this point.
Is that the right take away?
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How’s the live weather around the US and the rest of the world? Is it pretty accurate?
Definitely. The fact that developers like Aerosoft, ORBX, PMDG, etc…are climbing onboard is a good sign. To meet or beat FSX you will need plenty of content though…those landing challenges, missions, and tutorials will be essential to really taking the crown from FSX (if that is even possible). FSX had soooo much content right out the door.
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