It really doesn’t last forever bud. It might feel like it. But it won’t
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Time is relative, especially to the human brain. Joy is fleeting, pain lasts an eternity.
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Two things are certain imo
- we all dream, now and then, of becoming wealthy
- [as @jross already mentioned] we dont need most of the stuff we dream of
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I’ve hopped in and out of this thread, was really excited for MSFS during Alpha and Beta which I participated in, bought the full version, marveled at the cloudscapes and lighting while struggling to fly anything, but eventually even with modded default aircraft, I was just not happy with it.
It was only after constant wishful dabbling with MSFS did I realize just how good X-Plane 11 is. An example is flying the Caravan around Anacortes in Washington last night. The latest MSFS “update” came out so I was excited to give it a try and fly a circuit. Then I tried X-Plane and with ORBX installed and Enhanced Clouds (free) I have to say the visual experience was only marginally better in MSFS. But it’s the flying that counts and X-Plane is in an entirely different realm. It is leagues ahead.
I then launched a bush flight in Alaska in MSFS at sunset and it looked more like Vietnam than the frozen tundra I was expecting. Everything was literally lime green. I checked the weather and there should have been snow on the ground. If there are no season in MSFS, then what’s the difference between it and X-Plane with Ortho? Plus, the sub par flight model?
So, as I’ve done since launch, I’ve shelved MSFS and will dabble again no doubt in the future. In the meantime, I’m going to continue buying planes, like Thandra’s new Beaver, and fly them in the far superior X-Plane 11. Oh, and also DCS which is equally or arguably better still
MSFS will get there, but like so many predicted, it will be a year or two before it becomes the sim of choice.
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That is +/- what many times I defended since msfs release, msfs its ok, but when i want to really fly a airbus or a complex well made GA i open xp11 or p3d for a 4 prop liner. Also about smooth and fluid fps vs visuals, more i use msfs more i prefer xp11.
Even before msfs release, when all was on the hype train with msfs, i say “cmon,…, xp 11 or p3d with correct addons get the same or similar visuals and runs pretty well”
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For me that’s the point though. XP11 can be quite close with the correct addons that I have to buy and set up.
(I was a late adopter of X-plane, I bought XP11 in beta, after trying XP9 once and not liking it) and I don’t have any addons except one plane, (the Challenger 300) partly because XP11 didn’t run really well on my old PC to begin with, even without addons.
FS2020 has ortho and pretty good autogen and decent ATC and AI traffic that doesn’t crash all the time, and great weather for the whole world without having to do anything. I don’t have as much time as I had in previous years so to me that’s worth a lot.
Planes are still missing, especially properly complex ones, and a few features like replay, but in everything else FS2020 is a clear improvement over XP11 for me.
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Nice post on your thoughts. I’m definitely in the camp of keeping both X-Plane and MSFS. I like both for some of the same and some different reasons at this point. What I do appreciate from MSFS is that they finally allowed me to put P3D behind me. It will stay installed as a background tool for those times when I must review or write about a P3D specific add-on, but I’m done with it for personal entertainment use (eyes that BAe146 for P3D nervously…no…I will not buy it!)…
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Well, the 146 is also coming to X-Plane soon as well…
Things I like about MSFS over XP are that it is better looking in general, runs smoother and loads faster. Now, my XP install is a little bloated with 3rd party scenery, plugins and over 100 aircraft. Also, I haven’t done a fresh clean install since I first downloaded the first XP11 open beta back in fall 2016. That probably doesn’t help 
.
With MSFS I appreciate the weather depiction (very similar in some ways to X-Enviro). I also like the easy flight planning…point and click on a globe vs having to know the name of an airfield or it’s ICAO code. It seems such a simple thing, but going back to XP now seems rather archaic in that regard.
Still, XP definitely has the advantage when it comes to systems, flight models, helicopters, and the massive number of addons that are available. I’ll be keeping it installed for the foreseeable future, and I’m most likely going to buy more aircraft for it (beats having a shoe fetish I guess). The Thranda Beaver has been calling out to me, but so far I have resisted, mostly because I am flying the Christmas Trek in MSFS this year. After I get to Cape Town though, all bets are off.
Yeah…that’s a Day 1 buy for me. I hope it is awesome in VR…
Yeah…I haven’t picked that one up just because the PC-6 is so good…he is his own worst competition…!
The Beaver is probably worth buying for the engine modeling alone. I will no doubt end up picking it up at some point. Right now though, I want to flesh out my MSFS hangar. I’m leaning towards picking up the Seminole. How are you liking the Mooney now that the CTD problems have been addressed?
I haven’t revisited yet. Been working (for real) a bit too much this month. But getting ready to settle in to a couple weeks off…so hope to get back on the horse so to speak. I really like the presentation of the Mooney in MSFS though…it was just those CTDs that were really frustrating. Hopefully that is all resolved now. I have been assigned to review the Seminole for the magazine, so looking forward to checking that one out.
Yuppppp. I still prefer XP11 for overall performance and any aircraft with any depth to it, but I have to allocate about 20 minutes to get XP up and running.
The startup time for MSFS has been refreshing.
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For me I wanted (want) MSFS to be all we wanted it be out of the box. It was one of those situations where everything I wanted was already right in front of me in the form of X-Plane 11 (well, apart from volumetric clouds and new visuals). Like all planes, X-Plane needs good maintenance and a fresh install is called for at least once a year.
Bottom line: I cannot wait for MSFS to get to where we all know it’s going to be in the end. These are amazing problems to have!
That Beaver is still calling, but I’m actually having a ton of fun on the Kodiak right now. Might just plonk down the $$ for the Reality Expansion pack first.
Well, now I have MSFS installed and looking great, I guess I can go ahead take the time to do a clean XP11 install.
I still use XP11 quite a lot. I think in most areas a natural duopoly seems to emerge. I don’t uninstall IL-2 BoX when I buy something like a prop on DCS, or not finish Witcher 3 because Cyberpunk 2077 came out. MSFS has some good bones but they’ll be a lag before we get the big dollar/niche payware. The XP team post-Austin coding seem to be killing it, and XP12 will be great.
The tech MSFS used for the add-on aircraft SDK is quite unusual (something called web assembly, with a v8 javascript engine for UI etc) which will make it possible for them to sell ‘cross platform’ (Xboxen of various letters) and deploy via the web, but that might bear some fruit when the ecosystem gets access to a bigger market. Successful 3rd party devs means more toys for us. It’s just caused things to slow down on the early release as the base gets patched up and the 3rd parties have to learn the new bells/whistles.
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From time to time I have the need for buying MSFS and start to fly that modded A321 there and just wait for all the goodness to come.
Especially after AARs like to one you wrote Fearles. 
But I will be missing flying helos in FSE so still sticking with XP for now.
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I mean they all have different strengths, and some of them are pretty niche. I really like the weather/ATC/traffic mini system out of the box, while others might just want to use VATSIM or nothing, or pay for specific add-ons.
I think the bush or tourism flying in MSFS looks great, and certainly don’t miss making/finding Ortho imagery before I fly in it. The FBS A32NX is sort of like 70% of the XP11 Zibo 738 as a comparable. The stock C152 is ok, but the others looks better than they fly I guess. MSFS is weak in the area of complex props and small jets until payware comes along.
Comparable is weird though, in that we could all make a claim that ‘An orange is the best fruit’ by far, and them someone comes along and says they prefer apples and will be waiting for oranges to get peel-less. etc. 
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tell me about this, especially when the tiles generation process got stuck last few times on downloading OSM data… I mean I have no problem to generate them, but at least it could work!
Btw I just looked up what might be the cause for my engine failures when entering the menu (described in my latest post in the Christmas Flight thread):
Binding certain things (like mixture) on controller axes reportedly can cause it.
The Citation Longitude doesn’t have a mixture control but I’ll check that anyway.