So I’ve been on FSX pretty much since it came out. I don’t have many payware AC or scenery for it (none of the later), so I don’t have a huge financial investment into FSX that some have had. I tried out X-Plane years ago (2005 ish IIRC), and it wasn’t worth the switch, but it has obviously matured in the last decade or so. I’ve never pulled the trigger on P3D, as it basically just seemed like paying money for FSX again.
With that said, I do acknowledge that it might be time to join the march of forward progress. I’m curious what peoples opinions are regarding X-Planes and P3D. Here’s some background information if it helps people offer advice.
My wife enjoys “quality time” so that means very little man cave time for me. I do most of my simming on my laptop in the living room these days. So cutting edge tech specs are a thing of the past at the moment. So less intensive hardware specs are good, and VR is out for the moment. I don’t really care about MP compatibility, it’s just not my thing. Additionally I’m not worried about tac-pack or similar, I have other sims for blowing things up.
I tend to fly short to medium haul flights, and in general I’m usually below FL20 for my flying. I like an ATC, but it’s not critical. One of the reasons I’ve stuck with FSX so long is the massive amounts of good freeware planes available, so if the majority of addons for one or the other are payware I’m less interested. I do enjoy good scenery as the major immersion killer in FSX for me is the default terrain (the Phillipines shouldn’t be same shade of green as western Europe).
I’m very curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.
Aerofly FS2 is also kind of cool. It’s not as mature as X-Plane, and my personal feeling is that it never will be. But I’d be happy to be proven wrong here.
It’s more like the old Looking Glass Flight Unlimited 1&2.
I don’t do much in the way of civil flight simming; it’s just never been my thing. But one I’ve been watching has been Deadstick:
But it’s probably going to be a bit too hardware intensive for a laptop and it’s anyone’s guess how it will pan out, given it hasn’t been released yet.
+1 for X-Plane. It seems that Laminar really gained momentum with XP11. X-Plane was always the ugly duckling when compared to the other mainstream sims, but version 11 changed all that (I thought 10 was pretty good too). Now there are more players, and that has made it worthwhile for the 3rd party developers to jump onboard. It is now quite hard to keep up with the number of quality aircraft and scenery that is released. It seems that something bright and shiny catches my eye on the x-plane.org store almost weekly these days.
I jumped straight to x plane 11 after trying the free demo. Its great
Also I can link it to my skydemon vfr flight planning app to x plane and use it for training. It’s turned from being something I did for fun into a very very useful piece of software for me.
As a long time MSFS enthusiast…and by “long time” I mean running the predecessor of MSFS, subLOGIC’s Flight Simulator, on a Commodore 64 in 1984…I do have a dog in this fight, as it were. I have spent thousands of dollars over the decades…decades…investing in stuff for what eventually became FSX.
In my economics class in grad school that taght us a concept called, “sunk cost”. Essentially, any money you have invested in something is gone. You may or may not get a return on your investment. The idea is to avoid throwing good money after bad.
That is where I am with FSX. 2019 will be the year I go over to the dark side, and begin agin with X-Plane 11.
If I can do it, anybody can.
EDIT: Of course I just bought ORBX’s PNG scenery package for FSX this morning…because it was on sale…I’m an idiot…
X plane 11 gets my vote. I tried it around the same time as you did. Way back with xplane 1 I did not really take to it but 11 is very nice and even old farmers like me can fly it
So it certainly seems as if X-Plane gets the vote. I tried the demo yesterday, and to be fair I wasn’t that impressed as a first impression. I need to play with my graphics settings, and figure out some control settings, see if that changes my mind. Thanks for all the feedback so far!
I get that. Some of the XP11 contents, like aircraft and scenery, can be quite underwhelming. Then again, think back to your first day of FSX. You’ve probably downloaded a lot of stuff, since then…
Remember that XP11 is totally different to the MSFS series, in many ways.
And, you’re probably used to the FSX way of doing things, since you’ve been using it for quite some time now.
You need to give XP11 a lot more than a first impression, if you want to give it a fair assessment.
Hey! It’s a new year. Perfect time to start using a new sim!
Personally I love the feeling in XP of being about 2 feet off the runway just above the stall and nosing up slightly to drop down onto the tarmac. The feeling of weight and resistance is better than any other sim I’ve ever used. It’s definitely not the perfect sim. But I feel its very good. Even dcs doesn’t have that feeling for me.
As I stated above you will be beter suited with XP10 in regards to graphical performance.
Controlers setup seemed to me also tricky at first but then I get used to it. Imo combination of XP, DCS and BOX controlers setup would work fairly well
