A quick peek for those curious. Settings turned down a bit to get 30 fps on an R9 290X. Left in the FPS counter as this is just a beta so far.
Undockable window Map
Impressive for a stock aircraft. They usually aren’t that great but the 737 at least (the only thing I’ve played with so far) is looking really nice. Makes the upgrade worth it alone so far.
Cool…I hope there is still a bit of an “instructor panel” map mode that shows a bit more of the details. I found that useful for placing aircraft when wanting to practice instrument approaches…
OK…just exploring around. Love the native support for dual monitors. Love the setup options for the controllers - at least for my Warthog it was super easy. The new skin reflections are OMG…awesome. And the brightness and overall look of the sim is way better than XP10…which always tended toward dark features. Loading up a C-172 flight in AVL right now. With everything maxed out at 1920 x 1080 I’m showing 24 FPS in FRAPS…just a first blush number and that is with all the sliders to the right (terrain complexity, AA, shadows, etc…)
I’ll join you guys in about 22 hours (just started the download here)…
Trees and haze look to be very much improved in my opinion. I plan to experiment more with the weather. I’d love for this to be the end of having to use 3rd party weather add-ons…
Of interest in this shot out of KAVL is that they are obviously using the advertised current NaviGraph data because they are showing the runway under construction there in KAVL…very cool…! The overall default airport scenery and “life” is quite good…
Noticing some blockiness with the self shadowing…not sure if that is a setting issue or just a beta issue…
I turned on real world weather at KSEA and my FPS jumped up to 30 ish. It seems all pretty random so far, but nice to fly. I think the visible difference makes a bigger impact to performance this time around (maybe stuff like traffic etc). The MD-80 is fun btw.
Very nice haze depiction actually…very much like what I was getting with VenturaSky and the NOAA plug-in…and still marveling over those reflections…really nice…
The skin reflections with the night lighting are really cool. And the roads with the vehicle head and taillights moving along them seem to be just right now…all the night lighting is really, really good.
Aforementioned controller setup…really nice…
Weather is so/so…the default clouds are probably not going to compete with 3rd party stuff. In my opinion, the stratus clouds look a bit too grey…in fact, from below they almost look like a rubber tire factory has caught on fire in the region or Saddam has set all the oil wells on fire in Michigan (I went looking for bad weather). Even on top, in bright sunlight you’d expect the clouds below to be nearer white then the grey they are. Default C90 is OK…again, it probably won’t compete with payware stuff, but for what it is…it is good enough. I would have liked to have seen a sharper ADI though for sure…
So the MD-80 is fantastic. I mean…like…payware quality, which really drives the value of XP11 up in my opinion. I’m actually unsure if we aren’t looking at the Rotate MD80…it looks about as good. Not sure about all the functionality, but the panels are fantastic and the 3D model is very, very nice.
Laminar is going to have to do something about the runway sloping values though. For instance, here at Grand Canyon, the runway is almost unusable due to the ripples in it. They are going to need to institute some sort of data smoothing or something to get them to follow contours more smoothly. Unless there is a setting I’m missing in the menus (could be…I haven’t totally explored all the options)…
And a quick look at the Grand Canyon shows that while the terrain and autogen are definitely better…I’m guessing AlpilotX’s mesh will look better. I’ll try injecting that terrain grid in there and posting another screen if it works…
Regarding file structure…this looks a lot like XP10, so I’m optimistic that a lot of add-ons will work without hassle…
Biggest disappointment so far - but one that we knew was going to be missing - internet multiplayer functionality. There is LAN mutiplayer included…but no chance of a Mudspike Fly-In unless we use the 3rd party apps which aren’t super friendly…
It is nice that we can now search for keyboard commands in the Settings page…so you don’t have to hunt (as much) for things like cowl flaps or brakes…just type in the search term and it will take you to it…
Interesting - I get an Out of Memory crash while I’m trying to map my controllers (adding thrust reversers and speedbrakes)…and that is before I even launch a sim scenario.
One other mild disappointment - I was hoping XP11 would have some sort of logic (or flag or whatever) that would tell XP11 when you had loaded a helicopter and automatically change the HOTAS setting from throttle to collective. Not a big deal to go in and manually change it…but it would be kind of cool if it just recognized what type of a/c you were flying and made the change auto-magically.
One of the coolest things has got to be the new map system where you can highlight your aircraft, then drag it to another location on the map…and the view in the main window moves to reflect where you are dragging your aircraft…so you can see exactly what/where you are dragging yourself. Very, very cool. And the 2D pop-out map is fantastic for putting on the second monitor and monitoring your progress. Very nice!
Included Sikorsky is nice…a bit flat in the panel department…sort of uniform looking, so again, it won’t really compete with the payware quality stuff, but is good enough for default.
Some of those blocky self shadows I was talking about - coming up on Seattle downtown, which is a demo scenery area. Don’t expect your local city to look as detailed as this with custom buildings and all that. I looked in the XP11 directory and didn’t see the dozen or so detailed sceneries that had been included with XP10…so I don’t know what is up with that…
All of this really didn’t affect my frame rate. I’m hovering down at around 18FPS…which is very flyable…with all sliders maxed. I’m guessing there is some optimization to be done still…although I had to make a few concessions with XP10 as well, so who knows…
The Space Needle is nice…but you can’t land on top of it…you just go through it…bummer…
