Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Hi Sim Enthusiasts,

I've seen X-Plane 10 is currently on sale on Steam, and I was wondering if it is worth buying it. I do have FDX, so I would be interested to hear what the better program is, especially since FSX is discontinued and no longer patched.

Anyone has both and can comment?

FSX is not quite discontinued because of this: http://www.prepar3d.com/


It really costs much but on the top of FSX you get very improved game, more realistic, used for real pilot training (hence the cost).


But I am surprised by how X-Plane now looks, it used to be visually uglier sim. For 30 something euros I am seriously tempted, but I never tried it, and I heard that FSX feels more realistic when it comes to airplane handling. 

(10-05-2014, 01:22 PM)Misha link Wrote: [ -> ]But I am surprised by how X-Plane now looks, it used to be visually uglier sim. For 30 something euros I am seriously tempted, but I never tried it, and I heard that FSX feels more realistic when it comes to airplane handling.

Yeah, I saw a side-by-side comparison and I think X-Plane came out on top. It was a video comparing vanilla, unmodded versions, and specifically the weather looks so much better in X-Plane...

Well, at the price I went ahead and bought it. Might have been a waste of money, but then, probably not

Thanks for your opinion, Misha.

Since I didn't play Xplane at all, my only addition can be, I didn't play it for a reason, which may be dated. I conceive it as FSX lite, to keep it short. For me its like comparing Arma to Codemasters OFP (after the division).

EDIT: FSX is one of the games you can spend fortunes on, like iRacing  or Rise of Flight if you're a real enthusiast. Offtopic, but my prediction is that Arma will go this way too.

I don't really use it but my Dad has X-Plane (which I probably spend more time maintaining than he does flying!) and it seems like a very good and accurately modelled civilian flight sim.

To maintain reasonable fps (it doesn't really need to be more than 30fps) make sure you keep the Cloud Detail (Settings - Rendering Options) fairly low, probably 40% max, Texture Resolution on Very High and compress textures disabled, assuming you have at least 2GB VRAM (Extreme increases the VRAM load for no noticeable benefit and compression introduces some ugly artifacts), don't go crazy with the Stuff to Draw settings and make sure you have HDR Rendering enabled or else some lighting effects (particularly the night lights, runway lights) don't work properly.

Also, under Environment - Weather, set the Visibility to VFR (7 sm) although you might be OK with CAVOK (25 sm) depending on your system and be careful with the cloud type settings. Clear is obviously the least stressful and it increase with each setting up to Stratus.

There's some nice free scenery you can download that greatly enhances it as well:

http://world2xplane.com/
http://simheaven.com/
http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/fil...plane-asn/

The tricky bit is making sure the scenery loads in the correct order. It uses the scenery_packs.ini file in the Custom Scenery file for this but will just add new scenery you install to the top of the list, so you'll have to rearrange it as needed. It explains the correct order here http://world2xplane.com/2014/05/21/scene...n-x-plane/ and here http://www.x-plane.com/?article=changing...x-plane-10

Here's what my Dad's file currently looks like, which I think is correct!


So it starts with the HD Mesh v2 scenery for all of Europe (at Zoom Level 17. You can save HDD space and download time by using ZL16 scenery if you're satisfied with that, or mix them up so that you only use ZL17 for specific areas). Then the OSM scenery for North America and Europe (this is basically roads, rivers, stuff like that). Then the photoscenery for specific cities, followed by the W2XP building scenery for specific cities  and lastly, the Airport scenery.

As shown, you can use SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED to temporarily disable certain scenery, rather than moving it out of the folder, because if you do that X-Plane will delete it's line from the .ini next time it's launched.

The forum http://forums.x-plane.org is a great source of information and addons as well.

Useful plugins for X-Plane: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=68951

If you really get into it and want to interface real controls via an Arduino Mega, VladSim has done a lot of great work and produced and online config tool http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=79448

His site detailing his Baron 58 cockpit build is inspirational as well and full of great tips http://svglobe.com/

Holy shit, thanks for the comprehensive post, Doveman O.o You surely did your homework...