But unless that version includes a significant re-write of the now ancient Microsoft code, I’m not certain that 64 bits in P3D will counter and exceed the things I enjoy so much about X-Plane.
I will keep following P3D, will fly it from time to time, and eagerly await the 64 bit version that will certainly come this year. But I booted it up a few weeks ago with a friend, and in comparison to using X-Plane it felt archaic. I do miss its great AI aircraft from time to time, and I do love ORBX.
The ability to have autogen appear on-top of said photorealistic sceneryĪnd finally, the ability to access the full breadth of the PCs RAM can’t be overstated.The ability to create photorealistic scenery.The ability to easily create and share my own airport scenery.Thanks to 圎nviro, great real-world weather.Did I mention no configuration tweaking?.The simplicity of installing (and uninstalling) add-ons and managing the file system.Tons and tons and tons of excellent freeware aircraft, airports, scenery, and plugins.Great default aircraft with excellent flight models.But I’ve also come to love several other aspects of the X-Plane ecosystem: And with about a month of time under the belt, I continue to stay with it for the UI, stability, and flight models as noted above. I was just checking it out based on the passion demonstrated by other simmers and pilots I follow online. I never intended to switch to X-Plane 11.
And once I had that nut cracked I was sold. That was enough for me to figure out a solution to the nettlesome (and frankly disappointing) fact that X-Plane does not allow separate eyepoints for each monitor. That means something to me as a student pilot, but it means a lot as a simmer, too – I want the sim to be as immersive as possible, and with X-Plane 11 it was as immersive as I’d seen it.
X-Plane models flight in a fundamentally different way than FSX or P3D, and at least to me, the way the airplane moves both on the ground and in the air feels much more realistic than in P3D. I loved what I saw, and it was enough to get me to spend some time with it, and in that process I was very taken with the X-Plane flight models. And thanks to X-Plane being 64 bit, there was no scenery popping, or scenery resolving into a less-blurry resolution, to break the immersion. Without even full sliders the visuals in X-Plane 11 – the night lighting, the reflections, the way light moves about the scenery – were stunning. But initially, what really got my attention were the graphics. The default scenery had come a very long way and looked great. The fast loading time and modern and easy-to-use user interface were great. I was very taken with several aspects of the X-Plane 11 experience. So I happily stayed with P3D.īut when the X-Plane 11 beta was released I learned that it had native multi-monitor support, so I decided to give it a go. As soon as I figured out that I could not easily run with multiple screens it was clear X-Plane 10 was a non-starter for the sim. But I kept hearing about X-Plane from simmers I respect, and more so, I noticed that many of the real pilots I follow online who also sim were X-Plane advocates. So maybe six months back I downloaded X-Plane 10, and it lasted on my system for about 10 minutes. It’s an awesome package, and with ActiveSky and ORBX and REX it’s astonishingly good. I picked P3d because it’s a platform under ongoing development.Īnd I love P3d. And so it was, and with that being the case, I was left to choose between FSX and P3D.
But when it came time to build the Basement Sim I knew that I’d be looking at the most powerful possible rig I could afford, and that rig would almost certainly be running Windows. I flew FSX before that, but with Mac X-Plane was the only option and I liked it. I use a Mac at home, and have had X-Plane on my system for at least 10 years. I was asked that question today in the YouTube comments, and I thought it was a good one.