X-PLANE ALREADY UPDATING

[CathyH]

i have been in contact with laminar flow producers of X-plane. In the works are a major upgrade in the X-plane 9xx cycle of the inbuilt ATC engine. THe basic speech engine won't work in vista, and sounds robotic in XP. THis should address those issues. It takes a little getting used to the different interface, but just having bought it,as well as a couple of payware favorites, I am starting to appreciate it.

The out of the box scenery needs better autogen, but the actual scenery iteslf does not have that "world after 100 years of Global Warming) look the FSX had. Addon, generally go for around 425-50 US. X-plane does not insist that third party commercial developers pay royalties, and it inculdes a plane design and scenery desing program anyway. X-plane also hosts plane design competitions. I have also noticed that they are much more reponsive to customer input. Unsurprising since Laminar Flow is Austin Meyers and three employees, who are as much friends as worker

It's not FSX--yet

However the longer Microsoft delay, the more likeley it is theat x plane will become more FSX like and still keep it's own unique features. I do know athat at least one large add-on company--I won't say which is talking to X-plane. Also, with X-plane we are talking a ponetially massive market if irt goes mainstream, since it will run on windows, Mac OS and Linux.

Cathy

[Kahu]

I am really interested in buy X-Plane after reading the PC Pilot review and looking at other reviews online seems to suit my system rather than FSX, unfortunately I will need another hard drive to install this program (70GB) .
A question: Is anybody running flightsims of an external hard drive?............Is there any loss in performance using an external hard drive compared to an internal drive?

[Peppermint]

To be honest, I hope X-plane stays AWAY from going in the direction of being like FSX. X-plane actually has a 'real world' look to it, at least compared to FSX which seems like a cartoon.

I played the X-plane 9 demo about June last year, on my old machine. The FSX demo on my old machine would struggle to get 20fps at the lowest settings it would go. The X-plane demo on the other hand, much better. I couldn't get it to display the FPS, but I tell you, with the settings maxed out I was getting at least 20fps, not quite smooth enough for my liking, lowered the settings to mostly high-medium ratio, FPS jumped up to at least 35, which is smooth for me to play. I didn't get the time to mess around with the settings, seeing as it took about 5 minutes to load, and only a few before the joystick stopped working (part of the demo).

Honestly, I don't think there's much more X-plane needs other than a few updates, some better ATC, some better and easier to use menus, better sound engine and a bit better weather. I actually ordered X-plane 9 the other day, so I'll have time to mess around with the options and see what it can really do.



Personally I feel that FSX had to much potential, but fell WAY short of the mark. In my mind I saw it as something to replace FS9. Uh ah, UH AH! FSX is how many years old now? 3? Yet today, on a pretty high end system, it still can't run too smoothly. Yet when FS9 was released, it only took a short time before the hardware was able to run it well. Now that I've seen what it's going to take to run FSX well, I just don't see that it's worth it. The only thing FSX has over FS9 now, is the water and self shadowing. Nothing else. Those are 2 things that FSX will always have over FS9. But I'm not going to be using FSX as much as 9. Just realised I dragged this off topic .


As for X-plane....well we'll just have to wait and see. A lot of FS users I reckon will find it hard to move on to X-plane or other sims (unless MS can make another in time) and lets face it, there's not many sims out there. I can only think of Flightgear and X-plane.

[CathyH]

QUOTE (Peppermint @ Feb 8 2009, 03:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

To be honest, I hope X-plane stays AWAY from going in the direction of being like FSX. X-plane actually has a 'real world' look to it, at least compared to FSX which seems like a cartoon.

I played the X-plane 9 demo about June last year, on my old machine. The FSX demo on my old machine would struggle to get 20fps at the lowest settings it would go. The X-plane demo on the other hand, much better. I couldn't get it to display the FPS, but I tell you, with the settings maxed out I was getting at least 20fps, not quite smooth enough for my liking, lowered the settings to mostly high-medium ratio, FPS jumped up to at least 35, which is smooth for me to play. I didn't get the time to mess around with the settings, seeing as it took about 5 minutes to load, and only a few before the joystick stopped working (part of the demo).

Honestly, I don't think there's much more X-plane needs other than a few updates, some better ATC, some better and easier to use menus, better sound engine and a bit better weather. I actually ordered X-plane 9 the other day, so I'll have time to mess around with the options and see what it can really do.



Personally I feel that FSX had to much potential, but fell WAY short of the mark. In my mind I saw it as something to replace FS9. Uh ah, UH AH! FSX is how many years old now? 3? Yet today, on a pretty high end system, it still can't run too smoothly. Yet when FS9 was released, it only took a short time before the hardware was able to run it well. Now that I've seen what it's going to take to run FSX well, I just don't see that it's worth it. The only thing FSX has over FS9 now, is the water and self shadowing. Nothing else. Those are 2 things that FSX will always have over FS9. But I'm not going to be using FSX as much as 9. Just realised I dragged this off topic .


As for X-plane....well we'll just have to wait and see. A lot of FS users I reckon will find it hard to move on to X-plane or other sims (unless MS can make another in time) and lets face it, there's not many sims out there. I can only think of Flightgear and X-plane.

The ATC engine is being looked at, If a text to speech engine is still to be used I will use one of the Cepistral voices I have for VOX ATC, the are still a bit robotic, but they sound a lot better than MS Mary!