X-Plane advice...

[Michael Lockwood]

Ok,

 

I don't own X-Plane, I have the Demo installed so I can use Xtower when it comes out.

 

But I have been messing with the demo and I just have one concern.

 

The default 747 seems way to "sporty" Entirely to responsive.

 

Is that the more realistic simulation of a B747 or is the FS of a much heavier controlling aircraft more realistic?

 

Michael J. Lockwood

922991

[Christopher Serio 823884]

Michael,

 

This is only my opinion but the default aircraft that ship with X-Plane are just that.....default aircraft. They do a poor job of showcasing the sim's capabilities which has always been one of X-Plane's biggest downfalls. People install it, play with it for 2 minutes, say "I don't see what the big deal is...this isn't impressive" and then erase it never to look at it again. If you take some time and find some decent aircraft that showcase the sim better you'll be more impressed. The bottom line is that the sim really IS accurate. Many people have actually designed real aircraft with it and when they built the real aircraft they found performance to be within 1% or so of what it was forecast to be.

[Michael Lockwood]

Thanks for the reply Chris.

 

my concern is buying it. You don't know the contortions and promises I had to make to get FS2004

 

I can't afford to buy something, then turn around and not like it. So I get VERY careful about what I DO buy.

 

the main problem I have with the default 747 is, like I said, I doesn't handle like I would expect the 747 to handle. In XPlane it get airborne in less than half the runway and when you get it up, it yaws wildly at the slightest twitch of my throttle.

 

Michael J. Lockwood

922991

[Michael Sciascia 913061]

Try to download one of the 737 of Airbus you can find in this forum.

They are very well done (used for FDR display) and might give you a better idea of X-Plane potential.

I remind you that even with the demo you can fly for more than 6 minutes since after that time only the joystick stops working, but you can still use the autopilot

[Michael Lockwood]

ok, didn't know I could install new aircraft with the demo. I'll give it a try and see about it

[Michael Sciascia 913061]

I believe you can... just try to put the aircraft in a folder in Aircraft and see if it appears in the menu and if you can choose it.

It should work... I'll try tomorrow

[Andras Major 951189]

What do you guys think about the 737 in FS2004? I know someone who flies 737s for real and he says it's much too easy, nothing like the real 737. In fact, he develops the 737 for FlightGear, which is therefore to be much more realistic. I wonder where X-Plane's engine can be placed in relation to FlightGear (I doubt it's going to be any better than FlightGear's top engine JSBSim, though).

[Wolfgang Hilse 936361]

hi Andreas, hi Michael

 

I think, there is just the right plane for you, and it is Freeware. Look at http://www.benedikt-stratmann.de here you wil find the best 737-800.

There are two versions for x-plane 7.63 and x-plane 8.... , don't download the wrong version. There wil be an upgrade with autoland next year

it is not easy and not a game, it is very realistic

 

On his website benedikt stratmann wrote:

 

The target is to make the 737ng simulation a PERFECT SIMULATION OF THE AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS, not a perfect or easy game. This requires manuals (my part) that you have to study (your part).

 

Wolfgang , sorry my english

[Jim Reichheld 893822]

For a fairly realistic 737NG, check out the PMDG 737 series. www.precisionmanuals.com

[Jim Reichheld 893822]

ahhh, doh. Went over my head this was X-Plane forum, disregard my last. Sorry.

[Andras Major 951189]

I think, there is just the right plane for you, and it is Freeware. Look at http://www.benedikt-stratmann.de here you wil find the best 737-800.

There are two versions for x-plane 7.63 and x-plane 8.... , don't download the wrong version. There wil be an upgrade with autoland next year

it is not easy and not a game, it is very realistic

Just what I'm looking for. In fact, I downloaded it a few hours before your post, but could barely get it to work. I probably did something wrong while installing, I'll go back and try to fix it.

 

As far as I'm concerned, I'm fed up with MSFS. It never fails to mess up at least once in a flight, but today it was ridiculous, while there was literally no traffic in the area... I flew EDDM-LOWI and back with a Dash7 (which, as far as I know, is the best-modelled free aircraft for MSFS, and good fun to land at LOWI and other interesting places, with only 300m of landing roll if you're careful). I find the handling of the multiple overlapping screens outrageous (the scrolling system of X-Plane is so much better), and whenever I switch to X-Plane, I get the feeling that it's so more closely connected, I can always tell it exactly what to do. Sadly I haven't got the full version yet so I can't actually fly on VATSIM using X-Plane... I've tested XSquawkBox though, it works fine (apart from an issue which is currently being dealt with by the developer). Oh, and I use Linux for X-Plane, of course...

 

To be more specific about MSFS, what I find most frustrating is that its frame rate can sink to unbearable levels during a flight. This usually happens when I'm at a moderately busy airport on VATSIM (5 other planes), and no trick that I've been told solves the problem completely. Disabling multiplayer (I'm using FSInn) or the weather goes some way, but frame rate is still well below 20fps. I have a decent computer and graphics card, so I don't understand why one can't fix these things if the X-Plane guys obviously can.

 

As to realism, all I can comment about is R/C model aeroplanes (of which I've flown a few), and no full-size simulator program seems to model them correctly (I guess FlightGear could be made to, using the JSBSim maths). As a result of R/C experience, I can also tell that the Extra 300S shipped with MSFS is pretty poor... I guess that high-alpha and other scenarios weren't the main objective of the designers of MSFS's physics model...

[Michael Lockwood]

hi Andreas, hi Michael

 

I think, there is just the right plane for you, and it is Freeware. Look at http://www.benedikt-stratmann.de here you wil find the best 737-800.

There are two versions for x-plane 7.63 and x-plane 8.... , don't download the wrong version. There wil be an upgrade with autoland next year

it is not easy and not a game, it is very realistic

 

On his website benedikt stratmann wrote:

 

The target is to make the 737ng simulation a PERFECT SIMULATION OF THE AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS, not a perfect or easy game. This requires manuals (my part) that you have to study (your part).

 

Wolfgang , sorry my english

 

No problems, I don't expect it to be easy. I'm not asking of the difficulty, i'm asking the reality.

 

the default 747 took off in way to little runway. Is this accurate, or is it laughable. I would love to have Xplane if it's realistic, but I'm not shelling out 39 extra bux if it's not heads over heels better than MSFS2004.

 

Michael J. Lockwood

[Christopher Serio 823884]

Michael,

 

Don't forget, this is not MSFS. XPlane understand's physics. If you build a square and try to fly it in XPlane, it'll fly like a square would (ie. not very well). The default 747 was never said to be realistic nor were the rest of the default aircraft. The physics model in the sim was said to be realistic and it most certainly is. The way MSFS works is by a table lookup, NOT a constant physics calculation. This means that aircraft designers for MSFS need to tell the sim how the aircraft is going to fly. XPlane on the other hand takes your aircraft model and tells YOU how it's going to fly. A couple of people have done some funny things to play around with this fact. There have been grand piano's designed for XPlane with an engine on them to see how they'd fly. there's also a lot of futuristic looking aircraft out there.

 

The bottom line is this..XPlane's physics is subperb but it's default aircraft are not. If you download realistic aircraft models, you'll get the performance that you'd expect.

[Neil Parry 939159]

I had X-plane installed on my machine for several months....The reason I was drawn to it was that I wanted to build my own designs of aircraft. I ended up finding the design and build process and tool kit much too complicated for lil ol me, and have since put it down and not platyed it since.

 

After recently seeing the new scenery becoming available for X-plane, I may have to have another look...

[Christopher Serio 823884]

Neil,

 

I agree with you. The aircraft creation tools need improvement and they will hopefully be looked at soon once things die down since the new scenery. I found it very difficult to make my own aircraft but rather easy to modify other aircraft to fit my liking. You can convert a Cessna 172 to a jet powered spaceship with after burner in a matter of minutes.

[Stephen Sculley-Beaman]

WHy do we have to have xplane to use xtower...whats the relationship?

[Norman Blackburn]

XTWR is a plugin for XPlane.

 

Without XPlane the plugin (think FS Module) wont work.

 

It would be like having FSUIPC sitting on your desktop and FS still on the shelf in the store.

[Stephen Sculley-Beaman]

Shoot. I wish it could be made for fs lol. I want to be able to see the traffic when I control tower

[Norman Blackburn]

Download the demo of X-Plane. Thats all you will need.

[Mark Miller 956688]

HI, I have both X-Plane and FS2004. In my hummble opinion X-Plane has far superior flight models. Try stalling the lift on a microsoft model and see how it reacts. then stall the X-Plane model....X-Plane wins hands down as far as physics goes. X-Plane on the other hand has suffered from poor graphics, untill the new global scenery was released. now its advantages seem to be far ahead of FS2004 that I only pull FS out to print flight plans. X-Plane could improve in this area. as far as the default 747 goes, try loading some fuel to it before takeoff, it is not full in its default state. happy landings..

[Chanse Watson 834810]

I just purchased X-Plane + Global Scenery yesterday afternoon and is expected to arrive tomorrow. I decided to try X-Plane because my intent on flying a simulation is of flying an aircraft that flies realisticly. MSFS just doesn't cut it for me. Even though X-Plane lacks in graphics, remember that Microsoft is developed by a team whereas X-Plane is developed by a single person. Though, I've heard the updates/patches for X-Plane improve drastically as a new one is released.

 

I'll give my review when it arrives tomorrow.

[Andras Major 951189]

I'm using X-Plane 8.21 with the B737-800 from the Goodway team (great model, will be even greater once it's finished). The models included with X-Plane are nowhere near realistic, the addons are often much better.

 

One major problem I have is that the scenery reload pauses the simulator occasionally for as long as 10sec or so (on a fast computer: Athlon64 3000+ with 1GB RAM). In VATSIM, this isn't a good thing, but is something I'll have to live with until it gets fixed (if it does get fixed at all, Austin doesn't appear to appreciate the problem). Oh, the other problem is that there are no taxiway markings and the aerodrome layout is often totally wrong, but VATSIM ATC appears to be quite tolerant of you taxiing through the gr[Mod - Happy Thoughts].

 

Having said that, it's still way better than FS2004 because the frame rate is steady (on FS2004, in a busy area, it's pretty hard to shoot a visual landing, for example, even with multiplayer and weather disabled).

[Keith Smith]

Andres,

 

You really should upgrade to 8.3x (won't cost a penny). Not only will you see a 50-80% framerate increae, but your scenery load times will drop dramatically.

[Andras Major 951189]

Will VATSIM work with 8.32? I've tried upgrading, but both plugins (XSquawkBox and the B737) stopped working (if I had either plugin in the plugins folder, the program would crash on start).

[Keith Smith]

Andras,

 

Sorry for the spelling mistake on your name in my previous post. I use xsquawkbox without a problem in 8.32. Have you review the error.out file in the x-plane root directory after a crash? I can't speak to the 737 plugin, but I would think it's addressed on the xplanefreeware.net site, they're usually on top of issues like that.

 

Keith