X-Plane Ultra High Quality Scenery Video Demo

[ddavid 149]

Found this X-Plane 10 Scenery demo video on Vimeo. Quite impressive! Here it is:

Cheers - Dai.

[brett 2,314]

Thanks for posting the video Dai.  I am not an X-Plane user and have mixed reaction to the scenery. It is very clear looking with realistic autogen like the cars and buses, especially the train, ground surface and the like but at the same time it looks kind of bland in color compared to RW aerial photos. Therefore I liked it and didn't like it at the same time, still pretty cool. Not enough to get me to switch over or even buy X-Plane at this point.

 

Makes me wonder how many FSX users have switched over to it and use it more than FSX or at least use it once in awhile or got it but do not use it much at all. Do newer flight simmers gravitate to it because it does not have the faults that FSX has?

[Tim_A 997]

The biggest problems with X-Plane are

 

(a) the lack of *any* scenery at default airports

(b) the Americanisation of the globe (if you thought FSX was bad for making everywhere look like America, X-Plane is even worse)

© the cack-arsed controls - I spend way more time fighting the sim than flying the plane

(d) the (general) quality of scenery addons is still in the FS9 era, even now. There are some standout sceneries, and it can easily be made to look as good as anything Orbx have cranked out, but lack of decent competition (HINT!) means many devs have not upped their game.

(e) there are no wide-area scenery packs (that I've found) to fix 'a'. Which is a real bugger.

(f) brain-dead DRM means you need a CD image of disc1 mounted all the time

 

On the plus side:

Airports follow the contours. You can have humps and dips in the runway just like real life.

All airport data is updatable, and updates are issued several times per year. There are many more default airports than in FSX

64 bit native, and runs on my Mac without having to faff about with Windows. Handles hardware well

Weather engine and visuals are really good out of the box

Good support from aircraft devs - Carenado etc

Tools exist to import scenery from FSX (although results are variable) and build autogen from OSM data

 

[brett 2,314]

Thanks Tim, sounds like it still has a way to go to surpass what is already available in FSX. I like the idea of contours on the runways though. Good luck to them because it would be nice to see a 'Wow' simulator come on the block to compete with FSX. We have to remember that FSX wasn't built in a day.   

[Jess-b 420]

Yup, Tim pretty much nailed it. Now version 10.30 should bring some much needed autogen updates that will bring region specific bits and bobs.

Interestingly, the video above has more than a few fsx sceneries converted for use in XPX, which is a bit of a cheat.

From my point of view, I'm beginning to lose the enthusiasm I had with the release of XPX. Aerosoft aren't producing XPX scenery at the moment though what I think is a lack of demand. The flood of 3pd's just hasn't happened as expected and worse, there's talk of xp11 development beginning. So two years from now, it'll be back to square one. X plane seems to promise much but consistently fails to fulfil that promise.

My 2p worth anyway.

Jess B

[britfrog 180]

nobody can create scenery for xpx and that is just one of the many problems with it. aircraft are easy to port across but despite being badgered by devs all around they still havent included a flatten command. according to what I have been told they are totally focussed on the 64 bit thing and that all other problems have been put on the back boiler. According to the scuttlebutt the powers to be there do not see the necessity to change the a/c controls to standardise them and many other things that were brought up at the dev meeting, so it would appear that it is destined to never be a main competitor to fsx /p3d

[brett 2,314]

Sounds bleak so far but you never know what's around the corner. Things in the sim world have been moving along pretty fast in some areas. Thanks for the input all.

[Tim_A 997]

Even Excel bowed to the (then) might of Lotus 1-2-3 and provided command and macro compatibility. If you want to win, you have to play the game; you can't sit on the sidelines and proclaim you're not playing (which is effectively what Justin is doing) and expect the market share to come running.

[Tim_A 997]

nobody can create scenery for xpx and that is just one of the many problems with it. aircraft are easy to port across but despite being badgered by devs all around they still havent included a flatten command. according to what I have been told they are totally focussed on the 64 bit thing and that all other problems have been put on the back boiler. According to the scuttlebutt the powers to be there do not see the necessity to change the a/c controls to standardise them and many other things that were brought up at the dev meeting, so it would appear that it is destined to never be a main competitor to fsx /p3d

 

What do you mean by "Nobody can create scenery for XPX"? There *is* scenery for XPX, just not very much, and not generally of a high standard.

[jaydor 345]

PMDG have stated that they are going the X plane route, then you will see an explosion of development..

[Kevin Firth 114]

It won't be supported by me sorry James, I'll be cuddling up with Mr Lockheed and Mr Martin

[phil white 274]

Great looking scenery but then again the default is quite good with amazing night lighting. I have been using X-Plane 10 quite a lot lately.