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X-PlaneReview's are Three Years Old!


Stephen

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X-PlaneReview's are Three Years Old!

 

Time flies, but here is X-PlaneReview in now passing into its fourth year. 1st August 2013 was the date a newcomer decided it was time to deliver the best news and reviews for the X-Plane simulator.

 

The legacy in today's world of fast moving information is simply to just survive. Sites come and go regularly, but doing a few scant posts is not what people require, they need constant content and good content and content they can rely on, my mantra is "If I love it, You should love it too" and that is at the heart of this site. No crap, just the good stuff!

 

The changes in this three year period for the X-Plane simulator have been immense, beyond anyone's imagination and it is that growth that keeps you wondering how much more can still be delivered, but like any area there is still a huge amount of change and development available to create a flying world within a world.

 

Reviews back then used to take two days and three at the most. But with the depth and complexity of today's aircraft and scenery, some coverage is taking a week or more to study and deliver. And there are far more add-on's released to cover as well. Once you had down times to catch your breath and that now again is rare and you are mostly just trying to cover it all.

 

So what has seen the biggest changes. In aircraft it is the depth of the systems and the sheer reality of the areas in which you now fly, what was brilliant back then is really just average now...  as the pace going forward is just that fast. Scenery is almost life-like real, shutdown your aircraft and look at so many sceneries with the ease of the visuality of actually being there. The scenery airport coverage is now just simply immense, but still only mostly concentrated within the North American and European confines, Asia and the Middle East are still very empty areas that do require more effort and application from developers.

 

The biggest changes is in the applications of plugins. Once your ramps were bare, but now your airport activity is full on with X-Life, WorldTraffic movements and brilliant ground support vehicles doing their work to your every whim. Block to Block start up to Shut down is now totally different, but also highly rewarding.

 

The growth is certainly not over. When I started this site, X-Plane10 was very new...  now X-Plane11 is now on the horizon. There is no doubt that X-Plane10 was the game-changer (pardon the pun) version for X-Plane. It went from a very loyal but thriving simulator to a world class application in one version, X-Plane may never be repeated in the amount of change it created as did the computer world around us in power. And X-Plane11 will build now on that foundation and we never know how much the new VR (Virtual Reality) headsets will change our simulator in the future. Or at least use some ideas coming out of Pokeman Go (but not on the runways, thank you).

 

Other changes lately are to the site as well. A new powerful Window's monster has lifted the quality of the images in detail and the running of the simulator in a more close to full extreme settings than the comprised settings of my older earlier iMac, I still prefer the Mac in screen quality, but you can't discard that sort of power when delivering the very highly demanded detail and complexity that is required of the site.

The site uses IP-Board's interface and there has been huge changes there under the covers this year as well. Biggest difference is that images can now be sized in the posts from full size to small images, and you may have noticed this over the last few months in the more versatile arrangements of the layouts. I can now highlight detail by a larger image and have smaller images for multiple items like liveries, but overall it looks far more professional and we have better layouts of the information. There has however been a slight drawback to the image size changes, in switching over it has compressed the blank spaces between paragrapth's on all earlier posts? It can be edited back to what is correct, and I have done as many as I can, but with now over 600 posts on the site it is going to take a fair time to cover them all and re-edit them.

 

I can't of course do this site without all the help and guidance of the developers, the X-Plane.Org community and the X-PlaneStore, without them I just couldn't do what I do, but the greatest gift I can do in return is to highlight their huge commitment to X-Plane, their incredible skills and imagination and the sheer pleasure they give to us in what they give up in time so we can enjoy and use their amazing work.

 

The overwhelming biggest reward is that the X-Plane community is now even larger and more productive than it ever was. Everyone pitches in and there is a real self-worth in that, and that is missing even in our real world today. This spirit shows that we can all just get on with each other young and old, and in all forms and nationalities with one focus in just doing something good for everyone else.

 

______________________________________________________________________

 

Stephen Dutton

1st August 2016

Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews 2016

 

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