copacetic4

Fair enough, I can appreciate that.  I’m definitely the average punter. Enjoy the cruise - just don’t pay steerage class and expect the Royal Suite! 😉

Well, that was depressing - I didn’t realize I was enjoying such a flawed simulator this year.  Is XP12 perfect? No.  Has it continually improved since release? Yes.  Does Laminar have a plan to keep improving it and address the areas that many users are still unhappy with?  Yes.
 

This is an extremely complex piece of software that simulates one of the most complex human activities.  We use it for entertainment and training.  It costs us what?  Well under $100 with free updates between major versions.   Yet we’re supposed to be despondent due to an imperfect but wholly functional, and improving, product?

 

I love your reviews Stephen, but it may be time for a break from reviews for a while. 

59 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Nice reply thanks. Personally I lived in that bubble, pretty well over the last four years, I even thought I could have gotten away with it for XP12. But the problems starts once you update or upgrade one component, then you get a cascade of items in wanting to be upgraded, it is like a falling of the cards, same last year with my iMac, it was a 2009 series computer that ran all software from that period perfectly, but with the subscription model, they force you to upgrade the software. The photoshop software worked, or still does work fine, but Adobe canned it. So the machine is now redundant... I will say this, on the other side with faster computers and the up to date software, and that mega power card, it is a nice (if expensive) place to be S

Yep, I’m running on borrowed time and I know it!  Plus, I really want to go to a 3-monitor setup so I do look forward to my next major full system upgrade.  Fortunately prices seem to have come down a bit and hopefully later this year I’ll take the plunge.  Until then I’ll keep following your reviews.  Great stuff, it’s why I bought Aerobask’s excellent Phenom 300 and it’s been my “go to” ever since.  And happily they didn’t waste any time getting the Phenom updated for XP12, definitely one of XP’s premier 3d party developers.  

Stephen, Thanks for the monthly behind the screen and the aircraft reviews, I always look forward to them! 

 

With your litany of New Years issues just after an annual cleaning, my first thought was “hardware,” so glad you figured out that part.   
 

FWIW, I’ve been running XP12 through the latest release on a GTX1070 and i7-7700, and as long as I don’t overclock the GPU I haven’t had any problems with Vulkan device loss errors. I don’t always run the latest NVIDIA driver either.  I am currently on several versions back, which has been stable, and unless I start running into a new issue I probably won’t update the video driver for a while as just updating the driver never seems to improve anything visually on my system, it just increases the chance of breaking something.  
 

I run mid-range XP graphics settings locked at 30FPS with only a few basic add on/plugins, default scenery and I can’t do 4K, so it’s not as pretty as some of the screen shots I see posted.  But, it’s smooth, looks “good”, and flys well…all I can hope for with my investment.  Point being, a relatively low-end (these days) almost  6-year old system can work with XP12 if you aren’t an expecting to push the settings to the high end across the board and reach MSFS visual nirvana that so many posters want to tell us about…;-) 

Are we flying the same aircraft? I don't think so! I respect opinions but Carenado are currently leading the pack and not following, In areas yes they could improve like with their still 2D menus, but on the flight performance areas they are class leaders...

I see this is an older review Stephen, but Thank You for it. Looks like the Citation would be a good add to my 690B Carenado, which I really like. I look forward to seeing their next update to an already great looking and flying aircraft.


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