Jump to content

Medellinexpat

X-Plane Fan
  • Posts

    136
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    6

Medellinexpat last won the day on March 5 2023

Medellinexpat had the most liked content!

Recent Profile Visitors

6751 profile views

Medellinexpat's Achievements

Advanced Member

Advanced Member (3/3)

10

Reputation

  1. I was surprised how much these changes have made to the scenery. It was impressive before, but to me it felt a little sterile. Now that’s anything but the case. Frame rates remain very good despite all of the clutter and interior views.
  2. Thanks, bought this yesterday and your review is very accurate. The scenery is certainly good enough for me to consider other efforts by the developer.
  3. Out of interest, and before I buy this, did you revisit the scenery in later versions of XP12?
  4. Bought this on the basis of your review and also if Aerosoft is putting a foot in the water with XP12 why not encourage them. Not a bad scenery, a little heavy and turning to the south lost me 8 fps. Nicely populated by Traffic Global although the traffic flows seemed at odds with the winds, Notably sceneries seem to be moving to the $30 level, something that won’t encourage MSFS users to move, but given the smaller market acceptable. if you know how to install add on scenery the use of Aerosoft One will annoy. No issue with developers finding ways to protect their content, but its a different process. If you keep things clean and tidy Aerosoft One will muddy things a little. Notably XOrganizer picked up the new folder without prompting. Note an extra copy of SAM is downloaded so check any prior links and installations. If you haven’t used Aerosoft One before the instructions on the Org Store download page explain things. The FAQs on the Aerosoft One site really focus only on content bought directly from them.
  5. Thanks to you and the team for all the content this year. Well written reviews of new product are an oasis in the desert of endless, lengthy, biased and just generally tedious Youtube reviews. Why spend three and a half hours riding along with Captain Crunch when you can learn far more in five minutes on here.
  6. Not many expected MS to reenter the Flight Simulator market. When they did, that changed the whole Flight Simulator landscape and for me Laminar have been playing catch up ever since. Imagine a world where MS had not gone down that route and where that would have put X-Plane now. In reality Laminar’s biggest problem is trying to figure out what the MS plan is in the longer term. Will they lose interest again? Is the MSFS community large enough that the product can live without MS? Laminar in supporting multiple platforms and operating systems made their lives difficult, and its a model that hardly points to fast development. Almost the kind of strategy that leads to failure. But what happens now if Apple does become a more viable gaming platform, perhaps even the platform of choice? In that case the questionable strategy might look like genius.
  7. Given Laminar’s size wasn’t it always obvious that getting XP12 sorted out was going to a journey? A lost year? Personally I cannot think of a single area where XP12 is not better than XP11. I will admit to upgrading my hardware as I could see that the coming winter weather would eat into my FPS reserve. Not cheap, but then flight simulation rarely is if you take it seriously. Then there is the alternative. All of us will admit to having had a peek online at MSFS. After all those lengthy Youtube ‘review’ videos must have some purpose in the Universe. In a couple of minutes you will be wondering how MS hide the rails the aircraft seem to be flying on. You can see your house but as a Flight Simulator but is MSFS more immersive? Now, for developers this year must have been a nightmare as Laminar tweaked (sometimes one suspects with a digital chainsaw) the flight model. But several of them have ended up with some quite impressive add ons. Compare X-Crafts E-Jets in XP11 and now in XP12 as just one example. Presumably the worst of the changes are behind us and upcoming releases will eliminate issues like the Minecraft clouds. Or as a MSFS user I could be anticipating the release of landmarks of Antartica or preparing the digital rescue of the digital crew of a digital oil rig. The development of XP12 has been very Laminar. Austin is the Elon Musk of the Flight Simulation world - without the questionable tweets and the large numbers of children. Sometimes the rockets blow up and the gaps between the panels look suspiciously wide.
  8. The problem with Toliss, at least in XP12, is that they have worked so hard on continuous improvement of their Airbus range that its sometimes difficult to fly anything else!
  9. I haven’t bought much scenery for XP12 because in most cases SAM3 is needed to make the scenery work. While SAM3 is free, whether it really works in XP12 is questionable. What the ongoing development plan for SAM3 is also unclear. As the store listing and this review did not suggest that this scenery needed SAM3 I bought it. it does require SAM3 and I do not think it unreasonable that this be included in the requirements. There is no Traffic Global activity at this airport for some reason There is documentation but it is very poorly written Generally it looks promising, a big 5 gb download mind, but the SAM3 issue rankles.
  10. MSFS is such a small part of Microsofts business they can just use it as a promotional tool which is why Xplane should not try to go head to head with it. Xplane can survive as a niche product potentially becoming, say, a move up product for those who having experienced Flight Simulation in MSFS want something beyond the eye candy. MSFS development also seems to be moving more towards a game and Laminar needs to exploit that. I have just upgraded my system from a 2080 base to a 4080, not a cheap or easy thing to do, particularly where I live. I thought XP12 was good on the 2080, on the 4080 and the ability to move sliders to the right you really get an idea of just how good the product is. And there for me is part of the story. If you want fly complex aircraft add ons then you are going to need a decent rig (or spend your days posting on the forums about how poor your FPS is with your latest addition) and the cost of those add ons is tiny compared with the cost of the rig. Developer costs aren’t the issues but video card manufacturers might be. On scenery developers, the base XP12 airports, at least with the sliders up seem pretty good to me. The number of really good add on sceneries that have been produced for XP12 can probably be counted on fingers and perhaps a couple of toes but the reality is there’s an awful lot of rubbish out there hardly better than the stock. Scenery developers want to make more money, want the ability to charge higher prices. Go look at SFDs SFO. Do that and it will sell. On upgrade costs it always seems to me what was important was when the software was developed. Lots of developers released last year for XP11 and committed at the time that they would support XP12 in the future - some even saying XP12 would be supported ‘when available’. Now I bought those products as I saw them as part of my XP12 preparation. Not all of those commitments have been met and in my opinion when those commitments were met, unless an upgrade fee was mentioned, the upgrade should come gratis. However for much older add ons it is only reasonable to ask for an upgrade fee and in some cases sell the product as completely new. Good developers Like Toliss, Thandra, MisterX will always get supported by the community. Why? Because they provide excellent product. I don’t need every Thandra product in my virtual hangar or every variety of the Toliss Airbus A320 family but I buy them. And hopefully others do too.
  11. Very impressive in 12. Some of the colors seemed a little washed at the airport boundaries but a stunning achievement.
  12. Normally I would buy this as Chudoba generally produce reasonable sceneries, plus a the article says its in a good location. But it uses SAM and if you thought SAM in XP11 had issues, just wait until you try SAM in XP12. Developers really need to rethink using SAM because it provides no options. No SAM and you’ll be taxiing through a field of spring daisies. With the ground handling and moving jetways in XP12 SAM serves little or no purpose. And Stairport have been unreasonably quiet about their plans.
  13. I looked at the price and gasped. I sulked that there was no discount but by the end of the day decided to buy it. Wow. Absolutely the new benchmark in XP12 civil aircraft and excellent FPS. Be interesting to see if any Youtuber is up to flying this in competition against the best of MSFS. You may not see your house in XP12 but this might move the dial significantly about which is the better flying simulator.
  14. Towards the end of last year I bought a couple of the Aerosphere releases as they said (and still say in the Org store) ‘Support for XP12 when available’ Those planes still have no XP12 versions. Yet here we have a new XP12 release from the developer. So surely ‘Support for XP12’ is ‘available’?
  15. For me the 700 is a much better plane to fly in XP12 than in 11 since the last update. It still does have issues, the other day trying the EICAS selector lost me all of the screens, but now it does fly better including resolving capturing altitude and the ability to add passenger count. I am a little less overwhelmed by ‘three aircraft released in just over one year’ as I think that there is a huge amount of commonality between the three, even down to the included liveries being similar across the range. The 30% discount is useful (although when I tried it last week my org store discount code from the 700 for the 900 seemed to be expired) but again how much code is being repurchased? Yes the fuselage model needs extra plugs, the underlying data on the aircraft and the engines needs revision but is it 70% different. Don’t get me wrong the CRJ is a promising XP12 aircraft (although again a basic FMS) and adding one to your fleet makes sense. Its the cost proposition of having two or three of the variants that bothers me more. While we want developers to do well variant pricing is a murky area. With a 30% discount the 900 or the 1000 cost around $35 each. So, if you want the three that’s a rather eye catching $120.
×
×
  • Create New...