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Medellinexpat

X-Plane Fan
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Everything posted by Medellinexpat

  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.
  16. And Xplane has always had community. I would not have been alone in expecting the early releases of 12 to be bumpy (quite literally with the weather as it turned out). Five minutes of watching any video with Austin in it would have convinced you of that. Tinkering, experimentation, new ideas popping up. Xplane is a journey, not a destination like MSFS.
  17. I thought it was a good month for the Sim. The weather is moving towards resolution and its a big improvement on 11. Several aircraft are now updated to 12 and even the Deltawing CRJ700 is now quite good, a huge improvement over their initial 12 attempt. What is noticeable is that several developers are providing multiple updates, Toliss, Thranda, Flight Factor take a bow. Less progress on the scenery side. I used to buy a lot of scenery in 11 but now I’m finding that many of the stock airports in 12 are pretty good and no doubt the community will make them even better. Some of the smaller airports need some work but perhaps that where the market will be in the future. Two months ago my mouse was hovering over the ‘buy’ button for MSFS. Now 12 seems to be very much headed in the right direction. Shout out to Navigraph and Simbrief as well. When Simbrief was ‘taken over’ there was justified concern. But that new Simbrief interface? Very nice and combined with Navigraph charts an excellent end to end solution. One issue, SAM. Some scenery developers need SAM for their work to show, but why do we need SAM in 12? Any idea what Stairpoint is up to because at the moment SAM feels like legacy software that life would be better without.
  18. Really? Not everyone takes their flight simulation as seriously as you or I might do. Not everyone pours over every forum. Not everyone notices every small glitch or focuses on the next micro stutter. Like all those people who bought MSFS when it came out, suffered all the issues of downloading it and getting it to work and still being enthusiastic because they saw their house. All users, all paying the same amount as we do to Laminar. There will be further updates after it is released, just as there always have been, maybe in January. It may well be that Laminar intended the Beta to be better sorted by the holiday season but video sales in November and December are each generally around three times higher than any month in the year. It makes sense for Laminar to give up that potential revenue for another year? Plus MSFS 40th Anniversary Edition is due for release tomorrow. Many people when they select as Flight Simulator stay with it. Should Laminar give MS a free run at this years holiday market?
  19. Releasing in January would mean missing the important ‘Xmas market. Another month of Beta would have been nice but Laminar also need to be commercially realistic. Lots of money, particularly with younger users around the holidays - think Steam vouchers.
  20. I am not sure that Inibuilds have suddenly seen the light. To quote Inibuilds ‘To manage expectations there is no ETA for this (we are targeting some point in 2023), and will ensure items such as the new FM are addressed accordingly. At this time, it is only the intention to update the A300V2. ‘ Some point in 2023 is not much of a commitment and at the same time the A310 and Beluga are being walked away from. No ETA doesn’t sound much of a plan. It is charitable to suggest they are now listening to their customers. What is more likely is that they have seen that XP12 has some level of success and that XP11, at least in terms of new sales, is not going to bring many new purchases going forward. So a lick of XP12 paint and stick it in the store for future sales. Updating it to be compatible with XP12 sometime in 2023 is not the same as other developers like Flight Factor and Toliss are doing, updating for XP12 compatibility and then having a development path going forward.
  21. Lots of reports on the forum about the installer triggering a significant Windows Defender security alert. Not the first time Xplane users would have encountered that but a response from the developer might not go amiss. Like others I’ll wait for some feedback before installing.
  22. Many of the XP12 upgrades are free and some of the sceneries look better in 12 than 11. My point was why are people releasing new XP11 content? While I understand existing xEnviro users will welcome the XP11 update are there still new buyers for that at $70 a pop? Basically that’s the price of XP12. Some developers seem to be halting releases until they have XP12 versions that they can release alongside developed, but unreleased, XP11 versions. Boundless has both Inverness and Lands End effectively ready for XP11 but now being amended for XP12 before any release. To me, if you want sales that seems backwards. Why not develop from scratch for XP12 now? Maybe I am missing it and there’s going to be a strong XP11 market for a while?
  23. I was reading another article on this today and there was the quote ‘Laminar Research have turned down the idea of bringing xEnviro into their newly released simulator’ which seemed odd to me. As far as I am aware Laminar does not stop any developer from producing any add on (and without any reimbursement for riding on the coat tails of Xplane) although of course they might not have included them in the group of developers getting early access. Whether this product has a future, with XP12s focus on the new weather engine is questionable. Continuing to develop for XP11 is an interesting strategy, with apologies to everyone who isn’t planning to upgrade, but it does seem to me that XP12 is already well on the way to demonstrating that it is going to be a big step up from XP11. When I see developers releasing new XP11 sceneries it seems an odd move to me. There’s very little new XP12 content available why not focus on that market? No doubt Thandra with the Stationair have been making hay with the only GA payware aircraft for XP12 at least until the recent Aerobask Diamond update.
  24. Seems like a great update and my first flight was fine. I do notice quite a lot of wing flex in some of these XP12 updates. Is it XP12 weather or the aircraft modeling? The wing flex would not make any nervous flyer happy. The Org store is doing a great job in making these XP12 versions available quickly but is not including them in the updates tab on the store. All the more reason to watch this site, and Xplane Forum to be aware of XP12 updates as they become available but something for the Org.store to fix?
  25. @olderndirtI too have a lot of payware scenery. My guess is that much of it is not going to be updated and in many cases a new scenery, at best with a discount, will be released. Those scenery providers who are still active may provide updates but that a lot of older material won’t be. From those developers reporting on their XP11 products most seem to have one or more glitches in the packages. Some issues might get resolved by Xplane12 updates, say poor performance at night, but others like levitating buildings will be up to the developers. Boundless are a pretty good example listing discovered issues for their sceneries on the boundlessdirect site, through a link on their home page. One other issue is where you bought your sceneries from if you then need XP12 updates. The Orgstore is making them available pretty quickly but others, like the Inibuilds store aren’t built to have more than one version so purchasers from there are on wait until they change, if ever, their store.
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