Medellinexpat

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. 

That is why I protested getting in more coders, X-Plane has grown beyond itself and a small intimate group, like bringing in Jim Keir on the ATC, it made a huge difference because it brought new resources and fresh thinking to the Simulator, the transition problems of Vulkan/Metal were huge, and it cost Laminar a lot of time in fixing it, then everything else got shifted along and X-Plane 12 suffered, so we suffered, a year okay, but an important year in maintaining users to the Simulator.

Behind the Screen : November 2023
 
Looking back through the "Behind the Screen" edition of 2023. One repeatable thing came up, I was always rallying against Laminar Research. Angry is not the right word, neither is enraged...   frustrated maybe, but you can't really get antagonistic to a body of people that just has it's own course to run. I suppose that if Laminar Research did react to all the naysayers moaning including mine, that nothing would actually get done.
 
But a frustrating year it has been (and it's not over yet). Looking back I will agree that Laminar got through a load of major issues, the timetable when followed, does actually cover most of the biggest issues at hand. There was also a few major turning points of the year, 12.04b1, late in February and certainly the 12.06 release in August. But in my over the decade with X-Plane, it was one of the hardest years I could remember, yes generally life has been hard in 2023, but along the way X-Plane 12 became a grind.
 
Don't get me wrong here. X-Plane 12 is levels above X-Plane 11, going back there it feels flat and boring. So no doubt the sheer vibrancy of the upgraded Simulator is a something of a marvel. But why is it so hard to use?
 
Having progressed in a timeline from X-Plane 9 to X-Plane 11, it was a nice progression of new features and overall a better simulator. Yes there was those bumps in the road, but it is nothing at all like X-Plane 12.
 
The new version numbering system will probably bring in a reset of X-Plane 12, in v12.1.0, due on the anniversary of the release of the X-Plane 12 Simulator 17th December 2022. This version release should be the final roundup of the outstanding issues, those Minecraft square clouds, real weather improvements, bloom effects, cloud shadows, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS), Anti-Aliasing improvements, but looking at that list a full year on, it is actually quite long?
 
After that going into 2024, certainly the Simulator will be finally in a stable form, with further actions in more of new (if small features) and upgraded avionics. So are we there finally, a stable and mature platform to do our flying on. Maybe, or I hope so. But for me in many ways it has been a wasted year has 2023, a long waiting period for things to get better, and more waiting until it did, but even at this late December date, X-Plane 12 is not quite, even a itsy bitsy still not quite there is it. Yes again we are again waiting for v12.1.0 to get the Simulator into a proper form and shape, a year on from it's release.
 
We are always aware the X-Plane is always a work in progress, I accept that as part of the journey of being in Simulation or on any computer based game, but there is a difference between progress, and the basics not actually not working, and at the core of my rants, this has been the problem or my quandary with a certain Laminar Research.
 
For years I couldn't land an aircraft, yes I am a Simulation content reviewer and I can't land aircraft? I practised, and I got very close, but over the years it all just felt just wrong? In X-Plane 12 I found the landings had just got even worse, in fact it was like landing on ice (it felt like taking off on ice as well). The complex conclusion was that maybe, just maybe I was "Shit" at it...  honestly I have never flown a real aircraft in my life, but then again, that is why I jumped at this Simulation lark, to have a go, and hopefully to get good at it.
 
After a decade or more of practising I though I was actually good at it, but too many of my landings were still laughable, with screaming tyres and weaving all over the runway...  the real pilots don't do that (a few in training do), but overall they usually make a really good fist of the landing. Yes I blamed myself, thought that my skills were actually not good enough.
 
Then something happened. Messers Austin Meyer, grand poobah of X-Plane was having a conversation with Jan, an airline pilot, who flies for Lufthansa, and noted that in X-Plane the aircraft when landing would slam the nose down...  now anyone that has flown X-Plane as long as yours truly, I have witnessed what I call the "Extreme Gravity Yank", when at a certain height (no matter how light you are on the approach and in the flare), the "Hand of X-Plane God" would grab your aircraft and drag it quickly down and bang it into the runway, crashing it down, leaving you to control a wayward aircraft. It's not realistic, and have rallied against it for years and years, also it is "Bl**dy Obvious, to every one except Austin Meyer's and anyone at Laminar that it did this abnormal behaviour. Anyways he has fixed it, fixed the inertia of the landings.
 
I put myself in a very nice little GA, did a clean takeoff, and went into a landing pattern, then came around to do a perfect landing, PERFECT, a totally sweet landing, on the centreline with clean braking...  and have done so in flights ever since v12.08 was released.
 
The point is, this is a basic action in aviation, in fact the most important action at the point of a landing, and Laminar has "only" just fixed it, JUST FIXED IT. You get my point, for years and years I have been thinking my landings (and takeoffs) were "totally Shit", and it wasn't me. And this comes back to the point of the X-Plane 12 release. The basics should have been resolved first, the focus should have been on the minute, not the big ticket items, and the shit weather and lighting should have been top of the list in being fixed.
 
It has been a total roller-coaster year, admittedly the second half was far better than the first, but it has cost X-Plane a lot of momentum, mostly in delaying developer projects and transitions to the new X-Plane 12 platform. Am I happy with X-Plane 12?
 
In some parts it is absolutely brilliant, but in others I'm not. The aircraft feel is not the same, but fine line jiggly in areas, and I am consistently messing around with my settings in trying to get a decent baseline. Go back to X-Plane 11 and that baseline is easily there, so it is not me, it is X-Plane 12.
Lighting has been my major bugbear all year, with extremely dark cockpit screenshots, even external images sometimes need a very healthy 20% to 30% brightness. My job is to show you how things have changed or the details of the systems and instrumentation. But in many cases this year, the images coming out of X-Plane 12 are just not at all workable. And Laminar have taken away all our earlier lighting sliders that could make a difference, in fact you basically have no control of your graphics at all in X-Plane today, it's a sort of Supnic (slap) to keep your hands off. Yes there are 3rd party tools that you can use to change X-Plane, but the premise is that it should be in there anyway. Please don't tell me to change the Nvida settings, because it doesn't work, makes your monitor brighter or more colourful, but not the screenshots coming out of the simulator. Playing with X-Plane's lighting is a load of tricks to get the required images, and I'm very good at it, but I can only twist the lighting so far. Hopefully that the v12.1.0 release will finally give us more options with the lighting. Don't mention the rain, and I loved the mention of not making it look like a Star Wars "Hyperspace Jump"...  that one had me rolling on the floor.
 
Annoyingly looking at the images coming out of X-Plane 12 as they are all quite sensational, so real world realistic, they in many cases have taken my breath away... the flipside of X-Plane 12's brilliance.
 
Laminar has also finally admitted that the DSF scenery is now almost 20 years old? twenty years, that is 2003, two years after the Twin Towers fell, and they have replaced them with another one since then. First they are going to fix the bugs in DSF and what can we do but put then put more stuff into DSF? but those DSFs are still decades old, its like piling shit on top of shit to make it look better.
But Laminar have finally admitted that also looking at what comes after DSF, and finally reckoned they have reached a point where they have ideas of stuff we'd like to do that goes beyond the current scenery system, well "yay Bl**dy hey".
 
Like the transition from OpenGL to Vulkan/Metal, changing the DSF's it's a(nother) big core change to the Simulator, so it is not going to happen soon, but at least it is finally up there on the "to-do" list, but is it high enough on the list that says "priority", again this is Laminar Research and they have a tendency to not focus on the fundamentals, they also admitted to spending more time in chasing the Professional Training Market, getting rid of stutters and giving you the required smooth Simulation. So will that mean that again the more important issues will go on the backburner while trying to satisfy a very minority market. Yes the Pro market does have great accolades in selling a Flight Simulator, a sort of "Stamp of Approval" on the certification of the software, but it's also a bit of a double-standard when the weather is not at all realistic and when you couldn't land a plane realistically, you see the point, without the basics right (which to be honest was always Laminar's forte), you are never going to catch the attention of the big boys.
 
The problem is with Laminar Research is they mean well, they really do, and have always punched well above their weight. But sometimes a bit more focus on the basics would help not only themselves, but for us the users as well. I never wanted to berate them, not every month on month, certainly when like most they are "really trying their level best" to deliver a sensational Simulator, one that everyone can afford and use.
But their priorities need to be more focused, not so widely scatterbrained, I mean am I really interested in Austin's N844X, or a replacement propeller for his Lancair Evolution. Someone noted I should lighten up on this, go with the flow more, but after this 2023 and all the painful struggles throughout the year, I'm not laughing at all. Sadly it comes out here in my thoughts on each month and that became the tone of the year.
 
So could 2024 become a reset for X-Plane 12. If the v12.1.0 does deliver it does have the potential to create a new starting point, and that totally depends on Laminar getting the weather elements finally right, not just the clouds. It's certainly come a long way in six months, but the wind elements are still there, snow with the Northern Winter is now important as well.
 
For me I am going to take this attitude over the (short) break. I usually service the computers, and do my annual year file and backup...  but more so this year, as I'm going to totally clean out X-Plane, throw away the current version, and reload in a totally fresh copy, even dumping my years old keyboard and joystick prefs, a hard one as they are time-consuming to reset. But I want a totally vanilla clean setup to start 2024, totally fresh, get rid of all the junk and hubris that build up in the files, you would be surprised on how much waste you accumulate over a year, then sing at the top of my voice "Auld Lang Syne" and let 2023 be long forgotten.
 
As usual there will be no December "Behind the Screen" 2023 issue, but our full yearly round up of the year 2023 review is to be published on 22nd December 2023, so watch out for that.
 
Stephen Dutton
5th December 2023
Copyright©2023 X-Plane Reviews
 

 

Problem with SAM3 is that it is seriously bloated for this job, yes I agree the developers have been MIA for awhile, and SAM needs attention

Yes it would be interesting with the Fenix, three areas are interesting, ToLiSS has done this development for a decade, more importantly are the amazing tools you get with the aircraft, in performance it is perfect, I can't see MSFS matching all three... they will gush when they have no decent comparison.

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. 

Having been around desktop sims since wireframe I have personal knowledge of the "Oliver Twist Syndrome".
To be fair to Laminar, I believe they knew they would need to make some drastic changes for this new version, not least to begin steps to replace the decades old OpenGL which has served from the initial X-Plane 1. Vulkan and now Zink is their chosen path for us Windows users.
We're now used to buying partially complete simulators, think Asobo. The Laminar "Early Access" option was taken up by many, who immediately copied all their favourite XP11 aircraft, sceneries and utilities across and then wondered why the thing was failing. The bug reporter was swamped with problems which had everything to do with compatibility. Bona fide bugs hard to find amongst all the flack.
X-Plane 12 went Gold on the 17th December, a little over 2 months ago. In that time there have been 8 updates and fixes. Each, in my mind has improved the sim in some way.
The Global default scenery is modified Gateway submissions originally designed for XP11. Many will be re-drawn to take advantage of the new layering and effects available in XP12. The Laminar scenery library has been updated to exploit these new elements and we can look forward to independent libraries to be similarly updated to encompass these new features. Ortho awaits a specific tool to maximise coastlines and 3d wave behaviour, bathymetry. Animated Jetways now default.
Users should not be fooled by the similarities to past versions, as the groundwork for serious expansion has been laid. All it needs is it's community.

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. 

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. 

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?

I have recently, thanks to Org store sales bought several new GA aircraft and have been flying around the summer skies of the UK and California, or at least the Orbx representations of them. And it has been very pleasant indeed. It might be my imagination but some of the recent Nvidia drivers also seem pretty good. Which led me to the thought that XP11 is really not bad at all, and (unlike many video games and simulations) I still have a lot more to do, to learn and improve - although my landings seem a lot more consistent these days. Then when I come online I read all of the calls for more news and a release date for XP12 and I wonder why. Perhaps XP12 out of the box will be better, but then like many releases it might take a few iterations. Now in XP11 unlike in MSFS I cannot really see my house, nor fly around a more accurate version of say London. But then XP11 does many other things better to compensate. And then there’s all my investment in XP11, not just the money but the time and the tweaking and learning it to a decent depth - although there is always more to learn.
So yes, XP12 would be nice, if only to get developers some much needed new sales. But in the interim I’ll just virtually fly, rather than seeking snippets from forums and videos. How does Guernsey to Swansea sound for this afternoon for example? Pleasant enough weather, but a little wet in the arrival perhaps?

Might be more interesting this time around... FlightFactor have costed their Boeing 767-400 currently at US$69, but will be US79 for X-Plane12, notable the upgrade fee might be US$10. Not the same price in X-Plane11 to 12.

it's a bit of a stretch to say the -400 is just a  3D and panel update? There is a lot more in there than that, more so in that it is a very nice aircraft thank you very much...

No the OSM in AviTab is chunky and slow compared to Navigraph charts, not at all my favorite MAP system, certainly from a Pro perspective.

As always an interesting article. On Inibuilds they always managed the message well. If you give vloggers exclusive access for reviews what do you get in return - good reviews. Make your forums only open to customers and then close threads before they get difficult and you start the magic of people believing that your products are without fault. Have a friendly discord and you get your fan base out telling the world that the A310 is the gold standard. Its not hard. Its planned, but its not difficult.
On the other side we have Laminar who manage this side of the business incredibly badly. Strange whirling light presentations, long winded interviews talking about the philosophy of XP12 rather than pumping up the new features. Personally I am not looking forward to the release of XP12 because with it will come a tidal wave of sewage, online posts complaining about everything from the known (that it will not be a free upgrade) to the unknown - that it now runs like a slide show on a ten year old laptop. XP11 to XP12 - an incremental update. Manage the expectations.
Now Inibuilds are on the other side and not every developer can be happy. Why did MS choose Inibuilds, with no track record on this or any preceding MS platform to be included as a default aircraft? Why did an A310 get chosen, hardly an iconic aircraft? If the MSFS A310 is study level (which I doubt) what does that say to the MSFS community about the cost of complex addons? PMDGs $70 or Inibuilds $0? Did Inibuilds get paid by MS for the inclusion or is it the other way around, a developer paying (or offering for free) an aircraft to get a lot of publicity and exposure with the community? In effect product placement.
Half way through the year and the one group of people to feel sorry for is Xplane developers. With the wait for XP12 sales can’t be great. If I can pick up a big discount on a recent Thandra release on the org store it may be good for me, but it is also telling me life is not good for developers at the moment.

NEWS! - Aircraft Release : Piper PA-28-235 Charger / Cherokee 235 by Aerosphere
 

 
Aerosphere Simulations have released their next Piper Cherokee aircraft in the Piper PA-28-235 Charger / Cherokee 235.
 
The Piper Cherokee 235 was introduced in 1963 competing with the Cessna 182 for the four-seater aircraft market share that the original Cherokee could not fulfill.
 
Piper added a stretched wing and 6-cylinder O-540 engine to the existing Piper Cherokee 180 and thus the Cherokee 235 was born. The Cherokee 235 also had an option to have a constant speed propeller added, and with the increase of HP and two extra cylinders, Piper included tip tanks in the stretched wing to bring the fuel total from 50 gallons to 84.
Then in 1972, Piper stretched the fuselage again by 5 inches and thus the “Piper Charger” was born. With the iconic “Hershey Bar” wing, and the 235 HP engine, the gross weight of the Charger increased to 3,000 lbs. The Charger sported new throttle quadrant levers that Piper introduced in 1968, rather than the “push-pull” style throttle and mixture that debuted on the original Piper Cherokee. 
 
The Piper Charger had an empty weight of 1,550 lbs. and with a max gross of 3,000 lbs. gave an impressive useful load of almost equally the same weight as the aircraft. This impressive gentry of the Charger gave birth to the following “Pathfinder” and “Dakota” models which included rounded windows and tapered wings respectively.
 
 The increase in total fuel means that the range also increased to nearly 1,100 miles under proper conditions. The climb performance at 3,000 lbs. was about 800 FPM which is typical from a reciprocated Piper of that era. That being said, the Charger, although few in production numbers, still boasts impressive performance numbers even to this day. 
 
Features: 4 HD (4096 x 4096) liveries with a plain white texture that can be used for custom paint schemes. Steam gauge classic general aviation panel with required instruments for IFR. Garmin 530 & 430 All gauges are 3D Detailed flight model and interactive 3D virtual cockpit with animated knobs, buttons etc. cabin door, storm window and front/rear baggage compartment door. Toggle button to remove/display yoke Compatible with HDR and normal lighting effects Many textures taken from the actual aircraft Virtual Reality friendly and includes the click regions and hotspots required for VR gameplay. FMOD sounds  

 

 
Since the quiet withdrawal of Carenado...  so then where do you get your basic General Aviation Fixes? vFlyteAir are still producing gems, but so are AeroSphere, like with their Cherokee Sixes B and C here now with the Piper PA-28-235 Charger / Cherokee 235...
 
Images are courtesy of AeroSphere Simulations
_____________________________________
 

 
Yes! - Piper PA-28-235 Charger / Cherokee 235 by AeroSphere Simulations is NOW available from the X-Plane.Org Store here :
 
Piper PA-28-235 Charger / Cherokee 235
Price is Currently US$29.00
 
Requirements
X-Plane 11 Support for XP12 when available Windows, Mac or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum - 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download Size: 198 MB
Current Version : 1.0 (June 20th 2022) ___________________________
 
NEWS! by Stephen Dutton
21st June 2022
Copyright©2022: X-Plane Reviews
 
(Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Rights Reserved
 

These are good aircraft although Inibuilds themselves are not the easiest people to work with. Both of this aircraft we recently on flash sale at hugely discounted prices (over 80% off). It was a flash sale but if like me you have paid full price for these not a good feeling.

@judeb maybe. Of course we don’t know how MS are going to price this anniversary edition so ‘free’ might not exactly be what it suggests. One wonders if Inibuilds will hide behind their agreement with MS not to provide an XP12 update? If that do that their flash sale on the A300 and A310, when this news must have been known to them, would be at the very least cynical.

I totally agree. I also paid full-price for these too. I hope they can at least work in X-Plane 12 when it releases.
 

I received an email for the flash sale(s) and took advantage - see they've become partners in the MSFS group which could be the end of their XP endeavors.  

On charging for updates to XP12 there are two sides to that. If developers do not update their product then they will have nothing to sell going forward. Sales of XP11 only product once XP12 is released will likely plummet There’s a balance between providing a service for existing customers in providing the update and using your existing client base to fund making your product sale able  to new customers. If developers do charge a fee will they be transparent about the work that was needed to justify the charge?
My view is the developers with older product, say the IXEG 733 (I know its not in the Org store) would have a case to charge a fee. Something newer, lets say the Inibuilds A300 or the Toliss A340 are so recent (XP12 was already on the horizon) then them charging would be less justifiable. 
If developers do charge a fee then they will also have to make some development choices. Going forward only the XP12 versions will get updates and bug fixes? Will they need to maintain two code sources for the Org store, the XP11 only version and the XP12 version for new customers and those who have paid for the upgrade? Messy. And then there’s the whole issue of protecting their product. Product key verification becomes more complex when there is the key for the original purchase and presumably a key for the upgrade (or some other sort of workaround).
 

@Almdudler Really? 😆 I respect your opinion but I feel that 95% of my customers completely disagree with you. These things take full time work to develop alone. Nobody can work for free and survive. Maybe check out the new version. 🤷‍♂️

Nice article as always.
 
In my opinion, regarding upgrading your PC, I suggest to wait and see how it will perform once XP12 v1.0 is out, I think you will appreciate the upgrade much more , further more I do not suggest to upgrade to the fastest Intel CPU, see X-Force suggestion in YouTube, pick the middle performer (1 notch down) for a more balanced price/performance.
 
Regarding the "too hard to implement features", On that side, I think that I side with LR when it comes to graphical performance (world rendering). If I understand them correctly, it was only when they transition to Vulkan/Metal they got a whole new set of APIs that allow them to implement some advanced rendering technologies in an easier and stable way, dropping OpenGL is the way to move forward since the desktop platform they are supporting are abandoning this technology too as a main rendering API.
 
My prediction, and I'm shooting randomly here, is that the textures day one won't see significant changes from what we see in XP11, but after the first year we might receive a whole new texture implementation (maybe it will be regionally and not for the whole world) once they will finish implementing their new texture technology for terrain rendering. Again this is probably won't be the case, but it is plausible since it is very hard and time consuming rebuilding the terrain textures while focusing on other time consuming technologies. 
 
Regarding City areas, I do not see LR investing in this part more than the minimal needed, they will probably continue relying on third parties autogen and scenery to fill in those areas. It will never be MSFS level, and in my opinion that is fine as long as there are good VFR point of interest implemented in the sim.
 
Cheers
Saar  
 
 

I believe that users should talk to the very available developers before shouting to the masses... I am very sure they will address your concerns, sometimes it is not the product that is the problem...

I believe people (on or in) these forums and social media are promoting (Aircraft's, etc, etc.) for personal gain.
I believe, (my guess)....about 10% are giving true assessments of these products.
I believe social media started out with people being (honest).
I believe its turning into cooperate media. (lie after lie.)