JasonC wrote:
A more user friendly UI is really important as it is somewhat inaccessible to even serious sim users.
I’ve recently attended a presentation of Xplane 11 and I think it is a huge step in the right direction for that purpose.
You are exactly right, the original idea was an engineering sim and viciously difficult to operate for normal simmers. What should never be forgotten in this context is that in order to compete or even replace MSFS, it has to attract a HUGE number of sales to non-pilots and non-professional for the lack of a different word simmers. Neither MSFS nor any other sim could ever have survived only on the hard core simmers, at least not for this price. Prepare3D might be an exception as it is a spinn off of something which does exist anyhow and does not have to carry it’s own development cost to that extent therefore.
Austin is a very interesting guy indeed. It’s also quite unique that a product of this size is being kept going by a single person for most part. Of course that is a bit of a risk as well.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Austin is a very interesting guy indeed. It’s also quite unique that a product of this size is being kept going by a single person for most part. Of course that is a bit of a risk as well.
I used XP a lot when it was version 6 and 7. During version 7 he got new people involved, and 8 was a total rewrite more or less with more professional programmer(s). I have no idea how many people he has, but it is at least 2-3 I would guess.
In 10 you can still “make” aircraft the old way, but all the new and flashy ones are made in some 3D designer software of some kind. The basic flight model is still made the old fashioned x-plane way, which will also give you a basic shape.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
it has to attract a HUGE number of sales to non-pilots and non-professional for the lack of a different word simmers
Sure. But it has to attract developers too. They say that version 11 seems to stay with old issues which does not permit as yet mesh/texture independence (there is no serious texture compiler to accelerate texture development which is largely claimed to reduce developing costs). The lack of independence means that there is likely a risk of compatibility issues between a huge scenery loaded and other ones in the surroundings from other editors. No transposition mode as I heard either. Once again, this doesn’t affect the IFR simmer as much as those who are looking for a VFR scenery.
Nonetheless, first experience looked encouraging. We’ll see…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Neither MSFS nor any other sim could ever have survived only on the hard core simmers, at least not for this price.
Well, Austin did just that – I remember some years ago he bought himself a Cirrus with the proceeds of XPlane.
I hear XPlane 11 has a new user interface.
Yes, the UI has been completely redesigned in XP11. It’s much more user friendly.
Try the free demo here:- http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/try-it/
Hello and happy new year.
Once you try DCS there is no way to go back.
The complexity of Aircrafts and the thinking about how to complete a mission with others online, makes the majority of civil simulators to feel just boring to go from A to B.
But this is only my opinion.
I love playing in few servers online include the Greek Lock-On Greece as a primary.
There are even real life military pilots active in there.
Recently I finished my Aerobatic course in UK and what an excellent way to perform and practice what I learn real in DCS.
Of course don’t expect models to behave in the same way as real ones, but that`s the way sim`s works in general.
OCULUS RIFT is your best friend bmo.
alioth wrote:
Well, Austin did just that – I remember some years ago he bought himself a Cirrus with the proceeds of XPlane.
Things moved on considerably for Austin. I suspect the turning point might have been when Microsoft abandoned MSFS. He’s had a couple of Columbia 400’s and is now flying a Lancair Evolution, N844X.
Like Peter, he posts warts-and-all blogs about his experiences with the aircraft.
See here for an example: http://austinmeyer.com/2016/06/14/844x-ups-and-downs/
JasonC wrote:
A more user friendly UI is really important as it is somewhat inaccessible to even serious sim users.
A lot of people seem say that X-Plane is inaccessible and I can see that a total novice might not know where to start, though I would hope that even with a modicum of curiosity they would get going quite quickly.
However, I don’t know what a serious sim user might have difficulty with. Once installed, it takes about 5 minutes of customisation, all in a GUI, mostly to configure control axes and switch / key assignments (you can make anything do anything, but it’s quite straightforward). This is a one-off task.
I get that the UI looked weird. Part of the reason for the non-standard UI is the cross-platform nature of X-Plane – which is identical on Windows, Mac and Linux. No standard UI could accommodate that, so he wrote his own – which was somewhat crude, but it was simple and it worked. This has had a total rethink in terms of user friendliness for X-Plane 11 and is all the better for it.
If you want to kit out your home sim in a warbird (Spitfire) manner, this company offers these components.
You can fly in a Spitfire sim at the Maidenhead Heritage Centre which is full cockpit and three screens. Apparently all their kit cost several tens of thousands of pounds and they still think their graphics card is too slow.
You can fly in a Spitfire sim at the Maidenhead Heritage Centre
LeSving wrote:
In 10 you can still “make” aircraft the old way, but all the new and flashy ones are made in some 3D designer software of some kind. The basic flight model is still made the old fashioned x-plane way, which will also give you a basic shape.
That is the standard today, also in MSFS and it is what the customers demand. Their expectations these days onto the graphics and paricular the airplane graphics are huge and for the flying part totally irrelevant but mankind is a visual being, so they want airplanes represented to a totally nutty graphical detail.
This, also for Scenery, has been a HUGE problem in flight simulation, as this kind of toy playing is a huge ressource trap. But history has shown that for 99.9 % of the clientele for such PC based sims, graphics are far more important than anything else.
