http://www.x-plane.com/

Grabbing it now...

BeachAV8R

When you get it==impressions? Know it may take awhile, but...ASAP? Pls?

Yeah, the download looks slow, but I'll be happy to post some thoughts. Still can't figure out why SimHQ didn't get access to a preview copy. No marketing at Laminar apparently..

Cool thanks for the heads-up BeachAV8R I will check it out mostly based on your past heli articles... not sold on the fantasy ground scenery (which I avoid in FSX) but a good flight model would be cool so worth a try.

Torrent seems to be going slow too 100kb/s but lots 1300 peers downloading so should pick up soon...

Hmm.. Trying out the torrent right now.

Looks like I won't be able to post my impressions for 3 years and 41 weeks...

Not having a joystick/HOTAS sucks.

Forget downloading anything for a few days. Every idiot in the US is ordering stuff online now
consuming all available bandwidth.

ps I just now ordered TrackIR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Downloading!!

Thanks for the heads up Chris, downloading. It seems to be moving a lot quicker now.

Torrent is going better. I'm 10% done and an estimate of 4 to 5 hours remaining.

Yeah mine has reached 450kb/s now and will be done in 1h40mins...

I won't be able to touch it tonight though. Heading to the in-laws for dinner soon. Guess they wouldn't appreciate me setting up my HOTAS and computer on their dining room table amidst the festivities..?

Beach, honest question, you fly planes,do you actually enjoy sims ? Or do you use it as a tool ?

Heheh yeah I am oncall for work and could probably excuse myself to go into the home office to VPN in and check things out, but would have a hard time explaining the HOTAS too instead of the work laptop :P

I enjoy them immensely. I credit sims for leading me to this wonderful real life job. I spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours flying SubLogic ATP, FSII for Commodore 64, Solo Flight, etc..all before I ever started flying for real.

So it is entertainment first, but definitely has some crossover to the real world. Not to brag, but when I go to simulator training every 6-months I do very well. My coworkers credit it to the fact that I'm such a nerdy, techy computer sim guy. No doubt spending so much time looking at virtual instruments improves the scan. Particularly combat sims like Black Shark or DCS: A-10C where you are multitasking so much. I really do think it improves your overall situational awareness in the real world.

Well, you are certainly an asset to this board!

Torrent was fast for me. Have a video uploading to youtube and should be live in a couple hours, 1080p and it looks great. Just an FYI about the views in X-plane 10, they are all new and you must learn
them quick to see what you want in 10 mn.

I've heard of X-Plane, but never tried it. I hated the flight model in FS9; it felt too 'mushy'. Any of you real-world pilots: is the flight model realistic in X-Plane? How about aircraft availability?

Got home. Fired it up. It barely runs on my 3 year old machine. Staggers. Only looked at a few aircraft so far, but as usually the initial impression / marketing scenario is completely (and totally) wrong.

To wit:

FSX screwed it up years ago when, after the initial installation you were dumped unceremoniously into an airborne trike over some tiny airfield in the Pacific Northwest with about 5 FPS. The graphics looked terrible until you tweaked them, the FPS was terrible until you tweaked it, and you are put into an aircraft that you know nothing about, already airborne and that was that. It was just a terribly stupid opening impression for the game.

Fast forward X years to X-Plane 10 demo.

They put you in Seattle, so scenery density is an issue already. In - of all things - a friggin' 747. Who's VC looks like absolute garbage. Why? Why marketers why?? Why do you insist on still birthing products when the goal is to HOOK the user right from the get go?

Why not buy the rights to a really nice looking aircraft - like something from Carenado or something. Something simple, and familiar. Say, a 172 or a Warrior. Put the airplane at the end of a nice little GA field with some excellent scenery. And make it daylight for crying out loud. Don't make it overcast. Don't make the lighting dim. Make it look (cough), marketable.

Anyway - rant mode off. I've only just started to look at the demo, and I just figured I'd give my first (very first) impressions and why I think the demo puts itself in a hole right off the bat. They should focus group these things first (really).

Stay tuned for more.

BeachAV8R

Loaded up the King Air, Baron, and Cessna 172. The 172 is the best of the lot, but isn't an improvement over XP9 from what I can see. The 2D panel is just terrible because it takes up the full screen and makes it seem like you are sitting 6 feet back from the center of the main panel. The virtual pit is a much better viewpoint, but the textures aren't the crispest or sharpest. Carenado offerings for X-Plane would have really highlighted was it possible with X-Plane.

I moved the plane to an airport outside of Seattle and cranked up the details to max. It was more playable in that rural area, but still tough on frames. But I was surprised that the airport Bremerton(PWT) (at least in the demo) was just concrete aprons and runways, no real scenery to speak of.

I'm getting some funky graphics stuff going on too. The new view systems seems better, more intuitive since it uses the Shift 1-0 keys instead of just all over the keyboard. But when I go to fly-by view the LOD or something adjusts and parts of my plane fade away to nothing (like the wings or wheels) while the rest of the plane is still there. I don't know if that is my system or something with the demo..

The HDR effect seems a bit odd to me. Like everything is just a bit like watching a Barbara Walters interview with that soft glow attachment. Weather and clouds look great so far.. More to come..

Wasn't the 747 done by jrollon who did the payware CRJ for XP aslo?

Downloading with the installer on my Mac Pro atm. Is going SLOW

Thanks for the feedback BeachAv8r, my first impressions were similar to yours (low FPS and the scenery is pretty sparse) it's just good to know it is not just my system not liking it.

Hoping somehow the demo snuck out with some old code or bad settings or something, but if this was meant to make me go buy the full product I definitely felt the same disappointment I did when I first brought FSX home from the store and installed it (then put it on a shelf for more than a year).

Beach, you are definitely right about the marketing aspect, but after reading an interview with Austin Meyer I got the impression he didn't give a crap whether anyone liked XPlane or not; the customer just didn't enter into the equation.

Frankly, I cancelled my d/l after reading your initial review. Just lost interest for this huge megafootprint on my computer.

Dito that. Judging from the pics there is nothing, which is better than my FSX (with many addons of course).

Well X-Plane 9 is way better than FSX in some respects, and not so good in some others...
IF they have addressed the failings in v10 then great, but the omens don't seem good so far.
I think Austin knows what he wants to do, and doesn't 'play to the crowd' in the way Microsoft does.
Maybe not too diplomatic, but the intent is to deliver a better product, more simulator than game.
Certainly better screenshots are less of a priority than a better flight model.
Cheers
Keith

Most comments on the difference between the MSFS series and the Xplane series is the flight model in Xplane beeing more realistic and MSFS being "on rails".

There is a lot to like in XP10, but I'm still getting over the shock of the poor performance (on my admittedly long in the tooth system) and the really poor decision to have the default starting aircraft be such a poor first impression (terrible virtual cockpit). They would have been better off going with the nice (L-19?) that JKallinen features in much of his impressions video (nice job Jim!)..



What settings did you use on the Jim..? And what are your computer specs?

BeachAV8R

Toyed around with it, flying the C172. Agree with Beach on the startup. No Wow whatsoever. Poor frames on a Quad core OC'd and a GTX470. Frames in the teens over populated areas and mid 30's in the countryside. Played with the graphic settings and so far tweaking the frames only gained a few. I believe the demo is not optimized. Flight model is fluid, C172 stalls, spins, slips as expected from an Xplane sim. Still setting up all the controls on my X52. Controls are still funky in the setup on the Xplane series.

Really no Wow factor so far.... Will tweak some more, maybe I missed something?


SlackAdjuster

Computer specs are in my sig.
Thanks, but that video was made upon opening the demo for the first time. I really hate the fact
they changed all the view keys and I must learn them all over over again. Made it difficult to plan
any video captures. Wish they would have left that well enough alone.

I did test turning up the object density and cranked up the roads and tried the HDR. Those slowed me
down some from my original startup and fraps showed I was getting around 45 to 50 fps around the airport.

Will be doing more testing today with the settings to find the sweet spot, X-Plane has always been this
way. And as for Mr Meyer not caring about the customers, nothing has changed there either.

BTW, the Stinson L-19 was a plane that was made default for X-plane 9 when it was released. There are now
3 versions of the acf in the Stinson L-19 folder in the general aviation folder.

The trees are flat. What's up with that?

From watching the posted videos, it both impressed me, and left me cold.

It probably wouldn't even run on my computer

(Processor Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz
Windows Vista OS Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with SP1
Hard Drive 320GB (7200RPM)
Screen Size 15.6" HD (1366x768)
RAM 4GB DDR2 667Mhz
Optical Drive DVD SuperMulti with Light Scribe
Direct Disc Labeling Yes
Graphics Card NVIDIA 9800M GS with 512MB GDDR3 VRAM),

BUT, I will probably give it a try. I've never given XPlane a shot, just remember trying a demo many years ago, and seeing snow blow across the runway, pretty cool.

The L-19 vid looked interesting, to say the least.

Thanks for the reviews and vidioes. Vidios? LOL.

It will run on your computer provided you set everything properly, and then you will start
to see what it can do. Patience is critical when learning the new interfaces. This is all new
to me again to, since they decided to change all the view keys. The most critical keys for
me. Rarely do I just sit in the pit to take pictures or videos. Eye candy is most important
to me.

I just spent the last 1.5 hours taking screen grabs of my X-Plane 10 settings from Rendering
options to Weather and taking screen grabs of the results. You will be impressed with just a
little change in the settings can have such a huge hit on FPS rates.

Will be starting a new post down in screenshots when I get time to assemble it. Lot of images
to process and explain.

Austin, in feeding his own ego and looking after his pals, insists on including utter sh*t as the default aircraft.

My best advice if you purchase ANY version of X-Plane, is to sh*tcan all default aircraft immediately and load up with either the acceptable freeware (Search for Brett, amongst others) or the superlative payware available. The default stuff is crap and Austin seems incapable of not shooting himself in the foot by including it.

Of all the default aircraft, I think I remember TWO that don't deserve to be automatically deleted. Unless Austin wakes up to factors such as this, his product will always be the ugly sister of the Microsoft product. Some of us just can't face the truth. He'd rather think that he's an aeronautical engineering genius than increase sales.

Cheers!

Rick...

Check the screen shots section Rick, some new shots.

Nice looking screens Jim. What's the helicopter situation looking like?

Cheers!

Rick...

Hold on, I am still learning the interface functions and setting my stick for
the helicopters has not been learned yet. Have found out a good share of my \
photo real scenery will work with the 9X base scenery installed. Huge job moving
around over 300gb of scenery to test tomorrow, the big 50 milestone will be reached
at 4am.