Ive been taking a few shots over the last couple of days. I almost forgot about them, so here they are.

Rob

All pics are vanilla? I have the game but my PC can't handle it

Wow Scoobe, that Archer really looks nice and your screenies are looking great, they should put you on payroll as it's making me want to revisit it since my poor first impressions on the demo.

What poor first impression? Cuz most default aircraft are ugly? Now Carenado, soon PMDG --> best sim available.

good stuff

Thanks,

I was not impressed with the demo either. I played with it for a little bit and deleted it. But I kept having this nagging feeling that there was more to it than the demo was showing, so I ended up buying the full version which I had a feeling I would regret. I didnt.

The default planes are not very good at all. IMO. they look dated and fly just as bad. It wasnt until I bought a few payware planes that, I really saw what Xplane was capable of. Not to say that all the payware planes are all great, but like FSX some are better than others. The Carenado planes and the CRJ are my favorite planes from any Flightsim Ive used. Then I bought some scenery addons to build up the Xplane world and I was hooked. I converted all my Aerosoft Cities scenery from FSX and that fixed some of the default cities from XPX. Xplane requires you to play around with joystick settings and sensitivities to get a good feel. Something I never had to do with FSX.

I spent a few days playing around with the rendering settings, because everything is so different than FSX. With FSX I knew what everything did and what its limitations were and what settings did what. With XP, it was like having to start learning all over again. Anyone who does try XP, needs to devote lots of time to playing around with the settings and find a good balance for your system. Xplane 10 requires a hefty system and decent video card. FSX didnt care much what video card I had, but Xplane does, so does ROF for that matter.

In the 2 months that Ive had it, there have been many updates to its performance and I can now run it with most settings high and still get 70 FPS! this on an overclocked 2600k @ 4.8 ghz and an Nvidia 560ti (also overclocked). Although I dont have an ATI card, I hear that XPX curreently has issues running on ATI cards, but they are working on it as well as other bug fixes and enhancements. Im not recomending anyone to go and buy it, but I do think X-plane will be a big player in the Simulation world in the next 2 years or so. Its just not fully ready for that role yet, but will be once there are more bug fixes and more 3PD's jump on board.

For now, Im enjoying it a lot and eveytime I use it, I find more things about it I like better.

Rob

What payware airports, if any, have you pruchased and what do you think about them?

I am considering fleshing out my XP10 install a little. Gotta have some nice scenery to match the CRJ. lol

I purchased Sanfransico http://www.scenery4xp.com/GOLDEN_GATE/GOLDEN_GATE.html
Really nice scenery and it also comes with the area around SF including the golden gate bridge etc.. It looks fantastic.
I also purchased Laguardia airport which is also well done, but its just the airport. I live in new York and combined with converting Aerosoft's Manhattan X from FSX, it makes NY look great. Just missing good JFK scenery now. Ive also converted most of my Aerosoft City scenery from FSX and they work just fine in XP10.

Rob

I may have to check out the SF Scenery (I used to live there and do a LOT LOT LOT of flights there in-game).

I am glad to see that Aerosoft is starting to produce XP10 scenery. Intertesting comment from Mathijs at Aerosoft regarding how the XP10 airport they are working on actually looks better than the FSX version.

What resolution are you running and what settings do you use?

Since you asked for more details, yeah very poor impressions first from terrible performance since I was running ATI5870 at the time, the default C172 was ugly inside and out, the ground scenery looked unrealistic, the airfields besides KSEA were bare with not even any buildings or static planes etc.

Look I'm not bashing XP10 purposely, I could tell it has lots to offer, but the XP10 release was really hyped up in a lot of places as being a huge evolution from XP9 and FSX with these great ground object and detailed roads that you could land on, and so I downloaded it with pretty loaded expectations and I could tell the FME was good, but the poor <20FPS performance that didn't allow me to use AA, simple scenery, objects really left a poor first impression for someone used to FSX+Orbx+Payware planes and 45-50FPS.

But I'm not a FSX or XP10 or Flight fanboy however and am definitely open to impressions being changed, and since I've now changed GPU from ATI5870 to GTX 560 similar to Scoobe's, I think it is time to update my XP10 demo and give it a new try, especially since I now see Flight will take years to get more hardcore sim stuff, if the updated XP10 demo has more potential I may dive in and pick up a Carenado payware plane while I am at it to give it a fair shake.