An X-Plane newbie becoming uneasy with X-Plane 10

[OldAirmail]

I bought X-Plane 10 directly from their website after watching "

" on YouTube. It's hard not to get excited after seeing that video (well, part 1 & 2 anyway. Doesn't seem to be a part 3 or 4).

 

Over the past 2 months I've spent what time I could learning how to set it up to my satisfaction, learning the ins and outs of the program, and just learning to fly light aircraft with the excessive turbulence (which I just learned today how to minimize).

 

Today, I started to find out why even some major airports like Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) (460,779 aircraft movements in 2010, according to Wiki) don't have buildings. Even with the scenery maxed out and "airport detail" set to extreme, I had nothing. No buildings, no fences. Just runway and grass around the runway. Outside the airport I have buildings, etc maxed out. Cars and trucks everywhere. Streets and houses galore. Terminals? Gota go to KSEA for that.

 

Is there some setting that I‘ve missed????

 

When I installed X-Plane 10 I installed EVERYTHING. I have more than enough HD space, and power to run X-Plane maxed out so why do with less?

 

I live near Philadelphia and "fly" out of KPNE. I like to fly mostly prop planes, slow and low. So the scenery is of utmost importance to me. I also like fly to airports that I’ve done work at or read about. In all I have an interest in about 20-30 airports in the region, and I like to fly out a a few other places like Hong Kong, Geneva, and even little St. Stephan (LSTS) Switzerland.

 

I was hoping that X-Plane 10.20 11 beta might have more scenery in it. No luck there.

 

What I read today is that (basically) if you want scenery you need to buy it. I tried 2 free scenery downloads a few weeks ago, but they weren’t very good.

 

To pay $10 to $30+ for most scenery that ONLY covers a small area/airport doesn’t look like that good of a good solution to me. And most of the "large" area scenery that I do see don’t cover the area that I like to fly.

 

So my question - Should I put away XP 10, for now, and buy X-Plane 9? Will that give me a larger (and cheaper) airport/scenery selection?

 

And before anyone suggests it, I have absolutely NO interest in converting MS flight sim scenery to work with XP 10. Or putting buildings on the barren airports that I fly to and from for that matter.

Edited February 3, 2013 by OldAirmail

[RealScenery]

Hi OldAirmail,

 

Welcome to X-Pilot and the larger X-Plane community. Yes, it is a bit different than MS Flight Simulator and other sims. Another new X-Plane user had the same question here just a few days ago. You can see the discussion here.

 

While this is part of X-Plane's history, the scenery is a much higher priority now in version 10 and will continue to be so in  the future, with both Laminar Research and third-party X-Plane developers making scenery a top priority. In general, many of your comments above are correct, however, there are also many quality non-payware options as well, depending on the airport you're interested in. Many people, just like you, are creating their own airports, with tools available now for version 10. It's not difficult if you're willing to spend a bit of time learning.

 

Good luck

 

Eric

Edited February 3, 2013 by RealScenery

[chris k]

I started to find out why even some major airports like Philadelphia International Airport (KPHL) (460,779 aircraft movements in 2010, according to Wiki) don't have buildings.

 

Great KPHL scenery here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=11513

 

There's a *Ton* of scenery - Laminar provides provides the X-Plane fight dynamics, rendering engine, and the base terrain. 

 

The rest of us i.e. the 3rd party developers (i.e. other than the 2 people at Laminar research, who are busy coding and adding features to the above) provide the rest of the scenery; and most of the Aircraft too. Due to LR's size, it's uneconomical for them to do the airports. They leave that to the 3rd party scenery developers (just like the MSFS world). They also contract people to make most of the the Airplanes you see.

 

I dont know anyone who still uses the "default" airports in MSFS at all, either... so your net result is the same. You need to grab and install the scenery you want - luckily it's very easy process to add new Custom Scenery. (Far easier than Ive ever seen elsewhere) by simply putting a pre-made file into your /Custom Scenery/ directory. Poof! Done.

 

- CK.

Edited February 3, 2013 by chris k

[PascalL]

Hi,

 

LSGG:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16230

 

maps of available scenery:

http://www.xpscenery.net/index.html

 

Pascal

[OldAirmail]

RealScenery - "Another new X-Plane user had the same question here just a few days ago."

 

That is me, in part. Although I didn't expect RealScenery(.com type scenery) or (as in FSX) Magascenery coverage, I did expect a minimal attempt at basic airport scenery. But, as you and chris k point out, it probably was a bit more than should have been expected from such a small company.

 

RealScenery - "however, there are also many quality non-payware options as well, depending on the airport you're interested in..."

 

And that is one of my problems. Finding scenery for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, etc. will probably be relatively easy. Finding even basic airport scenery for many smaller city airports might be a problem.

 

In so far as Payware/non-payware goes, if I could buy a region or state scenery pack it would be worth it. Paying $10 to $30+ for each indevidual airport would be a bit too much. Then too, most of what I see for sale is for the scenic west coast/mountains/islands.

 

chris k - "Great KPHL scenery here: http://forums.x-plan...&showfile=11513". From that download page - "Brilliant scenery for KPHL by the MSFS scenery developers at SunSkyJet, converted with FS2X-plane."

 

What I see with that download is more than a little bizarre. But that may be the result of my downloading the X-Plane 10.20 11 (64bit) beta yesterday using "X-Plane 10 UPDATER and Installer". I kept expecting it to give me the chance to install it in another location as a separate instance. It never did, it just installed to my X-Plane 10 location. No biggie, live and learn. (And I have a whole bunch to learn. Including making a back-up first!)

 

For that matter is X-Plane 9 scenery compatible with X-Plane 10?

 

chris k - "There's a *Ton* of scenery - Laminar provides the X-Plane fight dynamics, rendering engine, and the base terrain."

 

Unfortunately, there is indeed a ton... Finding the airports that I want/need though is like trying to find that proverbial needle in a haystack. So many irrelevant needles crop up, in spite of trying to filter out the clutter. A case in point - a search for "x-plane" Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport download -fsx will pull up nothing relevant to X-Plane and the airport for downloading. Of course that airport would only be of interest to those who live, or work in the area. But it is an airport that I have been to in real life, and fly to for fun.

 

chris k - "You need to grab and install the scenery you want - luckily it's very easy process to add new Custom Scenery. (Far easier than Ive ever seen elsewhere) by simply putting a pre-made file into your /Custom Scenery/ directory. Poof! Done."

 

I could populate the airports that I most frequently use, but I would rather not. Between family and work I usually get to fly once every week or two. Populating small local airports could be an interesting hobby, but I'd rather fly. And don't forget what I said in my first post - I regularly fly in or out of about 20-30 airports (about 10 large and 20 medium/small). And note that that is "REGULARLY FLY". Not exclusively fly.

 

Thanks PascalL, the "XPScenery.net" is worth its weight in gold! I don't know how complete the list is, but it'll save a lot of time searching for airports

THANKS  .

 

 

But as I asked before, would buying X-Plane 9 give me better/more airport scenery? Or would I just have to buy/find/build/modify my airports for that too.

 

Or is it just a case where X-Plane 10 is so “new” that I have to wait a while? (And that one goes back around to "Should I buy X-Plane 9 until then"?)

 

 

BTW - Thanks for the time and help.

Edited February 3, 2013 by OldAirmail

[Orcair]

X-Plane 9 features similar design at airports. Laminar Research provides only the layout and basic features (taxiways, etc...). It is up to the users/3rd party developers to fill the world's airports with buildings etc.

As well, all X-Plane 9 scenery works in v10. It may not have the most up-to-date features, especially with lighting however it still works well.

Another option is for you to create your own airports. Using WED (http://developer.x-plane.com/tools/worldeditor/). This 2-D program takes some getting used to but it is a great tool in creating your own airports. Xsimreviews.com is currently offering tutorials that you can check out that will help you through the steps!

Hope this helps,

Orcair

[chris k]

And you can always ask for particular airports from the community.

Someone just asked for KGSP last week and greggerm threw one together.

Someone asked for C99 poplar grove -I tossed it together in an hour for them.

Luckily the xplane universe is full if helpful idiots like us (no offence Greg).

EDIT, easIert way to search is byICAO code. Scenery developers generally post the ICAO code as part of the naming by convention.

i.e. searching for "Ernest Rutherford/Lower Wakari Kakaori international Airport xplane" may not work, but "xplane NZDN" does immediately. I just had a look at the google search you tried. I would never do it like that (and expect it to actually work). Heh.

Know your ICAO codes.! These are where planes fly to. Humans are just ballast and/or cargo.

Edited February 4, 2013 by chris k

[chris k]

Heh here's another one.

"John G. Diefenbaker International Airport xplane". Nope.

"CYXE xplane" - Yup. First hit.

Edited February 4, 2013 by chris k

[Bobback]

Hi Guys,

 

My first post here.

 

As OldAirmail i share some of his concerns.

Just started with X-Plane and im comming from FSX. Actually i have only 3 problems with X-Plane.

 

1 - Lack of "complete" planes. 
I don't use the 2D cockpits anymore, its a long time since i don't fly using the 2D cockpit and i really didn't like to see the X-Plane "default" planes without the 3D cockpit. I love flying the C-130 in FSX, and when i saw it was included on X-Plane i found that awesome, but when i started and saw there wasn't a 3D cockpit i felt so bad... But i saw some people saying that X-Plane becomes much better around version .60-.70.

So maybe 10.50+ will be something more complete, i don't really know, i just expect it will.

 

2 - The ATC system

The ATC system on MSFS is very user friendly, i like it because i can just chose a plane, start flying and then i can just check the nearest airports and contact the atc to land on any of them, simple and easy. This sadly doesn't happen on X-Plane, but since X-Plane is very powerfull, there's probably a way to do something like FSX using plugins, maybe someone already did that and i just don't know. Anyway i haven't searched for it yet because i decided to assign some nav/com buttons to my joystick first, lets say i decided to include this on my learning curve, sometimes its just boring to check the airports frequency and have to manually dial the numbers on the radio, but anyway, brings more immersion to the sim.

 

3 - The lack of Airport Scenery

For the autogen i cannot say anything bad, its not something realistic, but its something good. I live in São Paulo, Brazil, it is awesome to fly over my city and see that all the major (and important) streets/avenues are there, and also an important river that surrounds the city is there. Also the default buildings while not that realistic are much closer to real life ones than the default buildings that are included in FSX. When starting FSX at the local airport some years ago i felt like flying in Rome, Medieval Era. Got afraid to see some horses and then a war! hehehe

At least that doesn't happen when flying XP10, but obviously i missed the airport scenery a lot. Even if it was a simple airport scenery, but there is none, that was bad.

 

I got to the org website and downloaded some airports, i believe most of them (if not all) are for X-Plane 9 (the ones in my country), but at least the ones i tried are not that bad. I don't need a real match of the real ones, as long as they don't look completely different im ok with that. But to say the truth, X-Plane seems to have a lot of information out there and a lot of information for scenery development. So i will try to learn something about it and see if i can do some airports of my Country, i'll start doing small fields and then i'll move to bigger ones.

 

In my oppinion X-Plane 10 is just new, like FSX at the start. Maybe in a year or 2 there will be a lot of scenery and airplanes to download. Only bad is that 95% of the good quality aircraft/scenery are paywares, and thats different of FSX, there was a lot of good quality freewares, but also much bigger number of users, so again, this will probably change in the next year.

 

One thing im sure is that after i learn about making an airport scenery for XP10, then there is no comming back for me, i'll not go back to FSX. The flying experience (to me) is much better on X-Plane.

Edited February 5, 2013 by Bobback

[OldAirmail]

Thanks for all the answers.

 

I guess that I have to look at it as Bobback says - "In my oppinion X-Plane 10 is just new, like FSX at the start. Maybe in a year or 2 there will be a lot of scenery and airplanes to download."

 

Bobback, I have the TrackIR v5 and I can't imagine doing without it. If a plane doesn't have a 3D cockpit, I don't want it. If you don't have a TrackIR get one, I think that you'll like it as much as I do. But just get the one with a hat clip, not the one with the 3 IR LEDs. I got VERY tired of the cord getting in the way, and haven't used the LED clip-on more than 2 or 3 times.

 

Thanks chris k for the search tip, that should help.

 

As I said, the scenery is the most important thing for me. Flying into an airport with nothing but the runways there makes me feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

 

Orcair - "...all X-Plane 9 scenery works in v10. It may not have the most up-to-date features, especially with lighting however it still works well."

 

That should help to get things started. Thanks. I was afraid to get any scenery that wasn't explicitly for XP10.

 

[PascalL]

 

Thanks PascalL, the "XPScenery.net" is worth its weight in gold! I don't know how complete the list is, but it'll save a lot of time searching for airports

THANKS  .

 

You're welcome !

Nice to hear that you like to fly in Switzerland, that's where I live. BTW, I often fly in the US

 

FYI in the (I hope) near future X-Plane will have an infrastructure for airports to be crowdsourced. When this happens, the airport base included by default should grow very fast.

 

Pascal

[OldAirmail]

You're welcome !

Nice to hear that you like to fly in Switzerland, that's where I live. BTW, I often fly in the US

 

FYI in the (I hope) near future X-Plane will have an infrastructure for airports to be crowdsourced. When this happens, the airport base included by default should grow very fast.

 

Pascal

Have you flown from LSTS? In a small prop aircraft? Too much power and it wouldn't be interesting.

 

"When this happens, the airport base included by default should grow very fast."

 

I'm sure that you're right. But as a newcomer to XP10 it's a letdown when you see on the internet how good it can be. And then find out that your favorite mid-sized airport looks like it came out of a Stephen King book!

Edited February 8, 2013 by OldAirmail

[hobofat]

Hi OldAirmail,

 

I had more or less the same reaction as you when I switched over from FSX to X-Plane.  In fact, I still miss even the procedurally generated airport scenery of FSX.  With that being said, however, I re-installed FSX about a month ago for old times sake, and I'll tell you what, the scenery is not enough.  I've gotten too used to the feel of X-Plane, and the flying experience is just so much better for me in X-Plane.

 

I know both sims can be used to create simulated experiences "as real as it gets on a home PC for pocket change" but X-Plane just seems to do it in a way that FSX doesn't.  And to be honest, I've never had a computer that handles scenery well.  I end up just turning it off anyway.  My only positive suggestion is to find a plane you really enjoy flying (my personal favorite is the MU-2 you can purchase at X-Aviation) and use your imagination as best you can for rest.  Or mainly fly to places that have reasonable scenery built up.

[OldAirmail]

If it helps others to understand my perspective: When I was very young I flew half way across  across the US by an un-remembered prop liner to New York City, and then from New York to London in a Lockheed Constellation (starboard side just behind the trailing edge of the wing. And, yes, I sat in a window seat!  ).

 

http://youtu.be/QjNRK1eRKx8

 

I fly small planes to small airports that I’ve been to, or would like to go to. And the more texture and airport scenery the better. For me, the texture and scenery that XP10 is capable of is of high importance.

 

In my teens I worked in a small private airport with Cessnas, a V35 Bonanza , and Moonie aircraft. These are the planes that I've actually taxied to tie down spots and cleaned as part of my job. These are the planes I like to fly. There's nothing wrong with jets and heavy metal, they just have little interest for me. I like to fly slow & low. In fact, when I fly in a real jet I loose interest after 1,000 to 2,000 feet.

 

I was born in the south west and lived on the east coast most of my life. The scenic beauty of the west coast has little interest for me, except for a change of pace every now and then.  But those are the areas that get the most attention from scenery developers. As was mentioned before, I'll just have to either wait for, or make my own, local airports.

 

[Z750Jay]

I too am new to X Plane and finding it a steep learning curve. I can see what the detractors say about X Plane and its user interface but I am willing to put up with that as it allows e user sooooo much control over their setup.

I also have just starred FSX and had a quick goat Flight but as I have only just got into flight Sim's I am unbiased and owe no particular allegiance so I can give my 2 cents worth. Flight looks nice but feels like an X Box game, FSX looks great and runs straight out of the box but the planes flew way too easy (I have a couple of hour RW flying with an instructor - not much but it's something) and X Plane 10 'feels' right. Even though its been a royal pain to set up ( I am still having snags with my hat buttons) I am on my way to being a X Plane fan boy

[AF380]

Hey there new guy!!!!!!

 

I just wanted to say "welcome to the x-plane experience!!!!" =D, I'm not one to use FSX and not knowing anything about it cause of my computer platform, but i can tell you that x-plane is the most realistic thing when it comes to in flying. especial x-plane 10, the graphics and extreme detail it makes is pheneomenal.

 

Some great sceneries you may want to look into as many great suggestions have come from others here, look into photo real sceneries, some are paywear and others free wear, but they are very accurate. you can also get a whole boat load of scenery of france at www.xpfr.org , since someone mentions switzerland i though i would mention france as well.

 

Also if you like heavy aircraft i would recommend the 767 from this site and the A330,340 series from the xpp, they have realistic textures in them and the parts of the plane look real. x-plane.org also has good aircraft and you x-planefreewear.net has great planes too, though none of the 757s on it work in x-plane 10 for some reason.

 

well i hope you have fun in your new experience using x-plane and enjoy it to the fullest.

 

happy flying =D