Mario Donick

I think there is one major reason behind all these different observations: X-Plane is developed by a very small team, with Austin Meyer and Ben Supnik as heads, and some others for certain specific aspects (such as autogen buidlings or ATC). In the same way, addons are developed by very small teams or even individual persons. What you see as Carenado or Alabeo companies, is (for X-Plane) in fact Daniel Klaue and maybe some beta testers -- one single person that has to produce plane over plane, and as it was said in another thread, these are not simple conversions. Each plane has to be developed from scratch for X-Plane, by this one guy. Besides developing, Dan is doing most, if not all, of the support related to Carenado's or Alabeo's XP activities. It's not an ideal situation. But having a fully-fledged beta and support team, or other devs (in the case of Carenado: besides Dan) would increase the cost of the addons, because XP's user base is simply not comparable to the numbers of FS9/FSX.

Now, back to topic maybe: In which way is the Centurion special, maybe compared to the C182 (with retractable gear; not yet available by Carenado for XP unfortunately)?

It is a well-known fact that older Carenado planes get updated with XP 10.21, because they need some XP lighting issues fixed.And their v10 models don't work all correctly, because XP itself has problems with Lua memory management. There is NOTHING Carenado or any other addon developer can do about this! With the same argument like your's I could say I won't buy any X-Aviation product, until they have made the DC-3 and the Corvalis work under 64 bit. But it is the same story: Gizmo uses Lua, SASL uses Lua, both depend on Laminar to work on Lua. Edit: There is currently only one XP version where you can get recent airplane payware for and where you can expect it to behave stable and foreseeable for the future -- and this is XP 9.70. XP 10 will probably change again sometimes, and there is no guarantee that planes working right now will work in later versions. In XP, you will learn to live with these uncertainties.

This is not Carenado's fault, but the well-known Lua memory problem. As SASL uses Lua, SASL has lots of out of memory errors in 64 bit mode on Windows. Neither Carenado nor the SASL author can do anything about it -- it will be fixed by Laminarin XP 10.30. (Even if you're banned from the .org, it helps to follow the support forums there.)

It is REALLY worth the paying, and Scandinavia / Finland has beautiful landscapes. I think everybody interested in the continued development of top-level scenery should get this one. It's better than Amsterdam, better than Wilmington (sorry, Cameron), better than TruScenery's own Malmi. (But all these three, Amsterdam, Wilmington, Malmi are very close to Tampere.)

Demanding to fly is very good, if it means "realistic".

Beautiful! This is getting better and better!

Thanks. Then I have to try again. Maybe I made a mistake in prioritizing the custom OSM. IIRC I had the Oahu photo textures as downmost layer, followed by your Ohau overlays (which probably contains your street definitions, so the cars drive on top of the photos), and the custom OSM as topmost layer. Which seemed to replace, not add to, your overlay. I'll try again.

Really a matter of taste, I think, and certainly one of quality. What RealScenery offers here looks very professional and very good, so it's really an option. But some people say that photo-based scenery has an "Hiroshima look" and "plausible" scenery is the way to go, others like photo scenery much more. This discussion is a very old one (when you take similar stuff in FS9/X world into account). I think both options can look great. Andras Fabian's New Zealand scenery, for example, consists only of standard elements and is very beautiful. But my hometown (Rostock, Germany, near the Baltic Sea) looks much better with an orthophoto on the ground, but XP roads and OSM buildings on top. Question to Cameron: Actually, I would like to be able to add OSM buildings on top of the NorCal scenery as well, because it's very FLAT. Is this possible? I remember that in Oahu it wasn't.

Yes, both the terrain and the streets, railroads, lakes, forests, positions and types of autogen are based on OSM. From time to time, in XP updates also the OSM data will be updated. If you want to know how autogen works internally, I suggest reading this extremly informative article: http://xsimreviews.com/2011/12/10/developer-interview-andras-fabian-mr-x-terrain/ With night textures I mean the lightning of the buildings at night.

In many parts the default scenery is very good. The height mesh (i.e. the basic landscape) is very good, compared to FSX and XP9. (I don't know about P3D). You certainly won't need stuff like "Ultimate Terrain" which is almost necessary in FSX. Then, you have OSM, i.e. accurate roads and railroads in many parts of the world. This is something I can't live without when I fire up FSX from time to time. These streets are a real benefit for every VFR pilot. The ground textures have become better and better over time. Certain places of the world look absolutely stunning. Yesterday, for example, I was flying around Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina, with the new freeware sceneries, and it was really beautiful. On the downside, we currently have autogen, which has also improved over time, but is still U.S. style all over the world, and still lacks night textures. You can, however, easily install OSM buildings for free. We don't have seasons currently; but at least winter is possible since some months with a tiny freeware addon. John Spahn is working on WinterMAXX to improve the winter experience. The clouds are also not quite there yet. But there are already many replacement textures available, also for sky colors. And of course, airports are empty if you don't install freeware or payware addons for the airports. There are many websites and lists about this. I have made one, too, only focusing on airports which are worth the download in my subjective opinion: http://goo.gl/maps/hVjCO So, all in all, XP default scenery is certainly much better than FSX default scenery. Default aircraft ... is okay, but as in FSX, I'd surely go for decent payware. There is also some quite nice freeware around.

Yeah, but I can move the shelves up and down, to gain more space It's quite flexible.

Well. I was actually thinking: "Might this second post be just another trap?" but came to the conclusion: "No. Such jokes can be really bad for marketing" (as seen in the past, when website gog.com said they would close down). Then you got me.

Yoke will be placed in front of the screen (using its bench vice style mount). The Saitek TPM (which is a Cessna-style piece, not the big throttle quadrant) on the right. The chair's height will be adjusted then.

Oh. Well, many things might add to this decision, one of them being able to develop and support a more complex plane in a reasonable amount of time. Often, this can only be done by bigger teams. And indeed there is a market for eyecandy planes. But do it right. Don't do a second ATR 72-500 (which is nothing but a shiny default plane with lots of bugs). Besides that ... XP really needs more complex planes for being taken seriously by FSX simmers. Just the 777 and the CRJ 200 are not enough ... and there is not a single General Aviation plane that is as deep as some of the planes available for FSX ... Maybe this field would also be an option for LES?

Done some upgrading ... During flight, the Thrustmaster sits conveniently on my lap. AirTrack on the iPad is a very important part of this setup, because it allows me to disbale the virtual cockpit view. Which greatly enhances the flying experience. Next upgrades will be rudder pedals, yoke, Saitek radio panel and Saitek TPM.

Maybe Cameron should clarify if this is indeed an joke. I'm not yet convinced. Just today I talked to someone who confirmed the view "more eyecandy, less depth".

Well, I also think this is just an April's joke, but sadly the statement might well be true for some folks.

Not really a flight, but Simple Seasons with GlacierMAXX and Andras Fabian's winter trees, in Juneau, Alaska:

Great!

Actually that Falke flight was very important for me. It allowed me to FEEL what flying means, more directly than an airliner could. I hope to get a motor glider license some day; these are still quite affordable in Germany.

Ranting would be one possibiltiy. Being patient another. There apparently exist different versions of 64 bit SASL currently. The one used by DDenn's Challenger 300 is a different one used by the CRJ 200, and both are different from the version used by the Carenado A36. I think it would be best to wait until one official stable final 64 bit version is finished.

In one of the many existing topics on this question, Cameron mentioned that the X-Aviation version uses a slightly different SASL version (I think an encrypted one?) I guess this has something to do with the DRM / activation. The 64 bit SASL version is, by the way, not yet final. Just today another beta update for the Windows version was released, that tries to solve memory issues in 64 bit mode. So better wait for SASL being stable in 64 bit.

Yeah. I know. But look at the T-34c pictures somewhere in this forum, and as I understand, these were not modified, but seem to be XP HDR...? Besides, with bloom these photos look very much like a video game

Thanks Bill for the good work!