X-Plane Question.......

[dc6tryer]

Hi,

...can FS9 aircraft be 'ported'(?) over to this other sim. If I thought I'd have to miss out on the wonders to be found for FS9 I'd just stay with it, but if it's straightforward then it's something to think about now that MS has got rid of the team and if in a few years I fancied an upgrade. Just thunking aloud really.

Anyone here use it ?
Good points seem like the terrain, but I don't know anything else about it!

Andy.

[Tom/CalClassic]

Most FS users I know don't like it as much as FS. It does have its advantages, though.

I don't believe that the aircraft are transferable, though. I think that if you have the GMAX source file, that can be used to create the plane for X-Plane, however?

[sunny9850]

The beauty of X-plane is that it is still available as a Demo for free download ... playable for about 10 minutes each start.
So you can give it a looksee....before spending any money on it.

Personally I think that the user interface ... in FS is much better still than with X-plane.
The Flight-Dynamics are supposedly better with X-plane than in FS but for those airplanes were I have flown the real one and both simulator versions I think FS still came out on top.

As for porting over FS airplanes into X-plane....I don't think that is possible. Definitely not the panels and gauges because they are completely different.

The latest version is however pretty nice as far as the eye candy goes...if your PC can run it at max settings. Which if FS runs good...Xplane will likely run better.

[ashaman]

I have to agree that the user interface of X-plane is still behind, but almost all that remains is more advanced... if most of the times exasperated.

In X-plane there's a good simulation of bird strike (though the darn birds appear all too often for anyone's tastes and realism), the weather is light years above end beyond FS (if any of you ever managed, flying in FS, to enter in a cloud and getting out of it with your windshield in tatters, your plane screwed over by peach-sized hail and and in an unrecoverable spin seen the plane was practically destroyed by hail, please allow me to know how you did it. I know only how it happened to me under X-plane), it has carburettor ice simulation and an immensely better simulation of structural icing than FS, the clouds project shadows and the lightning are light effects and do NOT manage somehow to look like the real thing using a texture (you will never understand the real difference this means until you fly in X-plane under a real overcast, with the sun's rays really blocked by the clouds, and a lightning suddenly lights up the dreary scenery for miles... I gaped in wonder the first time it happened to me and almost lost control of the plane... for mercy's sake I'll not list the differences with FS's pitiful attempt at lightning effect). For last, it has a thing that I think it will never be adopted into FS, the sloped runways (the wet dream of all FS users).

X-plane has its own defects though. It has difficulties with simulating well the mixture in a reciprocating engine (FS is better at it, though in the last versions of X-plane it seems things are getting better). It has no concept of parkings, so when you appear on the airport on the runway, thing that really screws over with online flight. It has no taxi help (the pink snake), so helpful in unknown airports you have no charts of, and for last... the most horrid of all the defects... it has no slew.

...and in last analysis, X-plane has the greatest defect in the fact that no one is going to make for it a serious propliners fleet anytime soon.

It remains a nice sim to use from time to time, advanced and showing exactly what FS lacks to be perfect. At times I dream to fly the Starliner from FS9 under it, or many other planes I like, always from my FS9 hangar... but it is merely a dream.

Nothing wrong with dreaming though.


PS
No. Sadly enough the planes from FS will not work under X-plane, no matter how hard you cry... and the other way around as well. Cease and desist.

[Col7777]

I looked at X-Plane myself and I liked the eye candy, I am a bit of an AI freak so does anybody know if it is possible?

[ashaman]

In X-plane 9 there is a certain form of advanced AI planes. I don't know how X-plane 9 's AI flights compare to FS though, as I'm still flying with X-plane 8 and here, under X-plane 8, AI flights are really poor.

[dc6tryer]

Hi,

interesting replies so far. I started to d/l the demo but when I started to look on the X-Plane website for even just a couple of interesting (to me, admittedly!) aircraft to add I came up somewhat short- a Staggerwing (freeware) and an Otter (payware) which looked really good, worn paint and so on, on some of it's skins. But the panels and instruments seem a bit generic, except for a beautiful Short's flying boat (payware) which looked like it had flown a million very hard miles, and had a wonderfully battered panel and instrumentation.

I stopped the d/l and have settled for my 3 frames a day FS9 until we sort out a new computer !!

Andy.