Not broken, but need help anyway.

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Not broken, but need help anyway.

Postby mikebourgeault » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:56 am

I know there are probably tons of forums around the internet that would address this, but since my entire flight sim experience is based around fly inside now, figured I'd ask here.

Before switching to xplane, I used FSX:SE, and then for a short while P3D v3. For years. I loved FSX despite its shortcomings, and then when I tried P3D I loved it more, but then they launched P3D4 like a week later. I spent easily 20-30 hours in P3D with flyinside before returning P3D, deciding to make the switch to xplane 11 as it looked like the way to go at the time.

I have to be honest, I don't find the xplane experience as rewarding. But there are a few identifiable reasons and I think they can be rectified.

Scenery - I fly mostly in the southwestern ontario region. Toronto city centre, and st.thomas municipal are my main airports. Initially the scenery for toronto was laughable. the CN tower is just a tv tower. Not so big a deal, since there are some good freeware addons for toronto. St thomas was another story though, and I spend a great deal of time converting an FSX scenery pack to Xplane, learning as I went. its still not perfect, but its getting there. then I discovered ortho4xp and even though the cloud cover in my area is a bit distracting, I dont think I can live without it now, it just looks too cool. I may have spoiled myself, and the general built in stuff is too strikingly not cool. My biggest problem is that I will spend a bunch of time installing addons, managing them, then take off and it looks great only to be flying over random tiles of water in 5 minutes. It feels like I'm spending more time configuring than I am flying. Which means taking off my headset, moving my sim gear out of the way, and spending more hours trying to figure out why Milton ontario is a big square of water. One I fix that, start over, then there's more water further on.

ATC - I loved using the computerized atc in FSX and P3D. It worked well, and was easy to use in flyinside. I miss it. I cant stand the built in ATC on Xplane, not only because it doesn't work as well with Flyinside, but it just feels clunky.

Weather - In FSX I really liked real world weather, but I just haven't gotten the same enjoyment form using it in Xplane. I think it has to do with the lack of seasonal textures, which really is more scenery related, and probably not feasible to have ortho AND seasonal stuff.

AI - this might tie into my aiport design, which I'm still figuring out, but man, they sure are dumb.

So here is my question, what, in the overwhelmingly large pile of free and paid xplane addons are your favorites to bring xplane up to snuff, and dont make you spend hours tweaking to make it work. My goal is to just sit down, put my headset on and fly. I have limited time where I can get away to do that, and I feel like I'm spending more time tweaking and troubleshooting than flying.

As a side question, how do people feel about P3D 4? I'm not beyond going back to it, of course that would make me the owner of every version of Flyinside, which isn't an awful thing, cause I really like it.
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Re: Not broken, but need help anyway.

Postby Greyman » Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:19 pm

World Traffic 3 (WT3) really does bring the game to life, with AI planes aplenty, sticking to real world schedules and/or being auto-generated. There is a free trial of this plugin, but considering the step-up in realism/immersion, the $30 purchase price for the full licence is well worth it.

Pilot2ATC is a pretty good ATC/flight planning tool already, but when it gets interfaced into WT3, as is planned, it will be a magic combination. Again, the last time i looked, there was a free time-limited trial, so maybe give it a try.

Just two to be checking out now, but if you also want recommendations to include aircraft, the FF A320 is an absolute must and if you are into GA, then you won't go too far wrong with any of the SkyView or the latest G1000 Aerobask aircraft.
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