Many years ago I was big into X-Plane. But it seems like so much of the development and community is focused on making the graphics as pretty as possible, instead of making the flying as realistic as possible. I'd easily take the tradeoff of rudimentary graphics with incredibly realistic controls and aircraft behavior over rich landscapes and fancy liveries......
> Many years ago I was big into X-Plane. But it seems like so much of the development and community is focused on making the graphics as pretty as possible, instead of making the flying as realistic as possible. I'd easily take the tradeoff of rudimentary graphics with incredibly realistic controls and aircraft behavior over rich landscapes and fancy liveries......
This is not the case at all. The flight model is pretty good. The bundled aircraft may not be as good. But is that really a surprise?
There are many third party vendors with realistic aircraft. Try Airfoilab's Cessna 172, or Zibo Mod (free) for the 737, to name two.
My guess is that the community focuses on what they know; how things look. If you're busy flying planes all the time and know about the challenges of flying, then you're probably not spending a lot of time developing for xplane.
Yes this makes sense. It's just frustrating for me as somone who doesn't have the time/money/risk tolernace for real flying, but would like to be able to "fly" as realistically as possible at home. I'm sure people like me are a tiny niche within a niche, though.
I was obsessed with flight simulators in middle school and high school. These included Microsoft Flight Sim, Flight Unlimited, Fly!, Falcon 4.0, and many more. So much so that I ended up taking up flying lessons and having my first solo flight on my 16th birthday (the earliest legal date I could do so at the time).
What I learned is that flight simulators can be a huge benefit. I basically learned everything in the simulator that I was later taught in the ground school of a private pilot course (which made those hours really boring haha!). You can learn weather, instruments, aircraft systems, etc.
The one thing that is really hard to grasp however from a simulator is the feel of flying an aircraft. I had a horrible habit of overcontrolling the aircraft - and it was the direct result of my many hours of flight sim experience. Even when using force feedback joysticks, etc.. there is still going to be quite a learning curve in a real plane.
So enjoy the flight simulators. But in my opinion I wouldn't get to concerned about how realistic the flight mechanics are. Because they are the least important thing you'd learn from a flight simulator. But that is just my opinion.
Same sort of experience: my transition from zillions of hours of PC flight sim to gliders did not go well at all. It seemed that I would never get so I could follow the tow plane in a non-exciting way.
I have observed that experienced pilots do reasonably well at following the towplane on the simulator even with no simulator experience at all. So it isn't just that it is different. There is something else going on there.
The realism of some payware planes has increased drastically, from aerodynamics to systems and failure modeling. Unfortunately, high quality payware has become very expensive.
As for X-Plane itself, Austin Meyer doesn't seem to have lost his old modeling habits, which sometimes infuriate flight simmers. Remember when he read a book on ground physics and all the wheels and braking were messed up? Now he has mentioned in a live FAQ session that they do HDR lighting "the right way" and that's the reason why cockpits are so dark in relation to the outside...
The reality expansion packs are made by one guy, as best I can tell. The company that makes them consists of a founder / CEO, an artist, and 3 beta testers according to the website.
I've often wondered if making XPlane addons might be one of the easiest and most profitable side projects out there.
I considered it, but it seemed like Austin would be a difficult person to work with (even if "work with" is limited to developing software within his app).
