For what it's worth X-Plane 11

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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Dec 04, 2016 8:09 am

Jan, I too ran into oddities that no one else seems to have encountered. I think that it's just an example of why putting a demo out there is so important.

If I were a poet I might ask "How do I compute thee, let me count the ways". No matter how large their budget is, they can't have even .01% of possible combinations of the software/hardware out there. Things will break, they'll learn how to do better.

Seriously, I think that that's the reason why LM ignores the use of Prepar3d for "entertainment" even when children write in that they're having problems with the Prepar3d game - The more users, the sooner most of the problems will be found. As I've said before - "WE" are the beta testers.



I'll wait for a later beta. X-P 11 looked no worse than other flight sims when they came out. For the short time that it did work, it handled well. And the interface is much better than FSX/P3d. X-Plane 11 can only get better, but I don't see a compelling reason to abandon FSX/P3d. Yet.
.. .
Get the most out of your controls - SPAD.neXt

Image
. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby Sprocket » Mon Dec 05, 2016 6:32 am

OldAirmail wrote: I think that it's just an example of why putting a demo out there is so important.


Well, like you said, it is just as well they have demos. Apparently my PC of 5 yrs old is too antiquated. At least they are honest about it.
High spec machines are required for Xplane 11, as they do not recommend PC's older than 3 yrs.

Image

Which has got me a bit baffled... :think: I also tried to install the demo on my i3 machine, 32bit with 4 Gb Ram, but the installer tells me that
"your PC does not meet the required specs to run this app"

With this massive RAM requirements then, this must be a 64bit sim only. :?:

Oh well :| Won't say I'm not disappointed though...

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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby user withheld » Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:56 am

I'm not really to sure what spec my PC is, 12-16GB ram 3.XX? processor, Some sort of 4GB ram video card. It is three years old plus and was built buy a colleague from work, probably not with the latest components.I am aware that frame rates (in the demo) aren't that great, especially with the MD80. it does get better after climb-out from Seattle and remains good enough to make a reasonably accurate landing back on the hump KSEA appears to have been built on.
I'm perplexed at others users major problems they have been having with the demo. It runs reasonably well for me. (Saitek hardware also).

I have flown both FSX and X-Plane 10 for some years and find FSX is prone to locking up and telling me I am out of memory! Something X-plane 10 has never done.
I rather wish I was perfectly happy with one or the other flight-sim but sadly find the between airport scenery fairly poor in FSX and the lack of 'well stocked' airports in X-Plane is a bit of an irritation. For me, where FSX scores well is the huge number of quite superb, and free aircraft with 3D cockpits that FSX has available. X-plane aircraft are not that great unless you go down the Payware path. The terrain/scenery in X-Plane is better, even areas local to me look very good and a recent night flight on a clear evening EGCC-EGLL (real world) looked very similar out of the window to how X-Plane 10 does.
X-plane weather is also inclined to be far worse (reaslistic) than FSX.

On seeing the demo of the MD-80 in X-Plane 11, with it's quite superb cockpit, I almost deleted FSX there and then, the FMS was a revelation too but I haven't got-to-grips with that yet! There was already a very nice B737 in X-plane 10 however.

So I hope X-Plane 11 has 'turned a corner' with less than great aircraft and cockpits, although I don't want to sound ungrateful to those who spend there time creating such.
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby papituwall » Mon Dec 05, 2016 2:30 pm

It seems that I should have posted this (http://forums.simviation.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=176307#p1293789) here i order to get some feedback.

HOW TO IMPROVE X-PLANE 10 AND 11 PERFORMANCE WITH NVIDIA

I have installed the demo of X-plane 11 and as one of the requirements is a CPU of 3 GHz and I have it of 2.8, they warn that a test must be performed in lower PC's.
Although it is a Beta, X-plane also warns that there are problems of fps that they work on to solve.

In my case: the program does not crash with the settings to the minimum, with this settings, I get 10 fps wiht continous stuttering. After serching in the net I have found some NVIDIA settings that go up to 20 fps and with almost imperceptible stutter. However the simulator with these minimum settings is not visually usable.

Here are the settings in Nvidia Inspector:

5- COMMON

Multi-display / mixed-GPU acceleration:
If only one monitor is used: Single display performance mode (if two: multi)
If multiple PCs are used each with their own monitor: Multi display performance mode

Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance.

Threaded optimization: OFF (this is the most important)

If you use multiple PCs each with a monitor, in addition to applying the above to each PC, you'll need to match the synchronization, in 2 - Sync and refresh, in Vertical sync put 1/2 refresh rate.

In my case: The next step is to make graphic adjustments that affect only the GPU: Visual Effects, Texture Quality, Antialiasing, with medium settings, the other CPU intensive at minimum. I'm still at 20 fps with very small sporadic stutters. I need to wait about 30 seconds to reach 20 fps before starting the flight.

I hope it helps those trying to work with X-plane 11 and improve those with use X-plane 10.


JUST FOR INFO:

Minimum Hardware Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core CPU (e.g. i3, i5, i7), 2 or more cores, 3.0 Ghz or faster, or AMD equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: a DirectX 11-capable video card from NVidia, AMD or Intel with at least 1 GB VRAM

MY FEEDBACK:

At present 22 fps without stutters with internal settings:

Visual effects: Low
Texture quality: Maximum
Antialiasing: 4x

Number objects: mimimum

Other settings: minimal


With this I can see Xplane 11 in a decent form. I won't explain here the details (in fact the secenery is similar to X-plane 10) but my conclusion is:

The best tweak for X-plane 11 is Prepar3D V3.4 <<q <<q <<q
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby Daube » Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:43 pm

Just for info, the beta gets updated from time to time (no idea how often). This is also true for the demo.
This morning, I relaunched the small installer program I had downloaded last week for my first installation of the XPlane demo.
In the UI, there was an option to look for updates, which I chose. It ran for a few minutes, but then my demo was updated. Basically, it will connect to Laminar, compare your sim files with the newest ones, and download only the necessary updated files.
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby Daube » Wed Dec 21, 2016 10:00 am

The Beta 3 is available since yesterday, including for the demo.
As with the previous update, you don't need to uninstall anything. From the main menu you have an option to update. I did that yesterday evening for the demo, and it told me it was going to download only 38 MB :)

No differences in performance though, so I still need to bring some settings to low in the game graphics (especially the reflections).
I did a short test flight from Boeing field to the city center and I was blown away by the details. It's really a completly different dimension from the FSX autogen. There's details everywhere. Of course it's generic, but it looks so convincing it's unbelievable. :clap:
Flying an helicopter at low altitude, trying to find a spot to land to simulate a rescue mission for example, is really exciting, unlike in FSX or P3D :/
The only bad thing is the road traffic totally ignores you. They drive though your aircraft as if you were a ghost. But ok, that's a limitation I can certainly tolerate :lol:

Another thing I noticed: For a stupid test, I launched a flight in evening/night time, then I landed on one of these big highways with 3D lights and a lot of traffic. Three things were quite amazing:
- the lights of the streets were actually illuminating my aircraft. So during my roll to stop, I could see my cockpit and airplane body switch from light to dark depending on the position of the spots on the side of the road.
- the lights of the traffic were illuminating my plane as well ! Every time a car or a truck would pass nearby (or through) me, their front lights were illuminating the body of my plane. :shock:
- the landing/taxi lights of my plane were illuminating the objects all around me, including the ground and the traffic cars/trucks.

In XPlane the planes and all objects have realy lights that really illuminate the scenery. No more stupid white opaque triangle under your plane like in FSX or P3D.
And if I'm not mistaken (but I need to check again), I believe the landing lights are also illuminating the clouds when you go through them...
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby Sinkrate » Thu Dec 22, 2016 7:43 am

The Beta 3 is available since yesterday, including for the demo.
As with the previous update, you don't need to uninstall anything. From the main menu you have an option to update. I did that yesterday evening for the demo, and it told me it was going to download only 38 MB :)


I’m really interested in getting xp11 but it seems to be only available via download – I hate that sort of thing! Do you get the whole world on 38MB? XPX came on 10 DVD’s and took nearly 60GB of hard drive space! How long would it take to download on adsl broadband (I live in UK, still firmly stuck in the 20th century) and what does UK scenery look like on it?
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Re: For what it's worth X-Plane 11

Postby Daube » Thu Dec 22, 2016 11:55 am

No, the update from beta 2 to beta 3 is 38 MB.
The whole demo is something around 5 or 6 GB. For that size, you only get the aera around Seattle (in a 150 kms radius around though, which is very nice and rich to explore).
The complete game is more than 60 GB I think. I wouldn't want to use any DVDs for that. I hate that format, it's fragile and too slow. I don't even have a DVD drive in my computer anymore, I'm just sick of these things.
Download is slow in my area, but I really prefer it over DVDs.
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