Simulator evolution 101
Saying that can mean so many different things, from First person shooters to flights like Microsoft Flight Simulator. Each one has an unique aspect in the Gaming or PC world. Now Let’s talk about what a Simulator is and then we can get into the mechanics of why someone would use this. According to Wikipedia a “flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes.”
In the 1990’s it used to be a big bulky room with plenty of room for hydraulics and servos to simulate the direction and motion of the aircraft. I know this really well because I on occasion would visit one of those places where you could see the flight crews flying in the simulator and it was so interesting and quite nice to see in actions. The cockpit would be up in the air and you’d see the simulator tilt right or left or tilt down or up and you could imagine how that would be so fun to fly. Now I on occasion I got to join the flight in the simulator because hey I was a little kid at the time and who’d not want to see it in action.
Simulations Still amazes me
I would on occasion remember those days in the big simulator and be in awe of what you could do. So ten years ago I started looking for a simulator game or app. I found the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and I was just amazed about it. I started playing that simulator in the early days when it wasn’t really as good as it got today. It was really fun and enjoyable to fly in those days to remind me what it was like when I was young. The nostalgia alone is something that was the best feeling in the world for me.
Fast Forward to 2020
As the Pandemic hit and we were stuck in our house for days on end due to being lockdown. I got really bored and started playing the old simulator. I decided I wanted to see if they’re something new and better graphics. So I found out that Microsoft was releasing the 2020 version later that year. I ordered my copy of the software as soon as I was able to preorder it because well I was stuck in my house and wanted something to do. I started using it and I have had the best time of life flying the game that reminds so much of my childhood as a kid in a real simulator. I will say that it does take some time to get used. You will also need a Decent graphics card to be able to play this one if you really want the realism of the way everything looks and how the terrain will look. I suggest something like a minimum of Nvidia 1060 TI or higher and that is just the GPU. A good CPU is recommended something like an i5 or high would work just as well. I never tried this on a I3 cpu so I am not sure how well it would work. I encourage you to try it out on your system and see just how nice it is to fly a plane.
Buy Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC), (Steam),(XBOX) and explore the world!
X-Plane 11 is vastly superior now, in terms of flight dynamics and the actual feel of the yoke in flight. MS FSX was really good, just old graphics but there are now high-res downloads available all over the web that make it look great. Optimization was always a problem though—in comes 2020. Which is now just a toy. MS Flight Sim (2020) uses tables of aggregate data to compute “average” flight dynamics and wind across the airfoil. It is incredibly difficult to stall a plane in MSFS now. Kids have made flying Snoopy on his doghouse as a flyable plane mod. You can fly an x-wing or tie fighter, the Millennium Falcon, an Iron Man suit—-all fly just fine with no accounting for weight, balance, or actual flight dynamics. X-Plane on the other hand can be licensed by flight instructors, when paired with FAA-approved hardware, such that students going for IFR rating can actually log hours on the flight sim with the FAA to count towards their certification—something you can’t do in MSFS 2020. Because it’s a toy. If you want to have fun flying a toy, it’s great, and very pretty. If you want an actual flight sim that comes close to the real feel, get X-Plane 11 instead. I do actually own both, and Prepar3d, but spend the vast majority of my time in x-plane.
How is X-Plane compared to graphics? Is it better than Msfs20 or is it worse? I have noticed that thr gpu and cpu isn’t getting the best Frame rates on it. Does X-Plane do better?
Out of the box, MS FS 2020 is definitely superior to X-Plane for the quality of the graphics. However, X-Plane uses Vulkan drivers to pre-load and pre-render the graphics content while it is loading the scenario based on geography and weather inputs. It can grab weather and time in real-time from the internet based on your loading airport, or you can set the weather and time. Because it pre-renders, it takes a while to load. But if the graphics aren’t that great, why use it? Because many websites exist, including flyawaysimulation.com and x-plane.org where you can download custom textures and scenery developed of photo-realistic satellite images. These are HUGE, I think the state of Washington takes maybe up to a terabyte to grab the whole thing, so unless you have a huge RAID array in your computer you likely won’t have enough storage to render all states this way. BUT, I download these and save them on my NAS for areas I frequently fly, and install the ones for my home airports, and scenery I like to fly a lot–the grand canyon, flown in an F16 while engaged in combat is quite fun. With the Vulkan engine, x-plane pre-renders the scenery and stores it in RAM or cache for fast access while flying, so you don’t get load buffering. I am using a Razer Blade Advanced 15″ gaming laptop, with an Nvidia RTX2080 MaxQ gpu (about 5-10% slower than the desktop version) and a core i7-10875H CPU. For a gaming laptop it’s pretty beefy, and if I’m not running AI planes, can turn up all the visual bells and whistles *almost* all the way and get ~40fps. Flight instructors recommend a minimum of 30fps for smooth visuals, and I’ve found that to be true–this isn’t a first person shooter, so things move slower and I don’t notice a huge difference in 30-40 fps vs 60+ for fatigue or visual quality. If I run a bunch of AI planes I need to turn the graphics down some for smooth gameplay, but because I’m fighting and not enjoying the view that’s fine. And the photo-realistic textures are *amazing*, way better than MS FS 2020 out of the box. You can also buy realistic textures, but more and more people are creating free ones and they’re beautiful. And using the Vulkan engine you don’t get much stuttering while flying, it’s very nice–just be prepared for the long load time as it pre-renders. I also use a Tobii eye tracker so I can look around while flying and only need one monitor.
You can add AI planes to any x-plane scenario, and designate them as friend, foe, or neutral. You can have up to about 16-20 extra planes, and they can be fighter jets, drones, helicopters, whatever planes you have loaded in your custom planes folder. All those planes do take some graphics power so turn down your settings for smooth dogfighting, but it’s another feature that gives it more replayability. All in all though I have way more fun, and have found tons of free airports, scenery and planes online, and find the flying in x-plane to be far more realistic.