X-Plane 12 Early Access(x-plane.com) |
X-Plane 12 Early Access(x-plane.com) |
Thrustmaster t16000m is more geared towards military aircrafts.
If you want to fly Airbus, TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition (which under the hood is the t16000m) is very good and works well with FS2020's Airbus A320 (even better with the free FlyByWire A320 mod)
If you want to fly general aviation aircrafts, the Logitech Yoke is pretty good. The Honeycomb Aviation stuff is much better but cost double your budget.
Either way, the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle does have some stiction and you might want to clean it up, or even better 3D print/buy a slider replacement for about ~$40 on Etsy.
It really does, I opened mine up and cleaned off all the factory grease, replacing it with a bog standard lithium grease (sparingly!) and the difference is night and day.
Some people swear by the fancy silicon grease and I see a lot of good things but I'm fine with regular old lithium.
VKB sticks last longer (no issues after 2+ years heavy use), are repairable and VKB will sell you parts. Much nicer if you can afford it. Take a look at their youtube channel if you are curious about the repairibility. https://www.youtube.com/c/VKBSim
But do they have a library of safety incidents, which you can then replay?
I haven't done much simming recently sadly, WarThunder VR support has been broken for over a year and sadly my CPU isn't strong enough for X-Plane 11, but I'll probably be picking up one of the new AMD chips this fall so I'm excited to get back into it.
I have MSFS 2020, I know of at least one user created 'mission' that puts lets you try and land on the Hudson like Capt Sully
X-Plane 12 Flight Model Update – Supersonic Transition, Delta Wings and Mass - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31827301 - June 2022 (126 comments)
For your scenario, I think if it was an Airbus, the conditions weren't too extreme and there were no failures, I'd have a pretty good shot at a successful landing. If it was a Boeing, I wouldn't know where to start.
I don't think flying is that hard at a basic level. Arguably it's easier than driving once you've got your head around the millions of buttons and switches. The challenge is what you do when things go wrong, and adequately planning for that situation.
It's probably safe to say you'd get 50% edge just by knowing how plane controls works (roll, pitch, yaw) -- I don't think a lot of "general public" would have idea what they are, let alone how they are mapped to things in a cockpit.
I distinctly remember in previous versions watching the AI aircraft bounce off the ground repeatedly in an attempt to reach an incorrect flight level given to them by the ATC. That kind of ruined the illusion for me.
It's a great sim, overall, I think it has a different set of priorities from MSFS, which is totally fine. I only wish I could have the best of both worlds.
If you really want good ATC, yeah VATSIM or IVAO.
I am disappointed to see xplane 12 not including fseconomy or similar right in the game.
I mean, this data is old, but that wasn't true in 2018[0]
I've been buying new X-Plane(s) since like 1997, I haven't yet used Steam to do so -- the x-plane website is easy to use, offers discounts frequently, and doesn't hold my software hostage behind another walled garden.
I'm not alone, if the modding forums are any indication.
XP-10 was said to have sold over 100,000 copies, but Steam charts shows an average number of players at 2 for 10 and 400 for 11 -- those numbers don't really seem to fit, even for a fairly old game. I presume a significant portion of the install base is done outside of Steam.
Just purchased and they sent me two keys... opened a ticket to let them know.
Both say 12.
Otherwise, X-plane 12 is pretty compelling as well and it probably wins in the flight model department in terms of just modeling a lot of weird and niche stuff out of the box. Most people will never notice but it's there to appreciate for those that can appreciate these things.
And with the right scenery, it doesn't look half bad either. E.g. orbx has scenery for both sims and I suspect things look pretty close with that. And there are some nice free add-ons that will get you closer to the MS experience but probably not all the way. E.g. Simheaven.com is getting ready with an xplane-12 release; completely free.
X-plane 12 is a pretty big upgrade if you were using or familiar with x-plane 11:
- volumetric clouds and weather updates
- the rendering is gorgeous in comparison
- lots of refinement in flight models, audio, ATC, weather engine, etc.
- Lots of nice new default planes
- Amazing work on the sound. Seeing a jet take off is one thing. But hearing the rumble is another thing.
Give the free demo a spin. Easiest way to find out if it's worth your money. Works great on recent Macbooks with the M1 processor.
And why call out VR specifically? Well, VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation. I've flown small planes too and I've never felt that a flightsim was able to provide the feeling of flying. Until VR that is. Now it's amazing.
> VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation.
So far I've held off on buying any VR-related non-sense because I have yet to find something that it would improve the experience of enough to warrant spending money on. It sounds like this might be getting me closer?
[0] I've written at length about this in the past, but he owned his company and sold to manufacturing plants. Many were out-of-state, so the plane allowed him to get to a few appointments and back home without a hotel stay -- or ... "gave him an excuse to own a plane". You pick :)
The VR works and works pretty well. The feeling of looking around in the cockpit is a nice improvement even over my old standby of TrackIR, which I used to use more frequently.
I will say that I think I might dust the TrackIR off and use it again at some point. VR is a little disorienting and uncomfortable for long time periods and just having head tracking with a monitor does get you part of the way there.
I do find it difficult to "touch" the controls in the cockpit, so if you want to actually learn the cockpit layout (rather than mapping a bunch of stuff to your keyboard and/or other input devices) you may want to pause the game while you select things.
The graphics in XP 11 can be somewhat improved with "Orthophoto scenery" and there is a lot of payware available too, but this is a deep rabbit hole with lots of sketchy downloads and mucking about. Even after doing this I don't think the visuals ever get close to competing with the MSFS "out of the box" experience.
But VFR flying and just general _enjoyment_ of flying (like the worldwide coverage of terrain and airports and live weather) are much better in MSFS
Both are really good though
The reason for that is, my primary interest in X-Plane is DESIGNING planes to see if and how well they will fly. If it had the structural stuff in the short-lived Young's Modulus by the same guy I'd be even more interested… that's a big ask, however, and potentially very dangerous.
Because people literally use X-Plane to design real planes, by making rough drafts of the aerodynamics, weights and balances of their proposed designs. X-Plane is a full-on blade element modeler right down to modelling the propellers of prop-driven planes also as little wings, and flight is simulated by taking all the airfoils etc. at various points of all wings and determining how the plane would fly with this collection of forces… for ALL MODELS.
That's the only engine at work. You don't download 'new flight code' for new planes you get, just the aesthetics and the model that says what airfoils go where etc. and then the sim works out what would happen.
If you wanted to fly your 747 but see what would happen if you stuck a Cessna engine 3 feet in from the left wingtip, MFS absolutely would not know where to begin with that. X-Plane would not only let you do it but would do a pretty decent job of showing what would happen.
So it's kind of not even a comparison…
Pretty hilarious getting downvotes on a nerd site for saying THIS. Bring it. I stand by what I said 100%, these are the things that matter in a simulator. For airplanes :)
Even the old flight sim was so advanced MSFT had contracts with the French military for their mapping tech from the game specifically. This is back in the day now.
I had a look on where I read about the X-Plane 11 keys during the beta, it's here - https://developer.x-plane.com/2022/05/x-plane-12-development...
There are also some which use force sensors and the yoke itself doesn't really move at all. Much more of a fighter jet style stick.
Unfortunately, I'm years out of date on what controllers are available with which mechanisms; sorry.
The patents expired in 2019, so it's possible that newer models will start coming to market at some point... but for the moment your best bet would probably be a second-hand Microsoft Sidewinder joystick off of eBay.
What I like about the Q2 is that it's cheap and offers wifi capability so I can sit on the couch far from the PC. More relaxing that way.
Sometimes I use real controllers and I got a USB extender cable for that.
A VKB setup is about $800 (dual THQ+SEM+FSM+stick+rudders) so... don't look at VKB until you've flown with a <$200 HOTAS for a while and actually know what you enjoy flying (and whether that kind of flying even justifies buying into the whole "real controller" thing =)
It's perfectly fine for most things, but _really_ bad with things that could actually kill you.
Meanwhile, in X-Plane land: https://developer.x-plane.com/2022/02/x-plane-12-flight-mode...
IE, a pmdg boeing will be hugely better simulated than the built in boeing.
Admittedly it can take some tweaking to get the response curves calibrated to what feels natural, and it never feels as natural as simply looking around (but I'd argue putting on a headset comes with ergonomic issues of its own).
The 3D vision (a horizon never looks the same on a screen), full 6DOF tracking (you can look over your shoulder, bend down etc), motion controllers with which you can turn buttons.. It feels so real.
Even the way you look out the window to see if it's time for the turn to base, it just looks like how it looks when you do it in a real airplane. Seeing it on a flat screen is really not the same.