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Comment by juice_bus | Hacker News Reader

How does X-Plane compare to the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator?

If you are primarily looking out the window, MS wins because they spend a lot of effort making sure to model the entire world in great detail. No shame in that, it's a great way to enjoy a flight sim and MS did an amazing job with it. And in fairness, they really upped their game with the weather engine and flight models as well. It's a fine product.

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.

The experience in VR is much much better in X-Plane. Sadly it doesn't have the amazingly realistic cities and world textures of MSFS but the controls work so much better. Especially X-Plane's "ergonomic yoke" which uses the tilt sensor in the controller instead of having to hold up your hand in thin air. MSFS is far behind this.

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.

First, thanks for the info -- you answered my question, too. :)

  > VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation.

I completely agree. I'm not a pilot nor interested in becoming one. My Dad owned his company and flew a plane for work[0]. He used the 1980s version of Flight Simulator to get licensed for IFR flying. I was impressed with the latest, but if there ever was a use for VR, it's this. You've got a panel full of instruments in front of you and an array of windows to look out of. At least half of the "controlling" in that game involves looking at specific places/in specific directions. Everything would be much more natural if I could control what I was looking at by ... moving my head.

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 :)

Have you tried something like a TrackIR? It gives you the ability to do what you describe in a cockpit, as well as using your head to fix your eyes on a point of the horizon/landscape/object during maneuvers. I haven't tried a flight simulator with a VR headset, but TrackIR increases immersion so much that I never felt like I was missing the experience.

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).

TrackIR doesn’t really compare. I went from TrackIR to VR for multiplayer IL2 and the difference is stratospheric in terms of actually feeling “in” the aircraft. It also significantly improved my gunnery.

What headset do you use or recommend? Thx

I use an OG Quest which is quite low res compared to other headsets. Most seem to recommend the Reverb G2 which is what I’m eyeing as an upgrade.

If you think TrackIR increases immersion that much you really need to try a VR headset and get your mind blown :)

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.

I use XP 11 with my HP Reverb 2.

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.

I used to spend a lot of time in flight simulators and am very interested in VR. What headsets have you used? Just a Quest 2? Or one of the high end ones?

I have used a Rift CV1, a Quest 1 and now a Quest 2.

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.

The samsung odyssey"+" is the best flight sim headset imo; they use some sort of screen to reduce the pixel/screen door effect and it works wonders in making stuff look realistic.

Yeah I've never tried that one, as Samsung never even bothered to sell it in Europe :(

IFR flying is much better in Xplane especially if you enjoy sitting down doing 6 hour long flights.

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

I don't know much about both, but xplane is developed by private developer, he even made video how he fought against patent trolls: https://youtu.be/sG9UMMq2dz4

I've had X-Plane back since version 7 or so. Get into binges with it and then stop for years.

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 :)

I tried the latest MS Flight Simulator on X-Box. It was incredibly difficult to figure out how to set things up to reasonably simulate something like flying an ILS approach. Maybe on the PC it's better, but it just didn't seem to be the focus. And there's background music playing like it's an un-serious video game. X-Plane seems much more oriented towards realistically simulating the tasks involved in actually flying aircraft. Microsoft's seemed more oriented towards having pretty dang spectacular graphics and providing a fun experience for people who aren't really that interested in the rest of the minutiae of piloting aircraft. It's pretty cool that you can see your actual house on the Microsoft one though.

I've found that MSFS works much better when you turn off all the "fun" stuff and use add-on aircraft. I enjoy flying Airbus planes, so using mods like FlyByWire (free) and Fenix (paid) can drastically improve the experience since the built-in A320neo is pretty barebones. Those mods can also load flight plans straight from SimBrief so I avoid ever using the built-in flight planner. I just load up at the gate with an empty flight plan, load in my real plan from SimBrief, and pretend I'm flying a real A320.

XPlane is a simulator. MSFS is a game.

That’s not entirely true. They gameafy some aspects for sure, but that’s just about accessibility. You can run it like a full sim and there are great videos of real Boeing pilots talking about it.

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.

Here's a great example of why the flight model is... lacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GX9lTvKuqU

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...

Fans are tribal. Recent reviews shows practically no difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzokcKkEyuE

"The flight model" is kind of inaccurate when it comes to MSFS. They've always used a system that allows the aircraft developer significant authority to make their aircraft as simulated or gamified as they want.

IE, a pmdg boeing will be hugely better simulated than the built in boeing.

This is true in X-Plane as well though, right? I would kinda expect a better default Cessna model, though I admit that most people probably aren't going to either flight sim for lots of time in a Cessna (though I'd actually be really curious to know what % of planes are flown what what amount of time).

Not only that video is very old (there have been multiple improvements), people that are even remotely serious don't use the default aircraft which are always awful, they buy payware aircraft that are much better modeled.

There is no comparison to X-Plane land <3

To be fair, you do have to buy some expensive addons to make it that realistic. Most of the buttons in the included boeing don't work at all.

Let's not start this. There are plenty of pilots with real-world flight experience who vehemently disagree with this statement.

I used MSFS a lot for practising VFR navigation / dead reckoning skills, very helpful for that with how good the scenery is. Not sure I could achieve the same in XPlane

Yeah if you fly VFR in areas you know real-world, it's really helpful to have the photorealistic scenery in MSFS!

It's only photorealistic if you use 10-20m DEM, otherwise any mountainous area just feels completely off and unrecognizable (try to fly over Alps with the default DEM, I couldn't recognize anything around Oberstdorf etc.)

I don't know the alps area :) But I find the surroundings of Barcelona very realistic!

Does Montserrat look realistic in FS 2020? I remember how recognizable it was from Tibidabo but I couldn't find it when I was flying around Barcelona last time.

I think it does yeah. You only see its iconic look really well from the Barcelona angle though! I'd have to check as I haven't really paid attention to it to be honest.

Just tested it and you are right - they seem to have fixed it with the Iberian update.

Thank you for asking the single most important question for this article. :)

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