P3D vs XP10 - Why X-Plane won me over in 10 minutes. By Robbie Nauffts I have been an aviation guru for 25 years. Ever since I could say plane I was obsessed with them. As a pre-teen boy I spent my weekends at the aviation museum across the street and would study every rivet on every plane there. I still have the picture of me looking like a complete dork in my bomber jacket, Air Cadet Wedge and sitting in a T-6 Texan at 12 years old. Maybe I should have been taking up smoking. At 13 years old I took my first flight. It wasn’t in a modern airliner or a general aviation aircraft. It was in a 1933 Lockheed Electra that Air Canada had restored and was doing charity flights in. My Uncle bought tickets for my brother and I. I was obsessed with aviation…but I was also obsessed with Air Crash Investigation and frankly was scared of flying. Ironic no? I did read once that a lot of pilots had a fear of heights. I didn’t mind heights; I just minded the plane I was flying on crashing into the ground. Anyways, a long story short, this old piston pounder took us on a tour of Halifax and my fear of flying was gone the second I was in the air. The flight lasted 60 minutes and it’s 60 minutes I will never forget. A few months later my second flight was In the back of a glider that was auto-towed into the sky. That was a thrill! A quick circuit and back down to earth…but the pilot had let me hold the control stick during the downwind leg. I only did two little adjustments, but it was amazing. I knew I had to get back into the air but like a large number of kids, I didn’t qualify for the only way I’d get my pilots license. Through the Air Cadet program. I passed ground school, but I don’t do politics well and two cadets out of 200 left that year and the year after for the glider course and powered flight course. But I continued to go to every airshow since the age of six and was still hooked on flying. Becoming a pilot had temporarily dropped from my career list and I discovered flight sim 98. Then my obsession was fueled. My first commercial flight was on an A340 with Air Canada from Halifax NS to Vancouver BC. That was a long haul and I loved it. The next year I did the same return flight, but while in Vancouver we flew down to Victoria on a Dash 8. It was the last flight of the day and the two drivers up front were ex-Aurora pilots so we were low and fast into Comox for the last flight of the day. It was awesome! I continued flying virtually with FS2002 and went to FS2004. In 2007 I discovered the VATSIM community and met my fellow addicts. It’s been great. Anyways, I’ve rambled enough and introduced myself. As you can tell, I don’t have any real world flying experience. Zip. But I have thousands of hours in FS9 and enough that I know what feels realistic and what doesn’t. So here comes my review. I picked up P3D two months ago after experienced the harsh reality of crash to desktops and out of memory errors that plague FSX. I think my total time in FSX was about 500 hours…and that was 500 too many. Nothing was more frustrating than flying a four hour flight, getting on short final and wham, out of memory. I went back to FS9 and continued flying. Prepar3d…aka P3D is Lockheed Martin’s revamp and update of what they bought from Microsoft. As soon as you boot up the game, the user interface is very similar to FSX. The tuning of your settings is very similar to FSX and when it comes down to it, it’s really FSX. However, P3D uses all cores of your processor, balances out what resources it uses on your computer and best of all, is currently supported by Lockheed. So we get patches and updates and long gone (for me and anyone else who migrated to P3D) are the out of memory errors. It’s great. You can beat the sim with addons, it looks fantastic and it keeps running. Using the newest DirectX drivers the sim is outrageous with in cockpit shadowing, lighting and more. Major 3rd Party developers have recognized P3D as the next platform for simmers and a lot of addons now are FSX/P3D compatible. The aircraft look fantastic and visually, P3D cannot be topped. But that is where the greatness of P3D ends. I installed X-Plane a few days ago and being a lifetime Flightsimmer, I did my best to approach it with an open and unbiased mind. However, the user interface was very different (but still easy to use) and it took me over an hour to program my keys and stick to be able to fly. And here is where life took a huge change. I loaded up the Carenado C208B (A favorite from FS9 and P3D) and added power. The aircraft suddenly walked to the left. “What gives?” I yelled as I corrected with the rudder. Then I noticed that the runway was taking a dip and the aircraft was bouncing around like mad on the rough surface. I was sure I was going to crash. I managed to stay on the center line and lifted off. The airplane continued to try and roll to the left and was shuddering. The only prop I’ve flown with that experience in P3D was the Majestic Q400. Continuing to climb, I raised my flaps and something else beautiful happened. The aircraft sank slightly. I know right? It doesn’t sound like a big deal but after flying in P3D when you barely correct for retracting your flaps this was amazing. Leveling out at 3000ft, I reduced power and started to cruise. Then I got an idea to try something that only the best payware aircraft in P3D would do. I brought the nose of the 208B up and held it. As soon as the aircraft started to get sluggish (that was new too) I pushed the rudder over and she slid off. Then the next amazing thing happened. The aircraft turned over onto its side and started TO SPIN! ZOmg I was in a spin for the first time since the RealAir Marchetti. I corrected quickly and tried it again. No fluke, the Cessna spun like it was its job! Swinging back into the circuit at Halifax I began my approach. Again, this wasn’t the rock steady approach I was used to in P3D but the aircraft was wavering, the nose was moving around and it was oscillating with the wind. It was amazing! On short final I noticed again that the runway as not a flat pancake like P3D. It dipped and then rose back up. “What is this sorcery?” I thought to myself as I slammed the Cessna onto the runway. I skidded around and tried to correct it, but I wasn’t used to experiencing a crosswind while on the ground. This was entirely new too. In P3D, you don’t get the crosswind until you are in the air, but in XP10, you experience the wind as soon as you are trying to roll straight and correcting for it. I added power to take back off and had my first ever ground loop. A ground loop! It was stunning. I started to think to myself “Has Carenado been dropping the ball with their efforts in P3D?” but no. It all boils down to XP10 actually simulating the aircraft being in a wind tunnel. This magic that Laminar Research has been putting their souls into has been redefining the simulation world. And it shows. In conclusion, I decided to come up with a comparison chart with what I personally found between P3D and XP10. Now, I didn’t review FSX because really, its like comparing a 2006 Chevrolet Truck to a 2014 Chevrolet Truck. The 2014 is a refined model that is more efficient and better equipped, but the guys with the 2006 don’t want to leave what they know. Don’t take this comparison too literally though because I am sure it’s not that simple. But you get the idea. The breakdown: Overall In-Game Look: Here the point goes to P3D. The aircraft look a lot better in P3D then XP10. Even when you take the same C208B from P3D and put it in XP10, it dulls out a bit, the colours look off and it’s not as crisp. Even with everything ticked off in XP10 it just doesn’t beat P3D. Performance: This one is a bit of a toss-up when it comes to your computer build. However on my system with the same aircraft and same mid-range display settings, XP10 had better FPS and a lot more to look at. 32FPS took P3D when was bogging out at 18FPS. Keep in mind that XP10 is also a 64 bit game and that is where the edge was. Point to XP10 Flight Dynamics/Realism: Match point hands down to XP10. Where in P3D you have to spend more money on quality aircraft that simulate your spins and stalls correctly XP10 does it right out of the box. Take the default Archer in P3D and try to spin it. Doesn’t happen. Default Cessna in XP10? Round and round she goes. The minute you put the power on in XP10 you are dealing with a whole different animal. Crosswind, sloped runways, angle of attack…it’s all there. Addon Quality: Now this here I know is going to be a “My team is better than your team argument” and it makes sense. At this time P3D is still picking up add-ons from the FSX developers. So the add-on quality, ie Q400, A2A Cessna etc are all game changers. PMDG is even stepping up to bat with P3D so it’s going to be a while longer before something of that quality comes out for XP- Oh Wait. You may want to google a group called IXE.G. They are doing a PMDG level 737-400 for X-Plane. Visually its suffers the same offness that every other X-Plane 10 aircraft does, however it is going to set the bar. The recent Flight Factor 757 has been the aircraft to beat in XP10 according to reviews. But at this time, my opinion is that the better add-ons are on the P3D side. So P3D sneaks away with this point. Sorry XP10 fans. Menu Interface P3D’s menu is definitely more eye-pleasing then the dos-ish interface on XP-10. But in the end, they are both doing the same thing. So draw on this one. If you are on FSX/P3D though and looking to switch, be advised that you are going to spend a lot of time scratching your head in the XP10 menus until you get what you want. Tuning XP10 walks with the point on this one. The reason being that you are able to tune a lot more options than in P3D. Lighting, compression of textures etc. I was able to tweak a lot more on the XP10 side then with P3D. Just look at the options available for the cloud drawing alone. Improvements Think of this as the “What both sims could be doing to make themselves more awesomer” category. Where P3D is visually stunning and fantastic, they don’t need to work at anything else there. However, they need to improve their flight dynamics. In order for P3D to be more accurate and realistic, the best aircraft don’t even use the sim. They work outside the sim, then fiddle with the aircraft after processing it. Accusim, Q400…VRS. You get what I am saying. The flat runways, although that is a moot point, after seeing them and trying to land on them in P3D it is a must have. XP10. These guys have definitely hit a home run stepping up to the plate. However the biggest improvement they need to make is to their graphics. I still don’t understand why my white C208B is showing up as beige in sim and looks like a FS2002 aircraft. Anytime I’ve seen screenshots from XPlane I’ve cringed at the clouds and colours. It just doesn’t look right. Conclustion (Don’t flame yet) The better program in my opinion is XP10. The flight dynamics are what make it for me and break it for P3D. The whole point of a flight simulator is to simulate flight. Sure, both simulators do that but it comes down to the details and feel. In XP10, I feel like I am flying. It’s more hands on, more aircraft to handle and more rewarding. With P3D, it just doesn’t have that feel. Just watch the XP10 videos on youtube and the nose of the aircraft in level flight. It’s wavering a bit, some bumps here and there. P3D with everything to the right on realism, you don’t get it. It’s too clean cut. So in my opinion, if you want to learn and be more immersed in a program, XP10 is for you. If you want to press buttons and do long haul flights in the 777 P3D is for you. If you are currently using FSX and not sure if you want to go to P3D, download the XP10 demo and give yourself 15 minutes. See what you think.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 01:09:15 +0000
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