Advice on Xplane or P3D please

[Cowboy10uk]

Hi guys, I'm guessing as we all love aviation, there's a fair few of us on here that also use P3D or Xplane for their Civi flying fixes. If so could I please pick your brains.

 

I've been out of Civi flying for the past few years after the birth of my daughter, I just couldn't find the time for a full flight, I only like to sim in real time and full fidelity. However noes she's 2 and at nursery it means I'm getting a tad more time on my days off to fly.

 

Previously I used P3D 2.5 and the PMDG 777 along with A2A general aviation aircraft.

 

However I'm aware that P3D has now moved onto Version 3 which requires a full purchase of P3D yet again, which of course is a tad expensive.

 

I've always been put off Xplane as I never found the cockpit graphics too realistic, always reminded me of an old 1990s sim, however with the release of the new 737 I see that has all changed. It also has the benefits of being a 64bit program.

 

So as I'm having to start again pretty much. Which way would you guys recommend I jump.

 

P3D 3 With PMDG 777?

Or

Xplane with the new 737?

 

Obviously I'm after the most realistic sim experience I can get for heavy metal long haul routes 9 - 10 hrs + and Realistic weather, ATC, Traffic and Airports if possible.

 

Thinking spending £500 roughly for main program, Terrain, weather, and scenery addons, and obviously the aircraft itself

 

Cowboy10uk

[Lucifah]

Ok, this is going to become a religous discussion as some people easily take offence when you criticise "their" favourite sim... ;)

 

I'll make a start and say P3D. You can get a developer license (monthly subscription, which will be cheaper than re-purchasing the whole thing every year). The terms explicitly state that the license targets *all* developers, even those who just start out. That could match literally anybody! So that's $10 per month rather than $200 every year or so. Technically the product is the same as the developer subscription grants you a professional licence for rent, so to speak. Anyhow, just wanted to get that out of the way, because the terms have been reworded not too long ago, but most people still have the old convoluted terms, which left a lot of questions, in the back of their heads.

 

Now for quality, I use P3D over XPlane mostly because:

 

- A2A, RealAir and Aerosoft have fantastic airplanes for P3D (I only do general aviation; not interested in airliners myself). By fantastic I mean Carenado-level looks, but with proper systems and (as far as I can tell) flight modelling on top of it

- Flight1's GTN750 avionics are a must have for me personally

- several good weather and traffic plugins to choose from

- a little bit better than X-Plane's basically non-existent ATC

- very decent scenery available (OrbX for example), without spending hours to download/generate tiles at several GB for a few square miles each (ortho2XP, as used by the unfortunately no longer available SimHaven sceneries). It's great for those who have time to tweak X-Plane, but I prefer to pay instead, since I'd rather spend my time flying rather than tweaking.

 

Graphics can be pretty fantastic on both though, with varying effort. And the latest P3D (v3) looks awesome and performs much better than any predecessor.

 

 

The only reasons I sometimes use X-Plane are that it feels a little bit more lively in terms of flight dynamics for the majority of aircraft, with exception of aircraft that have been designed with custom flight models (like the designers mentioned above), and it has better flight model support for choppers.

That said, whether any of the planes and choppers I fly in P3D or X-Plane are actually realistic is hard to tell. In theory X-Plane provides better flight modelling tools and physics, but whether or not the designer actually tweak their airplanes to make the most of it, hardly anybody would know (except real pilots who have flown specific models for real).

 

Anyway, that's just my opinion, not an accurate or complete comparison. :)

[cichlidfan]

It won't become a 'religious discussion' because the thread will be closed or deleted within 24 hours.

[SkateZilla]

This is NOT as P3D/FSX/Xplane Forum

 

For Support/Advice/Discussion of the above Sims, You should goto a Forum/Site for those sims.