Flight Gear vs Flight Pro Simulator vs FSX

[Charly_Owl]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for a civilian aircraft simulator. I've been looking up on the internet a bit to know what's currently on the market, and I have stumbled into 3 games.

 

Flight Gear, Flight Pro Simulator (which is a "scam", as people put it, a ripoff of Flight Gear), and Microsoft Flight Simulator X (Edit: MS Flight is free-to-play, thanks for the correction).

 

I don't mind spending a few bucks for a high quality product, but I want to make my research first. So I thought I'd ask for advice to you grizzled vets of the sim world. I read SO MANY ridiculously positive reviews for Flight Pro Simulator, which made me immediately suspicious. Indeed, I discovered that most review sites gain a "share" if people buy the sim on their site. So for objectivity, I don't know who to trust anymore. I know lots of people recommend FSX because it's free (but you can buy some planes if I heard correctly), but meh... graphics are not as pretty as those in Rise of Flight IMHO. Is there anything better on the market? I have DCS A-10C (thinking about Black Shark, but I might not have enough time), Rise of Flight, Il-2 Sturmovik '46 and Cliffs of Dover (it's pretty much unflyable in its current state, hopefully the upcoming patch will fix that soon).

 

For Flight Pro Sim, graphics look nice (with the Full Scenery pack that is) and it's currently on sale (67 bucks instead of 167 on their site). But is it a scam? Is it a real game that's worth the money? I don't know... So that's why I'd like to ask for your input and experienced advice on that one.

Edited April 24, 2012 by Charly_Owl

[cichlidfan]

and Microsoft Flight Simulator X (which is kinda "free-to-play").

 

 

I think you are confusing MS Flight, which is fairly new and free to play, with MS Flight Simulator X, which is not new and is not free from any perspective. In fact FSX might be considered the most expensive flight sim on the market by some people.;)

[Charly_Owl]

Sorry, I mixed up the 2.

 

Any feedback on Flight Pro Sim?

[cichlidfan]

Sorry, I mixed up the 2.

 

Any feedback on Flight Pro Sim?

 

I just looked at their web site and from the screen shots alone I would be disinclined to consider it for the price they are asking.

[Charly_Owl]

That's exactly what I told myself, to be honest...

[cichlidfan]

I am in no way an expert on flight sims but, FWIW, for civilian stuff I fly a lot of FSX using planes from MilViz, A2A or other 'quality' third parties and I have a stupid amount of money in scenery (ORBX, Aerosoft) and other 'atmosphere' (REX) add-ons as well.:cry:

 

It may not be DCS level, flight model-wise, but with the right add-ons it is acceptable to me but it certainly is not cheap.

[Charly_Owl]

Funny thing, I found out about something called X-plane 10. Currently downloading the demo... I'll probably give some feedback if it interests anyone.

[cichlidfan]

Funny thing, I found out about something called X-plane 10. Currently downloading the demo... I'll probably give some feedback if it interests anyone.

 

Search is your friend.

 

X-plane 10 thread

[Yskonyn]

For civilian flight there are only two all-round choices; Xplane or FS (9 or 10)

I suggest you search these boards for thread on one vs the other as that horse has been beaten to death.

 

Flight Gear is a nice project, but its open source and there's not a very big userbase. It lacks quality over Xplane and FS.

 

Flight Pro Sim never heard of, but from the feedback above I would steer right clear of that one.

 

To get a feel for what is available for Xplane or FS browse through sites like flightsim.com, avsim.com, x-plane.org or do a google search on flightsim community or xplane community. You will get more hits than you can process in a few days. :)

[Toxe]

Choose between FSX (more pretty) and X-Plane 10 (more professional).

[Haggart]

In fact, in my opinion X-Plane is the only option to be taken seriously. FSX is 6 years old - not only 6 years dev in graphics (what is not THAT important when you're on FL300), but also in flight model mathemathics and the simulation of that. I'm currently working with Prepar3d (the "modern" variant of FSX built by Lockheed Martin), but it also lacks so many things which which are built into X-Plane, beginning from a correct atmospheric visualization (which is especially important if you wanna fly by "real" sight cons), to the need to attach everything out of the simulator core by extra software (FSUIPC) for data export, where X-Plane offers many API's, plugins, etc from stock.

 

Only problem is that X-Plane 10 uses up a hell of performance. If you're going lower than an ATI 7xxx-GPU, expect to have to set the visual settings in the lower midrange, especially since it doesn't support SLI/Crossfire.

[Conure]

I am in no way an expert on flight sims but, FWIW, for civilian stuff I fly a lot of FSX using planes from MilViz, A2A or other 'quality' third parties and I have a stupid amount of money in scenery (ORBX, Aerosoft) and other 'atmosphere' (REX) add-ons as well.:cry:

 

It may not be DCS level, flight model-wise, but with the right add-ons it is acceptable to me but it certainly is not cheap.

 

I think some addons are - the NGX 737 falls within 5% of all boeing published figures!

[Conure]

Choose between FSX (more pretty) and X-Plane 10 (more professional).

 

Also disagree here I think. NGX + good addons + FS2crew + VATSIM with a good virtual airline pretty much blows everything else out of the water

[some1]

to the need to attach everything out of the simulator core by extra software (FSUIPC) for data export where X-Plane offers many API's, plugins, etc from stock.

 

Huh? FSUIPC only exports the data which is available through stock FSX API. From the perespective of addon developer, it's just another layer on top of the native FSX interface (simconnect). Some use it, because it's more convinient for them as they learned it back in the FS2004 days. But the majority of addon developers for FSX don't use it anymore.

 

Xplane is not more professional, it's just heavily marketed as such. Prepar3D is 100% "professional" while it is just an FSX with different licence and Lockheed Martin support. If you're using these at home, both products are 'games', both have some drawbacks. The major problem Xplane has is that you have much more limited choice of quality addons for it. And this situation changes very slowly because it still has much smaller user base than FSX. Can't say what will happen in 3-4 years, but for the next year or two, it will remain this way.

[dikkeduif]

From the official flightgear website:

 

As many people will be aware, there is a (self described) "new" flight simulator product that is being widely and actively marketed at the moment under various names - Flight Pro Sim, Pro Flight Simulator, etc. These "new" simulators are simply a rebranding of the FlightGear open-source flight simulator. However, the marketing tactics of the Flight Pro Sim guys have caused more than a bit of confusion with end users. To help provide some clarity and answer some common questions, we (the core FlightGear development team) felt it was appropriate to make a statement, and provide a FAQ. FlightGear is an open-source flight simulator that was created in 1996. It is released under the GNU General Public License v2, and as such, it is free to use, modify and distribute with few restrictions. It has been developed with the collaboration of a large number of individuals over the last 14+ years. The complete FlightGear application and source code can be always downloaded for free from http://www.flightgear.org.

Flight Pro Sim is a commercial product that simply rebrands FlightGear. Investigation by a number of the FlightGear developers has found no difference between this and the FlightGear v1.9.1 release other than a change of name. Flight Pro Sim is in no way endorsed or supported by the core FlightGear development team.

Given the similarities between Flight Pro Sim and FlightGear, we would recommend that prospective buyers download FlightGear for free and satisfy themselves that Flight Pro Sim provides worthwhile value for money before purchasing it.

Don't spend money on it.

 

As for what to choose, x-plane or fsx. You can try the x-plane 10 demo for free. To see what fsx is capable of you should check some youtube videos I suppose.

It's not true that x-plane is 'more professional' like one of the users above stated.

It also depends on the addons you have and the amount of money you want to spend on a simulator. There are some excellent payware aircraft for both fsx and X-Plane.

 

There is Microsoft flight, it's free to play, but... well it's not as complete as fsx or xplane. I'm not sure if there's any future for microsoft flight.

 

I have never tried flightgear, maybe once a long time ago, so I'm not sure. Just try it out, it's free :)

[Conure]

I've tried the new X-Plane and it's not great. In a few years no doubt but FSX has many years ahead of it yet, people are onluy now beginning to reach its potential. See these addons...You can make FSX an incredible experience..

 

Active Sky 2012

Ground Environment X

Ultimate Terrain X

Real Environment X

Ultimate Traffic 2

A few UK2000/Flytampa/Aerosoft airports

And of course, the king of fsx...

 

PMDG Boeing 737..

 

There is no comparison on the commercial market - it's expensive, but you cannot beat it.

 

To put it into perspective, the NGX comes with about 6500 pages of manual...Sound professional enough? :)

[sobek]

The only thing FSX is ahead in is the size of it's following. X-plane itself is very capable but it still lacks the quality add ons that FSX receives.

Edited May 1, 2012 by sobek

[Mago]

Prepar3d

[Conure]

The only thing FSX is ahead in is the size of it's following. The sim itself is very capable but it still lacks the quality add ons that FSX receives.

 

Yeah if we're talking default FSX absolutely, FSX on its own is a joke. But with good addons (and I find it hard to talk about FSX without talking about a standard addon loaded FSX) then it's the best by far. Ahead of everything out there.

[Toxe]

The experience has been the other way around for me. FSX felt always like a big bag of glitches to me, which you could fix more or less with a small flottilla of addons (for recording, camera and so on and I am not even talking about scenery or aircraft). Problem is that after that it feels a little shaky.

 

(Actually I started it just this afternoon, after a one year FSX break, to test my new graphics card and I had all kinds of problems and finally gave it up because I ain't flying it at the moment anyways.)

 

I am seriously impressed though with out-of-the-box X-Plane 10. It hasn't crashed on me yet and personally I like its user interface actually more than the FSX interface. It looks way more open to me than FSX and I really like the data export and flight model visualization modes and that it has out-of-the-box working replays and good camera control and a bunch of other small details, visually it can look quite beautiful (especially at night) and it is under active development with frequent patches. All in all it feels way more professional to me than FSX does.

 

And let's not forget that it is the only serious sim working under Mac OS X and Linux.

 

Is X-Plane 10 the perfect sim at the moment? Probably not. But neither is FSX. It all depends on what you want.

 

I like that X-Plane is a breath of fresh air. I got the feeling that after the release of version 10 it gained a lot of interrest and at the moment the community seems growing quite nicely. Not only with new users but third party developers are beginning to port existing aircraft, scenery or tools to X-Plane (including PMDG) or are developing for X-Plane exclusively. I have seen a lot of very nice work-in-progress pictures.

 

But that doesn't change the fact that at the moment the amount of commercial addons for X-Plane is still way lower than for FSX. And depending on what addons you want to use X-Plane might not be the sim for you.

 

But personally I am very pleased with it and don't see myself going back to FSX. I am quite certain that the future of X-Plane looks rather good. :)

[Conure]

The experience has been the other way around for me. FSX felt always like a big bag of glitches to me, which you could fix more or less with a small flottilla of addons (for recording, camera and so on and I am not even talking about scenery or aircraft). Problem is that after that it feels a little shaky.

 

(Actually I started it just this afternoon, after a one year FSX break, to test my new graphics card and I had all kinds of problems and finally gave it up because I ain't flying it at the moment anyways.)

 

I am seriously impressed though with out-of-the-box X-Plane 10. It hasn't crashed on me yet and personally I like its user interface actually more than the FSX interface. It looks way more open to me than FSX and I really like the data export and flight model visualization modes and that it has out-of-the-box working replays and good camera control and a bunch of other small details, visually it can look quite beautiful (especially at night) and it is under active development with frequent patches. All in all it feels way more professional to me than FSX does.

 

And let's not forget that it is the only serious sim working under Mac OS X and Linux.

 

Is X-Plane 10 the perfect sim at the moment? Probably not. But neither is FSX. It all depends on what you want.

 

I like that X-Plane is a breath of fresh air. I got the feeling that after the release of version 10 it gained a lot of interrest and at the moment the community seems growing quite nicely. Not only with new users but third party developers are beginning to port existing aircraft, scenery or tools to X-Plane (including PMDG) or are developing for X-Plane exclusively. I have seen a lot of very nice work-in-progress pictures.

 

But that doesn't change the fact that at the moment the amount of commercial addons for X-Plane is still way lower than for FSX. And depending on what addons you want to use X-Plane might not be the sim for you.

 

But personally I am very pleased with it and don't see myself going back to FSX. I am quite certain that the future of X-Plane looks rather good. :)

 

 

To each their own, but I think at the moment FSx probably is the perfect sim. It just takes a lot of tweaking but once it's working right it's incredible.

[metalnwood]

Too much mucking about in xplane right now IMO. If you like flying VFR then it really sucks as there are no landmarks and it is a lot of effort to put any scenery you want to fly in all the time.

 

The demo should not have a populated airport in it for a start as the full version doesnt have any.

 

I have found xplane X OK but sadly lacking if you like flying wth real scenery. Also as mentioned it uses a lot more resources on the GPU than I think it should but I hear nvidia is much better than ATI in that respect.

 

I bought the f33, that is a nice enough plane.

 

Xplane is no more professional and for the same amount of $$ as xpx you can pick up FSX and some addons like REX and an ORBX addon.

 

FSX may have come out 6 years ago but if you are going to spend $80 on a sim you get a pretty good one in FSX with the sim plus another $50 in addons to get you to $80.