But there are also other things that happen due to working within these limitations.įor instance, near sunset, the water should be reflecting way more of the sun, at a greater angle, because in real life the sun is so incredibly bright that even significantly off angle, there is enough reflection. I think to a large degree this is why atmospheric scattering tends to be more grey in x-plane than the incredibly bright blue that it should be.
Xplane 11 mods#
(Which is why most mods which try to modify atmospheric scattering end up blowing out cyan at the horizon.) You also get the same problem in reverse. Once you hit 256 on one of the channels, the only way to make it brighter is to add more from one of the other channels, which lowers the saturation and changes the hue, until you max out that second channel. It is way more than 256 times as bright as pitch black night. People don’t realize it because our eyes compensate unconsciously for it all the time, but the sun is #$%^ing bright. It’s not the number of objects, its not the realism of the roads (unless i suppose you are a helicopter pilot), and its not the raw FPS (as we’ve all seem to discovered, consistent FPS seems to be more important) This is *not* a criticism. In all seriousness, the lighting model is really what’s holding x-plane back in terms of “realistic graphics” more than any other factor. I know Vulcan/Metal has been a big project for you and forms the groundwork for the next round of improvements. In conclusion, Ben, I think the competition is healthy. I have every intention of continuing to use both sims. Is this really a bad thing? If a sim can be made to offer fidelity to real life AND mass appeal, isn’t that the best of both worlds? I’m pretty sure LR would like to enjoy the kind of sales success FS2020 is achieving. Why shouldn’t a sim offer degrees of assistance to help the non-real world pilots. In real life, flying a plane is actually a hard thing to do. I think there is a temptation for any group, hard-core simmers included, to become more insular in the face of a threat.
Xplane 11 free#
What I can say is that there are many, many things which FS2020 does so much better than X-plane, which have nothing to do with either eye-candy or flight model.
I can’t comment on the flight characteristics of tubeliners, because I tend to limit myself to planes I could have a chance of flying in real life (ie single engine props), but from my POV, there’s really not a lot of difference in the feel between X-plane and FS2020, especially if you turn off things like auto-rudder. Yes, FS2020 does do the eye candy thing very, very well, but I don’t like how readily it is dismissed in these comments and similar forums. However, I am a little afraid of LR being treated as the Emperor (of “new clothes” fame) in respect of FS2020. You’re doing a great job continually rolling out these improvements and making X-plane a better product.