Let me start by saying that my experience with X-Plane 10 was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had with a piece of software in my entire life.
Customer Experience Failure
I’ll skip the blow by blow, but the simple task of downloading X-Plane 10 web demo was a Thanksgiving nightmare, followed by the inability to even start the program, and finishing with such low frame rates, that I thought my monitor was showing me an old 8mm film. Then came a number of web updates and the requirement to download an installer from the website to install the DVDs.
The overall experience was a far cry from a smooth roll out of a new product. Clearly Laminar Research was not prepared for the release of software that still needed more testing and fixes prior to release.
X-Plane Eye Candy
With the full version of X-Plane 10 installed and about 20 hours dickering around with the rendering options, I have finally reached a point of content with X-Plane 10. So, I thought I would post some screenshots of my initial testing.
The settings for my '08 iMac
The trick to getting decent frame rates from X-Plane 10 is to turn EVERYTHING off and then start turning options back on and up. It is a frustrating and lloooonnnngggg task. Austin should design a little program that can set rendering options based on computer settings. But then again, Austin is not that cool.
Challenger 300 at Sunset over Puget Sound
But after spending a lloooonnnngggg and frustrating time dickering with the rendering options, I was able to install one of my favorite X-Plane aircraft, the Challenger 300 by Ddenn Design, and fly from KPAE to KSEA and experience a few of the new X-Plane features.
The Stinson L5S, a very close cousin to the Piper Cub in FSX
I also realized that Laminar Research has clearly marketed X-Plane 10 as a direct alternative to FSX or Flight. Included in the web demo are the Baron, a King Air C90B, and the Stinson L5S. Similar aircraft in my default FSX hanger. I was sad to see the Piper Malibu missing.
Initial Thoughts
My initial thoughts on X-Plane 10 are mixed. While it represents a revolutionary step forward in simulation software, the customer experience of downloading the demo, installing it, and configuring it is down right atrocious. As an customer advocate, Laminar Research might have an awesome product, but the experience to use it is the pits.
To Buy or Not To Buy?
Is X-Plane 10 a “do not buy” product, as I stated in my tweet? At this time, I will say that if you are willing to invest countless frustrating hours getting it configured and you own a powerful computer, buy it!
If you are an FSX user, I recommend waiting for Microsoft Flight, which will offer a far superior customer experience and better support.
For me, I paid $80 for this thing, so it will sit on my computer along side X-Plane 9.7, taunting me to mortgage my house so I can buy a super computer to properly run it. Until then, X-Plane 9.7 wins.
Typical of Laminar and the mentality of the author, rather than de-bug the product before it leaves the gate, the author expects all of the customers to de-bug it for him. Maybe a year from now the bugs will be rung out, it took longer than that to work out the bugs in 9x and it still is buggy. Laminar has never finished a solid product.
Hi Capt Kurt,
I certainly agree that Laminar Research expects users to help them continually fix the product. I think this is the case with most any software product on the market. However, to release such an infant product and charge $80 for it is appalling. Maybe I am not the typical X-Plane customer, but Laminar Research is targeting FSX users with this release; users that expect a polished product.
As for the issues that I pointed out in my post, beta 3 fixed many of them and an add-on called Urban Maxx (available at x-plane.org) also greatly improves the experience. I am working on a follow-up post to clarify some of my views.
Cheers!
Aric
Aric,
I am the guy behind UrbanMAXX, I am working on another release that adds more realism by using many different texture tehniques. It will be a payware product(inexpensive) and it is currently going through beta testing. Additonally I will relese SkyMAXX which even in its early stages fixes the issue of those drab X-Plane sky colors. CloudMAXX already helps with FPS and soon to be released CloudMAXX Lite goes even further……
These add-ons were born out of the idea that id you don’t like something, try and fix it instead of whining about it…..XP, I am learning, is very developer friendly and if you get ahold of the right people within the community you have a wealth of knowledge…
Currently,with those add-ons ,I have been very pleased with X-Plane……Like many people I was at first angry at LR for releasing such a product…..
Hi John, Thank you for your comment. It is great to hear about UrbannMAXX, future other products and how you got started. I admire you for taking action and improving the X-Plane experience for all of us. If you need any help beta testing, drop me a line. I have a new gaming rig that is eager for some flight hours.
While the initial release of X-Plane 10 was far from smooth, X-Plane 10 does represent the future of desktop flight simulation. As a newbie to the X-Plane universe, I am having to adjust my perception as to what X-Plane represents. Coming from FS2004/FSX, I keep expecting a simulator right out of the box with a larger freeware ecosystem. With X-Plane, I am constantly reminded that X-Plane 10 is simply a foundation with the expectation that users will seek out “add-ons” to improve their own world within the sim. Perhaps the X-Plane experience best fits “A Reality of My Own.”
Cheers!
-Aric
Wait, maybe a better idea, send them $$$ more for the professional product that does little or nothing more!
Having tried the demo last week, I entirely endorse the comments made so far:-1 Demo riddled with bugs
2 Frames rates very poor…. FSX runs beautifully.
3 Aircraft generally not up to present payware standards
If you reside in Europe as I do, purchase price from Aerosoft is 91.25 US dollars…… think I’ll stick with v9.70 for now.
Being stuck with a Mac due to my work I can only fly with x-plane. Back when I got my mac a year ago, I expected to buy X-Plane 10 right away – as that was when X-Plane 10 was supposed to come out, but with the delays in the meantime I have been using X-Plane 9.7, all the while investing hundreds and hundreds of dollars in payware files to get planes and scenery files to be near what I was used to in FS in years past.
Now as X-Plane 10 was announced I was one of the very first to buy it on the day it came out directly from Laminar. I got my disks last Friday and now all I can only say WOW!!!
What a disappointment.
With a four core i7 with 8 GB ram and a 1 GB video card my mac just chews through HD video production work like nothing… just what it’s supposed to do for a $3,700 investment. However when running X-Plane 10 the performance of the sim is absolutely atrocious… and that’s when you can get it running in the first place. With the details turned up, sure the screen grabs are great but that’s all you really get as it limps along at 6 or 7 fps. After hours and hours and hours of experiencing crashes, hangs, and general “beachballing” while fine tuning rendering preferences, I finally have it running > 20 fps. But that’s only in the default scenery. Most of my payware scenery and acf files won’t run unless I dial everything down to look markedly worse than in 9.7 or to a screen resolution of 1024×768.
What a farce.
I am hoping future updates will resolve some of these issues but in the meantime I find myself sticking to 9.7 and leaving 10 as Austin’s continuing WIP… but Austin already has my money.
I am surprised by the level of bugs – can’t seem to get glideslope runway lights to work, idle throttle seems to high, rudder effectivness on ground in high winds seems incorrect, and the install on the disk is unusable – you insert the DVD and then bring up the install on the Wedsite? I have MSX – need to reinstall it.
Well im really happy with XP 10, Running on a i7 2600, 6GB ram, ATI 5870 1GB, running in 1920×1200 im able to get >20 fps with all my planes ( Carenado, CRJ200, Falco, MU2, +, + ) It does take a little efford to get it running.
For me, the only thing to turn down, is the shadows ( Kept on overlay ), Texture is on High. nearly everything else is on high or more. HDR is enabled.
Away from cities fps is at 30-40+.
ATC. i find a bit buggy yet, but i really like, that issues are handled. Off course Austin could wait with the release, but it is impossible to foresee every problem with hardware until the program is testet by the users. And they have been issueing new patches very quickly to address theese things.
To wait for Flight – Well no one knows anything about Flight, exept the hawaii scenery videoes and pictures, so i will not hold my breath for that release.
To compare it to a wellrunning FSX – hmmm Fsx has had 6 years to mature. Developers knows how to program around the shortcommings. Not a fair comparison in my world. XP10 needs to mature a bit before making that judgement.
Wow! is right. Laminar did a great selling job on this dissapointing product. My computer (fairly powerful with a duo-quad processor, 4 GB ram and a 1G graphics card ) ran 9.7 like a dream and all my purchased planes as well. The selling points led me to believe that X10 would run on less computer and give more performance.
Wow – I am a sucker for a con apparently!
All previous posts here describe the horror that unfolded after loading X-10 for the first time. I say horror because it is a real downer to learn I have been dupped by Laminar, I so looked up to. I too had to turn everything off to get it to run. Even after doing so it will not run my favorite purchased plane the Pilatus PC12V10.
I have put V10 in the shed and pulled out old realiable V9.7 until I read some good news!
I haven’t had time to study your advice, but will soon. I’m equally as frustrated…..just got x 10 about a week ago and the resolution reminds of something little better thanPac Man game. And now my plane is trying to take off in the middle of some floating runway in the middle unknown ocean. Thx for the advice, hope it works.
matt
DISSAPOINTING!!! For starters, what’s with the antiquated sound engine? This should have been overhauled to at least bring it inline with fsx. This is the same simple mono one sample wave setup Austin has used for many years and seems reluctant to upgrade it.This sets the mood for other corner cutting and the sim is full of “handicaps”. Low fps are to be expected and one can “lower” the res etc but to some this will dissapoint. Another annoying thing is the fiddly Auto pilot and using it.This is so poor and cumbersome.Why did they not use the mouse scroll button as in fsx? Lots of little things like this have ruined the sim for me and I will stick to fsx. Even the so called “new”aircraft are a let down not to mention the abysmal older half finnished relics carried over from previous sims! Then there is the “aircraft select”. What’s this all about? Messy and frustrating compared to fsx again. Sorry to keep on about fsx,but Microsoft got a lot of things right”user friendly”,and Laminar should have dropped their pride and copied these useful and friendly UI. Add to that the fact that the new auto generated housing and roads is repeated all over the planet with no difference between Las Vegas and a rural town in England! lol It’s hard to believe how many disks this requires considering ther are no airport buildings,landmarks or city structures to at least give some VFR pointers! Also wher eis the so called “optimised code” where they said this would run better than 9.7 for a given setup? And why oh why are we still sticking to 32bit? 64 bit offers so much more computational number crunching,yet once again we are stuck with 32bit and the lower performance it offers.Poeple say there is no difference!That’s like saying there is no difference then between 32bit and 16bit or 16bit and 8bit.Absolute nonesence. Do your research! When it comes to number crunching 64bit offers greater resolution Ideal for something as complicated as a sim.It’s just lazy programming not taking advantage of the latest CPUs,and come on, 64bit has been available for years and just about every PC is 64bit already! One nice feature of Xplane though is the true night lighting which is superior to fsx. But taking all the dissapointing quirks I am still not sold as there are far too many fowners for me.Even the clouds pale in comparison to “REX”. So many things could have been better given the time between this and the last full release! Then there is the awful and clunky ATC. I could go one ,suffice to say I am giving this a miss! The only ones who are gonna endorse this are the fanboys and diehards loyal to the brand who will defend it here and elsewhere raving how great it is!!!
…absolutely right what you say about X Plane! One really has to question how Beta it really is (at the moment!) They are greedy and rushed it out!
I love the way they blog too, when something is not quite right. Its not a product for the average simmer, we know how good its flight dynamics are, but for the hobbyist, I am not so sure!
Hey guys,
I have to say that ive used FSX, FS9, XP9 and XP10. And the only truely finished product to come out of those would have to be FS9(closest anyway). Everybody seems to forget how much trouble FSX caused and still does might i add. I think ive spent more time trying to tweek FSX to run properly then actually flying it. Ha ha talking about not finishing products before realeasing to the public, im sorry but i cannot think of a time where microsoft has ever done this…..win3.1 maybe?
Anyway i like both flight sims and enjoy changing or swapping over, i think patience for the time being.
Ryan
Major disappointment! Trading off aerial views which provide realistic
flying at most altitudes for Austin’s passion for generic boxes of buildings
out of sync with reality was a poor choice. Add to that the endless crashes
and updates, and we have prematurity at it’s best.
Dick
Major disappointment with XP 10. With a powerful Imac, it seems to crawl, unless you turn off the majority of the rendering options, then the scenery looks terrible.
Stick with XP 9.7 until Laminar figures this one out!
WOW, thank God for the demo. Otherwise I would be out 80 clams.
I own all mfs and xplanes todate. Still flying through buildings and trees in xp10, not much fun when flying choppers. I see no difference with the chopper, it still has same annoying quirks.Scenery sucks on realism, a big no no for me. At least in MFS I can fly vfr using landmarks. I think Microsoft Flight will be crap
from what am hearing. Black Shark 2 it is for now……………………..
OK, well I have an i5 K2500 @4.3 GHz with a GTX470oc total cost roughly 1100-1200 bucks- and XP10 has run very well even from the first demo. No crashes, very smooth FPS 20-40 with most settings high except clouds.
And no I didn’t start with all rendering options down low. Maybe I’m just lucky? Have I tinkered with it? You bet! It seems most of the problems are with Mac users and that is too bad. XP10 looks fantastic (depending on what you have added to the Custom Scenery folder as well) Download some free airports and try Urban Maxx and Clouds Maxx from the org. Get the CBD for Seattle and then take a dawn or dusk flight over downtown Seattle with the dynamic lighting and the atmospheric scattering…amazing.
Blows FSX right out of the water.
I have tons of great Orbx scenery for FSX and I WAS addicted to it.
But I have lost interest in FSX since it just doesnt feel like real flight to me.
XP10 is an incomplete product but it is a marvelous pallet for the future and it is here now.
Can anyone tell me if this real life enhancement was added in X-Plane 10 – the ability to tune your radio to an airfield and by keying the microphone several times make the runway lights turn on? I don’t know which comm freq accomplishes this or how many times you key your mic – my brother (who is a real pilot) told me about this capability in the real world. I know we don’t have a microphone per se – but some coding could replicate this ability.
I emailed Laminar about this probably a year ago requesting this enhancement – I’m curious if they listened (of course I never got an answer).
- Wasted 90$ CA
- Buggy in every corner of its features
- Unfinished software = patch work of technological ideas (a bit here and a bit there, no integrity in its overall usability and no immersion in the overall experience)
- Laminar selling a Commercial product that is really an experimentation of different technological indeas(again no integrity in its usability)
- 1 season for the whole year! Version = 10, Laminar did not not notice that with the snow storms and the sofisticated weather module as well as with the plausible 3D world, there should finaly be some 4 seasons to make the whole thing immersive and believable?
- ATC is drunk or incompetent… Not possible to have IFR guided flight with this thing…
- A.I is a joke, how in the name of technology a concept of A.I per CPU can be practical and useful for home PCs???? 5 planes around me were too much for my i7 2600 overclocked…
- Yes performance is weak even with powerful computers but will forgive them this part since FSX was suffering from this virus for many years
- Oh the only thing I love in XP10 is Night Flying. Nights are very real over urban areas, we feel the 3D lit earth underneath and its almost the only positive thing I keep from my attempts to like XP10… Also nights hide the flaws and missing seasonal variations ;o)
- Now what can one do with XP10 once he sees his 90$ wasted? Some VFR circuits at night around an airport …
- Laminar was once the “David” against “Goliath/MS”, now they are trying to package and sell a commercial product that they do not know how to complete. They are no doubt geniuses at work but they do not know how to deliver a comprehensive overall complete usability for the end user…
- No, the fancy Flight dyanmics, the “we are the best” banners and all the overconfident advertisments including the post ACES closure sermon to preach FS user to convert does not match what is released…
- will keep playing with FS for now…
My experience withX-Plane 10.3 beta has been nothing but positive….. the detail and realism is incredible! Download and install were slick and easy with no problems. I’m running a multi-core Mac, which I am thinking provides much better performance, but I have not had problem one.