Screenshot/Video Request

[VegaSS 2]

I have yet to be able to run the demo, so could someone snap some pics or video of the Las Vegas area and surounding dessert please? Would be great help in deciding if I want to purchase XP10. Thanks

[airlinejets 709]

Hi Vegas,One of the forum members received his DVD set. Maybe you could ask him to have a look.http://forum.avsim.net/topic/355613-xp1000-got-it/

[fvapres 7]

I'll see what I can do...so far, taking 15 mins per DVD...5 to go...then update and setup for settings...

[VegaSS 2]

I'll see what I can do...so far, taking 15 mins per DVD...5 to go...then update and setup for settings...

Thanx jvapres, I noticed that you recieved your copy just after I posted. No hurry, I can wait for your install.

[fvapres 7]

First of all, a screenie of my settings:Here is a short video of the strip - at the beginning is KLAS McCarran Intl on the right (the brown spot) and just ahead of me is the strip...or where it's supposed to be...

Next up is a shot of Manhattan; or where it's supposed to be.

To be fair, we've never been told that XP10 would be accurate with it's cities in any detail other than road placement and the fact that objects would be placed according to an algorithm he developed to make a plausible city. But a bunch of houses with a few buildings interspersed definately isn't NYC or anything close. I hope that there is a way to edit the zoning data directly for large/small/commercial/warehouse/residential buildings so that there is a way to get NYC the way it's supposed to be. Trips anywhere familiar aren't familiar at all. Look at the bridge at the end of the video....I'd love to make this into a driving simulator and drive right off that cliff called a bridge.I'm somewhat disappointed at this. The plausible world is not anywhere close to the real world. Landmarks of any kind seem to be missing. Would LR like 3rd party to add it in so they don't have to? Seems like in some ways, being open to 3rd party allows for them to take up the slack so you can put out a product that is platform for others to build on. I would have hoped that LR would have been more up front about Landmarks and their lack of anything resembling one. I can only hope that they are going to re-implement the necessary landmark data for recognizable structures and buildings, but NYC isn't even close to the sprawl that someone else had hoped it would be.This won't stop me from flying XP10. By no means is this a deal-breaker. It has great graphics around the airport (minus buildings at any airport I've tried thus far) with a step-up ATC system that can be worked into a champ. And given lots of time and lots of users using WED (most of which who just want to fly to an airport and not worry about weather or not it has actual buildings at the destination or departure) to update their favorite airports with realistic lego-block buildings, these things can be made less intrusive. The approach over a city during the day has issues in being believable, but at night and during IFR it really shines. These are things I would rather do often. For the 15-30 minutes at the beginning and end of a flight, you'll be somewhat let down unless you enhance the urban sprawl or pay for a previously enhanced urban sprawl, but the flight at 5000'+ is rather significantly improved with the better weather, atmospherics and lighting.I'm about 75/25 on this current state of things. I feel like I was led to believe that it couldn't be as bad as this would seem. There's no way you could make a flight simulator without a realistic New York City or Las Vegas strip, could you? And yet here is one. One more expensive than previous iterations. It has plusses in that it is only the beginning of a new thing, but the question is, do you even know where this ship is heading? What if it's slightly askew from your current wishes? If you drift a heading at 3 degrees every 5 minutes, you will be 180 degrees from your intended heading in 1 hour. Only Austin can tell us where we are really headed versus where we think we are headed. How long until we find out how astray we are from our heading?

[JasonHarris 96]

At the end of the second video, was that a 300 foot bridge that went nowhere? I have to agree with you on a lot of what you have written and only time will bring out the answers. One thing that does pop out to me is lack of roadmap. I have prepaid for software to get in to the beta programs in the past (latest one being A10) but at least I knew what the final version would be like and had the fun of getting access to it while it was getting there. I don't mind the beta aspect but I wish I did know what the final outcome was supposed to be.

[fvapres 7]

actually, it dropped straight down about 150' then spiraled to the right a bit for an off-ramp-like appendage. I realize that getting all this data to flow effectively in the sim will be a long process, but to call this a releaseable title is a bit pre-mature I'd say. I've always supported Austin and LR since version 7, when I first saw it on the shelf and gave it a go. I've bought every version since just to be a part of the cycle. I would use it for a bit, but I still went back to MSFS just due to the style of interface and lack of 3rd party. To think that 3rd party would flesh out this, though, is a gross mistake, I don't think that could be their thinking. But now I question even that since I thought I could guess educationally about things they would consider feature-complete and this isn't even close. It's a start, but not what I'd call the next generation of X-Plane. It is a step towards what XP10 should be, but the land-data needs dire fleshing out.If there was a file that defined the structure zoning like the tree/landclass zoning, at least we could edit the citys to be more...citylike. Using a google earth backdrop of the city with bounding boxes for the residential/commercial/warehouse/seaport areas, this might be able to turn around. Have a generic/random layout to start with, but users could edit the cities to be more accurate if they choose.I know that I can get a 2d sketch of the floorplan of my house, along with the lot data for the city and most major structures. The data is out there. There has to be some way of harnessing it and importing into XPlane. G2XP is a pretty good start, but making a building on google buildings is rather hit or miss. I tried using the building maker in my home city here in central florida. It said the data wasn't available for the buliding maker.

[greggerm 312]

From a scenery content standpoint, this is most disappointing. Not everyone will care about these discrepancies, but I was *really* hoping that what I saw with the Seattle demo was an aberration... unfortunately, it would appear that it was not.Seeing Las Vegas and its surroundings as endless fields of green, and the cluster*@&! that is Manhattan (Shows up in the video towards the 0:45 mark).... wow. What the heck is up with the Brooklyn Bridge?? Nevermind being accurate - it's not even plausible! (The buzzword of the XP10 release)The display engine for XP10 seems to be good - handles all these objects well and that video (and my experience with the demo) show good performance! It's a terrible shame that the scenery engine which generates it all is an urban xxxxx-burger in its current form. Hopefully this can be turned around, and soon.Darnit - I really do want it to be better because I am a sucker for new simulation software, and I'm so ready to make a purchase - these videos just put fresh nails in that coffin. Ugh! Thanks for the videos - as much as I am disappointed with the content, I appreciate the effort, fvapres.-Greg

[greggerm 312]

FVAPRES,Quick question - when you were out at Las Vegas - how did the rest of the desert look? Was it all grasslands, or was it appropriately textured as desert, rock, sand, stone, etc...Thanks for your insights into the new product... Sorry you had to be the first one on the block with the product to field these requests!! :)-Greg

[Geofa 108]

I am wondering if you crank your texture resolution to "extreme" if it will get rid of the blurry ground textures (it did on mine) and if you crank up your objects to totally insane if New York will look more real....(I ended up not using any of the hdr settings just so I could run objects, trees, and textures to the max which for me gives a much more realistic look).However, my worry has been the landclass issue. If my suburban area looks like New York city and New York city looks like my suburban area that doesn't work so well in giving a semblance of reality. I don't care so much about accurate building models but the landclass has to match...somewhat...Look forward to more reports till my disks show up!

[fvapres 7]

I kinda knew it would come with the territory of posting first that I had it... :-pI like X-Plane and where it could go...don't get me wrong...it has promise. But most people will be expecting much more accurate world data than it currently ships with...gimme a bit and I'll get a video of KGCN to the canyon and around KLAS itselfAs promised, here they are. Apparently, YouTube is in read-only mode when I uploaded this video, so it may not be available right away.Desert Area around KLAS

Grand Canyon - Takeoff from KGCN, then proceed north, drop into canyon for some fun at 600+ kts in F22. No matter what sim, this is always fun. Near the end, I pull up and go high to 20,000' and give an overview of the canyon with the general lighting and cloudiness.-currently awaiting the 2.7GB video to finish uploading (couldn't resist recording a good bit)

[m_av 0]

Many X-planers have seen this movie before. The more I think about it, the more it seems almost like a ploy.In early versions of v8, when the scenery engine and data took a dramatic shift away from previous versions, almost all urban and sub-urban areas were filled with mid-rises and hi-rises. With the change of a few text and perhaps other files they were transformed into what is now referred to as "plausible" cities. If they could do it in v8 and v9, why on earth wouldn't it be possible in v10 ? And it was done with relative ease. What I am referring to primarily is the library.txt files and/or some such similar files which contain essentially a list of choice alternate buildings, objects, or groups of objects depending on footprint size and/or height, which can be interchangeably used in a given environment - whether urban, suburban, commercial or industrial, etc.For those interested, look into X-plane's Resources folder as well as the X-planes scenery description blogs and wiki stuff online.IMHO, v10, except for perhaps a few improvements, is not enough of an improvement over v9 to warrant a new version label - it could very well have been v9.99. Anybody can see that X-plane has a lot of potential and almost never fails to fall short of that potential. That drives many people, including me, particularly me, crazy.The real competition will be between X-plane v11 and Flight in a couple of years or so.

[MdMax 233]

At the end of the second video, was that a 300 foot bridge that went nowhere?

Well, according to the shape of the coastline, I think this bridge was Brooklyn Bridge and a "plausible" world bug.- OpenStreetMap- Real picture

[VegaSS 2]

OMG... This is a SERIOUS dissapointment. This is about as far away from Las Vegas as I could have EVER imagined. That's the STRIP????? Where the heck is the dirt?? I only wish there was green like that in Vegas. I thank you SOO much for this. My mind is made up now, looks like I will not waste my money.

[GoranM 3,762]

OMG... This is a SERIOUS dissapointment. This is about as far away from Las Vegas as I could have EVER imagined. That's the STRIP????? Where the heck is the dirt?? I only wish there was green like that in Vegas. I thank you SOO much for this. My mind is made up now, looks like I will not waste my money.

Because Las Vegas doesn't look right, you won't waste your money?I thought it was a FLIGHT simulator...Not a Las Vegas simulator.To each his own, I guess.