New "Convert" Has Some Questions

[Deaf Pilot 1]

Hey everyone! While I still use Prepar3D for a number of flights, I was exposed to X-Plane 10 (XPX) by a friend of mine who insisted on me giving it a try on his system, after never liking XP at all due to odd flight dynamics and horrible graphics. It really got me hooked and now I am spending more and more time with it!

 

I have been with the MSFS series since FS98, so I have become very familiar with how that one works, and how the innards of it are set up. So, I made a small list of questions and issues that have popped up as I fly around in XPX, and I am hoping you guys can enlighten me. 

 

1. Cockpits are the hardest-hitting areas in terms of frame rates - I can get 25-30 FPS in no-cockpit HUD view, about 20 in the exterior views, but oftentimes only 10-15 in the cockpit. Is there a tweak or anything I can do to help boost in-cockpit performance?
2. The default trim setting is almost always FAR too nose-down, resulting in me having to trim up a significant amount after takeoff - this is where the programming differences in FSX/XPX are confusing me - are we able to modify parameters in XPX like we can in FSX with it's CFG files? Can the trim be changed to reflect a true neutral setting on loading an aircraft?
3. Water Ops - I was giving water ops a try and noticed a couple of things:
   1. Steering is nonexistant - is there a water rudder of some sort that I am missing?
   2. Water surface in terms of the water moving the aircraft is VERY rough - almost like wild seas. Instead of gently rocking/swaying, the aircraft is almost being thrown around on waves. Can this be modified? Likewise, the bouncing across the surface of the water on takeoff is WAY too aggressive. 
4. Flying into clouds - I get a instant full-gray screen when in clouds. As in a solid overlay in front of the windscreen (or aircraft, if in exterior view). There is no smooth transition from entering clouds and going to a white-out condition. The clouds are a really beautiful thing, begging me to come play with them - but that "instant on" white out is very distracting.
5. Regarding differences in FSX and XPX - Can someone explain to me how the aircraft and the scenery file structures differ? How does the scenery work? How are the aircraft files different from FSX?
6. Null Zones - Is there a configuration file somewhere that I can numerically and individually adjust null zones and sensitivities?
7. Is there a "main" CFG file of sorts like what FSX has, where I could adjust a number of things about the program where menu options are not available?
8. Lastly, has anyone broken down what levels of details set in the menu provide what in the game? (For example, number of objects setting - does it just mean how much of everything, or for each notch you get more of everything plus you get more street lights, or you get more of this or that etc etc). 
9. Compatibility among versions - How are aircraft compatible or not compatible with other versions? If an aircraft is made for version 7 does that mean it won't work in 10, or what?
10. Night textures are too dark. The lights themselves (actual light points, like runway lights, street lights, traffic lights, etc) are great, especially after replacing them with a slightly larger/brighter version, but the ground textures representing the city are far too dim. I have adjusted the Gamma to where it looks right overall, but the city lights textures are still way too dark. Anyone know of a replacement texture to brighten these up or another way to get them to really pop? From a distance I think it's okay but anywhere close to them they just don't imitate real life at all.
11. Speaking of city textures - is there a way to upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate?

Well I think that about covers it for now. I'm sure I will have more questions but these are the ones I was primarily concerned about at this time.

 

Thanks in advance if anyone can answer any of these!

[Janov 2,383]

Hi DeafPilot,

 

no one has answered your questions yet, and it is probably because it is such a comprehensive list...

 

I am currently laying tiles in my basement, but if I find the time tonight I will give you a quick rundown on your issues and what the commone consensus is to them.

 

Welcome to X-Plane, Jan

[rick_studder 4]

Here's a go at some of your questions:

 

1. No tweak that I know of. You should experiment with rendering settings to get higher frame rates overall. Set all settings to low and then turn on by on up and see what happens. Usually one of the settings will stand out as culprit. 

 

2. I would presume that default trim can be set in Planemaker. But I don't really see the problem. You would always check and set trim in the real world before takeoff.

 

6. Null zones can be adjusted under Settings > Joystick & equipment. Unless your joystick is noisy there is no need for huge null zones (I use 2%), but I usually have the level of linearity at about 25%, artificial stability at 0%.

 

7. No cfg file that I know of. What needs to be adjusted can be adjusted in the menus. It's a blessing!

 

8. Some tuning tips for rendering settings: http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/12/beta-9-and-how-the-rendering-settings-now-work/

 

11. Not in any other way than updating X-Plane or use add on scenery. 

[Deaf Pilot 1]

Hi DeafPilot,

 

no one has answered your questions yet, and it is probably because it is such a comprehensive list...

 

I am currently laying tiles in my basement, but if I find the time tonight I will give you a quick rundown on your issues and what the commone consensus is to them.

 

Welcome to X-Plane, Jan

 

Jan - Thank you for responding. Looking forward to what you have to say later. I am very aware of the FSX vs XP debate and am not interested in it, frankly. Rather, what I am trying to do is just understand the differences for my own knowledge - not "is this better than that?"

 

 

Here's a go at some of your questions:

 

1. No tweak that I know of. You should experiment with rendering settings to get higher frame rates overall. Set all settings to low and then turn on by on up and see what happens. Usually one of the settings will stand out as culprit. Okay I had done that but I gave it another round of trials - found that the 3D shadows on aircraft was a pretty hard-hitter. Gained about 8 FPS from turning that down to Static. 

 

 

2. I would presume that default trim can be set in Planemaker. But I don't really see the problem. You would always check and set trim in the real world before takeoff. Very true, especially as a real-world pilot myself. However, you would find that in 90% of the real world cases, aircraft trim is set to neutral between flights, and this typically is a slightly nose-heavy condition on most aircraft, but only at the time of rotation. Pick up a little speed and it evens out. I just find that the "neutral" trim on almost all aircraft in XP are VERY nose heavy, requiring a heavy-handed amount of uptrim.

 

 

6. Null zones can be adjusted under Settings > Joystick & equipment. Unless your joystick is noisy there is no need for huge null zones (I use 2%), but I usually have the level of linearity at about 25%, artificial stability at 0%. I have already done this - my issue is that my roll and pitch axes need about 10-15%, but my yaw axis is particularly bad, needing almost 35%. I didn't want that much null in my roll & pitch control but I have to accept one percentage for all axes. That is what I was asking for - if there was a cfg somewhere that I can set the yaw to 35% and the pitch/roll to 15%.

 

 

7. No cfg file that I know of. What needs to be adjusted can be adjusted in the menus. It's a blessing! Okay - sounds great. Didn't really think of why we would need one besides tweaking little things (like pan rate in FSX, etc)

 

 

8. Some tuning tips for rendering settings: http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/12/beta-9-and-how-the-rendering-settings-now-work/ Thanks - this did help clarify a little bit what exactly I am adjusting in the rendering.

 

 

11. Not in any other way than updating X-Plane or use add on scenery. Bummer - entire cities are basically nothing but fields with a few roads, buildings, trees, and random tall buildings thrown in. Especially at night - for example, try flying at Denver at night, taking off out of KDEN. VERY sparse and rural compared to the real Denver. Would this be affected by the roads settings at all, since the scenery seems to be tied to the roads? 

[Janov 2,383]

Alright, here goes. Rick has already answered some of your questions, and there is not much I can add to those. I will just go through your points one by one and see if I can shed additional light ;-)

• Cockpits are the hardest-hitting areas in terms of frame rates - I can get 25-30 FPS in no-cockpit HUD view, about 20 in the exterior views, but oftentimes only 10-15 in the cockpit. Is there a tweak or anything I can do to help boost in-cockpit performance?

 

What Rick said. Getting good performance is different for everyone, depending on personal preference and hardware. There is no simple tweak, but some things that will drag you down hard are shadow settings, HDR, view range, number of objects, cloud settings. Also watch your available dedicated video ram (it shows on the rendering options screen). If you run out of video ram you need to decrease your texture setting, or performance will tank.

 

 

 

• The default trim setting is almost always FAR too nose-down, resulting in me having to trim up a significant amount after takeoff - this is where the programming differences in FSX/XPX are confusing me - are we able to modify parameters in XPX like we can in FSX with it's CFG files? Can the trim be changed to reflect a true neutral setting on loading an aircraft?

You can pretty much change every planes default center of gravity and also the pitch trim setting in planemaker. It is a .exe file located in the main XP10 folder. Play around with it some, there are a myriad of options... make sure to "save as" with a different filename, so you don´t overwrite the original plane.

 

• Water Ops - I was giving water ops a try and noticed a couple of things:
   
• Steering is nonexistant - is there a water rudder of some sort that I am missing?
• Water surface in terms of the water moving the aircraft is VERY rough - almost like wild seas. Instead of gently rocking/swaying, the aircraft is almost being thrown around on waves. Can this be modified? Likewise, the bouncing across the surface of the water on takeoff is WAY too aggressive. 

You can set wave height, speed, lenght, etc. on the weather menu. I agree, the default is a bit heavy. Not sure there is a water rudder, I couldn´t find a setting for it in either planemaker or the default seaplane. Maybe best ask the developer himself for it: Austin@x-plane.com

 

• Flying into clouds - I get a instant full-gray screen when in clouds. As in a solid overlay in front of the windscreen (or aircraft, if in exterior view). There is no smooth transition from entering clouds and going to a white-out condition. The clouds are a really beautiful thing, begging me to come play with them - but that "instant on" white out is very distracting.

That has been discussed before, and opinions vary. I think that the instant whiteout is realistic for most more solid clouds. The problem is that those solid clouds are not shown as such in the 3D world. So what appears to be a bank of whispy clouds surprises you when you dive inside by totally blocking your view.

I personally prefer the total whiteout to being able to sneak a peak at the ground once in a while, especially when practicing IFR maneuvers.

 

• Regarding differences in FSX and XPX - Can someone explain to me how the aircraft and the scenery file structures differ? How does the scenery work? How are the aircraft files different from FSX?

There are basically two different sets of scenery, the default global one, and custom scenery, both reside in their own folders. You shall never mess with the global one, but the custom scenery can be added and removed by simply moving the relevant folders in and out of the "custom scenery" folder. Likewise for aircraft, there is no installation or scenery library work needed. If you don´t see custom scenery at first, restart the sim, it does build a library internally and sometimes this takes this extra cycle.

 

• Null Zones - Is there a configuration file somewhere that I can numerically and individually adjust null zones and sensitivities?

It is a common wish to have sensitivity settings saveable "per aircraft". Right now this is not possible. You can adjust your global nullzone and sensitivy in the "Joystick + equipment" tab.

 

• Is there a "main" CFG file of sorts like what FSX has, where I could adjust a number of things about the program where menu options are not available?

Look in X-Plane 10/Output/preferences, plenty of .prf files there that you can edit --- at your own risk ;-)

 

• Lastly, has anyone broken down what levels of details set in the menu provide what in the game? (For example, number of objects setting - does it just mean how much of everything, or for each notch you get more of everything plus you get more street lights, or you get more of this or that etc etc). 

Afaik there is not absolute breakdown of what each level entails. It´s just generally "more stuff".

 

• Compatibility among versions - How are aircraft compatible or not compatible with other versions? If an aircraft is made for version 7 does that mean it won't work in 10, or what?

There used to be fairly good compatibility between versions up to version 9. Version 10 was a big step that changed a lot of things in the flightmodel, not to mention 64bit compatibility. So in general an aircraft designed for 9 or earlier will not work well in 10, and vice versa. The individual level of compatibility depends on how much the particular airplanes systems were affected in the last change. A glider plane, for example, might just work fine.

 

• Night textures are too dark. The lights themselves (actual light points, like runway lights, street lights, traffic lights, etc) are great, especially after replacing them with a slightly larger/brighter version, but the ground textures representing the city are far too dim. I have adjusted the Gamma to where it looks right overall, but the city lights textures are still way too dark. Anyone know of a replacement texture to brighten these up or another way to get them to really pop? From a distance I think it's okay but anywhere close to them they just don't imitate real life at all.

Again opinions vary. I personally like the way X-Plane portrays the night - as in you can´t see squat if it´s not lit. There is a replacement file out on x-plane.org that really boosts all lightbulbs at night, and it has in general gotten good reviews.

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=18742

 

• Speaking of city textures - is there a way to upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate?

Apart from really creating your own custom scenery, no. Landclass data is part of the global scenery, and only Laminar Research changes that. Which they are about to do, according to Ben Supnik´s blog:

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/

 

 

• Well I think that about covers it for now. I'm sure I will have more questions but these are the ones I was primarily concerned about at this time.
   
  Thanks in advance if anyone can answer any of these!

[uwespeed 497]

 

 

Speaking of city textures - is there a way to upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate?

 

It depends what you understand under "upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate". Do you mean the position of the textures or their look?

 

In regard of the position (although not city but all textures) I made two screenshots longer time ago - see below. They were taken in Germany at the transition from a photoscenery to the default X-Plane landclass. As you can see, the position is very accurate. However, this might not be the case everywhere in the world.

 

If you mean the look of the city textures: there is a replacement for the default city textures called UrbanMAXX.

 

 

 

 

[Deaf Pilot 1]

 

Alright, here goes. Rick has already answered some of your questions, and there is not much I can add to those. I will just go through your points one by one and see if I can shed additional light ;-)

• Cockpits are the hardest-hitting areas in terms of frame rates - I can get 25-30 FPS in no-cockpit HUD view, about 20 in the exterior views, but oftentimes only 10-15 in the cockpit. Is there a tweak or anything I can do to help boost in-cockpit performance?

 

What Rick said. Getting good performance is different for everyone, depending on personal preference and hardware. There is no simple tweak, but some things that will drag you down hard are shadow settings, HDR, view range, number of objects, cloud settings. Also watch your available dedicated video ram (it shows on the rendering options screen). If you run out of video ram you need to decrease your texture setting, or performance will tank.

 

Gotcha.

• The default trim setting is almost always FAR too nose-down, resulting in me having to trim up a significant amount after takeoff - this is where the programming differences in FSX/XPX are confusing me - are we able to modify parameters in XPX like we can in FSX with it's CFG files? Can the trim be changed to reflect a true neutral setting on loading an aircraft?

You can pretty much change every planes default center of gravity and also the pitch trim setting in planemaker. It is a .exe file located in the main XP10 folder. Play around with it some, there are a myriad of options... make sure to "save as" with a different filename, so you don´t overwrite the original plane.

 

Great - thank you. Was hoping for a global trim setting as all planes have too much nose-down trim by default but this is certainly better than nothing!

 

• Water Ops - I was giving water ops a try and noticed a couple of things:

   

• Steering is nonexistant - is there a water rudder of some sort that I am missing?
• Water surface in terms of the water moving the aircraft is VERY rough - almost like wild seas. Instead of gently rocking/swaying, the aircraft is almost being thrown around on waves. Can this be modified? Likewise, the bouncing across the surface of the water on takeoff is WAY too aggressive. 

You can set wave height, speed, lenght, etc. on the weather menu. I agree, the default is a bit heavy. Not sure there is a water rudder, I couldn´t find a setting for it in either planemaker or the default seaplane. Maybe best ask the developer himself for it: Austin@x-plane.com

 

I can try emailing him about it - would think he would be too busy to get back to me on a minor issue like this though.

• Flying into clouds - I get a instant full-gray screen when in clouds. As in a solid overlay in front of the windscreen (or aircraft, if in exterior view). There is no smooth transition from entering clouds and going to a white-out condition. The clouds are a really beautiful thing, begging me to come play with them - but that "instant on" white out is very distracting.

That has been discussed before, and opinions vary. I think that the instant whiteout is realistic for most more solid clouds. The problem is that those solid clouds are not shown as such in the 3D world. So what appears to be a bank of whispy clouds surprises you when you dive inside by totally blocking your view.

I personally prefer the total whiteout to being able to sneak a peak at the ground once in a while, especially when practicing IFR maneuvers.

 

I most certainly agree that white-out is definitely realistic! As I've said before, I am a real-world pilot and frankly, even most wispy clouds will completely knock out your vision when flying through them in the real world. However, my complaint is specifically how instantly the white-out appears. My buddy and I, when we were experimenting with XP and trying out the clouds, at first we thought something broke or there was a graphical error because the screen instantly turned completely white. 

 

Speaking of clouds, in my experience, there is one simulator that got it pretty close to right - IL-2/Pacific Fighters. I actually don't have much time logged with IL-2 but with Pacific Flight, one thing I absolutely loved was bad-weather flying. The clouds were not FPS hogs and yet they were the most realistic-behaving clouds I've seen. They make you completely blind and yet entry & exit is completely fluid and really does resemble real-world cloud flying almost to a T. MS Flight did better than FSX, but was still so-so. I would say XP is about on par with MS Flight. If the Pacific Fighters weather engine could be modified or somewhat copied to work in XP or any other civil aviation simulator, you would have the best weather system out there on a civil sim.

• Regarding differences in FSX and XPX - Can someone explain to me how the aircraft and the scenery file structures differ? How does the scenery work? How are the aircraft files different from FSX?

There are basically two different sets of scenery, the default global one, and custom scenery, both reside in their own folders. You shall never mess with the global one, but the custom scenery can be added and removed by simply moving the relevant folders in and out of the "custom scenery" folder. Likewise for aircraft, there is no installation or scenery library work needed. If you don´t see custom scenery at first, restart the sim, it does build a library internally and sometimes this takes this extra cycle.

 

Makes sense. Thanks.

• Null Zones - Is there a configuration file somewhere that I can numerically and individually adjust null zones and sensitivities?

It is a common wish to have sensitivity settings saveable "per aircraft". Right now this is not possible. You can adjust your global nullzone and sensitivy in the "Joystick + equipment" tab.

 

Not per aircraft, but per axis. As explained above, I want the null zone on my rudder to be larger than the null zone on my roll/pitch axis. because I have a sloppy rudder axis, I am stuck with 35% null on everything, instead of 35% on the yaw axis and 20% on the pitch/roll axis.

 

• Is there a "main" CFG file of sorts like what FSX has, where I could adjust a number of things about the program where menu options are not available?

Look in X-Plane 10/Output/preferences, plenty of .prf files there that you can edit --- at your own risk ;-)

 

Perfect!

• Lastly, has anyone broken down what levels of details set in the menu provide what in the game? (For example, number of objects setting - does it just mean how much of everything, or for each notch you get more of everything plus you get more street lights, or you get more of this or that etc etc). 

Afaik there is not absolute breakdown of what each level entails. It´s just generally "more stuff".

 

Okay - no worries. 

• Compatibility among versions - How are aircraft compatible or not compatible with other versions? If an aircraft is made for version 7 does that mean it won't work in 10, or what?

There used to be fairly good compatibility between versions up to version 9. Version 10 was a big step that changed a lot of things in the flightmodel, not to mention 64bit compatibility. So in general an aircraft designed for 9 or earlier will not work well in 10, and vice versa. The individual level of compatibility depends on how much the particular airplanes systems were affected in the last change. A glider plane, for example, might just work fine.

 

Thanks for clarifying that.

• Night textures are too dark. The lights themselves (actual light points, like runway lights, street lights, traffic lights, etc) are great, especially after replacing them with a slightly larger/brighter version, but the ground textures representing the city are far too dim. I have adjusted the Gamma to where it looks right overall, but the city lights textures are still way too dark. Anyone know of a replacement texture to brighten these up or another way to get them to really pop? From a distance I think it's okay but anywhere close to them they just don't imitate real life at all.

Again opinions vary. I personally like the way X-Plane portrays the night - as in you can´t see squat if it´s not lit. There is a replacement file out on x-plane.org that really boosts all lightbulbs at night, and it has in general gotten good reviews.

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=18742

 

Dont get me wrong - the darkness is not a problem. This is the first civil sim that properly replicates the lack of lighting and how you gotta have a light source to see something. It looks great! What I am referring to is the textures on the ground that resemble light sources of a city. AKA, when you fly over Denver in FSX at night, you see the lights of the city via those ground textures. In XP, it is there too, but far too dim. Real night flight, the cities really do shine and sparkle. Definitely not so in XP. FSX, in this regard, everything being default, does this better but I know XP can do better.

• Speaking of city textures - is there a way to upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate?

Apart from really creating your own custom scenery, no. Landclass data is part of the global scenery, and only Laminar Research changes that. Which they are about to do, according to Ben Supnik´s blog:

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/

 

Okay makes sense. However, uwespeed mentioned UrbanMAXX - I have seen it before but disregarded it. However, I gave it a closer look and realized that this is what I was actually looking for - here's why. In a review, it is made clear that XP differs from FSX in the sense that FSX has cities represented by textures & roads, with autogen on top of that. Apparently, it seems like XP does it completely differently - it lays down a "background" of green, and overlays that with roads and populates it with buildings, houses, trees, and other objects. Great concept, but in action, it makes every city out there look too sparse because there is too much green in between everything. That was my problem - My settings have to be pretty low (off the top of my head I believe the roads, trees and objects are set to default or low), and so I see a LOT of green everywhere I go. Cities just aren't there the way they should be because my settings are too low. However, UrbanMAXX seems like it will fix that by recognizing that there needs to be a city there, and putting the textures in the way FSX would. I will be giving that a try and seeing how that improves it. 

• Well I think that about covers it for now. I'm sure I will have more questions but these are the ones I was primarily concerned about at this time.

   

  Thanks in advance if anyone can answer any of these!

 

 

 

It depends what you understand under "upgrade the landclass data to be more accurate". Do you mean the position of the textures or their look?

 

In regard of the position (although not city but all textures) I made two screenshots longer time ago - see below. They were taken in Germany at the transition from a photoscenery to the default X-Plane landclass. As you can see, the position is very accurate. However, this might not be the case everywhere in the world.

 

If you mean the look of the city textures: there is a replacement for the default city textures called UrbanMAXX.

 

As I said above, I think UrbanMAXX is what I am looking for - I think because of how differently XP renders a city (strictly objects and roads as opposed to objects and roads overlaying a city texture) combined with how low I need to keep my settings to keep the frame rates up, I just wasnt seeing cities like I was supposed to.