PilotEdge Forums

Having both...if you plan on ever buying Saitek's' gauges...they do not work with Xplane at all. I've got 9 gauges that are worthless if I run the Xplane. The weather on xplane is much better and having the ability to make your own "fronts" etc is really cool. I say if you want to fly VFR stuff...I like the Flight Sim X .....if I'm flying approaches the weather is much better in Xplane. I do like the ease of use on the FSX....it's more user friendly however...if you set xplane up it works pretty easily. I cant convert 100% due to loosing 9 gauges at 150 bucks each and having the ability to "touch" dials etc while flying really makes it seem more real then clicking a mouse.

M

Before you give up on your gauges you might want to check with "Sparker" (?) who did the xsaitekpanels plugin. After what I saw he did with his plugin I'm convinced he might pull of the a gauges plugin. Couldn't hurt.

Whatever anyone does, don't get yourself in the mindset of an exclusive "either/or." Allow yourself the freedom to fly whichever sim whenever you want to. Just my pair of Lincoln-headed tokens. Have fun!

I think Mike is talking about the Saitek "Pro Flight Instrument" panels, which are little LCD screens that can each depict one flight instrument (artificial horizon, airspeed indicator, etc.) These can be grouped together to make a complete set of instruments for a cockpit.

As far as I know, he's right: there are no plugins for them for X-Plane yet.

The other Saitek "panels" (radio, multi-panel, switch panel, and backlit information panel) are all supported on XPlane by the xsaitekpanel plugin as Calvin mentions (and by the excellent SPAD add-on for FSX).

-M.

Hi Mark,

Yes, I am familiar with the whole line of Saitek products. My family gave me $2K my last B-Day for me to acquire the flightsim products they saw me drooling over in previous years.

My point was unless someone has asked Sparker(?) if he can see what he could do with the instruments we'll never know. If you go fishing you might catch a fish, but if you don't throw your hook in the water you never will.

If you find someone that can make our LCD screens work...let me know. It would be nice to have them work with both programs!

m

Xplanes is much more scaleable than fsx, if you are building a simuator xp is the clear choice. I have found the flight mechanics of xp to be superior. Fsx has great eye candy, but if you are serious about learning to fly then xp is the way.

I don't think it's really that simple. Have you tried flying some of the HIGH END fsx payware? I've had brief exposure to a couple of them and have been impressed. Yes, out of the box, X-Plane can do things FSX can't, but I wouldn't quite sell FSX that short.

If someone has thousands invested in incompatible hardware, the choice is less clear IMHO.

Well, you can look around the internet at some of the truly incredible simulators people have built and the vast majority used Xplanes. People have networked as many as 11 PCs into a simulator using Xplanes (after that you need to go to Project Magenta.) The multi-PC abilities of the software are staggering and allow you to spread a massive workload out over several systems (though XP10's system requirements require some fairly stout systems--with Xp8 or 9 you could use spares that were laying around the house for the secondary PCs.)

And before anyone accuses me of being biased, I have FSX (and all of its predecessors) and ran it until my simulator simply outgrew it. I also have half a dozen other flight apps (and even one that lets me fly X-wings!) FSX is pretty, and the scenery out of the box is waaay better. I especially liked the canned missions, my favorite was the Bahamas approach. If you are going to fly on a desktop simulator, and are looking for straight forward flight simulator then FSX is definately a contender.

But to match Xplanes for scaleability, or the incredible out-of-the-box abilities (orbital reentry, VTOLS, carrier landings, Helicopters, rockets, building your own vehicles, and flying the X15) you would have to shell out five bills for all of the FSX add-on packages it would take to match a $79 copy of Xplanes. FSX will do almost everything that XP will do, but you have to buy $29.95 add-on packs for everything, and there are a buncha them.

So like I said, if you are flying a desktop system then FSX is great. But if you intend to build a simulator then XP is the way.

But on the other-other hand, XP10 doesn't actually support networked displays correctly yet. I have a 6 PC setup (one PC for panels, 5 for external visuals), and there are several serious bugs. FSX, on the other hand, has a couple of excellent (and working) options for synchronizing networked displays.

Like Keith says, it's just not as simple as saying "XP is better than FSX" (or the other way around). There are significant trade-offs in either case. Also, if you're serious about building a "simulator" then spending a few hundred dollars on payware add-ons is trivial. I've got several thousand dollars invested in mine (mostly in hardware, and over many years). Spending $30-40 here and there for an add-on is a minor part of the investment.

-M.

MikePeavler wrote:If you find someone that can make our LCD screens work...let me know. It would be nice to have them work with both programs!

There is a plugin: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... file=17637

They apparently just released the first non-beta version.

Jim