Finally, time has come to say goodby. No no! No need to worry or to think that it’s over with X-Plained.Com.
It’s time for my holiday. Time to relax, time to hit the sun, time to enjoy the French life. After months of stress at home, several difficulties, website issues, and more of these things, I feel it’s time to go out for a couple of weeks.
And yes, I’m aware, at the end X-Plained.Com is looking again to me … and, what’s the next review, any special review requests from our readers, any new ideas to implement and so on. And, I promised myself – now already more then a year ago – to start with my first SketchUp airport creation EHTX or Texel Airport. That will happen, but I can’t guarantee when I will start with this. Maintaining X-Plained.Com cost more time then I thought. Not that this is a problem, but the result of all these promises is that other “X-Plane wishes” move to the background.
Anyway, first my holiday, after that, time to look and plan ahead. For now, enjoy all the stuff we’ve got so far. And no worries, when time and Wifi permits, I’ll answer your emails or comments.
See you soon! Bye bye for now!
Have a nice time Angelique, within 4 weeks we travel to the Dordogne 😉
Will do. Heading for the Jura (Belfort) and Annecy. Further on, time will learn. You to a great holiday. Enjoy!
Have a nice holiday Angelique.
All the best with making a good purchase decision. As an technician I know both Mac and Windows systems quite well and I’m in computers since the ZX-81 from Sinclair. I learned programming on Apple IIc and I’m a Mac(book) lover too but for flight simming I prefer those Windows computers. They cost a fraction compared to the Mac and can run other sims as well. Windows 10 isn’t that bad and runs very stable. Microsoft did his job quite wel
Another advantage is that you can upgrade parts very easily. I’m always building pc’s myself and choose A+ components. Last month I changed my videocard myself as an upgrade for X-plane 11 for example.
That’s an important thing to think about Angelique. iMac’s have ATI cards. ATI cards have never been performed very well in flight sims. X-plane is based on OpenGL drivers. (But I think I read somewhere that developers will change to another graphical system? Vulcan? sorry I’m not sure, maybe you know) Nvidia is superior in OpenGL compared to ATI cards.
Your new Mac will have a 5K! screen? With an ATI card for gaming? If I where you I should asked the local reseller for an test system.
So I strongly advice you to keep your iMac for editing and maintaining this site. Buy a new pc for your Flightsimming. If you buy the parts I will make the PC and do the tweaking for free for you. You won’t be disappointed……
By the way….. 5K isn’t the way to go. VR rules the near future in our hobby.
A quick reply. I’ll come back to you soon on this and I’ll send you an email too. But first, moving to the South … oops, mid France.
Have a great vacation, Angelique. Even if you need to reduce the frequency of X’Planed to keep from burn-out, I know we would all understand. But just know that your articles and reviews are very much appreciated and looked forward to.
Have you seen the new 2017 iMacs yet? Up to 8GB of VRAM! Very tempting! 🙂
Enjoy!
Will do Bruce.
Yes, I’ve watched Apple’s KeyNote, and it was great news. I think I will go after my vacation for the iMac 4.2/4.5Ghz, 64GB and the 8GB GPU mem. I had a thought of waiting for the iMac Pro, but I’m afraid this will be too expensive and besides that, it houses the Xeon Intel CPU and perhaps this more expensive CPU doesn’t add anything to XP performance. It also comes with the higher priced ECC memory, all kind of things that aren’t perhaps needed for normal work and XP power. After my vacation I’ll check with Austin or Ben and ask what they think. Then I’ll make up my mind.
Hi Angelique- I’ll be very interested in what you decide to do for computer hardware. I’m torn between building a new PC, or buying one of the new iMacs. I have seen the 8GB VRAM iMac at our local Apple Store, and it’s very enticing to keep the Mac technology (which I love). The Kabey Lake, the RAM speed and the 8GB VRAM should all work fine, and that screen is something that I could never replicate ion a PC. My only concern is whether the new iMac has sufficient cooling for so much horsepower “under the hood”. I know the new technology should produce less heat for more output. it’s my only concern at the moment in investing in the new iMac.
I hope your vacation is going well. You’re very much appreciated, Angelique! 🙂
Hi Bruce,
For me as Mac lover, I will never switch back to a regular PC. That’s behind me, and that has nothing to do that a PC is not good, absolutely not, but once a Mac, always a Mac!
My plan is to go for the following model:
– iMac Mid 2017 model Retina 5K-display (27″) with a 4,2‑GHz quad‑core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost till 4,5 GHz
– 64 GB 2400‑MHz DDR4
– SSD van 1 TB
I could also go for the 2TB SSD, but that price difference is too high and right now my internal 1TB drive is never full, also because I make of most of the airport add-ons an “alias” to the original storage location. That saves a lot of space on my internal drive. Even the Alpilotx.net mesh scenery packages are not present on my internal drive, but linked via an alias.
I’m aware that the “iMac Pro” has 2660Mhz ECC memory which is again faster then this “regular” iMac model, but ECC memory is mostly much more expensive. Besides that, the iMac Pro does have another AMD GPU, as they say the fastest there is, but don’t forget (at least, it was in the past like this) that the GPU’s in iMac’s are always “M” types. “M” stays from Mobile GPU’s as they use in laptops or notebooks. Then, the iMac Pro also has the Kabey Lake Xeon model CPU instead of the normal Kabey Lake in the new iMac models. Not sure if this “Xeon” model helps X-plane to an even higher standard then the regular Kabey Lake CPU’s.
About the “heat” concern I can say the following which is based on my own Late 2013 iMac with a 3.5Ghz with a Turbo-Boost of 3.9Ghz, 32GB DD3 memory and a 4GB nVidia GeForce GTX 780M. Oh yes, when you use X-Plane or any other program that needs a lot of power, the whole Alu casing becomes warm, but not that warm that you can’t touch it anymore. What I want to say is, that I never had heat problems with my current hardware or performance problems due to a different type of cooler(s) that is/are used. Oh yes, the coolers used in the iMac are of a different size then in a PC, and how they do it, no idea since I never opened an iMac, but what I know is that besides a cooler, whatever the size and cooling effect is, the whole Alu casing is also working as a heat conductor.
Thanks and enjoy your vacation. !! By the way, I was told by someone in the Apple Store last weekend that the new iMacs that already out don’t have the “M” gpu chip but an actual CPU card. Have fun!!
That’s indeed quite interesting that no longer a “M” chip is used. Will do.
Enjoy your holiday!
Will do. I’m looking forward to it.
Angelique and team – many thanks for your excellent reviews and the support for the scenery. The Areobask glider was as much fun to fly as the review stated – especially in Hawaii! Enjoy your holiday together as you certainly deserve it!
Thank you Jon. We do our best! And you than that I was able to help you online with Skype. The program I was talking about for actual remote control is Team Viewer. I asked Evgeny from JARDesign, perhaps the next time!