We’re pleased that dedicated X-Plained member Freddy De Pues from NAPS had the time to share his X-Plane 11 screenshots with us as well as what issues he has faced. Yes, we’re all aware that X-Plane 11 is still in beta or in the case of Freddy’s screenshots, from the Public Beta.
This is Fred’s first look and feel of X-Plane 11, but perhaps Fred hasn’t seen all the new features or perhaps not everything isn’t yet implemented. Anyway, this is Fred’s idea so far:
- Crashes a lot on startup with Custom Scenery at 257GB. At the end, you get the welcome screen anyway.
- XP10 Custom Scenery transfer or import, no problem, aircraft imports, don’t work. (didn’t try HD3 Mesh).
- Longer scenery loading time.
- Better FPS than in XP10.
- Hazy atmosphere.
- Contrails at lower altitudes.
- European autogen buildings have a German look everywhere.
- Selecting FOV you see what you get (angle of view).
- Nice preselected Chinese hat views, pan right, left, and up and down!
- No change in water or waves. Same weather engine.
- Less graphic tunings.
Overall impression not many differences with XP10, but what said, perhaps not all is implemented yet or Fred needs a couple more flying hours to see all the “new” ins and outs. Many thanks Fred for your input!
Thanks OT2 very informative and a nicely balanced view.
I spent several hours with the new X-Plane 11 Friday night and many hours yesterday, Saturday Nov. 27, 2016. I agree with Freddie in that the earth has not changed and that we are looking at a work in progress that has, as expected, some things that will disappoint. Getting past that and appreciating the fact that Laminar has given us a taste of what they have to satisfy our curiosities, I have found the following:
This is a 64 bit program only. If you are running an older (32 bit) system, it won’t work.
In the graphic settings, there are options which will allow better adjustments than what “popped” up on my screen when I first started the program. The slider for anti-aliasing was full off and this was the first adjustment I made – taking it almost all the way up without decreasing my framerates more than 3 or 4. The default picture size was set at 150%, which I moved to 100% (check block at the bottom of the screen). Moving the reflections slider from minimal to higher settings reduced framerates without greatly effecting the beautiful skins on the default aircraft.
In the custom weather settings, moving the visibility slider to the right almost completely removed the haze with minimal reductions in framerates.
Installing my Carenado aircraft caused no problems, but my FF 767 loaded with a warning that the avionics would not work and they didn’t.
Installing HD3 mesh worked, but took out many airport sceneries so I took it out. Looks great without it, but it probably sacrifices some detail.
The default FMC will work but without VNAV capabilities, which means you have to anticipate climb and descent and adjust accordingly. (My biggest disappointment)
Setting up the controllers was intuitive and easily done. If you have controls that move around a lot (my mixture would not stay rich which resulted in engine shutdown), it is probably an addon (don’t know which one it was – took them all out) that you brought over rather than a dirty pot on your controller.
Now for the performance. We must remember that everyone has a different computer setup and results will vary based on what you are using. My system is a homebuilt PC with an i7-4770 processor (not the biggest and best), a GTX 770 4GB graphics card, and 16 GB of DRAM running on Windows 10. With what I have described above, I am seeing 35 to 50+ frames per second. Never have I see less than this and am satisfied with this and (to be honest) was concerned that I would lag behind in what I needed. The clouds are much like XPX and I find that installing the current version of SkyMaxxPro just does not do what it did in XPX, but they are promising an update. X-Camera does not work well and will probably fixed for this version, but the built-in TrackIR (click the block at the bottom of the display settings window) works very well.
What bothers me now is that there may be a influx of updated aircraft/applications, all with a potential price tag (some have already announced) which will hit us all at the same time if we carry our current fleet over and if you want SkyMaxxPro and other applications. If the reduced prices are not “time limited” this might be manageable, but, if not, it will be an expensive move to do them all at once. This hits us older people on fixed incomes particularly hard.
Personally, I am thankful that I am now able to see the growth in another great simulator version and am looking forward to seeing the improvements which, if history repeats itself, will be forthcoming over the next few years. But, I am even more thankful that I still have XP10 to fly while I watch the growth of XP11. I still have what I paid for there and it continues to work – and very well, I might add.