While avoiding all the terrible news at the moment I have been spending some time gaming because, let’s face it, other worlds are better than this one at the moment. I’m starting to look for ancient debris in Minecraft [seems like a job for me, just keep doing the same stuff] and I’m considering my YouTube series on aircraft in X-Plane and how to improve that. I’m not sure I remember what day I last drove the car. It might have been Monday, who knows? The heating in my house is going to fail and I booked a technician but I have to wait three weeks for that person to turn up, so it could get interesting over the next while. I have heating at the moment but keeping it going requires fiddling a couple of times each day.
Mr O and I have been looking for places to do follow-the-leader low flying. Our first attempt was through the Mach Loop and it’s slightly annoying that it seems that could be the best place in the world to do that. I had a go at Star Wars Canyon in the USA and it isn’t that long and was actually quite boring from a – you can fly anywhere in the world – point of view. So I’ve been looking at the Chilean fjords. They look more remarkable than the Norwegian fjords and I wonder if Slartibartfast had any role in designing them. So, along with my search to find somewhere to retire I am also looking for decent valleys and LFAs, Low Flying Areas. Currently I’m tempted with New Caledonia and Tierra Del Fuego. One is warm and tropical and the other is most definitely not. These are dreams really as I doubt very much that I could afford or qualify to move to those places and then end up being a burden on their healthcare systems. It’s nice to dream though.
In these times we have to take enjoyment from the smaller things and do our best to keep sane. It’s not going to be easy and the fall-out from this pandemic is going to affect people for many years to come. Hopefully we will have a government willing to cough up the money to ensure the best of all. They seem quite cash-happy at the moment but I suspect that’s because of business losing money rather than an overall caring for people thing. Let’s wait and see.
Had another flight in the X-Plane system with Mr O, who is based in Texas. This time I decided we would fly from Kerry airport in the Republic of Ireland and bomb, or at least virtually attack, Skellig Michael – the island where Rey finds Luke. This time I recorded a section of the flight. After the bombing run it took about ten minutes for us to find each other in the skies so that wouldn’t be too interesting!
After the launch of my YouTube series Minecraft Megaship 3000, I have been pondering other things. I quite enjoyed the challenge of creating those videos and maybe I should do more? I might try streaming on Twitch and I think it will be flight simulation based. I’m just trying to work out what I could do. I might even stream some Minecraft. Who knows?
There are two videos currently live. Another six will be released with episode three today at 1500. The last video covers a tour with a ray tracing resource pack, it’s worth watching all the others for. Happy Noodlemass.
I spent a lovely time last night flying over the Welsh countryside with Mr O. We both have PCs capable of running X-Plane 11 and as we near the winter no-work-period it seemed sensible to try and fly together. While this is possible it is not easy. X-Plane has the ability to link up with another computer but only if you are on the LAN together. This is somewhat irritating. Also, it will only link up if the copies of all the sub-directories are exactly the same. This is not really a possibility as neither of us wanted to change our personal set up. So, the next thing was to find a solution from the world of the internet. There are a few after market add ons that will allow you to fly together but I didn’t want to pay money [I think I might make a donation] and I wanted the simplest set up. I found JoinFS a cross-platform tool to fly together over different sims! Also, as an advantage it is P2P and so doesn’t rely on an external network or server.
T7 and Tonka Live Flying
After a while trying to set the software up and not reading the instructions, because who does that, we managed to get one aircraft showing in my sim although Mr O couldn’t see me. I think that’s because JoinFS works by “knowing” the type of aircraft you are in and telling the other machine what type of aircraft to show. My T-7 wasn’t categorised and so nothing showed up for Mr O. This wasn’t a problem and we proved the concept worked with a trip around the Mach Loop until Mr O crashed!
On the next attempt we both had Tonkas and heading out to the Loop from RAF Valley. It looks like there are some positioning issues as Mr O’s plane was partly sunk into the ground and his weapons rack was ten metres from where his plane was, but you know what, at least we could see each other on the tarmac.
Two Tonkas Heading To The Loop
In the previous picture you can see my Tonka, Mr O’s and also his weapons rack just off his starboard side. So we headed to the loop. I think we did OK. I guess we might need a bit more coordination on airspeeds and maintaining a distance but for a first go it was done well. I think we did about three tours around the loop. In this next picture you can just see Mr O flying with much bigger balls that me!
Looping The Loop
We both ran out of fuel at some point so we had to coordinate pausing the game and adjusting the settings to add more fuel to the planes. This worked fine for Mr O but when my cockpit lit up like Xmas and I had run out of fuel I only had one engine burning upon game restart. I couldn’t get the second engine started, but that didn’t matter, we still made it back to Valley and landed.
Engine Two Out
I look forward to the next flight. I just need to pick somewhere cool to fly. Maybe the Swiss Alps?
It turns out I’m a sucker for some kinds of advertising. Normally it’s the advertising that solves a particular problem I have had or something that’s been playing on my mind. I bought the NVIDA Shield TV after seeing an advert on a graphics card driver update loading screen. I bought a SONOS Move after it was announced and they sent me an email letting me know about their new products. I guess I’m a sucker mostly. I bought a new television after “popping” into Richer Sounds and picking up their catalogue, there was a Philips Ambilight TV on the front. I didn’t buy one straight away but I would think it was within two weeks. I think the adverts have to be technology based for me to want to get whatever the product is. I haven’t been disappointed by my purchases but that might be just the sunk-cost fallacy kicking in.
I get emails from X-Plane about new aircraft, scenery, plugins and ideas and recently they sent one with a lovely F-16 model but that’s coming in a around GBP40 and I don’t really think that is a sensible purchase. Below the F-16 was an advert for a web-based glass cockpit simulator. I didn’t need much persuading, I looked at the shop page and decided I would get it. The current instrument panel I have on my [old] tablet takes ages to load and the refresh rate is quite slow. This would at least mean I could use any browser on any device and see flight instruments.
Suck You In Email
Just look at that F-16, it’s gorgeous. Except for the conformal fuel tanks over the wing root, I really think they spoil the lines of the craft. So, I bought SkyScout. It works well, it’s a small webserver which reads the data from X-Plane and then serves that to a browser on the LAN. I initially used the old Samsung tablet but it’s so old that the browser isn’t supported anymore. I then used a laptop and it worked really well but I didn’t want to have to keep getting the laptop set up when I wanted to fly around the world. So, I thought about a second monitor for the PC. It’s specification is high enough that it should be able to cope. The choices were about whether to get a small monitor or large. How much was I prepared to spend. Should it have touch capability? I really like the touchscreen I currently have as I can operate cockpit switches just by touching the screen – assuming the cockpit deign has hotspots.
I decided the screen had to be the same size as the current monitor so 27″. This, is quite frankly, ridiculous. I remember when I moved into my current home I had a 28″ widescreen flat TV that was pretty good for its day and that would now seem tiny. That TV ended up being given to Mr Pom, I think I remember carrying it up the stairs to their flat. So, screen size was sorted. The existing monitor has a large bevel and that would mean everything looks uneven but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that. Touchscreen costs are a lot more than a standard monitor so that was an easy decision. It was also quite fortunate as the touchscreen can only operate one of the desktops. So, only one monitor can run a touchscreen and it can only operate one of the desktop areas. I lucked in there.
I opted for a reasonable Philips monitor and ordered another screen arm and also I had to order a DP cable. All of these items arrived on the same day but late and so I decided to complete the build the next day. I couldn’t sleep well and I don’t know if it was tech-excitement or just the fact that I couldn’t sleep well. I also woke up quite well at 0500 and I think this is due to a neighbour leaving for work around that time, I think it’s just enough noise to nudge me awake as I sleep with the window slightly open. This morning there was a full blown conversation happening at 0450 as two people stood outside their RUNNING vehicles and chatted about stuff. I did at least get back to sleep. I love the sound of the rain and I wish it rained more.
The first set up I tried was to have both screens in landscape and next to each other. I think this made the whole unit too large and too much headsweep was needed to look from one edge to the other. The new Philips monitor is the main screen and will be used as the gaming monitor while the old ACER monitor is now the secondary, information giving screen. In this view you can see the system as it was set up for a couple of days.
Another X-Plane Set Up
The aim is to turn the keyboard and ancillary equipment to face the right a little more. As a system it worked well but I did think that having the ACER monitor as portrait would be more interesting and serve a more natural feature as the extra screen for information. I mentioned this to Penguin and he agreed, it seemed that it would work quite well along with fitting within the floor area of the desk and also making the bevel less obvious. So, yesterday morning I spent some time adjusting the left monitor to the portrait position. I needed to perform a little extra cable management and also move both monitor support stands so it would fit in the available space.
Current X-Plane Set Up
This is the current set up and will likely remain the monitor positions for a while. I like it. I think the left monitor looks good and fits better than landscape. Windows seems happy enough with the monitors being like this and the touchscreen still works and maps correctly to the portrait screen. I’ve had to find some wallpaper and set that up as Windows doesn’t want to have slideshows from different folders for different screens and that is something I can live with. There exist plenty of programs that can sort that out but I don’t really want to install more stuff on to the computer. As I write this X-Plane is downloading scenery for the rest of the world because when I installed it onto this computer I only covered Europe and northern America. It’s taken around an hour of download running at around six megabytes per second. My X-Plane installation currently consumes 442GB of my hard drive.
I did a thing. I used Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and X-Plane 11 to compare the flying and things. The plan was to fly from Biggin Hill to the Manston Airfield [which is currently shut]. While flying in MSFS I flew over Brands Hatch, my house, my place of work, Leeds Castle, Canterbury and then landed at Manston. I recorded the screen for each of these segments and uploaded them to YouTube. There is some information which needs to be released about the set up first I suppose because this wasn’t an even playing field. I will do that after the take off videos. Now, MSFS doesn’t have any particularly fast aircraft or military planes at the moment. So I used a Pitts Special in that game and my favourite T-7 in X-Plane. The order of the videos will always be MSFS and then X-Plane but it should be obvious from the aircraft involved.
Biggin Hill Take Off MSFS
Biggin X-Plane
The mechanical set-up. The PC has a Core i5 processor running at 3.7GHz. There is 16GB RAM, the graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super, the monitor is a 27″ 16:9 1080P thing, I’m not convinced for the need of a higher resolution or size. I’ve got two speakers running a boring stereo output, I’m not that bothered about full 5.1 for the PC, I don’t use it enough. I have a Saitek X52 HOTAS system and that’s about it.
While flying east-ish from Biggin Hill I could see a golf course and realised it was the one near Brands Hatch so I decided to flyby the motor racing circuit and see what it looked like. Here are the results for both simulators.
Brands Hatch MSFS
Brands Hatch X-Plane
My comments on Brands Hatch would be that both simulators manage it quite well but MSFS does put a building on the Brabham Straight. That would be tricky if you want to have a motor race but I guess this is just a simulation and if I really cared a lot about Brands Hatch I could make my own custom scenery for X-Plane.
Some words here are defining the software set up. For MSFS2020 I have essentially bought the deluxe version. I did this because I was quite convinced that I would pay for the extras in micro-transactions anyway so I might as well do it up front. Other than that I haven’t done anything to MSFS. I whacked all the graphics settings to the far right and just let the PC see where it can take me. For X-Plane 11 there are extras and these should probably be explained. The Boeing/Saab T-7 Red Hawk is a bought add-on made by AOA Simulations. There are plenty of free aircraft you can get for X-Plane, a quick look at the downloads website shows 1,128 aircraft for X-Plane 11. I also have lots of after market scenery libraries installed. These allow third parties to create scenery using standard models. There are 83 directories in my Custom Scenery folders, some of these will be airports and some will be libraries. I also have TrueEarth installed which is a paid for scenery collection of the UK. Great Britain South cost around 30 Australian dollars. So, given the time and money I have invested in X-Plane I am probably quite biased towards that, the sunk-cost fallacy.
In the next couple of videos you, probably, won’t know where my house is and you might not know where I work. If you do you will see the differences in this. These videos take you from the Medway Valley four villages over Maidstone and close to Mote Park. More comments after these then.
The Commute MSFS2020
A Faster Commute X-Plane 11
I’ve just changed my embedding technique and so the videos might look different from the one above, I’ll see once this is published. In MSFS my house doesn’t exist. The shadow of it does but the actual 3D model isn’t there. My work place has buildings but they aren’t the right shape. In X-Plane my house is modelled in 3D and my work place has buildings of the correct shape but not the correct colour. Remember that the X-Plane scenery is a paid extra. I know that the original scenery was just shadows on the ground for my village.
Next up is a flight and stall turn over Leeds Castle. Leeds Castle is near the village of Leeds and not the city in the North. It’s a pretty castle although I don’t think I have ever been inside the actual buildings. I think in the following videos it is clear that X-Plane does the better job, once again it has a scenery pack installed for Great Britain.
Leeds Castle – MSFS 2020
Leeds Castle X-Plane (with add-ons)
As I headed east I was reasonably sure I would land at Manston on the eastern tip of Kent. The last time I ever flew in a Chipmunk was from RAF Manston when that still existed. Along the way is Canterbury, the home of the Church Of England and other such religious paraphernalia. I wondered what the city would look like as I passed overhead. I had not seen this before in X-Plane and was quite curious.
Canterbury MSFS2020
Canterbury X-Plane 11
Again I think it’s clear that X-Plane nails the cathedral but I have to point out that I have paid extra for the scenery pack of the island of Great Britain. I would be annoyed if it didn’t look better. The last two things then are landing at Manston.
Manston MSFS2020
Manston X-Plane 11
You’ll notice that MSFS2020 was a little busy with other aircraft on the runway. Hence I landed late and on the right side of the runway. You can turn off other players or you can see them all. X-Plane has the option to have other people flying in the sim, you can also have AI aircraft and set their aggressiveness for combat. You can also have real world traffic in X-Plane and I’ve tried that and it seems to work quite well, depending on the ground ADS-B coverage from a particular database.
My overall thoughts. I think I prefer X-Plane. This is probably for a number of reasons and not all of them might be valid. A lot of this comes down to the sunk-cost fallacy. I’ve spent more time on X-Plane, I’ve spent more money on X-Plane, I prefer the military jets, I have no inclination to program a flight computer, I like shooting stuff. I will say that I think the clouds in MSFS look a lot better and they might not kill the PC like they do in X-Plane. I am sure that over time there will be a lot of extras and add-ons for MSFS and these will take a little while to become ubiquitous. I think I’ll see if I can lock the chase view in MSFS because I’m not so keen on the camera always staying horizontal, I prefer the default chase view in X-Plane. I’ve a feeling that X-Plane is more detailed in its settings and more customisable, this is generally what happens with non-Microsoft stuff, you have the chance to tinker more. MSFS is a good simulator and with full settings it wrecks my PC which is a pretty decent PC so I would expect the graphics to look good. X-Plane just has that edge for me.
There’s a part of me that wants to be snobby about all this. I want to write that X-Plane is for proper flight sim people and that MSFS is just a tiny bit “arcade” and that if you really want to fly then you would have had X-Plane, P3D, or DCS or other such simulator because you would have found them. Me being snobby is my brain taking full command of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. This goes along the lines of “you aren’t a real XXXXX unless you do YYYYY”. So, you aren’t a true Scotsman unless you are born in Scotland. You aren’t a true Scotsman unless you wear a kilt and have your own tartan [which is a bullshit thing made up by the Victorians]. You aren’t a true Scotsman unless you wear nothing under your kilt. You aren’t a true Scotsman unless. . . . . and so on. Now, sometimes there are qualifications and so on that can prove you are a particular thing but even then some people might say “oh, you aren’t a real XXXXX until you’ve had YYYY happen”. J Clarkson uses this when describing motorists, he says you aren’t a real motoring fan unless you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo. Clearly he is using the fallacy to great comic effect, along with being a bit of a prick. People seek legitimacy through the things they do. Many will say, especially those with internet balls, that you aren’t a real XXXX unless you have YYYY. This is bollocks. I have to remind myself a lot about this when I’m thinking. I actively work to make sure that I consider this and work through how my brain thinks.
So, my conclusion is: I really like X-Plane and will probably “fly” in that more than I will MSFS. But, if you’ve bough MSFS and you like playing that then good on you and I hope you enjoy the time you have.
A few weeks ago Nvidia released a driver update for their graphics cards and it screwed over X-Plane. Recently X-Plane has had an update to use Vulkan graphics processing or something like that and it improved frame rates enough that I went and bought a load of UK scenery. X-Plane started to look a lot better. Then this new graphics driver messed things up and there was a strange frame rate flutter from 50FPS down to about 15FPS once every two seconds. It made the game, sorry simulator, unplayable. Two days ago the newest driver version was released and the game now works as expected. Much better. I’ve finally got the HOTAS gear out again and am playing, as evidenced by this video of my Red Tail flight from Manston to Lydd. I think I’ll try out the Grob Tutor now.
Other things of note; the tin opener failed again and I’ve ordered a bicycle so expect plenty of communications here with boring details of bike rides soon.
I’m missing seeing other parts of the world. I’m currently stuck in a small triangle within Kent and while I do appreciate the luck I have in being in this area I am also bored of it. I would like to visit RAF bases, I want to see other people and I would like to be atop mountains. Normally by now I would have been to the Lake District and also we had plans to go to RAF Halton, RAF Brize Norton and RAF Wittering. I miss those things and as much as I know I sometimes struggle socially I do miss the people.
So, I’ve started playing X-Plane about 30% seriously. I’ve been learning how to use navigation equipment within the aircraft and I’ve even started playing with the radio settings but my last attempt at that failed and I got told off by the game for not following the ATC instructions! I recently got some payware in the form of an aircraft model, the T-7A, and it’s a nice plane. It flies easy enough, can get up to speed quickly and has a glass cockpit. I’ve even figured out some small parts of the autopilot.
UK Tour Scottish Islands
It’s slightly frustrating having to move my view around from the HUD to other parts of the cockpit to see the instruments and I’ll have to think about how to make that easier and quicker – maybe I need a second monitor? – but I’ll cope for now. One of the things I’ve always struggled with first person shoot em ups is that quick glances never seem to be that and moving the view can be time vital. Also, I’m not very good at them.
I’ve been flying around the country as part of this summer’s tour. The first few flights were down in the south over Kent and Cornwall but now I’m heading around airport hopping. A rough idea of places been so far are: RNAS Culdrose, Llanbedhr, RAF Valley, BAe Warton, RAF Leeming, Leuchars, RAF Lossiemouth, Kirkwall, Shetland, Stornoway, Prestwick, Glasgow, Isle Of Man, Belfast, Barrow.
Window Seat
UK Tour Belfast
UK Tour
Over South Shetland
A selection of screenshots
This has been good fun so far. I think I’m going to head down the east coast next. Let’s see where I end up!
So, along with getting the new PC was the general concept that I would have a machine capable of running X-Plane which has ridiculous graphics simulation algorithms. I’m sure there could be flight simulators that run quicker and also look better but because of the physics engine employed by X-Plane it is the most accurate in terms of aircraft movement through the air. It used to be that to run X-Plane I had to turn off any clouds. These seem to really mess with the frame rate and the bottleneck occurs on the bus between the CPU RAM. I had spent a lot of time reading about finely tuning the software to give the best compromise between frame rate and looks. The new PC doesn’t really seem to have any problems and I just turn everything up to 11.
Browsing for a slightly better looking Great Britain I found, I don’t remember how, a website offering sexy GB scenery. I had to pay for it but it did look good. I was concerned about splashing out without being able to test the software but the company had a Demo area around Southampton. Orbx have a selection of payware airports along with GB scenery. I downloaded the Demo area and flew from Southampton Airport over Portsmouth and Gosport. The fact that I could see aircraft carriers in the harbour along with HMS Victory and the forts in the Solent meant I was smitten. The whole area looked great. So, I took the plunge and bought some scenery of GB. I had some cash stashed away from the sale of my old graphics card and those proceeds went to these views.
I have not been disappointed. There is now 367GB of GB scenery on the hard drive and while load times feel like forever, X-Plane is terrible at some things, the whole of the island of Great Britain looks spectacular. I’ve flown from Manston to Lydd to Southend to Heathrow. I’ve also covered Cornwall along with the Lake District. Next steps will be Wales and Scotland, specifically the Mach Loop and Lock Ness. Below is a gallery of some sights so far. After flying for a little while I turned some clouds on just to make it look more realistic. I know I’ve got the frame rate showing up in the top left corner and you might think that 30fps isn’t that great. Trust me, I would have had around 2fps using the old PC and these settings. I’m not really into bragging rights about fps and anything more that 50 seems iffy, not worth it? Happy to be proved wrong on that. Also, below, are a couple of pictures of the F-35B using the old scenery. Hopefully you can see the difference.
It’s a funny old thing that when flying in X-Plane you wish for clouds but they kill your frame rate because it’s X-Plane. Then when you finally put clouds in or real time weather you end up with not being able to see anything most of the time because – clouds. You have to take off in cloud or fly through cloud and then not see anything for a while. Once above clouds the world looks pretty much the same wherever you are.
Weather X-Plane
Look at this picture. It’s gorgeous but the world looks faded because it’s not that often you get the wonderful clear days where you can see for miles.
