Newbie Interested in Opencockpits Modules

[smleingang]

Hi Banzai,

I've not yet seen the full version of X Plane 9, although the demo looks good. I think deciding on your platform is the single most important early decision, even before choosing which aircraft you're going to model.

I have a friend who is a devout X Plane fan, constantly boasting about getting ridiculous frame rates and reliability. For the casual gamer you can just have both this and FS 9 / 10 and switch whenever. But when you get into cockpit building you're dedicating your system far more. Dedicating to a platform, dedicating to a simulator, and in most cases to a specific aircraft.

I have flown my friend's sim quite a bit and I have to say that X-Plane sucks in terms of its support for hardware add ons. There's also far fewer commercial add ons available, although plenty of free stuff, much of it is really good. Problem is because much of it is free, it's developed by software people most of whom are not pilots. This is evident in some of the aircraft systems which behave totally unlike the real system, based often on the developers misinterpretation as to what a system does. As an example of this, on my friend's 737, in vertical navigation mode, the aircraft is meant to climb to specified altitudes using a standard climb rate. On the version he uses, it climbs at whatever rate gets it to the specified altitude by the next waypoint. This often means 200fpm climb when around mountains!!!! It's just the developer not understanding how the systems work.

With FS 9/ 10, you have plenty of commercial add-on suppliers, and a vast majority of it is very good and nicely priced. X-Plane 8 on the other hand, doesn't allow you to pan views so easily as you can in FS. It does provide networking support for panels however, which is key to most cockpits.

I think you should make your decision early on. I don't think anyone here would disagree, that the support on forums such as this, that make people sim building dreams take flight. If you go the FS route you'll get a ton of support from here. Welcome!

Thanks Paul!...I think I've already made my decision to go FS9 and model the 737-700NG...I love that plane and my brother-in-law is a retired Check Airman for Southwest Airlines...we've had a blast a number of times thru the years in the SWA full motion simulators here in Dallas...also got to take delivery of a brand new NG back in '99 up at Boeing in Seattle...X-Plane was fun but you are right about the lack of support and all and there's not much attention to detail...there's some really sloppy stuff out there!

Thanks again for the welcome!...now it's time for me to do some serious studying!

smleingang

[Tomlin]

Now that you are taking a bit of a more serious look at FS9 / FSX, you really are in luck when it comes to the 737NG. There's tons of stuff and ways to make this aircraft work. Basically it comes down to Money, Time, & Patience.

Best of luck to ye!

[Paul G]

Yeah and the 737 is an ideal choice. Not only can you buy just about everything for it, you get a choice of supplier and the prices are great.

[Trevor Hale]

Apologies for hijacking this thread, but I have FSUIPC and configure my Saitek X52 in FSX not FSUIPC. I wasn't aware there was much difference, other than that FSUIPC allows extra configurations (e.g. separate reverse thrust on axis rather than button). Can you enlighten me?

The major deal is, when you have things configured in FS9 / X in the software and then you end up doing some things in FSUIPC, you can get conflicts.

But personally, I think FSUIPC configuration is much smoother, and handles the information better then the sim software itself.

Trev

[Tomlin]

The major deal is, when you have things configured in FS9 / X in the software and then you end up doing some things in FSUIPC, you can get conflicts.

But personally, I think FSUIPC configuration is much smoother, and handles the information better then the sim software itself.

Trev

Agreed with Trevor!