Purchase and Downloading:One tip - if you do buy X-Plane, get it on disc because the official X-Plane server is painfully slow.
Purchased yesterday at 0900hrs as I had a busy day with other stuff I decided to go for the direct download, Chris was right as it took around 4 hrs to download then there were the updates which took about an hour and a half so by 14.30hrs the installation was complete. One aspect of downloading X-Plane 11 was that I was given a choice of which countries to install, so I chose All of North America and Canada as well as the whole of Europe, that is where all my flying in FSX takes me. I if I later decide I want to have Australia then I can go and download it but being given the choice is extremely helpful, not to mention the saving of disk space you can make especially if there are areas you do not or never will fly to. At the moment it has taken up 26.4GB on my disk which is peanuts really but just wait until the addons appear!!
As I had previously used the demo version and had deleted it X-Plane did not create a folder to store everything in so I just let it all go onto the desktop where it created a number of folders and other things after that I then created a new folder naming it X-Plane 11 and stuffed the whole lot in there.
Running the sim:
First of all I do not as yet have any addons and am just using the sim as it is out of the box.
Started X-Plane 11 and set up all the normal things you do after installing a new game then set up my joystick functions, I also have CH Throttle Quadrant which is a godsend when wanting more levers for particular functions. One annoying thing I have noticed (and yet to get around) was that I selected 2 levers for left and right brakes but when I went into flying the same aircraft much later the brakes no longer worked (even though I had saved it) reloaded my saved configuration but no........... still did not work so now using just one button on my joystick for brakes.
Flying the aircraft seemed a bit strange, not like FSX at all so need to see how I can get the controls to respond in the way I like them. Found that the rudders are too sensitive and if not careful you can career down the runway like a drunken pilot!! Also wish that the elevator trim could be assigned to the mouse button as I have in FSX (FSUIPC). Took off from East Midlands to fly to Nottingham Airport VFR and just approaching it my engine cut, a quick glance inside showed all temps normal and had to force land, only then did I notice that I had not applied Carburetor Heat so think that may have been the source of my woes. Frame rate wise I cannot yet compare until I have such things as Orbx True Earth installed or even addon airports nevertheless, it is running and that is all that counts for now.
Reflections from the glass windows is a bit of a nuisance especially at night although I guess when you fly more often I suppose it will not be noticed that much, if there were settings for that I would reduce it, going to have to read the .
Night time is a sheer joy, so different from that of FSX with Orbx lighting, it is by far much better and even the landing lights when approaching the runway give an added bit of realism to flying, on an outside view the rotating red beacon can be seen moving around and does not flash like FSX does.
Verdict:
This is not a verdict on whether X-Plane is a better platform than other flight sims but how I feel about it after only using it for one evening.
Bearing in mind that I have only ever flown FS9 followed by FSX, X-Plane is a completely different platform to which I am used to, it will take time for me to adjust and adapt to the different way X-Plane works, I doubt even if you could make adjustments to any files be it aircraft or sim as you could do with FSX but with being a 64bit application as is P3d then it is certainly a bonus for simmers.
Overall, I am happy with the purchase and do not regret buying it, I have a lot to learn in using this platform to get the best possible results from it both performance wise and graphically but no doubt I will pick up a few tips to help me along.
Regards
Nigel.