So last week, I picked up the FSLabs A320 and London Heathrow scenery for Prepar3D. To my horror, the frame rate averaged about 15FPS. I spent an entire evening trying to improve this, but could barely increase frames to 25FPS by disabling practically all the autogen scenery. In other airports, I can top 30-50FPS. It’s just London that’s bad.

To make matters worse, throughout yesterday’s flight to Frankfurt, the scenery textures took a nosedive somewhere over Germany and ended up a blurry mess, also messing up my destination airport with trees popping out of the runways and taxiways. There’s some fixes online that I’ll have to investigate…one of which is limiting the FPS to 30FPS, which allows my video card to prioritize scenery loading over frame rate, and a reinstall of Frankfurt airport addon. Still, for now I’m putting Prepar3D on hold.

I had similar issues with X-Plane 11 last week that I believe are now resolved. I had missing tiles and my approach to Venice ended up with a missing runway. I disabled the ortho scenery, overlays, and prefab scenery. I didn’t run into any problems during this flight. I’d like to try the same flight again in Prepar3D but I’m not keen on spending 2 hours on a flight to find out it’s blurry and unflyable by the time I hit London.

I can’t tell at this point which simulator I prefer. Each has its flaws. I do like the fact that I can render orthos with X-Plane 11, but at a cost of HDD space, tile issues, and clouds over the satellite scenery (sometimes engulfing entire towns)…it’s not worth it. I’m sticking to just HDMesh v4 for now.

The GA aircraft selection for X-Plane 11 is fantastic, as well as the local scenery…I can literally follow the roads to my house. It’s missing a lot of VFR landmarks, which is somewhat fixable, except I’m running into some issues in parts of London that aren’t rendering due to lack of OSM data. That said, if I want to follow I-5 from Bellingham to Seattle, it’s much easier to view the highway than trying to identify the flat textures of P3D.

On top of that, each airport is up-to-date as well as nav data. I don’t have to deal with purchasing addon airports to fix missing runways or outdated layouts, and I don’t have to deal with an outdated GNS database to find out that several waypoints are 2 years outdated.

Unfortunately, there’s no study-level 747 or 777 aircraft available for XP11 so far, except for some subquality aircraft. The main draw is the shorter haul 737 and A320.

For Prepar3D, I like the wide variety of aircraft (specifically study level long-haul airliners), study-level GA aircraft, weather generation, ATC interactions, AI traffic, and Orbx regional sceneries for P3D, but at the expense of frame rates, blurry textures, airport issues, and other problems I ran into.

I don’t think I can ever make a firm decision on which simulator I prefer. It’s one of those things that I’m never going to be satisfied with. With that said it’s still nice to have options available to me. If I lived in a perfect world there would just be one simulator for everything that includes both advantages of P3D and XP11, but that simulator doesn’t exist.

It’s an expensive hobby too, but gosh do I enjoy it.

Heya,

It’s another weekend for me. Currently in the middle of a 3 hour flight from Seattle to Juneau in a 737-900.

The hard part is the anticipation for many of these flights. I can’t afford to do a 3 hour flight during the week when I have so many other things I’d like to do. Even a one hour GA flight still takes up some time.

With that I’ve been bouncing back and forth from P3D and X-Plane 11 with this Seattle to Anchorage flight. On one hand, if I want to do the flight in P3D, I feel somewhat obligated to purchase the airport addon because it looks really good and it’s a nice destination for some of my local GA flights. On the other hand, I get a very good representation in X-Plane 11 for free.

Both sims feature very good 737 representations. P3D has the PMDG which is the best 737 simulation in the market. X-Plane on the other hand has a really good one (the Zibo 737) that comes in close second.

I think what got me to stick with P3D the expandability of the simulation. With the current addons I have, I get:

• PMDG 737: Accurate 737 representation
• Active Sky Next + ASCA: A very good weather and clouds model
• ProATC: Good ATC system with vectoring and SID/STAR support
• Ultimate Traffic: Real-world air traffic according to real flight plans
• Envshade + Envtex: Great Shaders and airport textures
• Orbx Global, Vector, Pacific Northwest Region, Alaska Region: Great scenery textures and vector information, along with custom objects and autogen.
• DD Seattle X + Airports: Seattle scenery and local airports
• Aerosoft Anchorage: Anchorage airport
• Chaseplane: A very good camera system!

It’s expensive, but it looks great and makes it one of the best simulations in the market.

With X-Plane, on the other hand, I have this:

• Zibo 737: The second best 737 (for free), with arguably more realistic flight dynamics.
• HDMesh v4: Accurate mountains, roads, rivers, lakes, etc.
• DD Seattle X + Airports: The same addon as P3D, takes longer to load though with frame rate issues.
• xCamera: A decent camera system, not as good as Chaseplane
• FSGRW: Updated weather generator.
• Up-to-date airports and navaids
• Great looking graphics and night lighting out of the box.

That’s about it. The weather texturing and cloud detail I’ve used xEnviro, Skymaxx Pro, and Ultimate Weather XP with mixed results. I’m sticking to default for now.

Orthos is another thing that everyone raves about…satellite scenery that comes at a price of blurry ground textures and massive disk space usage.

No ATC or Traffic coverage (the current options are substandard). There’s also not many landmarks out of the box…so if you want to fly around and see the Hollywood sign, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Statue of Liberty…you’re out of luck.

Along with that there are no decent long range aircraft, aside from the Zibo 737 and the FFA320, which aren’t as good as the P3D counterparts. There’s no top-line 747, 777, 787, etc…

Don’t get me wrong, out of the box and with free addons, I really like X-Plane in many ways over P3D, and I feel over time the base engine be even better. As far as expandability though, I just don’t think it’s there yet…

Other than that, this week has been mostly productive as far as keeping up with entertainment and such. I’m playing a lot of Yakuza 0, on one hand to “get it over with” and on the other hand to prove to myself that I can at least finish a game, even if it takes me over a year to complete. It’s a very good and compelling story…not sure what I’ll play after this (Yakuza Kiwami? Yakuza 6? Some other game?) but in the meantime I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

Also got Two Point Hospital. I have fond memories of Theme Hospital as a kid, and this is somewhat of a spiritual successor to it. It’ll be a nice change of pace from simulators and story-based games.

I’d like to do some truck simming this weekend. The new Promods update is out and it looks great. I’m going to stick with Promods and the previous version of Truck Simulator for a while. I just don’t really like Vanilla despite the recent improvements, so I see no reason to drop my current profile.

It’s been a pretty decent week. What have I been up to? What do I plan on doing over the weekend?

Gaming

I’ve just started getting back into Ace Attorney: Justice for All. It’s good so far, though I miss the soundtrack of the first game. Just started Chapter 2 and looking forward to playing more of it.

I tried a bit of Shenmue. I enjoy the world immersion it gives me. Just spending half an hour going through drawers in my own house…that level of detail is unprecedented. I haven’t even left my house yet, which I plan on doing soon. The only downside is that the graphics and audio are dated, and the controls just feel weird compared to modern game controls.

I’m planning on playing more Yakuza 0. One of these days I’ll eventually finish it, then I can move on to Yakuza Kiwami or Yakuza 6 (or finish 5 even?). I love this series and it’s always on my top games to play.

I’d love to try to get into Monster Hunter World, but Monster Hunter Generations is coming out for the Switch next week. Having a portable MH game, especially one with better graphics than the 3DS version, and more features is definitely something I’m looking forward to.

Listened to some soundtracks this week, mostly Final Fantasy and Nier Automata. Which reminds me how much I need to continue Nier Automata…it’s such a good game and one definitely worthy of attention, if only my time wasn’t taken with Yakuza 0.

Hobbies

Finishing up on the MG Jesta (Gundam) model kit. I have to finish up the backpack, the weapons, and the decals. I won’t be painting it or adding finish to it, for now at least. I’m trying to wrap it up so I can work on a new Voltron LEGO set I picked up. Over 2300 pieces…this is going to be a massive project!

Simming

I did some livestreaming last week and it ended up being pretty successful. Some of my family members watched me play Euro Truck 2 and I got to talk to a person about the German PZB train system during a Train Sim World session. I might do some more streaming again this Saturday, if I’m up for it.

I’m currently torn on Euro Truck Simulator 2 though. On one hand, if I want to play using a more detailed and expanded map using Promods, I have to downgrade to 1.31 and miss out on the new trailer ownership features, but I get the ability to travel through an updated UK, visit more cities in Spain, and I can travel all the way to Greece and Cyprus. On the other hand, sticking to vanilla I get an updated Germany, in-game events/external contracts, and trailer ownership.

I don’t have that problem with American Truck Simulator, fortunately. In fact, the next year looks bright for the sim. Oregon will be coming up soon, which goes into familiar territory for me…and rumor has it based off extraction of the in-game map files…Washington will be coming out next along with Utah and even parts of Texas. This is really good news!

In my flight sims, I’ve done a couple flights. One flight was in a PA-24 Comanche from Cologne to Trier, which the scenery over the Rhine and Moselle Rivers was jaw-dropping. I used a new GNS750 addon for the flight, which by far beats the default GPS system, and is compatible with all of my addon planes.

The other flight was from Juneau, AK to Seattle, WA in a 737-900. I ran into some minor issues, mainly graphics related due to the date being set wrong (which made the weather to be incorrectly displayed), and there was an issue with the gates not showing up at Seatac, which was an issue with SODE that I was able to fix after the flight.

One thing bothering me is the AI traffic and the ATC. When I tried to land at Seatac, there was already aircraft lining up on the runway. Since the default ATC doesn’t have SID/STAR support, I’m basically vectoring myself to the runway. Without ATC coordination I have to manually disable AI traffic in order to land without crashing into the AI.

The other issue with AI traffic is that the addon I’m using is utilizing old liveries for many airliners (such as Lufthansa and Alaska), travelling at KSEA and seeing a mix of new and old liveries is visually grating. Also if I add too much aircraft, it clogs up the gates, making it very difficult for me to find a place to “park” the plane. The floating red text is annoying too, but I can turn that off.

Seattle + Seattle Airports for X-Plane 11 came out. I’ve been waiting months for this, and…I’m not going to get it…for now at least. It feels like I’ve invested so much into P3D addons at this point that X-Plane 11 just feels average at best. Everything from the weather, the scenery, the shaders, even the aforementioned AI traffic simply works with P3D. The only thing I’m lacking is professional quality international airports, which I’m picking up slowly throughout the weeks.

Not sure where my next flight will be. I’m thinking of picking between San Francisco, San Diego, and Palm Springs. I haven’t decided yet on any GA routes either, though I’d like to perhaps tour the West Coast, or do an East Coast to West Coast flight. I can also do some FSEconomy flights and visit some random airports.

Got plenty to do this weekend. Looking forward to my next update :).

Good afternoon.

This morning, I spent about an hour in Prepar3D setting up a flight from Seattle to San Francisco. After waiting in a lot of traffic (is it normal for there to be a lot of airport traffic at 7AM?), I finally took off. Somewhere up around Oregon I got bored of just watching a screen for two hours, and exited the sim.

To be fair, I was tired as I had just woken up at 6AM and wanted to go back to bed. But I felt defeated, like I wasn’t able to accomplish what I had wanted to do in favor of more sleep. At the same time I felt like I was wasting time that could have been put elsewhere (sleep?). Even now, I still can’t get myself to get into the flight sim again because of how long it takes to set up.

Even worse, I can’t get myself to play a simple game…it just seems too much of a hassle when I want to do some more flying. Nor do I feel like working on any other hobbies, such as building a Gundam.

How do I balance the time spent on my day-to-day routine? How do I prioritize what’s important and what’s not?

It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time now. When I focus on games, I have no interest in simulators or other hobbies. When I focus on hobbies, I lose track of time, gaming and other forms of entertainment are just “boring”.

I’ve developed a priority system last month and have been sticking close to it for the most part. It goes like this: Work, Home, Hobbies, Gaming, Entertainment. So far it’s been working out pretty well during the weekdays.

I think the hardest part is the weekend. The first thing I do when I wake up at 6AM (I’m an early riser), I’m typically not going to start sorting out my closet or work on my car. Likewise, I’m also not going to spend 10 hours of my day on flight sims or video games. There has to be some balance…and I haven’t quite figured it out yet. I end up just sitting around doing…nothing?

I hope that can change soon. In the meantime I’m going to try to fill my time with something to do, and hopefully have a good time at it.

This week’s been mostly about gaming. After having a racing-focused week, it’s somewhat relaxing to get back into games after a few weeks of simulator stuff.

So what to do this weekend?

I’ve been playing a lot of Destiny 2, for the first time since I purchased it. It’s not as bad as people made it out to be. Sure, it makes some mistakes as the first game, but overall the story is good. How end-game plays out on the other hand is another story.

I played a bit of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. The game sounds great in my headset, and it feels creepy and weird. The graphics are gorgeous as well. The only issue I have so far is that some of the puzzles are repetitive, but overall it’s a good game.

Got back to Elder Scrolls Online, just briefly played it yesterday. Such a massive world, but it’s nice to be in an environment with other players enjoying a world that’s totally playable in single-player.

There’s a new update to Euro Truck Simulator 2 that I’m eager to check out. It updates much of Germany (so no need for Promods in that area of the world) and adds trailer ownership. I’m very excited to take my truck for a spin this weekend.

To put all my games back, I emptied out all the ortho scenery for X-Plane 11. While I think the scenery looks gorgeous, there are some problems I have with it. The space it takes (over 1TB!) is insane for just a few regions. There are also some scenery discrepancies as well as graphical glitches that vary between different areas of coverage. In the end, I rather just stick to my HDMesh scenery as it looks decent enough for flying, and it only takes about 150GB.

I definitely want to do some flying this weekend. Just not sure where to go exactly since I’ve completed my Germany tour. I could probably move out from Rome to Milan, then move north towards Zurich and then back to Frankfurt? At the same time, I’d like to do a 737 flight since I’ve put practically no hours into the PMDG 737 since I got it. Not sure where to fly there either (KSEA-KPDX?). It takes a lot of time to prepare a 737 flight compared to a small Cessna, so I’ve been holding it off.

I’d like to do some train simming as well. I have a scenario that I’ve been wanting to do: Portsmouth to London. There are also some German scenarios I’d like to play around with too.

Lastly, I’d like to play God of War when I get the chance today. That should be a lot of fun. Busy weekend!