WHICH SIM should you buy - MICROSOFT or XPLANE?

i'm not going to be talking about hardware specs in this video i'm not going to be talking about pricing either if hardware and cost is a consideration for you click on this video that goes into more detail about that this video is assuming that you can afford either and you've got the hardware for either but you're not sure whether you should go with the shiny new fancy microsoft flight simulator or the old tried and trusted x-plane 11. as i've said in previous videos and as with all things in aviation really it comes down to your mission objective so in this video i'm going to go through several of the use cases that you might have for your flying why you might be wanting to buy a flight simulator and therefore which of the two is going to meet your mission objectives most closely okay the first use case scenario that is you're a low hours pilot maybe you're just getting into your flight training you're learning about what we call effects of control how do you actually maneuver an airplane through the sky what does the control column do how does the throttle effect how you fly basically how do you maneuver an aircraft through the sky now microsoft flight simulator is brand new obviously and a lot of people me included have been saying that some of the flight characteristics of some of the aircraft are a little bit i use the word bouncy now you can of course do things like configuring your hardware changing the sensitivity so it's not so sensitive on the controls but at the end of the day these flight simulators do react slightly differently to the same control inputs and what i found is that microsoft flight simulator is a little bit less realistic in how it reacts to your control inputs than x-plane there just seems to be the ability to slightly over control an aircraft in microsoft flight simulator which is great if you're doing stunt flying aerobatics just kind of fanging around in an airplane but if you want to get a little bit more of a realistic feel of what it would be like in an actual aircraft i just personally feel that x-plane gives you a better sense of realism the second use case then is if you're in your navigation training so you're doing your cross-country flying you're basically all vfr there's no instrument flying and you're trying to get from point a to point b via various waypoints along the way now this is where microsoft flight simulator really shines the way that they've done the mapping the way the graphics are just so realistic of what you can actually see on the ground compared to what you would see in real life means that if you are navigating via visual waypoints it's going to be a lot easier to do it in microsoft flight simulator because the graphics well they're just that much more accurate saying that if you do have your hardware settings bumped up x-planes graphics are realistic enough to be able to do the same but it just comes down to the fact that because microsoft flight simulator uses newer technology and real-world satellite mapping to give you an image of what you are seeing on the ground as opposed to the way the x-plane is rendering those ground environments just means you're more likely to pick up things like buildings that would actually be there lakes and rivers that would actually be there roads railways you're more likely to be able to find that in microsoft flight simulator than you would in x-plane so if your requirement is to use a flight simulator for visual navigation i think microsoft flight simulator wins that one if you're a little bit more advanced in your flying and you're starting to get into things like emergency procedures especially if you're doing things like forced landings i've been trying both of these both in microsoft flight simulator and in x-plane getting up to a certain altitude pulling back on the throttle just like your instructor would and thinking what would i do now now of course in the series we have the luxury of the cap's parachute system but a lot of you won't be flying serious aircraft in real life and in flight simulators so if you're looking to practice things like force landings for example again microsoft flight simulator with its far superior graphics of what's actually happening down there on the ground makes it a lot more realistic as a pilot for you to be able to make decisions on my engine has gone i'm going to run through my checks in the aircraft but if i need to find a place on the ground to put the aircraft down where am i going to land it which field am i going to choose which road am i going to aim for can i make it back to the airport it's a lot easier to make those decisions when what you see around you is kind of akin to real life practicing at airports like big in hill for example where you have lots of rolling hills either side of the end of the runway really makes a difference on the forced landing spot that you might choose if you did have an engine failure after takeoff and at the end of the day if you're practicing emergency procedures in a flight simulator you want it to be as accurate as possible so god forbid if anything did happen in real life you feel more prepared for it once you start to get into more procedural flying especially if you're going to start doing things like your instrument rating and you want to be flying under the ifr the instrument flight rules it's a no-brainer at the moment that is definitely when x-plane shines far brighter than what you can do in microsoft flight simulator this is a combination of a few things it comes down to the realism of the controls like i was saying earlier on in this video the fact that if you are in imc in instrument meteorological conditions you can't see what's outside around you you want the controls to react a lot more realistically you don't want them to be too bouncy for example when you're in cloud but it also comes down to the avionics and i fly as you know the cirrus sr22 i use the g1000s in x-plane or the x-plane 1000's as they're called the avionics aren't really up to scratch in microsoft flight simulator many of the buttons don't even work a lot of the functions aren't there and it's very tricky to use those avionics systems in the same way that you would want to in real life to be able to practice ifr procedures x-plane on the other hand basically gives you every bit of functionality you can get in real life and in an aircraft that performs to the same level as it would in real life and i'll come to that in a second but it means you can do complex things like gps overlays on ifr procedures you can shoot an ils all the way down to minima if you're thinking about getting your instrument rating if you're new to your instrument flying or if you've been flying ifr for a while and you just want a tool to practice in without a doubt it is far easier and better just because the functionality exists in x-plane compared to microsoft flight simulator that it's a no-brainer if you're going to do that kind of flying x-plane is the system you should be using aircraft performance and testing is another really important one now i've got a round-the-world trip that i was supposed to be doing right now in fact but of course thank you pandemic but when i do do the round-the-world trip being able to test things previously especially in the area of aircraft performance so how far can i fly this aircraft before it runs out of fuel how much more efficient is it running the aircraft maybe at 55 power compared to 65 power what really is the difference between running lean of peak compared to rich of peak of course i'm a bit biased because the sr-22 that talks in produced in x-plane has even got its own milkshake it's that realistic like but in all seriousness the engine performance numbers which i've compared with my engineering team are spot on to what you get in real life down to the gallon over a five hour flight when you have aircraft models that are that accurate you can use a flight simulator from a safety point of view because obviously i don't want to be testing things like minimum fuel quantities in real life microsoft flight simulator doesn't offer us those models which are as accurate as real life in terms of their performance right now probably because it is just new and maybe those models will come but if you are looking to buy something right now out of the two if real world performance is important to you and the aircraft model that you want to fly is available for it 100 go with x-plane then if you're starting to get into real-world weather flying and the meteorological aspects are important to you now of course microsoft flight simulator from their graphics point of view has got a far better engine when it comes to rendering those meteorological environments than x-plane does we've all seen the clouds in x-plane kind of move and it's bright then it's dark microsoft flight simulator the way that they're rendered in 3d is a lot more realistic and flying into a storm really feels like flying into a storm however aside from the way it just looks if you're trying to determine what would you do if you did fly into a situation like that like if you were vfr and you flew into a storm what would your procedures be if it's a case of then focusing on the avionics maybe doing 180 degree turn and getting out of that storm you're going to be better off doing that in x-plane just because the accuracy and the realism of the aircraft performance is far greater than what you would get in microsoft flight simulator if you just want a bit of fun and you want to know what kind of what would it feel like to fly into a storm then probably microsoft flight simulator is going to be better because it would look and feel a lot more realistic than it would in x-plane again it all comes down to your objective if you just want to fly around bad weather to know what it's like from a fun point of view the realism means go with microsoft flight simulator but if you want to know what you would do in that situation in real life to see how you would react as a pilot the tools are going to be better off to find that out in x-plane microsoft flight simulator is brilliant don't get me wrong and it has the potential to either be like a really good flight simulator or a really good flying game i just think at the moment because it's brand new it's not quite sure which one it wants to be and look just a quick aside bill gates if you're watching this i just have a little bit of advice for you from from me and maybe from the aviation community as a whole if you could choose between being a really good flight sim and being a really good game please continue to go down the really good game path i think we have really good flight simulators already and the fact that we can see people like pewdiepie doctor disrespect sit down baby sit down come on no no and a whole bunch of big youtubers actually getting in and playing microsoft flight simulator is a really positive thing for the aviation community it will get more people excited about flying and maybe it will get some more aviators in real life in the future this is a really interesting discussion i've had some great conversations with you over the past two weeks about this exact question but what do you think what do you prefer x-plane versus microsoft flight simulator let's start the conversation going on in the comments i'll join in the first few hours of releasing this video as well if you're new to the channel and you like this kind of content do feel free to click on the subscribe button means a lot to me to see the channel grow otherwise thank you as always for watching enjoy flight simming and i'll see in the next video you

Channel: Stefan Drury

Views: 226,360

Keywords: flight simulator, microsoft flight simulator 2020, flight simulator 2020, xplane11, xplane flight sim, flight simmers, flight simming, microsoft flight simulator, #flight sim 2020, flight sim 2020

Id: 8pl71J6BFRc

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020