X-Plane 12 Early Access (opens in new tab)

It kinda depends on what kind of aircraft you want to fly.

Thrustmaster t16000m is more geared towards military aircrafts.

If you want to fly Airbus, TCA Officer Pack Airbus Edition (which under the hood is the t16000m) is very good and works well with FS2020's Airbus A320 (even better with the free FlyByWire A320 mod)

If you want to fly general aviation aircrafts, the Logitech Yoke is pretty good. The Honeycomb Aviation stuff is much better but cost double your budget.

If you want both a stick and throttle for under $200, you'll likely want the Thrustmaster T.16000M FCS (~$150). If you're willing to add another ~$150 to the budget, I highly recommend the VKB Gladiator NXT EVO with the SCG Premium grip (~$210 with US shipping) and picking up the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle alone (~$130).

Either way, the Thrustmaster TWCS throttle does have some stiction and you might want to clean it up, or even better 3D print/buy a slider replacement for about ~$40 on Etsy.

I enjoy my Thrustmaster T1600M, it was $150:

https://www.thrustmaster.com/products/t-16000m-fcs-hotas/

I play DCS and I'm using T.16000M FCS + HOTAS (you don't really need paddles unless you're flying helicopter). I'm primarily flying F-16 and these gears are really good. I only have minor complains so far, for example there is only one D-pad on the stick and the grip is too big for my tiny hand to sit on the palmrests

BTW, both FS and xP are excellent. I use them both in various setting - mostly w/gliders and helis. xP (at least 11) is way slower to boot and a bit harder to use. For casual flight, FS is my go to. BTW, I use them both on a Rift, and they are both very good. (I actually would use FS more, because of the boot time, but the thermal sim in FS is way too weak, so it’s too hard to climb a glider. FS is actually a bit more realistic this way, but giving up a little realism for the ability to get to thermal more easily and to a higher altitude is with it. If I need to be scratching around for lift I wouldn’t be flying that day!)

I use a quite old MS Sidewinder Precision 2 joystick from 2008 or so. Works fine with the X-plane 12 demo. Look for something that support rudders by twisting. I spent nowhere near 200$ at the time for this. I'm sure there are better options than this on the market right now. But I must say, this thing was pretty good value for money.

an xbox controller, until you've actually messed around in them and have a feel for what you want to fly, because that's going to determine what controller you want more than anything else.

An XBox controller works great. I have a yoke (honeycomb) that I paid a good bit of money for but is annoying to mount for just a quick flight around...so it sits in the corner of my office.

Whatever you get, make sure it has a twist axis. You can control the plane's rudder with it. Most do - even the basic Logitech Extreme 3D Pro is fine - but some don't.

Thrustmaster T16000m is popular

any xbox/ps controller

I'm also curious about this. I love challenging situations in flight sims and it would be fun to replay real scenarios, or even have a tool where you could just set it to randomly pick one or a couple problems off a list and cause them to manifest at some point in the flight.

I haven't done much simming recently sadly, WarThunder VR support has been broken for over a year and sadly my CPU isn't strong enough for X-Plane 11, but I'll probably be picking up one of the new AMD chips this fall so I'm excited to get back into it.

If they don't I'm sure you can add them, X-plane is fairly open I've heard.

I have MSFS 2020, I know of at least one user created 'mission' that puts lets you try and land on the Hudson like Capt Sully

Are you Captain Sully? :)

The answer is no, they don't

If you are primarily looking out the window, MS wins because they spend a lot of effort making sure to model the entire world in great detail. No shame in that, it's a great way to enjoy a flight sim and MS did an amazing job with it. And in fairness, they really upped their game with the weather engine and flight models as well. It's a fine product.

Otherwise, X-plane 12 is pretty compelling as well and it probably wins in the flight model department in terms of just modeling a lot of weird and niche stuff out of the box. Most people will never notice but it's there to appreciate for those that can appreciate these things.

And with the right scenery, it doesn't look half bad either. E.g. orbx has scenery for both sims and I suspect things look pretty close with that. And there are some nice free add-ons that will get you closer to the MS experience but probably not all the way. E.g. Simheaven.com is getting ready with an xplane-12 release; completely free.

X-plane 12 is a pretty big upgrade if you were using or familiar with x-plane 11:

- volumetric clouds and weather updates

- the rendering is gorgeous in comparison

- lots of refinement in flight models, audio, ATC, weather engine, etc.

- Lots of nice new default planes

- Amazing work on the sound. Seeing a jet take off is one thing. But hearing the rumble is another thing.

Give the free demo a spin. Easiest way to find out if it's worth your money. Works great on recent Macbooks with the M1 processor.

The experience in VR is much much better in X-Plane. Sadly it doesn't have the amazingly realistic cities and world textures of MSFS but the controls work so much better. Especially X-Plane's "ergonomic yoke" which uses the tilt sensor in the controller instead of having to hold up your hand in thin air. MSFS is far behind this.

And why call out VR specifically? Well, VR is in my opinion absolutely groundbreaking in flight simulation. I've flown small planes too and I've never felt that a flightsim was able to provide the feeling of flying. Until VR that is. Now it's amazing.

IFR flying is much better in Xplane especially if you enjoy sitting down doing 6 hour long flights.

But VFR flying and just general _enjoyment_ of flying (like the worldwide coverage of terrain and airports and live weather) are much better in MSFS

Both are really good though

I don't know much about both, but xplane is developed by private developer, he even made video how he fought against patent trolls: https://youtu.be/sG9UMMq2dz4

I've had X-Plane back since version 7 or so. Get into binges with it and then stop for years.

The reason for that is, my primary interest in X-Plane is DESIGNING planes to see if and how well they will fly. If it had the structural stuff in the short-lived Young's Modulus by the same guy I'd be even more interested… that's a big ask, however, and potentially very dangerous.

Because people literally use X-Plane to design real planes, by making rough drafts of the aerodynamics, weights and balances of their proposed designs. X-Plane is a full-on blade element modeler right down to modelling the propellers of prop-driven planes also as little wings, and flight is simulated by taking all the airfoils etc. at various points of all wings and determining how the plane would fly with this collection of forces… for ALL MODELS.

That's the only engine at work. You don't download 'new flight code' for new planes you get, just the aesthetics and the model that says what airfoils go where etc. and then the sim works out what would happen.

If you wanted to fly your 747 but see what would happen if you stuck a Cessna engine 3 feet in from the left wingtip, MFS absolutely would not know where to begin with that. X-Plane would not only let you do it but would do a pretty decent job of showing what would happen.

So it's kind of not even a comparison…

Pretty hilarious getting downvotes on a nerd site for saying THIS. Bring it. I stand by what I said 100%, these are the things that matter in a simulator. For airplanes :)

I tried the latest MS Flight Simulator on X-Box. It was incredibly difficult to figure out how to set things up to reasonably simulate something like flying an ILS approach. Maybe on the PC it's better, but it just didn't seem to be the focus. And there's background music playing like it's an un-serious video game. X-Plane seems much more oriented towards realistically simulating the tasks involved in actually flying aircraft. Microsoft's seemed more oriented towards having pretty dang spectacular graphics and providing a fun experience for people who aren't really that interested in the rest of the minutiae of piloting aircraft. It's pretty cool that you can see your actual house on the Microsoft one though.

XPlane is a simulator. MSFS is a game.

Thank you for asking the single most important question for this article. :)

I have flown a Cessna in real life but never a jet. In sim, I usually fly Airbus, usually at night or in clouds, relying mainly on the instrumentation and charts.

For your scenario, I think if it was an Airbus, the conditions weren't too extreme and there were no failures, I'd have a pretty good shot at a successful landing. If it was a Boeing, I wouldn't know where to start.

I don't think flying is that hard at a basic level. Arguably it's easier than driving once you've got your head around the millions of buttons and switches. The challenge is what you do when things go wrong, and adequately planning for that situation.

We do come across the news some passengers landing the plane with guidance from ATC time to time, and maybe ones with prior "training" with flight simulators may know at least how planes operate in certain extent, perhaps even where right switches are located. This alone may reduce a lot of back and forth with ATC, as they could say "turn the heading knob to 010 within autopilot cluster" as opposed to "you see there's a section of instrument called autopilot on the top center of the console -- you should see the knob that says heading, turn it so it says 010." At least it would be less intimidating to ones that has seen them in simulations. (after all, that's what simulations are all about...)

It's probably safe to say you'd get 50% edge just by knowing how plane controls works (roll, pitch, yaw) -- I don't think a lot of "general public" would have idea what they are, let alone how they are mapped to things in a cockpit.

Maybe if I could get the radio working. After that I've probably played with the autopilot systems enough that I could follow instructions. Such a scenario would most likely happen in a smaller aircraft and I imagine they'd guide me to the largest runway around, and landing a small aircraft on a full size commercial runway probably feels like the runway goes for miles and miles.

Having played lots and lots of flight simulators using Yolks, Pedals, and physical buttons, etc, I think with guidance from ATC, I would be more likely to land a plane safely compared to the general public. How much more is up to debate...

Depends on the plane, weather conditions, air traffic control and the runway. Does the runway support ILS, will ATC help guide you, clear skies & daytime? Probably would work

The ATC AI is still pretty awful I'm afraid. I would look into VATSIM if you like realism.

Perhaps the flight level given by ATC is correct, but the instrument calibration is not set correctly.

MSFS has similarly awful ATC though.

If you really want good ATC, yeah VATSIM or IVAO.

most of the community is on Steam?

I mean, this data is old, but that wasn't true in 2018[0]

I've been buying new X-Plane(s) since like 1997, I haven't yet used Steam to do so -- the x-plane website is easy to use, offers discounts frequently, and doesn't hold my software hostage behind another walled garden.

I'm not alone, if the modding forums are any indication.

XP-10 was said to have sold over 100,000 copies, but Steam charts shows an average number of players at 2 for 10 and 400 for 11 -- those numbers don't really seem to fit, even for a fairly old game. I presume a significant portion of the install base is done outside of Steam.

[0]: https://www.thresholdx.net/article/navi21

During the early access / beta period one of the keys might be for X-Plane 11. I think that's the deal.

It says about 24G required on my Mac - that's for the demo version. The paid version may be different.

unzip and double click the installer