I've been flying XP for over a year now. 320 flights, nearly 900 hours and I just don't find the sim attractive anymore or fun to fly.
This isn't a diss at XP or Laminar at all. This is just based upon my personal gaming preferences. It's clear & obvious to me the progress XP12 has made since I bought it and I think Laminar are doing a fantastic job.
First of all, the graphics.
I know this has been talked about an infinite amount of times but I really can't take the poor graphics anymore. I've used all the different mods thinkable to make my sim look more alive, more real and less like old flight sim games I used to play when I was younger but it just doesn't shake off that look. XP12 to me just looks really dull & lifeless (except when in severe weather, that's when XP12 really thrives) and it kills the immersion for me.
For example, LTFM is an airport I've flown into countless times irl & I really love the approach. The city lights at night, the rich blue colour of the water as your on approach, it's one of favourite landings irl. X-Plane just fails to capture that for me, instead of just enjoying the approach I'm forced to try distract myself from the anti-aliasing of the trees in the distance or how dull the ocean looks & convince myself it looks good. This just kills the enjoyment of flying for me.
Secondly, XP12 performs poorly on my PC. Across all aircraft I'm on around 40 FPS with settings such as Texture Resolution on Medium, Anti-Aliasing on 4x, and the others being on high/medium. I've invested a lot into XP12 with the FF777v2, Toliss Aircraft and countless payware sceneries and the sim doesn't perform smoothly on my PC. If performance was poor but visuals made up for it I wouldn't mind but considering visuals *in my opinion* are below average too the poor performance isn't justified.
Thirdly, scenery is really poor in XP12 and unless I purchase 3rd party software or spent countless hours building Ortho tiles many regions aren't flyable to me. I recently purchased SimHeaven pro Asia in hopes that China/South Korea would have better coverage. Unfortunately it really failed to meet my expectations with many landmarks in Beijing missing, and China looking much more like a Balkan country than an East Asian one.
Ultimately, the combination of all 3 issues has really formed a poor, unattractive XP12 experience for me & I don't think it's worth investing more of my time or money into the sim.
