Xplane 11 demo looked terrible, am I missing something?

I downloaded the XP11 demo to try out as I'd like to fly more 'seriously', learn more about navigation, flight planning etc as at the moment my primary flight sim is DCS, which I love and it looks superb but it's light on those features because that's not its primary focus.

Boyka undisputed 1. I expected a lot from XP11 having seen and read a few things and seen the hype in here but the demo really left me cold.

I played the tutorial missions and on the pattern one the demo just timed out mid flight so I didn't even get to put her back down again. The other ones were literally about 5 minute segments, barely enough to even judge anything from.

I thought I'd jump in something else and try a big jet (I'm used to single seat fighters after all) but had no idea which airport it chose and every one that I did chose just spawned me at some blank space with an airstrip or at a runway which looked like it was straight out of the 90s in terms of graphics.

The plane interiors looked awful too. Not the sharp fidelity I'm used to at all. My specs are good as well. I run DCS pretty much maxed out.

Am I missing something here? I want to give it another go, so any tips would be muchly appreciated - like how to get a proper feel for the game from the demo.

I didn’t even realise X-Plane 11 [official site] was in-development, though of course it is. The flight simulator series is the only real competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator, with its own approach to physics modelling, and X-Plane 10 was my pick when I wanted to take a skyward jaunt. The new game is due before the end of the year and now there’s a demo out that you can download now and a trailer showing some of the features below.

Where other flight simulators model plane physics using available aerodynamic data for each featured plane, X-Plane simulates flight from first principles. That is, it calculates the forces of lift and drag against the actual polygonal shape of the plane you’re attempting to fly. This means the game theoretically produces a more accurate flight experience, but also that you can include planes for which no aerodynamic data yet exists. Technically you could use X-Plane to design an entirely new plane and test how it might perform in the real world based on its performance in-game.

As an amateurish amateur in the world of flight simulators though, this is not where my interests lie. My interest is in using the game as a kind of tourism, since it includes the entire planet, much of it in great detail, and when else am I going to be able to buzz above the alps from that kind of height. Or failing that, my interest is in using the game’s simulation to create dramatic emergency landings, by setting a percentage chance for my plane to fail within a certain timeframe, turning the weather to stormy, and seeing whether I can navigate myself to a runway and touch down safely when everything suddenly goes wrong.

For that reason, I’m not sure I’ll notice most of the new additions X-Plane 11 is bragging about, including more detailed plane models. I do like the sound of the new user interface however, which seems to like it will make creating my own disaster scenarios a little easier. There are videos detailing some of these changes on the game’s YouTube channel.

X-Plane 11 is due for release this year and is currently available in beta. You can buy the game for $60 direct from the developer, which currently also gets you access to a digital download of X-Plane 10.

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