I am surprised because this laptop is at least an order of magnitude faster than anything around in 1999 
Sure; it won’t have a £1000 graphics card, but I was running FS2000 in 2001 on a 50MHz 486 or some such, 1024×768, and this machine is much faster.
X-Plane, which, especially for IFR, is the best out there anyway. That said, an external monitor definitely makes things much better than just the relatively small laptop screen.
X-Plane is a very good simulator, but he will definitely have to be very realistic with the rendering settings and learn how to optimise the different settings for his system. Hint, with X-Plane 11, use the Vulkan rendering engine and be cautious with the sliders on the RIGHT side of the menu (world objets not higher than medium, and reflections set all the way to the left).
For IFR flying, this shouldn’t be a problem.
VFR will be tricky, for as soon as he adds photo-realistic scenery (such as Orbx for the UK, for instance) it will bring the FPS down by a lot.
Laptops are terrible for simulation in general because simulation is very CPU intensive. As soon as the laptop heats up, the CPU will “throttle-back” and thereby drive the FPS (frames per second) to sub-20 figures. I use a £3000 Lenovo for work purposes, and I can’t really use it for flight simulation because of this issue.
Anybody who is serious about getting a proper and useful flight simulator for home use should get a PC in any case.
GPU struggles a lot when you add high resolution clouds & terrain, nothing new just like the huge workload for a pilot doing VFR scud running for XPlane on laptop, if you stick to “IFR pannel view” flying above MSA in max VMC or max IMC, then no need for lot of GPU just memory and some CPU and cooling
Alpha_Floor wrote:
with X-Plane 11, use the Vulkan rendering engine
Indeed. When I first turned Vulkan on, the frame rate almost doubled!
I use a MacBook Pro (not latest model), but bought an external GPU (Sonnett Puck) that drives a 32" 4k display set to HD (1080×1920). Works a charm. An eGPU sets you back only 3 or 400 $.
You aren’t going to get very far with the i5 and integrated graphics of an xps 13 (likely 8gb ram). He may be able to run XP11 with the settings turned way down. I assume this wouldn’t be much of a problem if he’s just using it to fly procedures.
172driver wrote:
I use a MacBook Pro (not latest model), but bought an external GPU (Sonnett Puck) that drives a 32" 4k display set to HD (1080×1920). Works a charm. An eGPU sets you back only 3 or 400 $.
Didn’t know this existed, very interesting! Thanks!
Alpha_Floor wrote:
Anybody who is serious about getting a proper and useful flight simulator for home use should get a PC in any case.
I use a laptop for flight sims, but I guess that makes me not serious enough Seriously it is a bit stupid I have to admin. The small screen, the fan running so hard it feels like it will explode any second. It’s very far from optimal, but doable for the occasional simming. My laptop has a i7 and GeForce RTX, anything less I would be suspicious about.
I’m thinking about a stationary PC next time around, but that won’t be anytime soon
For IFR, X-Plane is probably the only one, I guess.
For VFR? What exactly is “VFR” in a flight sim. I have though about that over many, many years. In X-Plane you can easily hook up SkyDemon on your favorite pad, and you have all the VFR nav practice you need, just pretend it’s a bit hazy outside Don’t know if that can be done in MS2020. Very useful for getting to know the nav software on your pad. What exactly else are you going to practice anyway, VFR that is, and that demands “real life” graphics?
For “VFR”, whatever that is in a sim, it’s really lots of other stuff that is important like:
My favorite is Yak-52 in DCS and all the planes in IL-2.
LeSving wrote:
Don’t know if that can be done in MS2020.
MS2020 is the thing for VFR. After all, it is basically a flight sim driving Bing Earth or whatever it’s called.
I have not tried it myself for the lack of a suitable computer, but the user generated pics and videos are close to insane.
