RealFlight 9 vs Reflex XTR2

[Mike1304]

I bought Reflex XTR2 many many years ago. Now I bought RealFlight 9 and expected a much better („industry leading“) because much newer and more modern product but I am a bit disappointed now.

Both products work in VR (Oculus Rift) but whereas XTR2 is the much older product nobody is talking about anymore in these days it looks much better than RF9!?

Maybe I haven‘t found the correct graphics settings in RF2 yet but in my old Reflex the sun is reflecting on the planes and helicopters looking like in real life, then the sceneries are all high quality with perfect lighting and reflections on the ground and the 3D-effect and world scale in VR is top notch! In RF9 the sceneries look like „flat 2D photos“ without reflections and the worldscale looks wrong.
Is there something wrong on my side? I hope so... And why is nobody talking about Reflex XTR2 anymore?

[Flying.Rose]

I am also disappointed with the graphics quality of such an expensive simulator. I expected much better in RF9. But from the point of physics the simulator is still one of the best. Still a waste of money upgrading from a previous version!

[opjose]

Reflex used a panoramic photo background for the airfields.

RF9 uses 3D modeled airfields.

There is a huge difference between the two.

That said RF9's graphics are not up to modern 3D standards. They attempted to improve the 3D airfield fidelity with RFX but got so much pushback about system requirements, that they software never caught on.

RC'rs seem to prefer the (now antiquated) DX9 graphics... sigh...

[opjose]

Originally posted by Tronic_:

What? Realflight uses both! The cartoon looking flying sites are 3D modeled and the realistic ones that don't allow first pirson/cockpit view are the Panoramic Photo airfields.

I never said otherwise. Rather the complaint was about the appearance of the airfields and the poster was not making an apples to apples comparison.

Reflex users touted "better looking" airfields when all they had was a panorama photo.

Originally posted by Tronic_:

Plenty of titles offer the option to select older versions of directx along with directx11 upon launching the game

and I think it’s safe to say that most people buying Realflight through the Steam store have mid to high end graphics cards. Also RFX could have failed for reasons other than hardware requirements alone.

No that's why it failed. The numerous complaints about performance and people wanting to go back to the other engine forced Knifeedge to abandon development when the company was sold.

Originally posted by Tronic_:

To say that all RC’rs prefer low end graphics simply isn’t true and most likely only apply to people buying copy's of the software at hobby shops and expecting to be able to run them on pcs using integrated graphics.

And yet the majority with higher end systems and RFX wanted to go back to the older engine due to performance constraints.

Personally I wish KE had stayed the course on a newer engine... but profitability of necessity, tends to trump all.

[opjose]

No. Rather uninformed people see a photofield and immediately assume that the particular sim (in this case Reflex) is inherently "better".

I can't tell you how many times I've seen that asserted. When you break it down to the specifics it is always the photo backgrounds that catches their eye.

They do not understand the difference and it is not worth going into how panoramic sims are severely limited by the "image on a fishbowl" programming they use.

You cannot quickly educate them as to the differences, so it is far easier to discuss photofields only versus 3D and avoid the whole "RF does both, Reflex does not" discussion.

[TJA]

Reflex XTR2 is out dated and over priced, also the Heli's are old and there has not been an update in years.