There are many planes that look very good. Some of them don't fly very well because the designer insisted in putting the wings where they are because they "look good" there (true story xD), and some others don't maneuver as expected. To me, it seems like the builders of these planes don't pay too much attention to the handling of their airplane. Hmmmmm. I present

SimplePlanes Explained: Aesthetics and Realism and Which to Prioritize

What is aesthetics?

Basically it means how good your builds look. You can make builds look better by adding a livery, decals, and supporting details such as probes, pitot tubes, windows, and a cockpit. Some people consider this to be the ultimate factor that determines the quality of a build. This may have problems. For example, in a challenge the host may just decide to judge planes based on screenshots. This definitely has foreseeable problems if a plane with a lot of functionality is entered.

What is realism?

Realism means making builds function and look as they do in real life (in the case of a replica build), or making them function and look like their real life counterparts (if fictional). While this concept may include aesthetics in some cases, in SP details like liveries and pitot tubes don't add function and don't make the plane work like irl, I don't think these things count as realism. Instead, realism deals with how planes fly. SP planes should, in theory, be designed to fly like if it is in real life. While this may be hard to do because of the unique nature of SP and its physics calculation, it is still possible.

Conclusion: a comparison

Although this is up for debate, I think the performance, handling, and functionality of builds is more important than aesthetics. This is evident in all my builds, as well as in the rubric in my (rather unpopular) challenges. However, the argument that aesthetics is more important is still valid, because it is what attracts users to upvote and download. Tell me what you think in the comments.

Previous SP Explained

"Platinum Through Forums Alone"
"Why Your Builds are Not Getting More Upvotes"
"How To Become Platinum"
"How a Possible Updated Rank System Could Look"
"How to Grow SP Drama in 3 Easy Steps"
"The Realism (and lack thereof) of SP Builds and Things to Know by a Person Part 1"
"How to Write SP Explained"

Thank you for reading. If you like this series and want more, please upvote and/or go here and type T in the comments to join the mailing list. See you next time.