Thinking of taking the plunge for P3D

[Arismac 10]

This elderly and physically handicapped old man spends about 60 hours a week with Flight Sim. I have loaded P3D v1.3 and now use it for 95% of my flying. I am averaging two software crashes per day.

 

I have installed most of Orbx scenery, AS2012, Plan-G and run a VA client on all flights. Sliders on maximum. On my rig P3D leaves FSX for dead as far as graphics are concerned. I can best describe the improvement of P3D over FSX by comparing my move from FS2004 default scenery to FSX with Orbx.

 

Given the feedbak from testers of v1.4 over v1.3 I will probably remove FSX from my computer after the next release. It will just be taking up HD space.

 

At this time the only Flight1 have basically ignored my requests for product support and that only once but they did provide a refund. The great majority have provided excellent support for their products ported to P3D.

 

Cheers, Mac

[gandy 18]

I think its the developers we need on our side with p3d not the publishers, as flight 1 is a publisher more than a developer then maybe its worth chasing the developers of your favourite addons they publish.

 

For what ever reason ifly decided to release a p3d version of the 737 so it is possible other developers will join in with support p3d even if its limited support.

 

I do have the p3d version of the ifly 737 :)

[Swofford 155]

I'm waiting for version 2.0 and then if it lives up to what people are claiming will hop on it. I'm more than happy to spend a couple hundred dollars on a platform that works and is actively being developed

and improved.

[Arismac 10]

I think its the developers we need on our side with p3d not the publishers

 

Could not agree with you more. From my obervations LM are working very closely with some developers. The obviously close collaberation between Orbx and LM is a case in point. Excellent work by both teams.

 

There is clearly a lot more to be gained by working with LM than by pretending P3D does not exist. Cooperation between all contributors to the flight sim industry will have both short and long term benefits to the whole community from developers to end users.

[Zeus67 15]

I believe they all are offering Prepar3D ready products, Simarket, Justflight,Flightsim Shop, Avsim etc, with the exception of Flight1 and their vendors. RealityXP, Eaglesoft, etc. At this point, we P3D users are an extremely small minority so our disdane has very little effect. Perhaps that may change in the future? Oh well, its not rally that big of an issue. Not planning on bycotting F1 just because of that. FSX is and more than likely remain my primary sim. P3D is just kind of a novelty.

 

I believe that right now most of the FSX users, and some developers, are waiting until the release of ver 2.0. Then we will see if P3D takes off as the next flight simulator.

[Ian McPhail 55]

PMDG is a stand-out also, much the pity.. However their 737 transfers readily, and the iFly 737 has a P3D installer, although it is within the Flight1 stable which otherwise denies the existence of P3D.

 

Although I have had no part in the v1.4 beta which I trust is almost ready to release, I would strongly urge the doubters to start there rather than wait for v2.0

[Swofford 155]

I'm thinking about it. Ive got a bare 10000 RPM drive that needs something to do.

[Ian McPhail 55]

Wait till v1.4 is released in the next (we hope) few weeks, install it, migrate your older Orbx material across - Orbx have supplied a full migration utility - and you will find a heap of other devs like Carenado now have P3D installers, while existing FSX addons can be easily installed using an FSX registry cheat.

 

FEX have a P3D version, and Active Sky X works well also. FSBuild 2.4, Plan G, FS2Crew, Flightsim Commander 9 all relate well to a simple registry diversion (I can let you have a cookbook approach, there is payware migrator from FSEstonia - of all places - and its good. The Flight 1 registry tweaker also works well.

 

FSUIPC have a latest version that installs into one or both FSX and P3D.

 

And so on, and so on. X-Plane is a rapidly improving sim, but most aircraft and little scenery matches what is available for FSX/P3D. And the default is disappointing where I find P3D has already improved on FSX, and both are superior to XP. a really excited user don't flame me, there are many other features of XP that are genuinely breakthroughs, and it will be good into the future to have real competition between two constantly evolving simulators.

[pmanhart 176]

I'm thinking about it. Ive got a bare 10000 RPM drive that needs something to do.

 

If it is lonely, I could put it to good use...

 

I should also point out that the newest versions of FS Commander 9.x supports P3D out of the box.

 

Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk 2

[Zeus67 15]

Wait till v1.4 is released in the next (we hope) few weeks, install it, migrate your older Orbx material across - Orbx have supplied a full migration utility - and you will find a heap of other devs like Carenado now have P3D installers, while existing FSX addons can be easily installed using an FSX registry cheat.

 

FEX have a P3D version, and Active Sky X works well also. FSBuild 2.4, Plan G, FS2Crew, Flightsim Commander 9 all relate well to a simple registry diversion (I can let you have a cookbook approach, there is payware migrator from FSEstonia - of all places - and its good. The Flight 1 registry tweaker also works well.

 

FSUIPC have a latest version that installs into one or both FSX and P3D.

 

And so on, and so on. X-Plane is a rapidly improving sim, but most aircraft and little scenery matches what is available for FSX/P3D. And the default is disappointing where I find P3D has already improved on FSX, and both are superior to XP. a really excited user don't flame me, there are many other features of XP that are genuinely breakthroughs, and it will be good into the future to have real competition between two constantly evolving simulators.

If it is lonely, I could put it to good use...

 

I should also point out that the newest versions of FS Commander 9.x supports P3D out of the box.

 

Sent from my VS920 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

This is the beauty of P3D, it shares the core engine code with FSX so there is no problem to use add-ons from one sim to another. Those add-ons that have problems rely on direct access to some areas that have changed in P3D, which is why LM says that all P3D add-ons should only use SimConnect because the code is always evolving and changing.

[as355f 0]

PMDG is a stand-out also, much the pity.. However their 737 transfers readily, and the iFly 737 has a P3D installer, although it is within the Flight1 stable which otherwise denies the existence of P3D.

 

Although I have had no part in the v1.4 beta which I trust is almost ready to release, I would strongly urge the doubters to start there rather than wait for v2.0

 

Downloading as I type.

 

What is this registry hack you speak so fondly of? B)

Any idea of where I may read about it?

[Ian McPhail 55]

Try this:

 

It is surprisingly straightforward.

 

1. Copy the FSX white plane on blue background with the word application to its right in the column from the FSX root or main folder, into the P3D root file. (In FSX you find it way down below the folders in the list of Application files}

 

Having the FSX application file in P3D root folder does no harm, but it provides a target to fool installers that that is where FSX is.

 

2. Download and install a reg utility from Flight 1, or I use the one below:

 

TweakFS - Registry Utility for FSX

Version 1.3

TweakFS - Cool Tools for Flight Simulator

June 13, 2008

Website: http://tweakfs.com

Forum: http://tweakfs.com/forum

Email: info@tweakfs.com

 

3. Using the Registery Utility set the FSX path to the P3D folder, just follow the instructions its straightforward, and as you have put the FSX application file in there, it will accept the change of path. That's why we do step one!

 

4. If you are planning to Install the PMDG NGX .. install the two PMDG base files as normal, run your PTPs through the livery manager as normal. There should be no problem (unless my instructions are too obtuse).

 

5. The dealbreaker is that you will probably have to copy the Load instruction for the HUD dll from the Appdata\\FSX dll.xml file to the similar folder and file in P3D. I

 

If you are uneasy about editing an xml file, then just copy the entire DLL.xml from Appdata FSX to Appdata\\\P3D. Saves worry.

 

Without this you will have a HUD but with no content at all. Just a great big sunshade.

 

6. For other aircraft just follow the same steps except for the xml problems. I have all my Carenado installed directly without problem. (But Carenado have released installers for P3D for most products).

And the Real Air Duke installed without problem.

 

7. The Orbx migrator tool is excellent and sorts things out well. You can install airports directly but people flow is lost. Regional sceneries do install ok, including Misty Fjords. All new Orbx scenery is being released with a P3 installer.

 

8. The Aerosoft Airbus X is very much harder and the migration from FSX is discussed at length in the AVSIM forum.

There are a number of addons outside this simple approach of mine. They will need SimConnect and better guru than me will have to tell us to make these work.

 

9. For standard freeware and payware scenery just copy the entire contents of the scenery add-on folder in FSX including the scenery and texture folders within to the scenery folder in the P3 equivalent. If you are more relaxed, leave them where they are and browse to them from the scenery library and Add. But and but, do copy and replace the two standalone scenery and texture folders, within the Addon Scenery folder so you don't lose those bgls that you installed directly into them - and have since totally forgotten.

 

10. REX Essential has been released with a full P3D installer and it works beautifully.

 

But the first three steps are vital.

 

Caveat Emptor of course. Make sure you back-up anything you want to change.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

This utility seems to have disappeared from their web site..

here is the direct link

 

http://www.tweakfs.com/store/free_tools.php

[as355f 0]

Try this:

 

It is surprisingly straightforward... <snip>

 

 

Thank you so much for the detailed reply, I certainly didn't expect you to go that far.

 

I'm sure you've pre-empted all my questions.

 

I think everyone should be jumping onto this, FSX finally has a chance of being "done right."

This thread has definitely allayed some of my fears of the unknown.

 

Pete.

[AKStirling 44]

Backtracking to Bert Pieke's question earlier in this thread i am a user of the RealityXP package in FSX and the one thing stopping me from lining up my enthusiasm behind P3D is the fact of not having the functionality of that gauge in P3D. That deficiency does and will continue to more than outweigh the relatively minor improvements currently in the mix as between the 2 sims. On this subject my curiosity is aroused by Carenado's marketing of planes flying the FSX/P3D functionality flag. One of the selling points they tout in the 'New Features' department is 'Reality XP integration'. Given the widely available knowledge that the gns's can't be successfully ported over to P3D i find this hard to fathom. Would be interested in anyone else's thoughts on this as i daresay it's possible i'm missing something ...

 

Alan