I am considering Prepar3d, but haven't yet made my final decision.

 

An important factor in my decision is that I no longer have FSX, nor the DVDs, so, buying Prepar3d would be a start from the base, if it was not for the following fsx add-ons I can still get from their home sites:

 

- FSUIPC License for FSX

- LevelD767 PIC

- RealAir Siai Machetti

- Aerosoft Katana

- Aerosoft Twin Otter

- Aerosoft Lukla

- Aerosoft Heathrow

- Aerosoft Diskus X

- Flight1 Pilatus Pc12

- Wilco's Airbus Collection A319/20/21

- Landclass from VFR France for Portugal and Spain

 

From the above add-ons, and given that I no longer have FSX installed, nor will I buy it back just to install Prepar3d, can

you confirm what will work, and any hints on how..., with the present release of Prepar3d?

 

Thx in advance for your help!

I use the FSX to Prepar3d Migrator tool from Sim Market. It creates a dummy FSX install folder so you don't need to install it. I've managed to install everything I want so far without any problems. Apart from the Quality Wings 757 Repaint Manager. The actual 757 works though. It's about £10 I think. Great little utility.

 

I do find that I still have to add scenery manually with the scenery manager in Prepar3d after the install of the scenery itself but this takes no time at all. I don't have any Aerosoft scenery, just UK2000 so you might not have that issue.

Thx Chris for your reply.

 

BTW: Are you happy with your migration to Prepar3d? For someone like me who was, some 5 yrs ago, a devoted MSFSX user, but have since then uninstalled it and very recently got involved with MS FLIGHT, what would you have to say reagarding the option to get Prepar3d Academic vex buying back FSX ?

 

I see one evident argument for Prepar3d - it has a dev team behind it. But, maybe you can add other factors :-)

 

Thx in advance ;-)

I use the same FSX2P3D migration tool - Out of your list, the Pilatus works fine as well as the PMDG 737NGX.

Tom

Thx Tom! The Pilatus is one of my preferred fsx add-ons :-) Great to confirm that ;-)

I run both on two different but similar systems. I am really impressed with P3D so far but FSX is still my favorite, mainly due to the additional aircraft available that do not work or are not licensed for P3D. Other than that, the performance and quality are very similar. In the long run, the big plus will be that P3D is being developed as opposed to FSX which is stagnant as a platform but still has a LOT of add-ons being developed.

 

A good time for the flight simmer!

 

Vic

Thx Vic, that's my impression too - Prepar3d has a team behind it, while in FSX there are lot's of teams - 3pd - but the core remains unchanged. In the future LM might even consider using a custom physics model and ESP only for the visuals. This would be great, specially if we could then benefit from their knowledge in the aviation biz...

Thx Vic, that's my impression too - Prepar3d has a team behind it, while in FSX there are lot's of teams - 3pd - but the core remains unchanged. In the future LM might even consider using a custom physics model and ESP only for the visuals. This would be great, specially if we could then benefit from their knowledge in the aviation biz...

 

I'm watching P3D with great interest to see how it matures. It is still a little too enshrined in it's FSX legacy for dramatic improvements, yet that legacy is also providing a vast add-on pool to drive its adoption. Or, at least as well as it is permitted by the licensing options.

 

With P3D 2.0, I suspect things will change. The real question becomes, as backward-compatibility is exchanged for new ability, will adoption have reached a point that development focus is applied to P3D for it's own sake, rather than as a side effect of simply supporting FSX?

 

With P3D 2.0, I suspect things will change. The real question becomes, as backward-compatibility is exchanged for new ability, will adoption have reached a point that development focus is applied to P3D for it's own sake, rather than as a side effect of simply supporting FSX?

 

My thoughts too :-) That's why I keep following it, as well as xplane10 - for different reasons - but haven't made my mind yet....

The only thing to note with Aerosoft's scenery is if the addon has AES lite you wont be able to get AES Lite to work as the vistamare.dll is incompatible with P3D. It is how ever being worked on.

RoboRay: your observations are very astute. At this stage very little has been released about the features of v2.0, and at one level I have resigned myself to a transition to a sim with limited backward compatibility. After all, I recall the investment I made in all the earlier sims, and now their add-ons languish on the shelf (More correctly I gave them away to people who did not intend to upgrade).

 

But if backwards compatability is limited in this case a real problem will exist for the short-term. Who will build the add-ons of the quality of PMDG, FSLabs and the like for Prepar3D which does not have the market saturation of FSX? Will Orbx scenery work? Is P3D to be one of those other sims like X-Plane with a small and devoted following that get only the occasional "made-for". Indeed the scenery engine is one of the limitations of FSX, but if that is overcome by radical new build, will the present FSX scenery fit.

 

Compatibility as someone said earlier in this thread has made the switch to P3D relatively painless, it will still be the trick for the next version,and it will be a real inhibitor to the mass market if this is seriously limited. There is a large and growing number of P3D users but not large enough I suspect.

 

But, Lockheed Martin is surely aware of all these considerations so I will await their version with great interest. However, inevitable teething troubles aside, it should be a huge move forward and finally turn the poor orphaned FSX in to a beautiful princess.

I believe they could probably follow a multiple FDM approach, like in FlighGear, where you can swtich between FDMs just by a simply option in the command line.

 

I would applaud a new flight dynamics platform, including the possibility of vectored thrust, better flight dynamics overall, rotary wing FDM, etc... I am sure that although it could take it's time, 3pd would embrace such a project.

 

ESP allows for proprietary FDMs to be used with it, thus turning that simulation platform into a simple display driver.

ESP allows for proprietary FDMs to be used with it

 

Hello

As does FSX, always has for those Devs prepared to write the code i.e PMDG

Majestic's upcoming DH-400 is using external flight dynamics.

http://www.majesticsoftware.com/c/portal_public/layout?p_l_id=1.2&p_p_id=54&p_p_action=0&p_p_state=maximized&p_p_mode=view&_54_node_id=15&_54_page_title=DashqFour

mad dog! your post was tremendous!!! I was long (since 2006/2007) trying to find out the link for their original site - Magestic. I had lost track of it...

 

Regarding PMDG, I wasn't aware they were using an external FDM (???)

 

Again, thx for your reply :-)

Yeah the future development of the platform on Prepar3d is a big lure. Another good feature of it is that the level of detail radius in Prepar3d is larger. FSX was 4.0, Prepar3d is 6 or 6.5. I can't remember exactly. I run it halfway between the two at about 5.5 I think. Looking out of the window is a much better experience now. The textures look sharper for much further. Along with Rex Essential creating a hazy horizon hiding the distant low textures it looks amazing. You can make FSX draw sharper textures but it's a cfg edit that gets deleted every time you change a setting in the fsx menu. Very annoying.

 

I don't have fsx any more, don't need it. Prepar3d hasn't crashed on me once in over 6 months.

 

As far as the 2.0 version of Prepar3d goes, I don't care about backwards compatibility. This is the price we pay for advancement. A good sim platform that supports direct x 11 and runs fast with lovely graphics is more important to me that being able to run my existing add ons. I'll just buy new ones. I appreciate that not everyone can do that though. It's very exciting to have the prospect of a sim built on new modern technology after over 6 years of being saddled with fsx and all of it's problems.