I agree that it would probably be better to separate different flightsims onto different hard drives, but, because of pure economics, I run FSX, XP10, Flight, and P3D on one (non-partitioned) drive and have experienced no problems. I get pretty good FRs (locked on 30 - running 29/30) and no glitches - even with imapHD and TrackIR5 running. This is with i5 650 processor (not OCed), 8 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 560 (not OCed) and 1TB HD. So, even with a mediocre rig, these things will run. Just for information - no room for bragging!!

 

John

I created a new user account to run P3D and keep the files separated. This was a necessity when I installed some

of my A2A Accu-Sim aircraft in P3D. When both FSX and P3D are run on the same account, they will bot

read/write to the Accu-Sim DAT files.

 

With a separate user account for P3D it has it's own DAT files for the A2A stucff.

 

Paul

In truth, I kept both and then found after a while I did not go back to FSX sufficiently to make keeping it worthwhile.

 

For those who like to turn up the heat a bit on their flame throwers, let me also say that for some time I couldn't pick the difference between the two, but now I find P3D increasingly complete. So I opted for the one that I believed is under continued upgrade, and have it running well, knowing there is more to come.

 

I then saved the FSX main folder, the Program Data MS\FSX and the Appdata\Roaming folder (not just FSX cfg because the XML files are vital for the dlls) - to a large storage disk, and I continually copy and paste from those three folders.

 

Messing around with boats is almost as much fun as sailing them, and I think that fiddling, downloading, installing and tweaking are part of the attraction of our hobby - full immersion particularly at the setup and adjustment phase. Not that P3D needs anywhere as much attention as FSX, and I only have two tweaks in my cfg file, and I am not sure they are needed!

While P3D's interfaces are not as "slick" as FSX, the scenery, while overall the same as FSX, seems to be more complete. Realizing there are some areas in which there has been major work done, the outlying areas also seem to have more auto-gen without suffering FR losses. Once everything is set up, it is one smooth running program.

I know this has been alluded too before and mentioned that P3D will remain 32 bit but isn't that extremely prohibitive? Most of us have these super high end machines which if you were to run any other game is not even an issue but we have FSX and prepar3d that brings machines to their knees just for flying into a major city and overcast. We have to turn down the settings to get anything half decent fps.

 

Other games... max detail max scenery. Still get high fps.

 

FSX is so intensive its not even used for benchmarking new computers. I would think 64 bit would alleviate alot of this. I'm no programmer but is it just because doing so no add one would work? Sooner or later we have to take the plunge for a 64 bit program. And start a new cycle. Unfortunately its expensive but its our hobby and the only way to get some sortof decent performance.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

Modifying the base code to full 64bit would be a major undertaking. Contrary to popular myth, it's not as simple as flicking a switch in the C++ compiler!

 

In addition, unless a 32bit version was retained, a huge potential market would be excluded. Maintaining two separate versions in synch would increase the overhead as well as add yet another source of potential bugs.

What would be a better bang for the buck, a 64bit P3D or a P3D that can use multiple CPUs and GPUs? Aren't most popular games out there still 32bit? For retaining my collection of add-ons I would much prefer 32bit for the next few years.

Yes totally agree. But at the same time how many products survive after 10 years when there is serious flaws and limitations.

 

I'm thinking of cars built in the 70s 80s. Would we use same technology today? Safety performance and Economical wise?

 

Or can all these bugs and limitations be fixed with 32 bit code? Perhaps that's the question.

 

 

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Hey Gypsy Baron,

 

I really like the idea of creating a new User Account to run either FSX or P3D. I need to be able to refer back to/test with FSX but I wasn't thrilled with the dual-boot idea and restarting windows every time I wanted to do a quick comparison. But switching User Accounts would be much easier. Tell me:

 

1. I take it I would need to re-install FSX while in the new User Account?

2. P3D and FSX would not see each then at all?

3. There may be some addons that still need to find FSX to install properly. Do you think the P3D Migration tool would suffice to cover that?

 

Clutch

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I know this has been alluded too before and mentioned that P3D will remain 32 bit but isn't that extremely prohibitive? Most of us have these super high end machines which if you were to run any other game is not even an issue but we have FSX and prepar3d that brings machines to their knees just for flying into a major city and overcast. We have to turn down the settings to get anything half decent fps.

 

Other games... max detail max scenery. Still get high fps.

 

FSX is so intensive its not even used for benchmarking new computers. I would think 64 bit would alleviate alot of this. I'm no programmer but is it just because doing so no add one would work? Sooner or later we have to take the plunge for a 64 bit program. And start a new cycle. Unfortunately its expensive but its our hobby and the only way to get some sortof decent performance.

 

Changing to 64 bit would not make things run faster. It merely allows the one process to address more memory, so solving Out Of Memory problems. It may allow higher resolution textures and more objects simply because of the extra memory, but that would in turn slow things down because there would then be more data to move around. The limiting parts of the PC would still be the main bus to/from the video card, the disk, and the memory. A 64-bit version would probably be slower to start with in any case because all the structures which make up the virtual world inside the memory would need to be larger to accommodate 64-bit pointers and offsets rather than 32 bits ones.

 

And it would not fix any bugs in itself. In fact the process of converting to 64-bit would almost certainly introduce many more bugs which would take a long long time and much testing to eradicate.

 

Finally, you'd have instant incompatibility with any add-ons which run within the FS process itself.

 

I'm actually thinking that a more productive solution to the one problem which 64-bit does solve -- OOM -- would be to separate some parts of the P3D code into separate processes. Cooperative processes would allow each to use their full 4 Gb of memory, and each would naturally be able to use separate processor cores without any special re-programming. Multiple processes are used in real aircraft, and of course we have examples of such implementations in simulations as well -- Project Magenta, ProSim737, and so on have separate programs doing different parts of the job.

 

Regards

Pete

I've solved my OOM problems by just using dx10 in fsx. Unfortunately prepared doesn't have dx10 but obviously has the capability. It would seem an issue of optimizing code more than anything.

 

Don't have Xplane but read about it and now its switched to 64 bit' and although doesn't make it much faster its more stable and smoother and other addons can be converted with a plugin not too mention huge opportunity for scenery to use 16 or 32 GB of memory textures.

 

The point is we have to make the plunge at some point. There is no progression being chained to old code and 32 bit going forward. Clearly high end machines can handle intensive simulations as evidenced by today's games if coded correctly.

 

So if P3D is so corporate they will have to make major changes if they want that professional corporate feel without a 4GB VAS limit and sim that doesn't fall to its knees coming into a populated scenery and coastlines and mountains.

 

Sooner than later we may just have to sacrifice our favorite addons if plugins are not possible. Only way to conquer this hurdle it seems.

I solved OOM's by converting to a dedicated sim computer using WideFS and FSUIPC. Running external processes on a networked computer.

"I've solved my OOM problems by just using dx10 in fsx."

 

So if that is the case, I read P3D v2.0 will be DX11. So wouldn't that solve most OOM issues? That as well as more interaction with multiple GPUs? Also, if 2.0 is good enough, that could buy LM several more years of development time to then produce a 64 bit version.

DX11 + optimized management of the 4GB of VAS that the platform has would certainly help us out a lot and probably eliminate a lot of problems. From what I've read it is DX9 + FSX's poor memory management (which apparently leaks over time) that causes a lot of our OOM problems.