I've been watching with some interest the almost feverish anticipation for P3Dv2's release on Monday. It definitely seems to have replaced the PMDG 777 as "The Next Big Thing" that everyone is talking about. I'm especially interested to see how some people are pretty much ready to sell their flight simming soul to P3Dv2 before they've even got it installed and running.

 

From what I gather P3Dv2 has moved the graphics engine to DX11 which offloads some of the computing load to the GPU and leverages the potential power of more modern GPUs and multi core CPUs much better than FSX does. The screenshots show new lighting with dynamic shadows. We've got volumetric fog and some new water effects.

 

It's not really a very impressive list of improvements given it's been nearly five years since MS shut down Aces and Lockheed started with P3D. Five years for a better framerate, less blurries and a few new eye candy effects?

 

It's still 32 bit. It's still the same old flight dynamics which struggle with post stall behaviour, turboprop modelling is very poor, helicopter modelling is very poor and vectored thrust is not modelled at all. The same old ATC is still there. Sloping runways are still not featured. Runway conditions are still not modelled. The screenshots still show the same old cardboard cut out clouds. We don't appear to have moved on any further forward than the very basic engine failure modelling introduced with the Acceleration P-51. I also believe the same old weather engine is still present.

 

I find it perhaps just a little amusing that so many people on these forums proudly declare that it's a simulation and not a game, yet as a community we are falling over ourselves fawning over P3Dv2 which appears to have done precious little to improve the simulation aspect of the software yet the headline features for most appear to be the modest improvement of eye candy.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing LM. I'm happy someone has picked up the torch and is carrying it forward. I'll be picking it up at the end of the month and I'll give it a fair shot at replacing FSX on my system. I'm just perhaps a little disappointed that after almost five years of P3D development very little has apparently been done to improve the core simulation aspects.

+1

Spirit

I am just glad that after years of nothing, at least something has been done.

 

Sent from my Mobile thing

 

 

There are still going to be updates (2.1, 2.2, 2.3 etc), and you can put in feature requests.

Oh and there are going to be Cloud Shadows!!!!!

I also agree with you though

For better or worse we will see, startnig Monday.

I've been watching with some interest the almost feverish anticipation for P3Dv2's release on Monday. It definitely seems to have replaced the PMDG 777 as "The Next Big Thing" that everyone is talking about. I'm especially interested to see how some people are pretty much ready to sell their flight simming soul to P3Dv2 before they've even got it installed and running.

 

From what I gather P3Dv2 has moved the graphics engine to DX11 which offloads some of the computing load to the GPU and leverages the potential power of more modern GPUs and multi core CPUs much better than FSX does. The screenshots show new lighting with dynamic shadows. We've got volumetric fog and some new water effects.

 

It's not really a very impressive list of improvements given it's been nearly five years since MS shut down Aces and Lockheed started with P3D. Five years for a better framerate, less blurries and a few new eye candy effects?

 

It's still 32 bit. It's still the same old flight dynamics which struggle with post stall behaviour, turboprop modelling is very poor, helicopter modelling is very poor and vectored thrust is not modelled at all. The same old ATC is still there. Sloping runways are still not featured. Runway conditions are still not modelled. The screenshots still show the same old cardboard cut out clouds. We don't appear to have moved on any further forward than the very basic engine failure modelling introduced with the Acceleration P-51. I also believe the same old weather engine is still present.

 

I find it perhaps just a little amusing that so many people on these forums proudly declare that it's a simulation and not a game, yet as a community we are falling over ourselves fawning over P3Dv2 which appears to have done precious little to improve the simulation aspect of the software yet the headline features for most appear to be the modest improvement of eye candy.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing LM. I'm happy someone has picked up the torch and is carrying it forward. I'll be picking it up at the end of the month and I'll give it a fair shot at replacing FSX on my system. I'm just perhaps a little disappointed that after almost five years of P3D development very little has apparently been done to improve the core simulation aspects.

 

I agree with a lot of what you're saying but I also believe that this is nothing but good news for all of us student pilots. Just wanted to add that there is a HUGE point being missed, many of our existing add-ons will work in P3D V2. This plus moving the graphics rendering to the GFX card utilizing D3D11 is huge. The LM Dev team seems extremely capable of getting P3D to where most people want it to be and this first step is absolutely in the right direction.. in my humble opinion.

 

The amount of work that was required to get over to DX11 and still maintain compatibility with existing add-ons had to have been many 1000's of hours of coding. My hat goes off to the LM team.

which appears to have done precious little to improve the simulation aspect of the software yet the headline features for most appear to be the modest improvement of eye candy.

 

Although you are stating facts which can't be denied I do think you underestimate the importance of what you call eye candy for a good simulation. I understand what you are missing in P3D 2.0 but 1. a lot of that is up to 3rd party developers (just as it is with FSX!), 2. for a real simulation it is very important to get the virtual pilot immersed in the sim and for this eye candy is very important, and 3. I do believe this is only the beginning.  ^_^

It's not really a very impressive list of improvements given it's been nearly five years since MS shut down Aces and Lockheed started with P3D. Five years for a better framerate, less blurries and a few new eye candy effects?

 

LM and developers like OrbX have stated that the most exciting thing about the new engine is that it's far more scalable than the old one. This allows developers to use higher quality models and new techniques in their sceneries and aircraft addons. Out of the box, the sim comes with a few new DX11 features enabled to showcae the tech, but that's just the beginning. It's a small team - they can create the base technology, but are working closely with 3rd party developers to take advantage of it.

 

It's still 32 bit. It's still the same old flight dynamics which struggle with post stall behaviour, turboprop modelling is very poor, helicopter modelling is very poor and vectored thrust is not modelled at all. The same old ATC is still there. Sloping runways are still not featured. Runway conditions are still not modelled. The screenshots still show the same old cardboard cut out clouds. We don't appear to have moved on any further forward than the very basic engine failure modelling introduced with the Acceleration P-51. I also believe the same old weather engine is still present.' 

 

32-bit: Not necessarily an issue. DX11 = lower VAS usage. The old FSX engine is also very bad at releasing unused memory. Optimizations are enough to keep us going for another 4-5 years IMO

 

Flight dynamics: LM will make it easier for 3rd party developers to plug in their own flight dynamics (A2A AccuSim etc.). The old flight dynamics are mostly there for backwards compatibility.

 

Sloping runways: Have been in third party sceneries for ages

 

ATC: Agree about this, but the focus for this update was not ATC or AI. Maybe for P3D 2.5?

 

Runway conditions: See Flight dynamics

 

Clouds: REX

 

Engine failures: See Flight dynamics

 

Weather engine: REX, Opus etc.

I believe the true value of P3D v2 is a decent performing SIM platform that does not require hours of tweaks and do away with the flakiness of FSX.  For this prize, the simmer will have to give up some of the most cherished planes due to EULA and software restriction, which is ironic because the reason FSX is tweaked so much is because we want those planes to perform well without causing hesitation, micro stutters, OOM and crashes.  There is only so much pain tolerance one can endure.

 If I had spent 45 minutes of my time prepare for a tube line flight I expect to finish it.  Sadly you will never know if your next flight will complete or not with FSX.  If it does not, you have just wasted a few hours that you would have better spent somewhere else.  The most stupid decision for me was to pick up FSX Gold on sale at Best Buy for 20 bucks.  I had been out of FS since FS2000 and picked FSX up thinking I will be looking at state of the art.  Thousands of dollars on HW/add-ons later, I sometime want to throw everything out of the windows and quit flight sim for good.  All the FTX add-ons of the world are nice to look at, not so nice when your plane stutters on approach or worst, FSX crashes.  If you spent hundred on add-ons having to throw it all away, because you cannot enjoy the sim any more is painful.

It's still 32 bit. It's still the same old flight dynamics which struggle with post stall behaviour, turboprop modelling is very poor, helicopter modelling is very poor and vectored thrust is not modelled at all. The same old ATC is still there. Sloping runways are still not featured. Runway conditions are still not modelled. The screenshots still show the same old cardboard cut out clouds. We don't appear to have moved on any further forward than the very basic engine failure modelling introduced with the Acceleration P-51. I also believe the same old weather engine is still present.

At least with this release, the goal of LM was to improve the core engine - something that only they can do, no one else except LM and MS has the source codes. And they did it while at the same time maintaining almost 100% compatibility with FSX, so your precious addons from FSX can still be used.

 

Most of what you have mentioned in the original post are things that addon developers can do, and what they did with more or less success in FSX for all these years. Lockheed is not doing the same work as addon developers, it's doing the work that the addon developers can not do. Sure, it would be nice to get a better weather or ATC out of the box. So would be a PMDG quality 777 and A320 bundled with release for free.

 

Regarding the 32 bit application, DX10 and up uses process memory differently, that's why OOM's are much less likely to occur in FSX in DX10 mode. P3D should benefit from it too, plus the guys at Lockheed did some memory leaks hunting. But we will know if that helped only after release, when people start throwing everything they got into the sim at the same time.

 

If P3D 2.0 were 64 bit at the relase day, you would get a great simulator platform with virtually no content for it (except sceneries), as only basic addons without c++ modules would work.

+1

X-Plane 10 wasn't a bit of a disappointment for me, as I had previously been running X-Plane 9, and personally I didn't see it as a huge improvement (other than the night lighting).

 

So I have been concerned that P3D v.2 won't be all that much better than FSX. But I was a beta tester for MS Flight and it looks like a LOT of what I like about Flight is going to be in P3D v.2. Ever since my first beta flight in Flight, my dream has been that a flightsim would someday be developed that included the best aspects of Flight and FSX. Right now it's looking like  P3D v.2 might just be that sim.

 

People here keep lamenting that v.2.0 isn't 64 bit, but I'm not concerned about that, because I do think that LM will release a 64-bit version at some point. After all, X-Plane 10 was 32-bit only on release, and its 64-bit exe was added as part of an update.

Its FSX. With improvements. How is that not a good thing?

I'm just perhaps a little disappointed that after almost five years of P3D development very little has apparently been done to improve the core simulation aspects.

 

And now we go to our reporter in the field who is interviewing Microsoft Games head Phil Spencer

 

Styckx: Hi Phil, what are you doing to improve the core simulation aspect in FSX?

 

Phil: *chirp* *chirp* - *chirp* *chirp*

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: This is not an actual interivew and intended for sarcasm and point making purposes only, but is indeed a "reality".. 

I've been watching with some interest the almost feverish anticipation for P3Dv2's release on Monday. It definitely seems to have replaced the PMDG 777 as "The Next Big Thing" that everyone is talking about. I'm especially interested to see how some people are pretty much ready to sell their flight simming soul to P3Dv2 before they've even got it installed and running.

 

From what I gather P3Dv2 has moved the graphics engine to DX11 which offloads some of the computing load to the GPU and leverages the potential power of more modern GPUs and multi core CPUs much better than FSX does. The screenshots show new lighting with dynamic shadows. We've got volumetric fog and some new water effects.

 

It's not really a very impressive list of improvements given it's been nearly five years since MS shut down Aces and Lockheed started with P3D. Five years for a better framerate, less blurries and a few new eye candy effects?

 

It's still 32 bit. It's still the same old flight dynamics which struggle with post stall behaviour, turboprop modelling is very poor, helicopter modelling is very poor and vectored thrust is not modelled at all. The same old ATC is still there. Sloping runways are still not featured. Runway conditions are still not modelled. The screenshots still show the same old cardboard cut out clouds. We don't appear to have moved on any further forward than the very basic engine failure modelling introduced with the Acceleration P-51. I also believe the same old weather engine is still present.

 

I find it perhaps just a little amusing that so many people on these forums proudly declare that it's a simulation and not a game, yet as a community we are falling over ourselves fawning over P3Dv2 which appears to have done precious little to improve the simulation aspect of the software yet the headline features for most appear to be the modest improvement of eye candy.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing LM. I'm happy someone has picked up the torch and is carrying it forward. I'll be picking it up at the end of the month and I'll give it a fair shot at replacing FSX on my system. I'm just perhaps a little disappointed that after almost five years of P3D development very little has apparently been done to improve the core simulation aspects.

 

The list is fairly long and comprehensive IMHO

 

There are many links / ways to see the long list of fixes and improvements. I did post the list but edited it out in case this was still not allowed. If you Google it you will still find it.

 

 

Flight dynamics: LM will make it easier for 3rd party developers to plug in their own flight dynamics (A2A AccuSim etc.). The old flight dynamics are mostly there for backwards compatibility.

 

This was mentioned by the developers that P3D v2 will allow a much simpler plug in for flight dynamics modelled outside of the sim itself. The only reason it wasnt made as the 'standard model in the program itself was to maintain backwards compatability.