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.

I believe one needs to keep in mind the screen shots we are seeing are not with default scenery. To me, they look like most, if not all, are done with ORBZ FTX? Now, that's another $100.00 addition to get that quality of scenery.

I believe one needs to keep in mind the screen shots we are seeing are not with default scenery. To me, they look like most, if not all, are done with ORBZ FTX? Now, that's another $100.00 addition to get that quality of scenery.

It wasn't Flight's scenery that impressed me, it was the 'feeling of actually flying' that totally blew me away. I have yet to try any other sim that does this nearly as well (which is why I'm still using Flight). This is mainly the result of Flight's excellent dynamic shadows and lighting, and the appearance of it's water (and 3d trees). and the improved flight models (over FSX). 

 

I'm fine adding 3rd party scenery and aircraft, and even 3rd party weather, if that's what it takes for me to finally have the sim that I'm been hoping for for years. I don't know yet if P3D is going to be that sim yet . . . but I'm being optimistic (which is my nature).  I'm not sure that everyone here gets just how immersive dynamic shadows/lighting can be.

The more prudent reality check is that FSX reached it's end line 7 years ago and that MS aren't coming back.

 

P3Dv2 is a huge step forward under the hood. It adds many modern graphics features that have been standard in other sims for half a decade. It fixes major FSX shortcomings like fog and autogen issues. It even goes as far as to give you four payware quality planes in the base simulation. 

 

Most importantly though, it opens up a new world to addon developers. Their entire business model is based partnership with third party developers. They've developed new SDK tools (that all developers say are great), opened up the ability to more easily host external flight models, improved simconnect, and fixed issues with the weather engine to allow guys like Active Sky to do things they could never do in FSX.

 

Core improvements will continue to go forward in v2.1, 2.2, etc as well. If that's not enough for some then stick with FSX. No reality check needed.

you mean we will be able to get the "golden coconut bra" award?  

 

when I got that in Flight.. that was it for me.. I uninstalled it as fast as I could! LOL

It took Microsoft 25 years from the introduction of flight simulator to MSFS X. So I don't think five years to get to P3D Version 2.O Be thankful someone picked up the ball and is running with it. That and they will only continue to develop it.

As far as I am aware, Flight still used lookup tables for FDE's just as FSX does.

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.

 

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. 

 

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.

Mike,

These are very salient points.  I am glad that Lockheed Martin focused on optimizing performance by moving more processing to the GPU rather than focusing on creating a 64-bit app.  If the focus would have been to create a 64-bit application, but only make moderate improvements to the engine, the gains in performance would not have been as great.  Also, could you imagine the backlash from the community complaining that no add on aircraft, weather engines, AI Traffic, or sceneries work in the new app? That would have been an ugly scene.

 

I think that LM's approach provides us with a modern platform that third party developers can build from for many years to come.  It also provides us with an easy transition by being able to port many current add ons from the legacy Microsoft product to the modern Lockheed Martin product, which will be transformed over time into something that will not resemble its current state.  Looking forward to the future.

As far as I am aware, Flight still used lookup tables for FDE's just as FSX does.

 

Yeah, but they did improve the FDE as well.

 

BUT, the major point here is that had LM changed the FDE to improve it internally, people would be going nuts about backwards compatibility. Instead they improved how external models interact and plug into P3D (like the Q400).

 

They made the right compromise. 3rd party developers will be doing some brilliant things with this new approach while old FDE created addons still work as well.

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.

 

+1

 

My thoughts exactly.

 

 

 

This is mainly the result of Flight's excellent dynamic shadows and lighting, and the appearance of it's water (and 3d trees).

 

+1 too!

 

 

 

 I'm not sure that everyone here gets just how immersive dynamic shadows/lighting can be.

 

I DO!!!

 

 

 

They made the right compromise. 3rd party developers will be doing some brilliant things with this new approach while old FDE created addons still work as well.

 

Indeed! P3D 2.0 is only the bottom of the pizza! And what a bottom it (hopefully) is!

What I'm excited about is that the changes LM have made to move the graphics workload from the CPU to the GPU (where it belongs) will (hopefully) free up the CPU to do more simulation work (AI, ATC, Flight Dynamics, Weather etc.) in future versions.

 

With FSX and P3D 1.x the CPU not only had to deal with all the simulation work but also the graphics rendering.  If P3D 2.0 had just been about improving ATC and the Flight Dynamics etc. then I believe we would have had a dramatic drop in FPS.

 

I also believe that if LM had decided to improve on the ATC, Simulation and Weather code in addition to the graphics changes for version 2.0 then we would still be waiting for its release 1-2 years from now.

 

With the moving of graphics rendering to the GPU and the multi-threading support think of P3D 2.0 as a necessary foundation for future enhancements/features which is something we can look forward to :smile:.

I hope there will be plenty of discussion here about P3D once it is launched.  I know already my video card would need to be replaced, cheapest that I've found is $100.

 

So I will not be in the front of the line for this product.  I will wait and see how it goes.

Back to the original OP's statement...

 

Yes, you are correct except on ONE HUGE POINT (at least in my eyes anyhow) - FSX is dead aka the devs were slashed from the MS payrolls years ago, effectively killing the MSFS line. P3D is just beginning to awaken aka the devs are very much alive and with each version you can actually see progress being made by the very people who have continued its development - not third parties. 

 

FSX was killed off before further development could be made, leaving commercial and private sources to "pick up the pieces". True, P3D is picking up where Microsoft left off with the FS engine, but would people be griping less if Lockheed Martin would have come out with a totally new engine on their own forcing owners of FSX to purchase yet another set of commercial add-ons since nothing would work with P3D?

 

So in summary, for me at least, having a more stable simulator and knowing that the development team that produced P3D is actively working on making improvements to it with each official update, beats a sim which is no longer supported by it's original developer and requires high user maintenance just to keep it running correctly.

 

I have used MSFS since Fly! was around for Mac. I just don't see what's so wrong with a person aligning themselves with a product that is not 5 years outside a dead development team and in tune with the latest hardware and hence software developments.

To the OP, do you have any idea how much code goes into a project this big? While there are a couple ACES members working on P3D, the team is still made up of many people that have never seen the FSX/ESP code before. They have to go through and learn the platform and figure out what does what. It's quite understandable why the updates as of yet were so minor. They were simple improvements to optimize and clean up code as they got to know it better. Now that they know the engine well, they have been able to rewrite and upgrade the graphics engine to the latest DirectX API. It doesn't look like a huge improvement at first glance, but take into account all of the new shadowing/lighting capabilities, as well as the complete modernization of hardware usage. It was a huge amount of work for them to do "just" this, I'm sure. As they've said, the improvements with v2 allow them to more easily and quickly make more graphical improvements in the future.

 

As for the flight dynamics, why should they need to do much with them now when the API is there for developers to create their own flight models from scratch the way they want. It probably provides a ton of flexibility that way. Also, 32 bit is a whole different animal to change. There are tons of old libraries/DLLs/bits of assembly code that will need to be rewritten for that to happen.

 

Just some things to think about. It's now up to the third party developers to really take advantage of the new optimizations to increase the overall visual quality of the sim.

IMO (and along of the lines of the title of this post) "Reality check". The facts have been stated in the discussions here; just having the FSim platform in the hands of a major corporation is a major plus for us simmers. Also, Seems like their approach to the v2 is quite reasonable: Getting the max improvement possible in user experience quickly. Which means: Better performance through best use of the GPU (an otherwise under-utilized resource and available now), better graphics, clouds. And, improved capability to have external flight models by third parties. Not bad, really!.

It wasn't Flight's scenery that impressed me, it was the 'feeling of actually flying' that totally blew me away. I have yet to try any other sim that does this nearly as well (which is why I'm still using Flight). This is mainly the result of Flight's excellent dynamic shadows and lighting, and the appearance of it's water (and 3d trees). and the improved flight models (over FSX).

 

I'm fine adding 3rd party scenery and aircraft, and even 3rd party weather, if that's what it takes for me to finally have the sim that I'm been hoping for for years. I don't know yet if P3D is going to be that sim yet . . . but I'm being optimistic (which is my nature). I'm not sure that everyone here gets just how immersive dynamic shadows/lighting can be.

Ditto to that completely. Whenever I need a pure flying experience then Its the only one available at the moment.

 

MY expectations with P3D is that the emersion factors that they have added with the shadows/lighting coupled with the (hopefully) improvement to the smoothness and increase in FPS will go some way to achieving the same experience as Flight. Once 3PD's bring out models with fully modified FDE's then the experience will be complete.

 

This is the start and can only get better.

 

As you can see, I'm keeping my expectations as low as my excitement will allow.