Maybe we should ask LM if they were Prepar3d to release Prepar3d....

 

So for $59 u get some additional frames per second, some nice fog, and some water... Huh.

 

Oh boy.. Always a few of these type in the crowd.

 

Real time shadows

volumetric fog

FSX like start up menu

tessellation

DX11

shift to GPU rendering

better CPU optimization

MSAA and FXAA built in

Vsync

Vegtation Density Slider separate from Autogen density slider

More free planes

 

That's just a gloss over but hey keep doing your best to keep the list short to convince yourself nothing is different. 

The startup menu is now working. Antialising is terrible. No full screen either!

Set you AA up through NI if your using Nvida mine looks great now and actually gave me FPS by giving control to the drivers and not P3D. And there is a full screen.

The shadows are B-E-A-utiful

 

1.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

I was not entertained during the capture of the screenshot

Lovely!

I have to enable wide view aspect ratio and then restart the sim in order for it to be in full-screen across my 3 monitors.

 

 

shift to GPU rendering

 

Not to drag you down, but did you really check that? All I can see is moving the new features of the sim onto GPU, but the old parts, like ground-loading, autogen, mesh... still run pretty much off the CPU. Or am I mistaken? Try this: turn off everything "new" in the sim, like water, shadows, fog, leave only the tessellation. Then run the sim and observe the GPU usage. So if the GPU usage is not more 50% with unlimited FPS (and CPU usage is at 100%), would a faster GPU actually help with the frames? I doubt it.

With FTXG and default settings

 

2013-11-25_12-7-14-672.jpg

 

2013-11-25_12-7-40-352.jpg

 

Default?? Wow... Looks like I'm back to putting my settings to default and starting over, they don't look near as good as that right now! Thanks for the shots!

Before I slam it can anyone tell me if there's any difference between the $9.99 a month and $59.99 version?

I assume slam it means buy it?

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/product-overview/prepar3d-license-comparison/

Having some major teething problems.

This platform would be an immediate buy for 1st time simmers and those that have constant or annoying FSX CTDS and OOMS In My opinion..

Anyone running FSX like a dream should wait and see how P3D behaves when placed under the same stress as a fully loaded FSX. At least thats what i will be doing.

AMD user - My personal first impressions.

 

Just like a kid in a sweet shop I couldn't help playing with all the sliders, and then playing with then some more. In between playing with sliders, of course, some time was spent setting up the yoke and rudders and throttles and panels. Another bunch of time was lost due to the 'black screen issue' but that seems to have randomly gone away for the time being. I'm still running the 13.4 driver which is not the latest so upgrading will be interesting.

 

I run three screens in Eyefinity and with FSX you get the dreaded fisheye effect. When their was only FSX it was something you learned to live with. With P3D NO FISHEYE EFFECT - now I have over 60in of screen in front of me, filled with an amazing view. Impressive, is an understatement.

 

The HDR lighting, makes FSX look real for the first time. To me anyway. In the end I stuck with the default settings and don't know if these change per PC and initially just sitting on the runway I was disappointed by the fact I was getting 20fps. However, it flys as if the FPS were 60. I've not spotted any stutters and its SMOOTH.

 

With FSX if I goto say 35000ft my frames skyrocket. Not so in P3D they increase a little but high or low the FPS stay stable for me.

 

Off to Seattle, then New York and London. In all three the frames drop but, it's still smooth. In fact adding AI, cars, boats and shadows, doesn't seem to bring on the dreaded stuttering or make the sim look like I'm watching a slideshow. I can bring it to its knees by putting everything on max but then I'm not really running a mega machine.

 

The autogen and scenery settings are not the same as FSX. In fact on normal, the autogen stretches right to the horizon and theirs a LOT of it.

 

The visibility also looks realistic and going through the default clouds looks like your going through a cloud.

 

I've still not added anything and am running it purely vanilla. I have 3GB on my graphics card and for the first time I've seen it used. Around 2 - 2.2GB. This must be taking the load and is why everything is silky smooth. VAS was at around 2.36GB

Flying the F22 actually feels like your flying something that has some speed. Yes I flew through New York really low it was fast and it was smooth. My 20fps is an illusion as there are a huge number of pixels to push around so I'm not really sure what it means anymore. It feels and looks like it should be 60. I'm a little confused as to what it's actually showing me.

 

Still loads and loads to do and try, but first impressions for me are

Oh boy.. Always a few of these type in the crowd.

 

Real time shadows

volumetric fog

FSX like start up menu

tessellation

DX11

shift to GPU rendering

better CPU optimization

MSAA and FXAA built in

Vsync

Vegtation Density Slider separate from Autogen density slider

More free planes

 

That's just a gloss over but hey keep doing your best to keep the list short to convince yourself nothing is different. 

 

Real time shadows (nice, that's a win...but can get this today in FSX with Steve's DX10 shader app albeit not to the extent that P3D delivers)

volumetric fog (nice, that's a win...as are the new clouds)

FSX like start up menu (yay?)

tessellation (don't care, unless it results in better performance, fixes blurries, and/or lowered VAS - both of which have yet to be demonstrated since the third party support isn't there to push the sim to its limits)

DX11 (don't care as DX11 is GPU tesselation)

shift to GPU rendering (see above)

better CPU optimization (what "better" optimization?)

MSAA and FXAA built in (nice, but get that today in FSX through drivers)

Vsync (nice that this is "fixed", but also get that today in FSX through drivers)

Vegtation Density Slider separate from Autogen density slider (nice, but have this ability today in FSX - it's a config file tweak - just no UI slider)

More free planes (shrug - does anybody fly the "stock" planes after day 1?)

 

$199 for clouds, shadows, and some next-gen menu and UI sliders? What they gain in clouds and shadows is somewhat diminished by the less-than-stellar water people are reporting. The jury is still out, but I need a more compelling story than, "Whoooo...it's got DirectX 11 technology inside!" before I bite down on that worm.

Isn't it $59?

Here... You want $60/$199 worth of change log.. Have at it...

 

Object Instancing

• Instancing allows the rendering system to have graphics cards draw multiple copies of the same entity just once. This greatly improves autogen building and tree performance.

GPU Particle and Effect System

• Effects are now simulated through the new GPU (graphics card) particle system
• Training scenarios with much more effects rendered on the scene are now possible

Tessellated Terrain on the Graphics Card

• The previous work being done to generate terrain mesh is now done on the graphics card.
• Fully dynamic night and day light cycles
  • Terrain lighting is now able to be done dynamically on the card, whereas previous shadows and lighting had to be baked into the textures and reloaded when time changed
• Terrain paging performance greatly improved
  • Trainees in fast flight scenarios will see their terrain paged in much quicker as it is being done on the graphics card

Multi-Threading Support

• Visual scene and rendering optimizations are now be done on background threads
• Shader compilation is now threaded out which greatly reduces stuttering effects that some users had with previous versions
• Resources are now able to be shared between views
  • A single update can be shared across virtual cockpit views greatly increasing performance with multiple views open
  • Round world coordinate conversion now able to be done on the GPU

Visual Rendering Engine Improvements
Prepar3D Now Has an Updated Real-Time Shadow System

• Fully dynamic variance cascaded shadow maps
• Supporting an unlimited number of objects receiving and casting shadows inside shadow range
• Full support for object self-occlusion, including virtual cockpit self-shadowing
• Terrain able to receive and cast shadows in real-time
• Soft shadows support through separable blur pass filters
• Day and night cycle support within the shadow system
• Weather support (lightning able to affect shadows)

A Modernized Lighting System

• Through tone mapping, views are now able simulate the effect of your eyes adjusting to the brightness of a scene
• Improved simulation of night visibility
• Bloom lighting effects greatly improved

A Vibrant New 3D Living Water Surface

• Dynamic 3D waves and water surface based on weather conditions and wind speed
• Water lighting and shading improved for greater realism

Volumetric Fog and Cloud and Weather Improvements

• The appearance of flying through fog and clouds has been greatly improved
• Light is now simulated as it passes through visibility and cloud layers defined in the Prepar3D weather system

Specular Lighting Terrain Support Enabled

• Land classes now have specular values that will affect how they reflect light (for example, snow and roads now reflect light differently, snow is shinier, etc.)

Improved control over anti-aliasing up to 8x MSAA and FXAA support

Global anisotropic filtering support up to 16x

A Modernized Full-Screen Mode
Fullscreen mode is now non-exclusive

• The mode switch is much faster
• Windows can span more than one monitor in full-screen mode
• Plugins can create their own windows
• Bringing up the kneeboard or ATC windows won't cause delays in fullscreen mode as they used to

  

$59 academic (which you can get but aren't "technically" supposed to unless you're an educator or a student), $199 for the official pro. There's also a revolving $10/mo developer "subscription" option (which I may do just to tinker with it myself before dropping two Benjamin's).

Antialising is terrible.

 

FXAA is terrible because it's a post-processing method. Try MSAA.

 

Also, what about blurries?