Thank you for the suggestion... I have pilot and passenger in the payload, but neither display. Maybe a compatability issue; not the end of the world but spoils any screenshots using this ac, which I do a lot... can't expect a fix, as its a freebe.

 

 

 

 

This....

 

 

2.1 in its glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those are really nice looking screenshots, sure looks like you found your way with P3D :smile:

 I'm very reluctant to spend some money on a 32 bit simulator.

The big problem is the VAS space available for the sim.

 

I do not know how effective the auto gen function in P3D2 works.

 

Xplane 10 already took the 64 bit path, why not P3D?

With all the scenery add-on's that is available, I think a 64 bit app. is ESSENTIAL.

Screamer,

 

as far as I understand, things are not quite as simple, otherwise the LM team would have gone that way already.

 

One point is legacy code still written in assembly language. Besides, as one of the core LM developers stated, you can forget all your senery add-on's available, should they go 64 bit. Accoding to him, not even present bgl files will be compatible, not to speak of dlls and the like.

 

Kind regards, Michael

Screamer,

 

as far as I understand, things are not quite as simple, otherwise the LM team would have gone that way already.

 

One point is legacy code still written in assembly language. Besides, as one of the core LM developers stated, you can forget all your senery add-on's available, should they go 64 bit. Accoding to him, not even present bgl files will be compatible, not to speak of dlls and the like.

 

Kind regards, Michael

 Thanks for the reply, Michael.

 

I read some forums and there is users of X-Plane 10 that claim they convert FXS scenery to X-Plane with spectacular results.

And I quote his post

 

"After only recently hearing of FlyDubai's partnership with Qantas I felt a Scenic flight over Dubai was in order.

All screenshots feature the freeware x737 from EADT and of course Flytampa's Dubai Reeboted scenery converted to run in X-Plane 10 64 bit.

Enjoy!"

 And this:

 

Converting FSX scenery is done through a client called FS2X-Plane found here: http://marginal.org....nery/tools.html

Here is a thread with FSX airports listed with how well they convert and the necessary steps to fix... http://forums.x-plan...showtopic=44099

 

 

And he post some very interesting and beautiful screenshots of that conversion.

Here is one....

 

 

 

How is that possible?

 

Cheers

 

Johan

Novation.

They are beautiful screenshots.

 

1-What clouds settings are "Rex direct or ASN"

 

2- What scenery are they?

I read some forums and there is users of X-Plane 10 that claim they convert FXS scenery to X-Plane with spectacular results.

And I quote his post

How is that possible?

 

Cheers

 

Johan

 

Because it doesn't offer any guarantees, at all.

 

As someone that also uses XP10, I can tell you, about 80% of what you put into the scenery converter comes out as garbage or requires fiddling about with manually copying files around to try and isolate the bits that are needed and bits that just break the conversion.

 

Noone posts screenshots of those, because why would they?

 

It's also a complex process that is simply beyond what many simmers want to learn or use, some of us don't mind fiddling with running programs, modifying text files and manually extracting 3d models from bgl files, but for many that's a step too far into what they want to be a relaxing hobby, thus insisting that such a conversion tool is the way forward alienates those users.

 

On a subset of scenery it works, and yeah, it can look spectacular when rendered via XP's rendering engine, but even when it appears to work fine, sometimes there are things missing, especially with the more complex scenery with animations and such.

We could insist that LM go that route, but then you're just limiting yourself to the same situation XP is in, yet with even less addons working for it until momentum builds, and if you're doing that, just use XP - the interface isn't that bad.

 

The advantage of P3D right now is that it supports *most* FSX things 'as-is' without any conversion, without too many compromises. The learning curve is essentially zero because it's so similar to FSX in the way it works. That's why a lot of users have held off XP and insisted that P3D2 would be the way forward for them - they don't want to learn a new sim, and they probably won't want to learn all the foibles of a scenery conversion system.

Novation.

They are beautiful screenshots.

 

1-What clouds settings are "Rex direct or ASN"

 

2- What scenery are they?

 

 

Hi Ahmet... pleased you like the pics :smile:

 

Clouds (and whole weather environment) are REX4.....  The scenery is #1. Horizon UK Photoscenery (over Cumbria) using RevolutionX Autogen from Just Flight.... then two shots of Orbx FTX EU - Ireland and the last three are FTX Australia SP4.

 

 

Those are really nice looking screenshots, sure looks like you found your way with P3D :smile:

 

Thanks... well its not perfect, but then neither is FSX or XPX. For me, this is the best of the three.

 

 

I will try your suggestion, though, but I have 2.1 working really well, so I'm leery about messing with NI too much.

 

I had fully intended to NOT install 2.1 for the same reason you state:  leery about messing w/ ... 2.0 which was working wonderfully for many weeks now, including after the NI find.  I purchased and set up a Saitek PF Cessna Yoke & Trim and that was all she wrote for 2.0!   Oh yeah, I got the RA T Duke running great and all was properly calibrated and de-bugged.  Then, I decided to do what I have done whenever I wanted to fly in something other than the Duke.  So I loaded the QW757.  Loaded great, all's well.  Then I clicked on the Flight Planner in the drop down menu:  FATAL ERROR.  I rebooted, I tried different planes, I did everything I could think of but the long and short was I could not get to the flight planner any longer!

 

So I just installed 2.1, the patched version, out of necessity.  All seems fine so far but boy do I appreciate NOT messing w/ something that works!   So I hear you, but 'messing w/ NI' is something you can safely do and undo w/o harming anything in your P3D 2.1 install.   I haven't looked too deeply yet w/ regard to AA, but on first glance all the improvement I saw in 2.0 appears to still be there, judging only by looking at the lack of jaggies down the runway at my default airport & runway.

 

If you try this, at least initially ...

 

1.  Remove competing NI profiles, just make & save changes in the GLOBAL.

2.  Click the restore to defaults to start w/ a clean slate.

3.  Do the DX1x Bioshock compatibility.

4.  Set AA to Override application

5.  Choose a preferred AA type, I like SUPERCVAA_64x_12x or whatever it is

6.  Choose a transparency setting like SGSS 4x or whatever.

7.  Make sure AF is set to Application Controlled, NOT Off/user def--critical for better water

8.  Leave LOD BIAS at ALLOWED, not clamped--critical for better water.

9.  In sim:  FXAA OFF, MSAA 4x.   AF 16x.   SSAA in .cfg makes no diff here.

Thanks for the reply NikkiA, now I understand it better. :good:

 

Cheers

 

Johan

The XML parsing engine in 2.1 is tighter, and as a result, less tolerant of syntax errors. Carenado are releasing patches for all their aircraft to fix the broken GNS 430/530 and G1000, but since A2A don't support Prepar3D, you'll have to live with those issues until they change their mind.

Yes, I get that the main issue is A2A's current unwillingness to support P3D, but it also makes it difficult for users to fully support P3D, while its compatibility with 3rd party addons is so uncertain between minor release updates. I don't know about others here, but I cannot afford to purchase new 3rd party addons to replace the ones that each update breaks.

 

I appreciate your reply, but what about my other two questions:

2.) We were told the that pre-release patch was sent to 3rd party developers. If so, how did all these incompatibilities go unnoticed?

3.) Why hasn't LM acknowledged some of the issues that so many users are reporting on their site?

 

I fly the A2A 172 a lot also and you are correct, the beacon no longer works. As to the condition of the aircraft changing from the end of flight to the beginning of the next flight, I haven't seen that yet, but it is easy to work around the problem by heading to the hangar and doing a complete overhaul. That destroys some of the realism, but the only other option is to delete the 172's history DAT file, which sometimes gets corrupted even with FSX. Here's a thread with some good ideas on how to revert to backup DAT files (where the plane's history is stored):

 

http://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=36871

 

A2A has clearly stated that they don't support P3d2 (which only means don't ask them for help), but they have also stated that they "are working to support all platforms in the future."

Thanks for your reply and the link, but I was already aware of that. That was why I initially decided to wait until A2A officially supported P3D before purchasing A2A's Cessna. But after using A2A's Piper Cub in P3D2 with no issues at all (and hearing that there was only a minor issue with the C172, which was easily bypassed), I decided that I didn't want to wait any longer. And I was VERY happy with the Cessna in P3D ... until v.2.1 introduced a bunch of new compatibility problems. Now I wish I had waited. A2A's Piper Cub no longer works, and selecting the C172 for a P3D v.2.1 flight is like rolling a dice ... sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it doesn't.

 

Does your C172's beacon never light up? Because mine sometimes works just fine.

I appreciate your reply, but what about my other two questions:

2.) We were told the that pre-release patch was sent to 3rd party developers. If so, how did all these incompatibilities go unnoticed?

3.) Why hasn't LM acknowledged some of the issues that so many users are reporting on their site?

 

For 2, I have no idea, but remember when 3rd party developers also had access to the Prepar3D 2.0 beta builds yet lots of incompatibilities were discovered at release, especially with Orbx products? This seems to be repeating in here.

 

As for 3, Lockheed Martin don't work on weekends. They'll probably start the Prepar3D 2.2 changelog on Monday.

2.) We were told the that pre-release patch was sent to 3rd party developers. If so, how did all these incompatibilities go unnoticed?

 

 

This is quite likely a mixture of 2 things, a) 3rd parties just test their own stuff, if it works, they say 'ok', they probably spend close to 0% time testing other people's addons....

 

and b) they're not running huge beta teams, just their own observations, and since most of these problems are 'works for some, fails for others', the chances are that most bugs aren't getting spotted if they're only testing a small segment of the sim.

1.  Remove competing NI profiles, just make & save changes in the GLOBAL.

 

Why not just create a brand new P3d2 profile from scratch? It uses the Global settings as the template when you do that.

Does your C172's beacon never light up? Because mine sometimes works just fine.

 

 

It may be like the opposite of my refrigerator light, which is only on when I open the door and look at it.  

 

Seriously, I've never seen it on in 2.1. 

 

From reading various comments made by the LM team, it seems like they are also catching bugs that have existed since FSX SP2 and fixing them. They have stated a few times that this might cause add-ons to "break", because the third party coders may have compensated for the bug in the host app. Think about what a mess the FSX DX10 shaders were until Steve rewrote them. A large number of add-ons didn't work right in DX10 mode. Some of those shader bugs carried over to P3d2 (not P3d 1, since it was DX9). For example, the progressive taxi markings didn't work in FSX DX10 until the shaders were patched and they didn't work in P3d 2.0 either. And what about the joystick issue  with FSX in Windows 8?  That was a bug and LM fixed it by dumping the legacy joystick code that was inherited from FSX. Now P3d handles joysticks like every other new 3D app..At least the joystick fix probably didn't break anything, or at least no one has complained so far. As much as I like to use FSUIPC, I'd rather not use any add-on when I don't have to use it.

 

I feel some empathy for a small shop like A2A, because in the past, if one of their aircraft didn't work in FSX DX10, they would just say not to use DX10 mode. Now, they have to cope with DX11 and LM tinkering with the code also. It will eventually work itself out.

 

 

Why not just create a brand new P3d2 profile from scratch? It uses the Global settings as the template when you do that.

 

That should work but I've had trouble w/ getting user-created profiles to work and I never have investigated why, so I just jumped to modifying the GLOBAL.  This is not an issue for me because I only use this Win 7 install for P3D V2.1 now.  I have FSX installed but I'm not using it currently so the  NI settings never need changed.  I have Win 7 on another install on a different disk for everything else.  I don't even run an anti-virus on my simulator Win 7 install, and I have Windows Defender turned off for realtime protection. 

 I'm very reluctant to spend some money on a 32 bit simulator.

The big problem is the VAS space available for the sim.

 

I do not know how effective the auto gen function in P3D2 works.

 

Xplane 10 already took the 64 bit path, why not P3D?

With all the scenery add-on's that is available, I think a 64 bit app. is ESSENTIAL.

 

Would going 64-bit also mean less performance?