Small nugget of info on v2.3

[Guest Mik75]

And not to forget about X-Plane, right?

I have to say though, that I am pretty impressed by the performance and the look of P3D v2.2.

It's not comparable to FSX at all in my opinion, not matter if it runs in DX9 or DX10. The lighting in DX11 is much more than just a small improvement! ESP takes advantage of modern graphics cards in its current state and therefore, load on the CPU got a lot lower! But to speak less technically (I don't know too much about that stuff anyway), it looks so much more immersive, runs a lot smoother and could easily be called FS11 in my opinion! Everybody who runs P3D with reasonable settings, and sits with both eyes opened in front of his/her monitor, should recognise that very easily! ;-) I am looking forward to the future updates of P3D!

[Daveo 36]

defrag :lol: i'm using old NVidia drivers(311.58) and don't have this issue

 

The 332.21 drivers work pretty good.

[StoreyedTrain 13]

 

One thing I wish L/M would do is to restore Multi-Channel support in addition to Multi-Player.  I for one would like to take advantage of triple pcs driving triple monitors and have it 'natively' supported within the sim itself (as it is in the brand-X sim from Laminar.)

 

Running it all off one PC is simply asking more than a system, even a GOLIATH system, can do.  

 

That's a great concept, but the simple reality is - too much for just ONE computer!

 

It's possible that someday L/M will release P3D in a 64 bit version, and restore the multi-channel support back into version 2.x of P3D.  

We can continue to dream...

 

Actually the current physics/level of detail should be relatively doable for a recent Mid-End PC, lots of stuff is very repeatable.

For a high end PC it should relatively be a piece of cake even for triple screen.

 

More than 200 FPS with single screen on all settings to full with a reasonably complex plane should be doable for the current hardware architecture available.

 

So asking for 5PC support, you must indeed be dreaming.

(i`m alway surprised how eager people are on FlightSim forums to just throw money at everything to "solve" the problem, probably the reason everything is so radically overpriced when it comes to flightsimming)

[DocBird 79]

This is so great to see in their determination, and all for the performance gain. But I'm wondering how much can you hash out on old code, "retrofitting" here and there, and bandaid fixes elsewhere. I guess its the only thing we can do right now, in squeezing out every single little drop possible. I often wonder though what a flightsim would run like if it was built from the ground up with modern code of today if it wouldve beem better in the long run. Our machines are always being pushed to the absolute max to get a few extra fps. 

Hi Hightower,

 

I totally agree!

 

I started a thread over at the Orbx-forum one year ago:

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/61695-development-of-a-next-generation-simulator/

There was a lot of resistance to this. But from my own professional experience I can tell that it is often more work to redraft an agreement then to start from a clean white piece of paper .

 

 

I, however, still think that it may not be easy but I think that IKARUS and Outerra (http://forum.avsim.net/topic/434517-an-interesting-future-for-outerra/page-1) have shown that it is still doable to start from scratch.

 

And look at what currently happens on the X-Plane field now: (http://forum.avsim.net/topic/433700-introducing-world2xplane/page-1) Scenery was much improved by a couple of dedicated people! Together with the HD-Mesh that generates is a very nice landscape! That is outstanding!

 

But imagine what a team of ten (or so) lead developers could do if they were supported by hundreds of (subcontracted) junior software developers for the simple work.

 

I am, however, looking forward to 2.3 as it is the best we have today.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

We already had that ... it's name was Flight.   :rolleyes:

 

Not really, Microsoft Flight was still very much based on the FSX engine. But the thing is, it overhauled tons of things such as flight dynamics, sound and autogen, and I don't think Prepar3D 2.2 is on par with that yet.

[SolRayz 392]

Well I can't wait for this update!

 

Shared by John V at ORBX:

 

P3D v2.3 is mostly a performance upgrade, with LM addressing further fluidity and FPS gains.

 

 

Post more as you hear / see it..

 

This could be the final nail in the coffin for FSX for me. We will see.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

This could be the final nail in the coffin for FSX for me. We will see.

 

Even if it's not, 2.4 was also confirmed for 2014.  :wink:

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Not really, Microsoft Flight was still very much based on the FSX engine. But the thing is, it overhauled tons of things such as flight dynamics, sound and autogen, and I don't think Prepar3D 2.2 is on par with that yet.

At Robin Meyerowitz who disagreed with my post, have you tried Microsoft Flight? The autogen in that was superior to what Prepar3D 2.2 offers right now.

[Robert McDonald 167]

Actually the current physics/level of detail should be relatively doable for a recent Mid-End PC, lots of stuff is very repeatable.

For a high end PC it should relatively be a piece of cake even for triple screen.

 

More than 200 FPS with single screen on all settings to full with a reasonably complex plane should be doable for the current hardware architecture available.

 

So asking for 5PC support, you must indeed be dreaming.

(i`m alway surprised how eager people are on FlightSim forums to just throw money at everything to "solve" the problem, probably the reason everything is so radically overpriced when it comes to flightsimming)

 

Sadly, many people posting on this forum are not experiencing the joys of 200 fps with a lot of third-party detailed-scenery and complex aircraft rendered in high-definition on P3D.  If you're flying at high altitude with mostly sky and clouds to look at, you may see very high frames on a single monitor.  On the ground at FSDreamteam KLAX in a complex airplane, with Orbx FTX global and vector 1.x?  Not so much.

 

P3D is a product that Lockheed markets to professionals and government for use in high end simulation and training missions.  It's not designed as an "entertainment" platform (see the EULA). So 5-PC support on a cockpit build is not 'dreaming' when they are marketing to end-users like the U.S. military.  Lockheed is a defense contractor, not a game company.  If the highest-possible rendering and smooth stutter-free performance are important, offering a robust multiple-PC solution for those willing to build one seems prudent.

 

Looking at some of the projects over at FlightDeckSolutions, you can see the glass cockpits and many screens wrapped around the aircraft on a full-scale cockpit build.  That is easy to accomplish with some other flight sim platforms (think brand-X) and you would expect a company the size and means of LM to build something equally scalable.  The fact that P3D at present has such a "hole" (lack of multiple PC support via a high speed network) seems like an oversight.  Multi-channel was part and parcel of v 1.x of P3D, but they pulled it from v 2.x, I don't know why.

 

You shouldn't be surprised that people who are avid simmers are willing to invest in gear that actually DOES solve the problem, or hardware that is full-scale.  I wouldn't say things are overpriced in this hobby.  Check out the prices for real aircraft parts, you'll learn the meaning of 'overpriced'.  Someone suggested that Boeing could give their planes away for free, and live off the replacement parts sales.  Every rivet, nut and bolt on that aircraft has to meet F.A.A. standards.  And you can't buy real Boeing parts from Wal-Mart.  But I diverge.

 

Many of us started out with a single monitor and joystick, and used the keyboard for many of the commands.  Just like some folks start out with model railroads with a simple oval track, no switches, and a generic model train.  You have undoubtedly seen the high-end of model railroading, why should flight simulation be different? The advantage of model railroading is that the scenery is static, while the trains and a few other objects are animated.  In a PC flight simulation, EVERYTHING is moving, and the more stuff you throw into the rendering, the lower your frames become.  I'm talking about $1000 video cards and 4.7 or greater Ghz overclocked PCs and STILL the frames plummet.  That's not surprising, it's simply a fact.  The PC isn't just rendering graphics.  It also has to compute the physics of the aircraft, taking variables like gusting wind, turbulence, icing conditions and more into account, along with inputs from the control surfaces, all at the same moment.

 

P3D is a great platform with a tremendous amount of promise.  Hopefully the two improvements I am suggesting will happen in the near future, for the benefit of all.

[StoreyedTrain 13]

Sadly, many people posting on this forum are not experiencing the joys of 200 fps with a lot of third-party detailed-scenery and complex aircraft rendered in high-definition on P3D.  If you're flying at high altitude with mostly sky and clouds to look at, you may see very high frames on a single monitor.  On the ground at FSDreamteam KLAX in a complex airplane, with Orbx FTX global and vector 1.x?  Not so much.

 

Multi-channel was part and parcel of v 1.x of P3D, but they pulled it from v 2.x, I don't know why.

 

You shouldn't be surprised that people who are avid simmers are willing to invest in gear that actually DOES solve the problem, or hardware that is full-scale.  I wouldn't say things are overpriced in this hobby.  Check out the prices for real aircraft parts, you'll learn the meaning of 'overpriced'.  Someone suggested that Boeing could give their planes away for free, and live off the replacement parts sales.  Every rivet, nut and bolt on that aircraft has to meet F.A.A. standards.  And you can't buy real Boeing parts from Wal-Mart.  But I diverge.

 

With "should be able to do more than 200fps" i meant after a lot of optimization to the software in any form of scenery environment and not only when looking at the sky at 100000 feet.

The scenery is not that complex all autogen is very square or only two textures stuck together.

Only thing big on the GPU is the groundtextures but that should be possible to be optimized due to graphiccards having a lot of memory nowadays.

 

Multichannel was probably pulled because you were about the only 1 user.

 

I don`t need to check out prices for real airplane parts because i worked at the maintenance shop at KLM working also on the enginetype in my avatar. (CFM 56-7B)

(i agree with you tho the prices for airliner parts always did make me giggle)

The point is that real planes fly on hardware and not purely on software, software sold to many people should come down in price automatically. (supply demand thingy, it`s less easy to copy an 80c2b1f so to speak.)

With your logic you would consider a purely software based Space Shuttle simulator for 500000 dollars a bargain, which doesn`t make any sense to me.

[Robert McDonald 167]

With "should be able to do more than 200fps" i meant after a lot of optimization to the software in any form of scenery environment and not only when looking at the sky at 100000 feet.

The scenery is not that complex all autogen is very square or only two textures stuck together.

Only thing big on the GPU is the groundtextures but that should be possible to be optimized due to graphiccards having a lot of memory nowadays.

 

Multichannel was probably pulled because you were about the only 1 user.

 

I don`t need to check out prices for real airplane parts because i worked at the maintenance shop at KLM working also on the enginetype in my avatar. (CFM 56-7B)

(i agree with you tho the prices for airliner parts always did make me giggle)

The point is that real planes fly on hardware and not purely on software, software sold to many people should come down in price automatically. (supply demand thingy, it`s less easy to copy an 80c2b1f so to speak.)

With your logic you would consider a purely software based Space Shuttle simulator for 500000 dollars a bargain, which doesn`t make any sense to me.

 

That's hysterical!  Very very funny!  Thanks for the chuckles.  I'm speechless.  

[StoreyedTrain 13]

 

Cheers and grins to you as well.  Good luck on that upcoming Cable TV special!

 

My mid-low end pc can handle multiple full hd streams just fine thank you.

(unless something got lost on translation)

 

You don`t need a highend pc for pretty much any game/sim environment anymore, except for flightsims, not because they`re so much more complex, just because they are more than 5 years behind on technic.

A bigger airplane doesn`t necessarily have more complex physics than a small one, and is physics wise no match in complexity to a racecar, eventho there are race sims i can play at much faster rates than FSX/P3D.

 

I know there are many buttons in a big airliner cockpit but hardly any of them have a very complex algorithm running behind them, it is not as if when pulling the gear switch it is actually calculating the oil pressure on the hydraulics on the geardoors.

If you push the firextinguisher button it is not as if a fluid dynamics calculation is used to assess whether the fire is successfully extinguished or that half the extinguishing material is blown off into the air without any extinguishing effect.

 

Every action you take in the cockpit is "when button is pushed -> perform action as such.", in other words nothing to make a processor come to a halt.

 

And i am very much for 64bit because that would increase the use/performance in P3D significantly, certainly for my mid-low end hardware.

[Noel 4,564]

 

 

And i am very much for 64bit because that would increase the use/performance in P3D significantly, certainly for my mid-low end hardware.

 

What is the mechanism by which the 'performance' increase would come?  We might agree that 'performance' equates to some combination of image quality, freedom from stuttering aka smoothness, and frame rate.  Intuitively it seems to me more VAS means you can preload more upcoming tasks & textures, etc into RAM, and this should help in particular w/ the smoothness & image quality arena, but not sure it will help in the raw frame rate department.   What do you know in this regard?  

[Guest]

Well we could always wait for FSX SP3 ... hehe

 

 

 

not because they`re so much more complex, just because they are more than 5 years behind on technic.
A bigger airplane doesn`t necessarily have more complex physics than a small one, and is physics wise no match in complexity to a racecar, eventho there are race sims i can play at much faster rates than FSX/P3D.

 

What "technic" is that exactly?  Can you be more specific?

 

Processing wise, not much involved in displaying HD streams, my phone can do that, my i3 based media center PC can do that.   Light calculations (HDR, Shadows, Reflections) are extremely process intensive as is SGSS AA.

 

I'm certain more optimizations and changes will help, but I would caution one's expectations ... a 750Ti 2GB card and intel i3-3225 and 4GB RAM isn't going to allow one to turn up all graphics settings regardless of more performance improvements.  A lot of people say "my hardware should be enough", but ask yourself how do you know that ... sorta like saying my VW bug should be as fast as a Ferrari, they both can do 100 mph ... technically accurate but one clearly isn't

 

Looking forward to 2.3 release.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Looking forward to 2.3 release.

 

Are you still a beta-tester? Have you got your hands on a 2.3 beta?