I tried your suggested settings and in the Seattle area it didn't help very much. The biggest performance killer seem to be the Seattle area itself. In ORBX Australia Cairns I got great performance. I'm somewhat curious about some of your suggestions.

Why setting water at max and user vehicle reflection on and disabling or lower many other settings?

In REX4 why using 32 bit texture compression algorithms ?  Isn't DXT strongly recommended for better performance?

The Seattle area kills my FPS as well that was also common in FSX. I think your video memory is your bottleneck I know that at upper mid level settings in a payware plane I use about 3GB of Vram.

 

JW what kinda FPS you getting at KRNT on a cloudy day in the Carendo A36?

Let me try KSEA and see what comes of it - report back - as my P3D is running perfect

Well my findings are this

 

Scenery complexity very dense loss 10 fps - still very much usable

 

Scenery complexity to normal - 38 fps back again locked not huge difference in scenery missing 

 

The other two sliders were set at normal for both scenarios

 

Has to be Titan rocking in P3D 

 

A2A 172 used for testing 

I look at it this way..........if you have to ask whether it's worth "upgrading" to P3D, then you probably aren't ready to make the move.

 

 

Scenery complexity very dense loss 10 fps - still very much usable
Scenery complexity to normal - 38 fps back again locked not huge difference in scenery missing

 

My result no change in fps remains around 15 fps and I still have stuttering. No big difference in Seattle town but noticed less detail in the airport.

I also gave Prepare3d a try shortly after version 2 first came out and performance was so bad for me that I got for a refund.  After all the positive reports about v2.2 I repurchased it.  My experience has been mixed, but I am hopeful that the next update will make things even better. 

 

First, let me be clear that I use FSX with the DX10 fixer, Xplane10 (latest beta) and Prepar3d, and enjoy different aspects of each. In both FSX and Prepar3d I have FTX Global and most of the Orbx NA regions installed. I have only installed what comes with an official installer into P3d.  I use the Carenado C337 for comparing performance between all 3 sims as it is available for all and I enjoy flying it.

 

I can enjoy great visuals and smooth flight locked at 30FPS in P3d, BUT only in rural areas and smaller cities.  This is with enabling most shadows to both cast and receive, at the lowest distance settings.  I do have to turn off the cloud shadows in overcast conditions.  I have Scenery Complexity and Autogen buildings and trees all one notch from the left.  Visuals and lighting look great with those settings and performance is smooth and virtually stutter free in rural areas.  As soon as I go to a large city however, the FPS drop significantly and stutters become unbearable, at least for me.  This is especially noticeable in the Seattle area as others have noted, but to a lesser extent it is also a problem in all larger cities I have tested.

 

I have tried every suggestion in the book and moved virtually every slider to the left and unchecked all the eye candy and turned off all traffic and -- you guessed it, there is still an annoying surging stutter when flying in large centers, especially my Seattle test; not as bad, but still there and of course the sim looks like crap with those settings.

 

On the other hand in FSX with DX10 I can fly the same scenario in Seattle with most sliders hard right (autogen down one notch) and AI traffic 40% and car traffic 10% and enjoy a smooth flight and great visuals.

 

I also tried adding my FSDT CYVR to P3D and the stutters were horrible, whereas in FSX it is very smooth locked at 30.

 

If I could only have one sim right now it would hands down be FSX with DX10. 

 

My second pick would be a toss up between Xplane10 and P3D.

 

The latest beta of XP10 is the most fluid sim to fly and is the only one of the 3 that seems to give my video card a real workout.  Oddly with P3d neither my CPU or video card seem to be working all that hard when the stutters get bad.  

 

Fortunately I can have all 3.  For me, when flying in or out of larger centers or areas with addon airports FSX is my choice; for rural areas during the daylight hours P3d is great and for night flying, hands down, it is XP10.  

 

IMO FSX has come a long way thanks to the DX10 Fixer and is still an awesome platform.  

 

P3d is still very similar to FSX in many respects, but the improved lighting and shadows do add something to the immersion, when you can use them.  The volumetric fog and effect of flying in and out of clouds is also more immersive that FSX, but their are still performance issues that need resolving and very little overhead for more complex airports that do fine in FSX.  

 

Xplane10 is starting to show some real promise, but to me doesn`t look as convincing in the daytime, but great at dusk and night - still miss the airports buildings though, but they are working on that.

 

Wouldn't it be neat if we could combine the best features of all 3?

Wonder if  they can name  all the thousands of  addons  that can be installed and are able  to function

AVSim used to maintain a P3d compatibility thread:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/426926-p3d-v2-master-compatibility-list-closed/#entry2858636

 

but since most 3rd party FSX add-ons which are still actively maintained by the author do work with P3d 2.2, it has apparently become redundant to continue to maintain the list and the thread was closed.

 

There is an interesting ongoing poll on the ORBX official message boards:

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/78996-poll-which-sim-platforms-do-you-use/

 

Of people that responded to the poll (which I assume that most are users of ORBX products), roughly 60% use FSX and 40% use P3d2. The way the poll is set up, you could select either or both sims. This is a large jump in the use of P3d since the last time that AVSim conducted a poll. But then again, ORBX users tend to have high end systems and want the best quality flight sim experience. 

As for the airports I've never had any issues and I've been running some of the airports since day one of V2 such as KHQM now that orbx has the new objectflow.DLL out most of the airports work perfectly. You won't mess anything up by doing it I promise!!!

Here is are the steps just in case you want to try it.

1.Start EMTand enable virtual FSX

2.Start installer

3.Select the FSX install option on the installer

4.let installer do its thing

5.exit EMT

6.load V2

7. when prompted dont allow the objectflow.dll

8. A window will open offering to update objectflow.dll do it and there you go working orbx airports in V2

you can install all the airports you want at once then load V2 and follow 6-8

As for affinity mask I don't think it works as I have affinymask set to use all my cores but I still get blurries but if I set it via taskmangar all the blurry are gone

 

I have tried this for 1S2 and KBVS. From what I can see 1S is installed. But I never received any window with update objectflow.dll only one question if to run it. Also EZdoc has vanished in P3D2. I also noticed that 1S2 installation prompted me about FSX or P3D installation. Not so with KBVS.

...and for night flying, hands down, it is XP10.  

 

So true.

The latest XP with HDR on is jaw droppingly gorgeous around dawn/dusk/night. The lighting of objects and the environment is simply superb.

I have tried this for 1S2 and KBVS. From what I can see 1S is installed. But I never received any window with update objectflow.dll only one question if to run it. Also EZdoc has vanished in P3D2. I also noticed that 1S2 installation prompted me about FSX or P3D installation. Not so with KBVS.

It doesn't come up for all airports I know 1s2 worked before the new object flow.DLL was released