xplane user thinking of p3d. thoughts?

[atlflyer 138]

I have a great setup for xplane. Specs below. I run xplane with pretty high settings and stays locked at 30 fps with hdr on 4xssaa with most planes I fly including the carenado HD series like the b1900.

 

however I'm a vfr guy. I love eye candy. How well would my system perform with p3d? I was a long time fsx user until a few years ago. I know there are several tweaks for it but are those relevant anymore with p3d? I wanted to get the following products as a base:

 

Orbx global ftx

Orbx vector

Real environment essentials plus

Ksna from simmarket ( I fly on pilotedge all the time)

Carenado b1900 and kingair.

 

I thought this would give me a good base for flying around and enjoying the eye candy but I wonder about my fps.

 

Specs:

4790k @4.4

Corsair h75 water cooler

16gb 1866 ram

Titan 6gb superclocked card

27" 1920x1080 monitor.

Trackir 5

[tutmeister 717]

With that setup you should find it runs well. Give it a go for a month and see. Also don't forget you can now fly a2a aircraft, the ultimate ga experience for vfr flying!

 

I own xplane with decent scenery add ons and regularly try xplane and every time I cannot drag myself away from prepar3d.

 

Chris

[atlflyer 138]

Yeah I really like the flight models and lighting in xplane but as an eye candy vfr guy. It's very very lacking. World2xplane is helping but it's still far from accurate and appealing.

 

I want to get the carenado 206 with the g1000 and the carenado pa34 as my primary aircraft. I would like 30 fps which is my adaptive half refresh rate goal and the magic number for me as far as fluid fps. I just enjoy the vfr eye candy.

[JimmiG 244]

Yeah I really like the flight models and lighting in xplane but as an eye candy vfr guy. It's very very lacking. World2xplane is helping but it's still far from accurate and appealing.

 

 

Have you been keeping up with some of the new scenery for X-Plane such as HD Mesh v3, beti-x CZST (payware), KSFO, KSAN and PAJN by "MisterX6" etc.? Of course FSX/P3D have the OrbX airports and landscapes, which are hard to beat for VFR due to the sheer amount of content, but buying them all is an expensive proposition. X-Plane is definitely catching up, though it doesn't have as much content at this time.

 

I'm in the opposite situation actually - I used to be really into P3D but due to all the bugs and issues with the last few versions, I switched over to X-Plane completely. I will check back once P3D v2.5 comes out however.

 

I have a 4770K @ 4.5 GHz, 8GB RAM and a GTX 670 2GB and have no problems with either P3D v1, v2 or X-Plane. I would say that in order of performance, X-Plane performs the best, followed by P3D v1 and then P3D v2. With v2, it depends on how you configure the sim. You can make it look just like FSX, in which case you get excellent performance, or you can turn on all the new water and lighting effects which cause a bit of a performance hit. With your Titan I think you'll have no problems at all, though.

[tonywob 4,770]

I had both installed until recently, i.e. X-Plane and P3D v2.4. For Europe at least, I find the VFR scenery far more satisfying than anything available for P3D and all of it is free, but in the US and Canada, the combination of ORBX and A2A are IMO still ahead of the scenery in X-Plane. Since I don't do much flying in the US, I haven't fired it up and let my developer's license expire, but I'm tempted to reactivate and try out 2.5 when it's released.

 

Regarding performance, well I found X-Plane ran better on the same hardware with similar settings. My computer isn't particularly powerful, so in X-Plane with HDR, I averaged about 18-25fps, in P3D with the shadows this was generally between 12-20fps. I think on your system you won't have any problems running P3D. I'd expect the situation to improve in future point releases as they optimise their engine and bring it more up-to-date. For me, the worst performer was actually FSX.

[LAdamson 240]

Yeah I really like the flight models and lighting in xplane but as an eye candy vfr guy. It's very very lacking. World2xplane is helping but it's still far from accurate and appealing.

I had been away from flight simming for a year and a half, but started up again with a much higher tech computer, and a 980 card. It will run X-Plane 10 and FSX well into the hundreds of fps, and I can also drag it down below 30 when throwing everything at it. I previously used flight sims since the beginning of desk top simulation, and did beta testing for Microsoft and 3rd party airplanes for MSFS.  What I find interesting, is that with high fps, and a very smooth screen, as the ground rolls by..................the flight models of XPlane 10, and FSX seem so much more alike.  In fact, sometimes I need to notice the background scenery, to tell the sims apart. At the present, I'm using RealAir for FSX.

 

I too, am a VFR eye candy type of flyer. I owned and flew a semi-high performance airplane. My wife and I, regularly traveled the mountain and desert areas of the mountain west USA.  Since the time of flying was our option, we'd often fly in very calm and still air. We'd jokingly call it a FSX flight. That's because the ground just appears to slowly move underneath, while it almost seems motionless, yet we're doing close to 200 mph ground speed.  Since FSX defaults to no turbulence, I believe this is where some get the impression it's flying on rails. My definition of flying on rails is different. To me, that would be a continued heading and altitude without input.

 

Some X-Planes, just move around a lot, as if they're is some turbulence. Some think that that's how air always is, but it certainly isn't. It doesn't matter though, because I'm now flying both X-Plane and FSX in simulated smooth air, more than not. I'm really enjoying both sims. Being a mountain flyer, X-Plane can be visually stunning.  On the other hand, I downloaded Orbx FTX and the Pacific North West, as well as numerous airports, such as Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  The other evening, I started at some unknown airport in the green belt of Oregon, and was blown away by the visuals at sunset. And I mean blown away! It looked so dang good. Just for comparison, I changed to default FSX, and then XP10.  They couldn't even start to compare!  With this scenery, I was still hitting 65 fps or more.

 

For this reason, and especially eye candy................which is the reason I threw those heaping sums of money into real planes, I'm glad that there is a variety of sims, that will run pleasantly fast on my system. There is no reason to stick with just one. I know that things are somewhat different with P3D, and hope to try it soon. And since Orbx works with it, then all the better.

[atlflyer 138]

Thanks for all the feedback! I sure don't mind not cranking the settings up in p3d. I can keep sliders in the middle. I just want more aircraft functionality in the ga aircraft which is why the g1000 stationair appeals to me I also would like some good vfr eye candy. The orbx global and vector with some airport add-ons look to make that possible.

[kaosfere 3,115]

I have a system slightly less powerful than yours (3770K overclocked to 4.5GHz and a 770 rather than a Titan), and I've recently started running P3D in addition to X-Plane.  In my own experience, at least, the performance between XP 10.30 and P3D 2.4 is largely similar.  With almost all sliders turned all the way to the right, at busy airports, with cloud cover, I drop to something less than 20FPS, but in all but the most brutal areas it's easily 25-30.

 

And that's with the v3 HD Mesh, SkyMaxx Pro, World2XPlane OSM data for X-Plane, and ASN and the full ORBX suite for P3D.

 

Honestly, the biggest frustration for me coming over has been the memory issue.  It's usually not a problem, but flying in a congested area in a fancy plane it's not too hard for me to top 4GB.  (Hell, I frequently ran into 8-10GB in X-Plane, but it seems to be a bit less RAM efficient).   As long as you monitor that, though, you should be fine with your system and a full load of eye candy.

[Baylorguy 39]

I have both and the biggest con for P3D is the close memory management you will have to do if you have add on aircraft, but especially add on airports.  The newer airports such as Flightbeam's KDEN or FSDream KIAH are much easier on memory, but some of the older products like KLAX will regularly trigger an OOM, even if you are arriving after only a 2 hour or so flight.

 

It varies depending on your setup... but just something you need to be aware of.

 

Other than that P3D is superior (in my opinion of course) and there is a reason why I rarely play Xplane anymore.  With the exceptional Aerosoft planes on P3D and PMDG coming on board very soon, I have no reason to look elsewhere.

[atlflyer 138]

thank you for all the input I appreciate it!

[Guest]

P3D v2.x offers a 60 day money back refund.

 

My biggest draw to P3D is it's ongoing development and extension like DX11, shadows (cloud, terrain, simobject, etc.), tessellation, bathymetry, HDR, volumetric fog, 3D waves, improved VAS usage, and more ... all from the ESP platform which is based on FSX SP2.  

 

P3D also brings a robust and updated SDK and provides a considerable amount of compatibility with FSX products.  I'm very impressed with just how much compatibility P3D v2.x has been able to achieve.

 

Companies like A2A, Majestic, and others have been able to perform flight "physics/dynamics" that are amazing.

 

It's a platform I'm enjoying growing with and look forward to it's continued support.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Appliance 51]

Now let me get this straight.  

 

You're thinking of going from a 64bit sim to a 32bit sim.  We P3d users are hoping LM will release a 64bit version.

 

Now I know the grass IS greener. 

[rparson99 32]

64bit isn't everything ;-)

[snglecoil 1,828]

I enthusiastically use both platforms. Each one brings different strengths to the table. For VFR GA ops, P3D with all the great available 3rd party scenery is stunning at times. My jaw drops every time I fly into ORBX's Palm Springs and Monterey.

 

On the other hand there's just something about XP's flight modeling that feels more natural like the planes have real weight and inertia. I have A2A's 172 for P3D and it is fantastic...flies dead on the numbers. It still feels a little like it is on rails, though. But don't get me wrong. I'm not saying P3D is bad, just different.

 

The one place that XP has a real advantage is lighting. The way the sun blooms when you look straight at it. The representation of airplane and airport lighting. The way landing/taxi lights illuminate surrounding naturally. P3D really could use work on their lighting methods. The silly "light cones" projecting out of the rotating beacons makes me shake my head sometimes.

 

But yeah, for the type of flying you do, P3D is terrific especially with 3rd party help. Go for it.

[kaosfere 3,115]

Now let me get this straight.  

 

You're thinking of going from a 64bit sim to a 32bit sim.  We P3d users are hoping LM will release a 64bit version.

 

Now I know the grass IS greener. 

 

Eh, as said above, 64 bit ain't everything.   That 4GB RAM limitation is the primary thing that's annoyed me about P3D -- I have 16GB of RAM in my system that X-Plane is able to fully utilize, but I've had to learn to be a lot more careful with it in P3D.   For me, though, the deciding factor was add-ons;  I'd seen one too many things in the FSX/P3D world that made me go, "That's cool, I wish that worked in X-Plane."

 

I do still feel like XP is a more robust platform, and the way of the future -- in terms of stability, configuration options, and easy of extensibility it's way above P3D, not to even talk about how horrible it is that the FSX family follows the lovely MSFT tradition of throwing files any which place when you install stuff.

 

Dropping aircraft into X-Plane is as simple as throwing one self-contained folder into a directory anywhere you want.   Liveries require no config file editing.  It's a piece of cake, and uninstalling is just as easy.  You don't need to worry about sounds and effects and stuff getting put into various random directories (with the exception of a few commercial installers, but even then it's pretty self contained)

 

Anyway, yeah -- both have merits, and I'm going to keep using both, but P3D has started scratching more of the "I want it now" itch.  That could well change in the future.