Yea, I Agree.  Hello V3!!!  

 

This is definitely not "2.6".  I had more remaining vas after landing than I had after takeoff, aka, nowhere even near an OOM which I had frequently on this same route in V2,5.  Breathtaking lighting and smoothness.  Stock textures are phenomenal. 

 

Had a pic to share but it won't let me share photobucket images on here.

I installed v3 last night and agree with the sentiment that this is quite an improvement. This is not a complete list but so far I have seen:

• Much, Much , Much better VAS management than 2.5 and FSX
• smoothness in flight that is very noticeable
• more realistic and refined flight models
• the ability to customize HDR settings by letting the user define Bloom, Saturation, Brightness
• much better cloud and fog rendition
• a bit nicer water and sky
• faster loading time

I am sure there is more that I will experience as I use the platform more, but to me this is the platform that all simmers* can unite on and developers can build better add-ons with to take advantage of modern tech.

 

*all simmers does not include those who still use FS2004. They have taken the "Century of Flight" moniker literally. 

Downloaded 3.0 this morning. Seems to be a nice iteration of the platform. I have a fresh install of 2.5 so can do an apple-to-apple comparison, and there's a 10% improvement in frame rates in the same scenario with the same config settings. Not huge, but combined with VAS optimizations a nice improvement to be sure.

 

The ability to adjust HDR is nice. I'd love to see them expand on this with day/night settings (without having to delve into the config).

 

Looking forward to being able to get some Orbx and A2A stuff in place.