I was a huge naysayer when 3.0 came out.  I was miffed about the upgrade cost for what I thought was so little.  I was doubtful about the VAS improvements.  I was doubtful the devs would get on board so quickly and update their products (pretty much free of charge!)... and so on.

 

I can say I'm heavily flying v3 for now.  While I've still got FSX and v2.5 installed (for beta testing purposes) I rarely touch v2 and occasionally use FSX boxed.  Even poor old XP10 hasn't had much lovin'.

 

I broke down (sort of lol) and purchased REX4 on the Thanksgiving sale so I'm officially using P3D v3 clouds (was using FEX textures in v2).  I've got many addons installed from 2.5 (Orbx, FSDT, FB, LVFR, Sim720, all my Shez freeware, A2A, Realair (yes the Legacy v3 is coming I promise, piston duke later), I ported the baytower rv7 with GTN mods with success, not to mention using the GTN750 as well....Milviz is getting the helos done and other products soon too!

 

I did a workout flight tonight on Pilot Edge, which with v2.5 or FSX would have OOMed in about an hour... I basically had my FSDT LAX, Shez LGB (kinda a VAS hog), LVFR KSNA, flew over Sim720 CRQ, and down near LVFR KSAN with the VAS never climbing above 2.5 GB.  I'm not sure how the LM team did it but amazing!

 

I'm very happy with where P3D is at!

 

I sat on the sidelines until about 2 months ago and I haven't looked back. All I have is REX4 with soft clouds, ASN, Orbx Global and Vector, Aerosofts 320/32 and as of two nights ago, the Phenom 300. I've been a perfectly happy camper and I haven't looked back..

 

Welcome to the club.

Good to read, improvements, always!

 

Enjoy

I may look at v3 in the future, but at the very least not until the Legacy update is released, and likely not until the FTX regions have all been converted.

 

It's hard through, since to be honest, I 'want' for very little in my simming lately as I've been quite happy with what I have.  I barely even spent any money in the recent sales...

And don't forget about v3.1

 

Cheers, Rob.

Hi Ryan, great to have you on board ...

Good to see that knowledgable simmers are on board and good to see someone who was sceptical now being convinced. There are way too much naysayers who haven't even tried P3Dv3. But they are getting less and less... ;-)

Good to see that knowledgable simmers are on board and good to see someone who was sceptical now being convinced. There are way too much naysayers who haven't even tried P3Dv3. But they are getting less and less... ;-)

This is true. v2 had a lot of issues during its release and unfortunately that turned many people away from P3D. I would love to see LM release a killer feature that makes a big splash and gets others interested in P3D.

Framerate tip :

- I have resized all 512 Rex Texture Direct + Soft clouds textures to 256. FPS with 4 cloudlayers + 20%..

 

Tomorrow I am going to do the same with the AG building and Orbx HD trees textures.

 

Now I am able to use dense custom AG on top of my photoscenery.

For me it was still the best version of any MSFS-derived version.

 

I was getting 40+ on graphically perfect settings for me, with the PMDG 777 and ASN + REX Soft Clouds and only default scenery, which was more than enough for my use of the sim.

 

Never ever experienced such good looking graphics, scenery, shadows, skies, and at the same time experienced such great performance / smoothness.

 

If I had to chose a single civil sim, P3D3 would no doubt be my choice.

I was a huge naysayer when 3.0 came out.  I was miffed about the upgrade cost for what I thought was so little.  I was doubtful about the VAS improvements.  I was doubtful the devs would get on board so quickly and update their products (pretty much free of charge!)... and so on.

 

I can say I'm heavily flying v3 for now.  While I've still got FSX and v2.5 installed (for beta testing purposes) I rarely touch v2 and occasionally use FSX boxed.  Even poor old XP10 hasn't had much lovin'.

 

I broke down (sort of lol) and purchased REX4 on the Thanksgiving sale so I'm officially using P3D v3 clouds (was using FEX textures in v2).  I've got many addons installed from 2.5 (Orbx, FSDT, FB, LVFR, Sim720, all my Shez freeware, A2A, Realair (yes the Legacy v3 is coming I promise, piston duke later), I ported the baytower rv7 with GTN mods with success, not to mention using the GTN750 as well....Milviz is getting the helos done and other products soon too!

 

I did a workout flight tonight on Pilot Edge, which with v2.5 or FSX would have OOMed in about an hour... I basically had my FSDT LAX, Shez LGB (kinda a VAS hog), LVFR KSNA, flew over Sim720 CRQ, and down near LVFR KSAN with the VAS never climbing above 2.5 GB.  I'm not sure how the LM team did it but amazing!

 

I'm very happy with where P3D is at!

 

Hi Ryan,

 

Congrats! I tried v3 when it was released but had issues with my controllers. I hear v 3.1 will fix controller issues. Can you test to see if the Lotus L39 is working on P3D v3?

 

Jose

I told everyone I was waiting until the "dust cleared" ( labeled a V3 hater by some for that) when V3 was first released.  Anyway, I waited for 2 months, and when I saw that most of the installers came out, and the problems installing were fixed by patches to add ons, I finally made the move. Only issue I had was my Ch Pedals which were not recognized by V3, but my paid FSUIPC fixed that problem. 

 

Main benefit I see, slightly better FPS, maybe 5-10 % at most. I never had VAS with 2.5, so that was never an issue. Other than that, I don't see much difference between 2.5 and 3 on my system, both are stable and both look good. 

I decided to wait for ORBX to port most of their content to v3. There are enough great add-ons updated now to retry with v3.1.

 

I have all the FTX regions and most of their airports. It's probably going to take years for everything to be updated.

I decided to wait for ORBX to port most of their content to v3. There are enough great add-ons updated now to retry with v3.1.

 

I have all the FTX regions and most of their airports. It's probably going to take years for everything to be updated.

If I remember correctly, John Venema stated that all Orbx products will port over within the year of V3 release, so that is good news. 

Ryan, I'm interested in trying out v3 as well since I've never had any version of P3D. Although my rig is similar to yours, I'm running a 2700K but have a GTX670 2GB card. I built my rig in May 2013 for FSX, but not sure the video card would be up to P3D. I mainly want P3D for the cloud shadows, the other shadowing I'm not to concerned about and never had any OOM issues in FSX flying PMDG products with Addon airports or sceneries, but any VAS improvements would still be welcome.