P3D 3.4 Experience Thread

[Afterburner 374]

I have upgraded the Client from 3.2 to 3.4, and I have measured a noticeable reduction in start-up time between double-clicking on the P3D icon and the appearance of the scenario selection menu.

 

With MyTraffic 5.4B plus a lot of other add-on airplanes installed, it took 50 seconds on my system using v3.2. Now, with 3.4, it takes 42 seconds. A welcoming addition!

[theskyisthelimit 48]

Depends on what you are upgrading from... if v3.0 then yes maybe but if from 3.3.5 nah.  No real need that anyone has mentioned.

 

Makes sense, but would updating the content potentially overwrite installed addon files, i'm assuming yes.. so in that case ill hold off till next round.

[downscc 1,327]

Makes sense, but would updating the content potentially overwrite installed addon files, i'm assuming yes.. so in that case ill hold off till next round.

Rob has a lot of good info on what update changes what files in the AVSIM P3D Guide... check there.  Also, check the LM Whats New page for 3.4 to see if it worth the trouble for you.

[Kuragiman 227]

Well....   after playing with it for a few days now... I am unhappy...  the 3.4 is like a Hoover vacuum cleaner on the VAS... just sucking it up like mad digital dirt!    I did a test flight from Flytampa's Tampa to FSDream Team's new KMEM.   Moderate slider settings with about 50 AI aircraft roaming around.   I monitored VAS with FSUIPC.    Booting up at gate C30 in the PMDG 737NGX with moderate settings running ASN with 4 cloud layers...  3.4gigs GONE and not even moving from the gate.   By the time I started the taxi I had 260megs of VAS left.  :/       Once I took off it climbed up to 400megs but then dropped back down to 270megs once I went outside the plane to look around.   I did manage to make it to TOC then saved it and restarted the sim.   When it loaded back the scenario 3 gigs were already gone...  over the course of the next 35 minutes of flight at cruise the VAS dropped from 1 gig left to 500 megs left in just about 20 minutes of flight.   When the KMEM loaded in on final memory plummeted to 210megs remaining and started to get the ding of death.  Not only that but my buttery smooth sim started to stutter on final.. never seen it do that before.   @_@   Why.... is the VAS usage so poor compared to the last version I flew which I believe was 3.2.0?     I use to be able to do up to 5 hour long flights with these settings now I can't even get an hour and half flight done without having to save and restart the sim?  @_@    The entire reason I walked away from this hobby a year ago is because I was getting tired of all the compromises and having to change settings on every single scenario... I thought I'd give it a year and come back and look again.    Now I can't even fly the way I use too.  She runs smooth (minus that weird stutter hiccup at the end) and the FPS stays pretty constant at a lock 30 FPS but the VAS just flows like a stab wound until the sim dies of blood loss....   I am aware of threads talking about deleting Camera.cfg files and turning off Optimize Parts and all that jazz to try and scrape a little VAS here and there but I am more concerned with the rapid bleed.

[cannow 61]

Well....   after playing with it for a few days now... I am unhappy...  the 3.4 is like a Hoover vacuum cleaner on the VAS... just sucking it up like mad digital dirt!    I did a test flight from Flytampa's Tampa to FSDream Team's new KMEM.   Moderate slider settings with about 50 AI aircraft roaming around.   I monitored VAS with FSUIPC.    Booting up at gate C30 in the PMDG 737NGX with moderate settings running ASN with 4 cloud layers...  3.4gigs GONE and not even moving from the gate.   By the time I started the taxi I had 260megs of VAS left.  :/       Once I took off it climbed up to 400megs but then dropped back down to 270megs once I went outside the plane to look around.   I did manage to make it to TOC then saved it and restarted the sim.   When it loaded back the scenario 3 gigs were already gone...  over the course of the next 35 minutes of flight at cruise the VAS dropped from 1 gig left to 500 megs left in just about 20 minutes of flight.   When the KMEM loaded in on final memory plummeted to 210megs remaining and started to get the ding of death.  Not only that but my buttery smooth sim started to stutter on final.. never seen it do that before.   @_@   Why.... is the VAS usage so poor compared to the last version I flew which I believe was 3.2.0?     I use to be able to do up to 5 hour long flights with these settings now I can't even get an hour and half flight done without having to save and restart the sim?  @_@    The entire reason I walked away from this hobby a year ago is because I was getting tired of all the compromises and having to change settings on every single scenario... I thought I'd give it a year and come back and look again.    Now I can't even fly the way I use too.  She runs smooth (minus that weird stutter hiccup at the end) and the FPS stays pretty constant at a lock 30 FPS but the VAS just flows like a stab wound until the sim dies of blood loss....   I am aware of threads talking about deleting Camera.cfg files and turning off Optimize Parts and all that jazz to try and scrape a little VAS here and there but I am more concerned with the rapid bleed.

If you have not already posted please put on lm forum so beau has examples of issuse i believe they are monitoring the threads but need individual examples and combinations of add ons

[WebMaximus 372]

OK, so here's my update after using 3.4 for roughly 2 weeks. I'll focus on the two most important things IMO comparing 3.3 to 3.4 - the VAS consumption and the overall look and smoothness.

 

This is where my 3.4 journey started and as you can see I was overall happy and positive about the upgrade.

 

However after doing some more flying this is where I started to notice how 3.4 indeed has some serious issues and mainly in the VAS department.

 

Since then I've been flying a lot and yesterday evening doing a short hop in the NGX from FlyTampa's EKCH to Orbx's ESSA and finding myself with only 400-600 MB VAS left before I got close enough to even have P3D load the ESSA scenery I though to myself..."Maybe it's time to revert back to 3.3". When I got closer to ESSA I noticed how my available VAS dropped to somewhere between 200-300 MB and when I was established on the ILS into 01R I noticed how they airport looks all black...

 

Sure enough when I got even closer about 4-6 nm out on the ILS with somewhere between 100-150 MB VAS left I clearly saw how all textures related to the airport scenery including the runway I was about to land on were all black. And let me assure you, land on a runway that is all black where also the surroundings left and right of the runway are all black isn't a simple thing to do.

 

Anyway I made it down safely and then I faced the next challenge...trying to find my way to F31 via W and Z in "the land of blackness". Since I'm very familiar with ESSA I managed to taxi along W although very slowly but when I came up to Z my adventure had an abrupt ending as seen in the screenshot below showing both what it all looked like as well as the reason why my adventure ended. I guess that didn't come as a surprise considering the early warnings even before I was close to ESSA.

 

So that's all about VAS and after this adventure yesterday night I decided I had it with 3.4. I do encourage the continuous development of P3D and I'm very happy we have LM doing this! However when spending more time worrying about issues and if you will make it into your destination rather than enjoying your flight it's simply not fun anymore.

 

Thanks to the great software available today allowing you to with just a few mouse clicks revert your system back in time and now back with 3.3 and exactly what my system looked like before upgrading to 3.4 and this takes me to the second thing...the overall look and smoothness. Now that I've been flying using 3.4 for about two weeks and comparing it to 3.3 to be honest so far I haven't been able to see any difference what so ever.

 

I guess this confirms what I thought I saw when I first upgraded to 3.4 when it comes to improved IQ and smoothness after all indeed was nothing but my own wishful thinking.

 

So...this is where my P3Dv3.4.9.18400 adventure ends and here's the promised screenshot showing the last view I had of it just when I was about to turn left onto Z.

 

 

Now I'm looking forward to a weekend with lots of flying and zero of worrying about VAS and OOM CTDs :smile:

[kurtb 121]

Well said, I posted a prb 2 weeks ago about the vas prb, and i got nailed with settings to high etc, well said

[Bobsk8 12,745]

Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems. 

[Kuragiman 227]

OK, so here's my update after using 3.4 for roughly 2 weeks. I'll focus on the two most important things IMO comparing 3.3 to 3.4 - the VAS consumption and the overall look and smoothness.

 

This is where my 3.4 journey started and as you can see I was overall happy and positive about the upgrade.

 

However after doing some more flying this is where I started to notice how 3.4 indeed has some serious issues and mainly in the VAS department.

 

Since then I've been flying a lot and yesterday evening doing a short hop in the NGX from FlyTampa's EKCH to Orbx's ESSA and finding myself with only 400-600 MB VAS left before I got close enough to even have P3D load the ESSA scenery I though to myself..."Maybe it's time to revert back to 3.3". When I got closer to ESSA I noticed how my available VAS dropped to somewhere between 200-300 MB and when I was established on the ILS into 01R I noticed how they airport looks all black...

 

Sure enough when I got even closer about 4-6 nm out on the ILS with somewhere between 100-150 MB VAS left I clearly saw how all textures related to the airport scenery including the runway I was about to land on were all black. And let me assure you, land on a runway that is all black where also the surroundings left and right of the runway are all black isn't a simple thing to do.

 

Anyway I made it down safely and then I faced the next challenge...trying to find my way to F31 via W and Z in "the land of blackness". Since I'm very familiar with ESSA I managed to taxi along W although very slowly but when I came up to Z my adventure had an abrupt ending as seen in the screenshot below showing both what it all looked like as well as the reason why my adventure ended. I guess that didn't come as a surprise considering the early warnings even before I was close to ESSA.

 

So that's all about VAS and after this adventure yesterday night I decided I had it with 3.4. I do encourage the continuous development of P3D and I'm very happy we have LM doing this! However when spending more time worrying about issues and if you will make it into your destination rather than enjoying your flight it's simply not fun anymore.

 

Thanks to the great software available today allowing you to with just a few mouse clicks revert your system back in time and now back with 3.3 and exactly what my system looked like before upgrading to 3.4 and this takes me to the second thing...the overall look and smoothness. Now that I've been flying using 3.4 for about two weeks and comparing it to 3.3 to be honest so far I haven't been able to see any difference what so ever.

 

I guess this confirms what I thought I saw when I first upgraded to 3.4 when it comes to improved IQ and smoothness after all indeed was nothing but my own wishful thinking.

 

So...this is where my P3Dv3.4.9.18400 adventure ends and here's the promised screenshot showing the last view I had of it just when I was about to turn left onto Z.

 

 

Now I'm looking forward to a weekend with lots of flying and zero of worrying about VAS and OOM CTDs :smile:

 

That is the MOST gorgeous Flightsim I've ever seen.   Don't change a thing!   The black tones mixed with that little bit of gradient shading...  it moved me emotionally.  This is a modern art master piece!   

 

I don't have the option to roll back as I completely wiped the sim off my PC a year ago when I walked away in frustration.   So when I came back last week I just went right to the newest version;  P3D Vacuum Cleaner Edition and I am asking myself.... do I really want to uninstall EVERYTHING again and jump back to an older version?     If I can just download part of the files and install an earlier version I will so long as I don't have to wipe out everything.

[carlito777 712]

Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems.

 

That's pretty easy. People who don't fly complex tubes never have problems with VAS. It's a joke if people who only fly small GA planes claim that they don't have VAS problems. Of course not if you fly planes which are less complex than the hydraulic system of a tubeliner alone...

 

I'm also thinking about reverting back to 3.3. I will do a 777 flight tomorrow from Heathrow and see how it goes...

[WebMaximus 372]

Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems. 

 

Of course it is a combination of settings and add-ons used that will decide if you will be fighting VAS issues or not. Like Carlo said if you only fly simple a/c models for instance vs very complex a/c such as the PMDG line of a/c for sure there will be a difference.

 

A better comparison is to see how your VAS behaves comparing different P3D versions but other than that keep everything else the same when it comes to your installed add-ons as well as settings used. Then you will see the difference caused by different versions of P3D and nothing else.

 

Even comparing to someone else using the same settings and add-ons as you are not always gives a logic result since all systems for one reason or the other behave differently. I guess the main reason for this is the huge numbers of parameters in play both looking at hardware and software.

 

That is the MOST gorgeous Flightsim I've ever seen.   Don't change a thing!   The black tones mixed with that little bit of gradient shading...  it moved me emotionally.  This is a modern art master piece!   

 

I don't have the option to roll back as I completely wiped the sim off my PC a year ago when I walked away in frustration.   So when I came back last week I just went right to the newest version;  P3D Vacuum Cleaner Edition and I am asking myself.... do I really want to uninstall EVERYTHING again and jump back to an older version?     If I can just download part of the files and install an earlier version I will so long as I don't have to wipe out everything.

 

Yeah, that screenshot did turn out quite nice didn't it :wink:

[kurtb 121]

Just had a flight from egll to eddf and this is the outcome - i love the comment Donar made------ "Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems"

 

[WebMaximus 372]

Just had a flight from egll to eddf and this is the outcome - i love the comment Donar made------ "Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems"

 

Welcome to the black world of 3.4 :wink:

 

At least you made it all the way to your gate :smile:

[HUSSAR 272]

I was unable to use the default pan view in v3.4 using the hat switch on my Saitek Pro Cessna Yoke and Thrust Master HOTAS Cougar and the mouse + spacebar combo to pan view is also lost. The command is set in the controller options but the view command does not respond. Interestingly, hat switch and mouse + spacebar combo works in FSX:SE.

 

I deleted the Controls folder in %Appdata%\Roaming, installed the latest FSUIPC installer and enabled raw data in P3D's control\other tab.

 

I was able to assign the POV/Hat View in the Axis assignments tab in FSUIPC

 

• Axis Assignment->Send to FS as normal axis->Pan View (in dropdown menu)

Mouse control of pan view is still not functioning, working on that.

[Kuragiman 227]

I call this one Speedbird Black.  It's a daring piece of art that brings out a certain gritty feel and a truth about how the world is.   Notice the lack of connecting space to the Jetways.  This speaks to me about the futility of trying to prolong ones life through the use of technology while simultaneously embracing the cosmos in all of its wonder.  Also... for some reason...   I want to eat Bacon....  I cannot explain it.  Powerful piece indeed!  

 

Just had a flight from egll to eddf and this is the outcome - i love the comment Donar made------ "Has to be something in common with the people that are having VAS issues. A huge number of  people are running 3.4 on Facebook, and only a very few are having problems"