After a descent hiatus from the sim community, I have built a new system and am looking get P3D reinstalled, along with the necessary addons for what I want to fly.

 

To step back in the waters I want to focus on US/Canada Airline operations. I know which aircraft to use as I already own them. But here is my main question.

 

 

 

It it has been a good solid year that I have been away and I know there have been a lot of new, game changing, addons. So any input on what I need to pick up would be most helpful. What the must have addons now? I know ASN is usually the way to for weather, and ORBX for land textures. Any other info would be so helpful. Thanks guys!

After a descent hiatus from the sim community, I have built a new system and am looking get P3D reinstalled, along with the necessary addons for what I want to fly.

 

To step back in the waters I want to focus on US/Canada Airline operations. I know which aircraft to use as I already own them. But here is my main question.

 

 

 

It it has been a good solid year that I have been away and I know there have been a lot of new, game changing, addons. So any input on what I need to pick up would be most helpful. What the must have addons now? I know ASN is usually the way to for weather, and ORBX for land textures. Any other info would be so helpful. Thanks guys!

Take a look at AS2016 for weather. I switched to it from ASN and I am happy with the result. I wasn't unhappy with ASN to start with. If you want check out the free 7 day trial , but for me with the sale price on the upgrade and a coupon I had it wasn't that expensive and I found it worth it. I fly using fsx-se but in terms of addons I think the p3d experience would be similar when it comes to a weather addon. 

Fly Tampa airport sceneries are great add ons

Prepar3D Tweak Assistant (PTA)

 

http://www.avsim.com/forum/764-p3d-tweak-assistant-pta-and-realismshaderpack/

http://1coder.ru/PTA/

Freeware:

PTA

WOAI

Traffic Optimizer

FreeMesh X Global

Adam Mills Texture replacements for USA & Europe - I stopped using FTX Global after I got hold of these.

Ray Smith's AFCADs

ADE to recompile Ray Smith's AFCADs in P3D format.

 

...and payware:

FSUIPC

"Adam Mills Texture replacements for USA & Europe"

 

...an excellent find, sir.

There are a bunch of threads on this topic already, but you will need weather engine (AS16) weather textures (REX or ASCA), airport scenery, camera program to move around cockpit (looks like Chaseplane has replaced EZDOK). If you want ORBX, you may want to wait a couple of weeks. Last year they had a big black Friday sale. My only advice is to watch out for ORBX Vectors - it is a huge VAS drain. UTX may be a better option.

 

Also if you are focusing on USA operations and will be spending significant time on the Pacific coast, you may want to checkout PilotEdge for live ATC. I hear they are about to expand to more Cities in the west including Seattle and Denver.

Just a suggestion, but it would be helpful to provide links to a description/download site, and it would also be interesting to hear some personal reasons for why a particular addon is a "must have" for you. Otherwise reading a topic like this is mostly like reading some brief personal shopping lists like

 

Eggs

Milk

UT2

Frozen burritos

Bud light

FSUIPC

Laundry detergent

etc

 

Just my 2 cents...

 

Just a suggestion, but it would be helpful to provide links to a description/download site, and it would also be interesting to hear some personal reasons for why a particular addon is a "must have" for you. Otherwise reading a topic like this is mostly like reading some brief personal shopping lists like

 

Eggs

Milk

UT2

Frozen burritos

Bud light

FSUIPC

Laundry detergent

etc

 

Just my 2 cents...

 

There are lots of threads like this. I don't know if rehashing it all will be beneficial. If OP does a simple search he will get all the info he needs and more.

 

Just a suggestion, but it would be helpful to provide links to a description/download site, and it would also be interesting to hear some personal reasons for why a particular addon is a "must have" for you. Otherwise reading a topic like this is mostly like reading some brief personal shopping lists like

 

Eggs

Milk

UT2

Frozen burritos

Bud light

FSUIPC

Laundry detergent

etc

 

Just my 2 cents...

 

 

Get a good Belgian Beer or a Microbrew. 

Thanks for the help. Even the thinly veiled sarcastic ones.

Weather: AS2016 plus AS Cloud Art--allows dynamic automatic changing of cloud textures based on wx, and continued improvements to weather that take advantage of P3D's evolving capabilities.  Fog and overcast have really improved over my former ASN/FSX experience.

 

Landclass: ORBX Open Land Class North America--a recent and major improvement to landclass in US and Canada (and Mexico/Caribbean), plus very good low-impact night lighting

 

Vector Scenery: UTX USA v2 and UTX Canada: excellent road and water body overlays with less configuration trouble and performance impact than ORBX Vector.

 

Terrain Mesh: personally, I stopped using these add-ons (I formerly used FS Genesis now reincarnated as Toposim in FSX), as their performance impact was excessive in comparison to their benefit.  P3D now includes 38m mesh as default anyway...19m and 10m mesh, where it exists, results in a lot of morphing terrain shapes as you approach them.

 

Scenery Textures: ORBX regions: Pacific NW, Northern California, Southern California, Northern Rockies, Central Rockies, and Southern Alaska.  SoCal is a performance killer when used together with complex planes and airports near LAX, but can be disabled.

 

North America Airports (payware):

 

Flightbeam's airports are all P3Dv3 native and good performers: KSFO HD (San Francisco), KDEN (Denver), KPHX (Phoenix), KIAD (Washington Dulles).

FSDreamteam has native P3Dv3 support for all their sceneries...best ones are more recent additions such as KIAH (Houston), KMEM (Memphis), CYVR (Vancouver)...as you get to the oldest releases they work fine but look a bit dated.  Older FSDT NA airports include KLAS (Las Vegas), KLAX (Los Angeles), KFLL (Ft Lauderdale), KORD (Chicago O'Hare), PHNL (Honolulu), KJFK (NYC JFK) and KDFW (Dallas Ft Worth).

Fly Tampa has native P3D support for nearly all of their sceneries...as with FSDT the best are the most recent, including CYYZ (Toronto), TNCM (St Maarten), CYUL (Montreal) and KTPA (Tampa).  KBUF (Buffalo) and KMDY (Midway) work, but are long in the tooth.

Recent Imaginesim P3D sceneries have seen significant improvement over some of their earlier work, including KATL (Atlanta), KAUS (Austin), KLGA (NYC LaGuardia), and KCLT (Charlotte).

LatinVFR has some good recent P3D-ready add-ons: KRDU (Raleigh Durham), KMIA v3 (Miami), KRSW (Ft Myers), KSNA (Orange Co John Wayne), KSAN (San Diego).

Taxi2Gate did KSEA (Seattle), which is OK if you don't want or need anything resembling customer support. 

TropicalSim has P3D-ready versions of MDPC (Punta Cana Dom Rep), MBPV (Providentiales Turks and Caicos) and a so-so KMCI (Kansas City).  Their TNCC (Curacao), and TNCA (Aruba) sceneries also work OK.

ORBX has a few nice airliner-capable airports, including KPSP (Palm Springs), KBZN (Bozeman Intl), KJAC (Jackson Hole), and KEGE (Eagle/Vail).  Some require their regional sceneries, some don't.

Aerosoft KASE Extended (Aspen), KDAB (Daytona Beach), and TNCB (Bonaire Neth Antilles) all work well in P3D v3. 

 

North American Airports (freeware): SunSkyJet KPHL (Philadelphia), works well in P3D, just disable anim.bgl file.

 

ATC Add-ons: Radar Contact v4 still works well, especially from a remote network PC.  PF3 is my second choice.  Pro/ATC-X is still suffering from once-per-year update cycle and other issues that render it usable only in limited circumstances (tubeliner airline flights into large airports served by SID/STAR routings).  PF3 has a wide variety of voices, but some breaks from real world ATC...Radar Contact still has the best fidelity in adhering to proper procedural operations and language.

 

Other add-ons:

Virtual CDU: I run my PMDG 737/777 and Aerosoft A320 FMS CDUs on iPads using this software.  Touch-screen physical CDUs are a really nice addition.

Electronic Flight Bag: Aivlasoft EFB--great networked moving-map display.

Nav Charts: Navigraph Charts app for iPad/Android.  Annual navdata subscription required.

Camera Control/view manager: OpusFSI (also includes a decent weather manager, but I prefer AS2016)

 

P.S.  Oops...forgot ORBX FTX Global for worldwide textures

 

Regards

Weather AS 16

ATC  PF3

FSUIPC paid

Anything by A2A. 

EZdok

BBS A340-600 and  A330-300

 

Well, there are many out there but, I'm enjoying BBS Airbus Heavies

 

Massive improvement on V.085.1   I literally parked all my other so called "high end aircraft" and since been flying these bad-boys none-stop. Impressive FBW systems and a magnificent Preflight Management System.

I would agree with w6kd's suggestions, but I am not running Open LC or any vector programs.  I have FTX global (maybe someday when I have more $$ I will buy Open LC NA) plus a couple of regions.  ORBX seems much easier to use now that FTX central is V3.

 

I especially like AS16 and ASCA, FlightBeam and FSDT airport add-ons.