No thread on P3Dv4 basically being confirmed to be 64bit and coming in 2017?

[bonchie 2,305]

Surprised there's no a discussion.

JV's (Orbx) comments about "Project P" in his 2017 road map have basically confirmed it. P3Dv4 will be 64bit and it is coming in 2017. I know Rob has dropped some hints as well via his denials :smile:

 

Not sure if JV unwittingly broke the NDA or not, but his comments leave little room left for speculation.

[kevinfirth 1,393]

Think we all knew it was coming, the question is just when in 2017...

[simmerhead 885]

It's been on the horizon for quite a while, which is why I've only bought two addons this year. 

 

I truly hope they will break backwards compatibility this time and make some major changes, but I fear it's mostly recompiled code and that we're still stuck with 2006 graphics in DX11 dressing. 

[ComSimPilot 623]

I really hope developers will offer a free or at least small fee upgrade to existed customers. It makes no sense to me to sell a different license for a P3D 64 bit upgrade. 

[penta_a 428]

I wish to have DX12 as an option or even as a preview mode as was with FSX, using latest graphics technology is ultimate goal with modern games/simulations (I think).

 

Ali

[greggerm 312]

 

 

Surprised there's no a discussion.

 

Discussion? It's here in this thread, hanging around in Hangar Chat.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

...which is why I've only bought two addons this year. 

 

 

That's what I've been saying for 3 or 4 months now. I'm not buying any new P3d addons until the FS market shakes out, which may take 6 months.  Having all this "diversity" in  flight sim choices is somewhat of an illusion.

 

I know that I am in the minority with this opinion, but I don't see the FS market as rapidly expanding. The flight sim community seems to have five components:

1. Very casual simmers who buy something like FSX-SE, play around with the sim with for a week or two and never use it again. 
2. Licensed pilots and ex-pilots who like to  flight sim as a hobby.
3. Pilot training facilities
4. Hobbyists who can't keep up with advances in the technology because their hardware doesn't support taking full advanatge of the new technology.
5. Dedicated hobbyist flight simmers who tend to be on the cutting edge of the technology

Group 2 is small and getting smaller every year as newly licensed pilots aren't making up for either those that aren't current or have left the profession entirely. Group 3 is also very small and probably isn't growing either. I suspect that Group 1 is the largest group and they probably don't have the protracted attention span to buy a lot of addons for whatever sim that they are using.  Group 4 seems like the next biggest group to me. That leaves Group 5, which is probably the audience at AVSim, X-Plane.org, ORBX, etc.. Although I can see VR causing this last audience to grow over the next decade, the present state of VR (both the technology and the added cost) will cause it to not be a short term factor in the growth of the flight sim market.

 

So, now we have potentially four flight sims competing for a very small market, not to mention that a number of people in the community  don't have high end hardware to take advantage of all the new features in even the present flight sims. It's both a good thing and a bad thing. It wasn't coincidental that JV's post was initially interpreted as an acronym:

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/499655-some-interesting-info-from-the-2017-orbx-roadmap/?p=3527380

 

And while we're on the topic of John Venema's "crystal ball". Read here:

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/465561-no-64-bit-p3d-coming-according-to-orbxs-john-venema/

[ComSimPilot 623]

In my mind the four flight sims are not competitive at all. If you are not a VFR simmer, I really cannot understand how someone can select anything else than FSX or P3D. All major quality payware airliners and airport sceneries are made for these two platforms. The only one I'd appreciate in XP is the IXEG 737, though a retired now aircraft. I would never go to any platform where I cannot fly a 737NG, 777 of PMDG quality, an A320 of FSLabs quality and a Q400 of Majestic quality. But even for VFR which XP company can beat A2A? Let alone ORBX. I never found a reason to go to XP and I don't understand really how people move to XP just because its 64bit. I'm reloading the flight before T/D and I never have an OOM. It takes 1-2 minutes on an SSD. Now, if you are a VFR simmer, then maybe. Maybe all the debate is from VFR simmers and that's more understandable to me, though I don't think XP has the quality payware airports that FSX/P3D has at the moment. 64bit P3D will finally make it the only choice and those who left for x64 bit to XP will return. That's my guess. 

[Mephic 129]

I would never go to any platform where I cannot fly a 737NG, 777 of PMDG quality, an A320 of FSLabs quality and a Q400 of Majestic quality. But even for VFR which XP company can beat A2A?

 

THIS.

 

Spot on. 

[bonchie 2,305]

In my mind the four flight sims are not competitive at all. If you are not a VFR simmer, I really cannot understand how someone can select anything else than FSX or P3D. All major quality payware airliners and airport sceneries are made for these two platforms. The only one I'd appreciate in XP is the IXEG 737, though a retired now aircraft. I would never go to any platform where I cannot fly a 737NG, 777 of PMDG quality, an A320 of FSLabs quality and a Q400 of Majestic quality. But even for VFR which XP company can beat A2A? Let alone ORBX. I never found a reason to go to XP and I don't understand really how people move to XP just because its 64bit. I'm reloading the flight before T/D and I never have an OOM. It takes 1-2 minutes on an SSD. Now, if you are a VFR simmer, then maybe. Maybe all the debate is from VFR simmers and that's more understandable to me, though I don't think XP has the quality payware airports that FSX/P3D has at the moment. 64bit P3D will finally make it the only choice and those who left for x64 bit to XP will return. That's my guess.

 

People are not using XP just because it's 64bit.

[ComSimPilot 623]

People are not using XP just because it's 64bit.

I've seen countless posts here of people smiling for not having OOM problems anymore. It should be one of the reasons. The other should be the lighting engine. Visuals are impressive but not perfect. Clouds and shadows are not as good as in P3D. But again what someone gets coming to XP11 to simulate airliner flights? An old Boeing airliner. That's all I see. Cause everything else is far behind the PMDG, FSLabs, Majestic, A2A, QualityWings standards...in both visuals and complexity. So, all this fuss with XP is for nice vanilla atmospheric/lighting effects and sloped runways. I wouldn't move from my P3D advanced -aircraft simulator- with amazing still visuals to come to a better environment simulator and downgrade my aircraft simulation experience. And I wouldn't move to a platform and start checking the forums every day and praying from day one PMDG, FSLabs or Majestic or FlyTampa or Flightbeam or many other good developers  to make something for XP. If I see a torrent of add-ons being made for XP from these companies then I'd think again if I see a potential over P3D. Until then its all speculations. XP add-ons leave me completely uninterested for now.

[simmerhead 885]

64 bit only solves VAS issues - nothing more. In fact, when you talk to programmers, there is a real risk of things slowing down in terms of fps. I also fear we'll see a lot of poorly optimized addons on the market with high resolution textures on high polygon count 3D models that will turn P3D into a slideshow.

 

But I don't say that to be negative. I welcome the development. Scenery is to me just as important as the aircraft, and we've been at the limits of a what a 32 bit flight sim can do for a long time. It's just a matter of being picky about the third party devs you chose to support.

 

The onyl downside to this development is that my wife is going to be ###### when I order a new $5000 PC next year...

[EGLD 438]

Having got OSM and VFR imagery working in X-Plane, that really is the standard platform for VFR IMO - detailed satellite imagery overlaid with every (almost!) road and building in it's right place in the world creates a stunning visual experience that simply cannot be bettered.

 

But for flying high in a bizjet or airliner into a detailed airport, P3D is still the platform. The weather in X-Plane still looks terrible to my eyes, even in XP11.

 

Ideal scenario for me would be a 64-bit version of P3D with OSM based autogen laid over satellite images.

 

X-Plane still seems to just perform better at far higher scenery density and distance settings than P3D on my PC though, is this indicative of P3D's reliance on CPU over GPU still?

[tf51d 284]

Surprised there's no a discussion.

 

JV's (Orbx) comments about "Project P" in his 2017 road map have basically confirmed it. P3Dv4 will be 64bit and it is coming in 2017. I know Rob has dropped some hints as well via his denials :smile:

 

Not sure if JV unwittingly broke the NDA or not, but his comments leave little room left for speculation.

Not so fast! OrBX already provided the terrain for Dovetail Flight School which is 64bit. They may be talking about integration of their scenery into DFS which is also 64bit and due in 2017.

[Richard McDonald Woods 168]

I feel that we should be moving forward towards an environment where those who choose the Prepar3D route expect to pay a reasonable amount for top-end software providing exclusively the best simming experience from LM.

 

Absent from much of the previous posts is that LM is a major company servicing primarily the world's defence industries and their training needs. Simmers like ourselves may be a very useful testing ground for LM's developments but cannot be very important in LM's revenue streams.

 

That said, I would like to see regular software updates to Prepar3D so as to keep it at the leading (not bleeding) edge of simming. I would also like to see P3D having automatic software updates so that everyone is using the latest versions, and we get away from the current spread of software stages in use. Then we could leave the Dovetail and FSX market to play to the simpler levels of the simming market, and enjoy an exploitation of so many of the newer computing technologies now available..