I will purchase it a few weeks after release to let the dust settle... see if there are any big snafus that might have been missed.  I will keep it "plain vanilla" for quite some time for learning/designing purposes and keep 3.4 running side-by-side  loaded will all my goodies.

I am curious to see how my now "average" system will handle it.  Got 300GB on an SSD awaiting it's arrival, a good 'ol 2600k still pumping out 4.5GHz and my trusty 870 GTX.  Thank goodness I bought one with 6GB vRAM way back then specifically thinking P3D may need it in the future.  Runs good across 3-displays.  Hope it can keep up with what's coming.

My real, only hope is that is will help reduce those little micro-stutters (fingers crossed).

26 minutes ago, Noel said:

he next build should be somewhere towards the end of the year:  i9-7900X, GTX 1080i Ti in

Gigantic waste of money in terms of P3D performance :-)

As soon as the following are compatible I'll install v4;  PMDG, ORBX Products, AS16, EZDOK, ImagineSim KATL, Avilasoft EFB.  I expect it'll be a month or two.

I will purchase on Tuesday and will look forward to performance improvements, tons and tons of autogen, dynamic lighting where available, and future development on the platform. Can't wait.

23 minutes ago, swiesma said:

Gigantic waste of money in terms of P3D performance :-)

Naw, not compared to my first system:  Pentium DX33, 8mb ram, 4x CD-rom, Win 3.1, 120Mb HDD, 5.25" FDD, 3.5" FDD, 15" Sony color CRT:  $2400 pre-inflated dollars!  

I understand your point, but this approach was applied on my last build and I've been tickled ever since.  On a 6 year plan one amortizes the cost over that time, so this system will come in at around $460/year--veritable chump change for something I use daily.  Even 5y out from my last build I still enjoy liquid smooth, stutter-free performance, as long as sliders are kept in check in the most demanding areas, and most of that is dialing back GPU dependent controls.  The main piece that is pricier than the alternative 4 core chip is the 10 core i9, so in terms of the cost of that upgrade over 6 years is truly paltry.  I would love to be able to run peddle to the metal on those GPU-dependent sliders, and hopefully SLI can do that w/ dual 1080Ti cards, so we won't go to two cards unless that is substantiated.

 

I will wait for a few updates to address issues (if any) and for Orbx to update FTX Global, Vector, and OpenLC. I will also wait and see how the performance is impacted for the higher LOD and determine if I need to upgrade hardware.

I expect to make a purchase around early fall.

 

 

On ‎5‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 1:45 PM, CrownCityMisfits said:

SSD space is limited, so I'm ALL IN on v4. Orbx, ASN, A2A and ChasePlane will be ready for me immediately, and that's all I need. Doesn't hurt that the new (released today) Milviz Beaver will have a free v4 update soon.

Bugs and growing pains are expected but I'm not stressed about it.

Plus 1

14 hours ago, J van E said:

Short answer: no. It's good but not good enough. I can't imagine anyone being really satisfied with generic landclass scenery with all its drawbacks. It does the job up to a certain point but it's not even close to what you would see in real life. So no, it is good but not good enough. I know this probably won't happen in my lifetime but a flightsim will only be good enough for me when the world I see out of my window is like it is in reality. Up to then things can be good up to great and even awesome (I can't wait for the photoreal regions that Orbx will be making for Aerofly FS 2) but not yet 'enough'.

Nothing wrong with that I have the same opinion that it's good but not good enough.
The dream is the same compared to real life :-) (and well that's why I fly real life lol) So still a bit to go, but compared to 30 years ago we've come a long way ;-) 

Having said that as for P3D V4 it will be my main sim because it's the most complete environment to simulate aviation on a desktop.

 

11 hours ago, swiesma said:

Gigantic waste of money in terms of P3D performance :-)

Gottta agree with Noel here - you see what you're really doing is "future-proofing" your system.  So go big as your budget allows.

Ten years ago I spent a little extra to get a top of the line CPU (runs at 3 GHZ which was as good as it gets at the time) and 6 GB of memory, and  a top of the line NVIDIA card (for it's time - forgot what it was) that has been replaced twice since with newer NVIDIA cards.  The conventional thinking 10 years ago was, "6 GB!  You're wasting your money.  No game needs that."  Well, to that I say, who gets 10 years out of a system anymore?  And I'm a Software Engineer that used to build a new system for gaming every 18 months....so I say go BIG so that you don't find yourself shorted in a few years and have to buy an all new system anyhow.  I thought 6 GB was overkill but there are now FS games that recommend 8 GB out of the box....some even more....

Folks, don't buy new hardware that meets today's expectations if you plan to use the box for the next 5 years, buy it for what the software will demand in 5 years.  Agreed, perhaps Prepar3D might not be able to leverage all the features TODAY, but you want something that can handle what they will be offering in Prepar3D V4.5, whenever that day comes.  Or even V5.  Crazy how people bash folks for buying "to much of a system" when it actually pays to "future-proof" your rig for the next 5 years.

Mark Trainer

 

That is it Mark.  Back when Moore's Law was in full effect you could double performance in a few years so it made some sense to continuing upgrading, but not so anymore, so future-proofing is way more applicable/possible today than in past times.   Single core performance improvements have virtually stalled for 5 or 6 years now relatively speaking, and I'm still convinced terrain texture loading is best on the higher core count platform, plus bonus assigning other processes to non P3D cores does indeed cut down on competition for the main thread and even terrain loading cores when you optimize an affinity mask for your specific situation.   I'm pleased to see P3D continuing to try to exploit the GPU any way they can which gives us a future path towards getting the most out of what hardware can offer today.  

Sigh, ok it's been a few years, so I've just invested £1400 into new hardware to give the PC a refresh via Amazon same day delivery, mainly for P3D

Will build the new PC tomorrow to see the jump in performance hopefully on 32-bit P3D, and then look forward to a 64-bit platform to take advantage of all this damn RAM and VRAM

Current PC is Win7, 12gb RAM (1x4gb died last year), i7-3770k 3.5ghz, nVidia GTX 770 4gb VRAM

and new PC is Win10, 32gb RAM, i7-7700k 4.2ghz, MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080TI Founders Edition 11 GB

Pretty much a mix between observing the reviews and stuff (stability and performance are the major concerns) and waiting for the very most of addons to be available in v4.

On 5/26/2017 at 7:24 AM, Noel said:

The next build should be somewhere towards the end of the year:  i9-7900X, GTX 1080i Ti in SLI if that is well-supported by build time, and 32Gb DDR4@2666Mhz.  

Around the time this happens I will likely be ready to consider V4, or XP11 or what have you. 

To quote the late Willy Wonka, 'Scratch that, reverse it!'   I see a GTX Titan Xp in my future.  This I believe GPU/vram covered into the next several years, w/ SLI an option as well, but doubtful the need for V4 or maybe V5 as well.  Next, after viewing John Venema's overview of performance in V4 I'm moving up my start date to as soon as PMDG, Majestic Dash 8 (have to check and see if they're on board) and Global Vector will fly in V4. 

Geez, the clarity and frame performance are phenomenal, or so his screenshots appear!

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/135405-prepar3d-v4-64bit-orbx-preview-4k-screenshots/

On 5/25/2017 at 1:26 PM, sd_flyer said:

I will not purchase P3D V4 and stick to XP11 for now :)

I made the switch to XP11 as well but may come back just because of some of the things still missing from XP11.  (Do I really want to go through that again?)

11 minutes ago, ricka47 said:

I made the switch to XP11 as well but may come back just because of some of the things still missing from XP11.  (Do I really want to go through that again?)

Haha, my "strategy" and my thoughts exactly ! Oh my sweet biter sweet misery...