Prepar3d v4 test pilot report (preliminary)

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Prepar3d v4 test pilot report: (preliminary)

Test rig: GTX 970, Intel 5820K at 4.0 gig, 2560x1440 display.

Pre-flight: activation worked flawlessly

Flight area - Western Carolina Regional Airport (KRHP)

Addons: 

Mesh - FS Genesis (direct install via scenery library)

Scenery: - ultra high-res photoscenery @ 25cm per pixel.

Trees: NuVecta (NC, GA, TN for this part of the world) - LOTS of trees.

Airport: custom (built with ADEX, Instant Scenery v3, with lots of objects)

Aircraft: Carenado A36 Bonanza (default)

Hardware: dual joysticks, Saitek rudder pedals, nothing exotic (MCP/EFIS/throttle/other hardware) trialled yet. Setup effortless, most axis assignments automatic.

Test program findings:

Smoothness: very good to excellent (?perhaps not quite as good as Aerofly 2)
Frames: obviously depends on settings. Defaults settings, fair weather on runway: 90 FPS. Adding trees, 25cm/pixel photoscenery, airport and moving terrain and scenery sliders all the way to the right: 55 FPS
Hi-res photoscenery: superb detail. Occasional texture-pop - need to think about why/when this happens.
Tree appearance: LOTS of trees, so many going all the way out to the horizon. Close-up objects: excellent detail. Not entirely happy with autogen AA for distant objects - have only briefly played with the settings so far, better when AA ramped up.
Airport: hangars etc look great
Shadows: much better!
VR with oculus: not yet tested

Quick orbx manual test: with v3 libraries, some but not all objects appear, tech such as peopleflow works.

Recommendation: buy it, it's great and is only going to get better.

[A320wolf 27]

Thanks for this first report Rob!

I'll buy for sure within 2-3 days ;-)

Regards, Max

[Dazkent 113]

Thank you Rob, this does sound very promising indeed!

 

[MikeT707 1,181]

Sounds great. Just installing it and hope to be flying soon.

[jkeye 152]

Tried with the Vive-VR is great

[OzWhitey 3,353]

5 hours ago, jkeye said:

Tried with the Vive-VR is great

I am really pleased to hear that, as I find myself doing more and more flying in VR, and while AF2 is great for that is obviously lacks a lot of features and add ons that P3d has.

 

My focus for the test - other than competing with a few others around here to get the first working download 🙂 - was to investigate how the sim worked with a range of add ons that I frequently used with v3. Although I did a quick flight with default scenery, that's not the way that I will ever use the sim, so,I was much more interested in how it flies with the eye candy turned up.

 

The thing I was happiest with was the visual appearance, which is definitely improved compared to v3. Particularly with terrain shadows turned on, the landscape seemed to have a real depth to it when compared to the previous iterations of this sim,

[jkeye 152]

Agree

5 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

I am really pleased to hear that, as I find myself doing more and more flying in VR, and while AF2 is great for that is obviously lacks a lot of features and add ons that P3d has.

 

My focus for the test - other than competing with a few others around here to get the first working download 🙂 - was to investigate how the sim worked with a range of add ons that I frequently used with v3. Although I did a quick flight with default scenery, that's not the way that I will ever use the sim, so,I was much more interested in how it flies with the eye candy turned up.

 

The thing I was happiest with was the visual appearance, which is definitely improved compared to v3. Particularly with terrain shadows turned on, the landscape seemed to have a real depth to it when compared to the previous iterations of this sim,

I agree with that. 

I think Xplane's environment  is still more lifelike but ATC in P3dv4 and 64 bit stability mean I'll now spend many hours with P3D again.I think we simmers have it good right now!