FSX-SE FSX SE/ PREPARED V4

[Canuckshaw 0]

On 6/6/2017 at 4:25 PM, fshobby said:

Why not just keep both FSX and P3D installed and continue to use the 747 in FSX assuming it works well enough, but when you get any new addons get the P3D version. Spread the cost out over time instead of a big hit all at once to cut over.

Because, if you are flying a beautiful plane like the QOTS you will also want beautiful airports and scenery. Not possible in FSX. I OOM just flying over the Rocky Mountains no where near an airport. But, apparently, I "misread" a post suggesting the FSX version would be brought to the same level as the new P3Dv4 version as meaning the FSX would be made to work in v4. I would have waited to purchase if the message had been more clear. Now I spent the money on the wrong version and will have to spend another $160 CDN to get the one I should have waited a week to buy. PMDG response: not our problem.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

59 minutes ago, Canuckshaw said:

 But, apparently, I "misread" a post suggesting the FSX version would be brought to the same level as the new P3Dv4 version as meaning the FSX would be made to work in v4. I would have waited to purchase if the message had been more clear. Now I spent the money on the wrong version and will have to spend another $160 CDN to get the one I should have waited a week to buy. PMDG response: not our problem.

Well, in all fairness to PMDG, the product page where you buy the 747 makes you physically type Yes to the understanding that the product is only for FSX (as seen in photo below). In fact they added that box to help people avoid buying it thinking that they are entitled to use it in P3D. The onus is on the user at that point. If not sure, you should have stopped the transaction and either opened a support ticket with PMDG support directly or asked in their forum. Asking for a refund when it also plainly says on the purchase page that digital downloads are not refundable, would be directly against their policy.

 

With all due respect, the comment about not being able to fly the plane in FSX with addon scenery and not OOM is also not correct. I have about 60 hours in it using FSX and have a scenery library with around 360 addons in it and have never gotten lower the around 800mb of remaining VAS left. Sounds like you have some set up issues preventing you from doing the same. If it was true that the plane was un-flyable in FSX with addons the PMDG forum would be lit up with complaints saying as such.

 

[CaribbeanCLANK 134]

I am a FSX:SE user who would like to make the switch to a new 64 bit flight simulator. Prepar3D v4 seems to be the logical choice in my opinion. I NEVER even considered moving over to P3D until now. I have loads of scenery add-ons and a few aircraft add-ons too so I knew money (lots of it) would have to be spent moving from FSX to P3D.

When P3Dv4 was announced and so many devs started talking about free upgrades I didn't feel so bad. I did some research and I would only have to pay for a few of my add-ons again. PMDG's 777, PMDG's 747 and HiFi's ActiveSky16. Not too bad right? That's what I thought untill I went to the P3D product page for PMDG. The PMDG aircraft are $45 USD more than the FSX version. And my 747 is not even 4 months old and I might have to purchase it all over again. I did some digging around and found a post on here about PMDG's pricing. I really wanted to know if the P3D versions were better, or included more features than the FSX versions I owned. As far as I can tell they are pretty much the same Instead the article talked about continuous development of product lines, licenses and so on. This got me to thinking that because of licensing and the nature of P3D that ALL other add-ons would have higher price tags than their FSX equivalents. I looked at dozens of add-on sites and that was not the case. I could not find price differences between P3D/FSX add-ons....JUST PMDG. It is want it is. Up until last week I never thought to check the PMDG P3D product page.

Anyways, a lot of my add-on scenery are already working or will be working in P3Dv4 and most of them will allow me to get the P3Dv4 version of that add-on for FREE despite being on a different platform. That alone will save me a ton of money when I eventually switch. And to those developers, I am thankful for such a kind gesture. This is encouraging and just one of the reasons that I am choosing P3D as my sim moving forward.

I will not lie, having to pay $300 USD just to use my PMDG fleet in P3D bothers me a bit, but thanks to other devs the switch is not as expensive as I thought it might be. At the end of the day, I would like to support the developers that do outstanding work....that includes PMDG. 

 

[Alfred Stone 0]

On 6/7/2017 at 3:23 AM, jabloomf1230 said:

Most of these developers offered discounts at one time or another to switch from FSX to earlier versions of P3d. One can't expect such gracious behavior to continue endlessly. It is to the third party developer's advantage to cut down on the the number of legacy flight sims that are supported. That's just common sense. If anyone is complaining about this now, just wait, the 64 bit speed bump is a real incentive for 3rd party developers to stop supporting FSX. It's already apparent that most of the major developers are focusing on XP11 and P3d V4. And more commercial developers would provide add-ons for XP-11 is there wasn't such a large backlog of freeware add-ons that have been developed by the XP community. Eventually the XP community will realize what the Microsoft flight sim community realized, that you get what you pay for.

Firstly l would like to say that l have FS 2004 / FSX / FSX Steam / XPlane11 / FSW, as most of would have. l am not taking any sides but will tell it as l have personally experienced the flight simming world over the years. Will keep it short and to the point. l have pumped in a few thousand dollars over the years to get the best of the flight simulators. Agree with the developers discount and switching over to P3D, but one has to also think that when Dove tail took over there were a lot of expectations, which l may add they failed miserably. l have already seen the outcome of the so called exciting famous P3D V4 and not impressed at all, it is just FSX in a 64 Bit version. The scenery is all the same, Orbx etc. 
FSX and P3D:
For the time and  that it came out it was a big wow factor, then all the adons came along, planes and scenery, WOW. Orbx hit a huge note and changed the whole scenario, in which they made it so friendly that there were hardly any conflicts with other scenery ad ons. Major WOW factor Planes well that is now a subject on its own, only thing l can say here is Best of the Best, and no other has yet to compare to FSX and P3RD ( never got P3RD but sorry l did not). Instead l bought XPlane11. The ad ons were very friendly for these two flight sims and very compatible. Weather well just another fantastic WOW. You all know what l am talking about, look at the Tube and you all have seen it. AI Traffic WOW factor again, ATC Wow factor. As you will see there are plenty WOW Factors  for FSX. Yes they have their faults as well, remember old flight sim, such as flat boring runways and taxiways.
XPlane11:
Install, set up, start. Scenery WOW factor. Depends on your computer great frame rates. Ad on scenery, nothing spectacular. But l may add that with the Ortho4x it changes the whole scenario, but the massive negative on this mater is that all seasons are one season. Weather is really YUK. Bought the FS Global weather, made a difference for the better, but clouds still YUK. Active sky, still needs work done so l will be fair to see what that outcome will be like. In FSX and P3D it is the bon digidy of weather engines.. ATC huge YUCKY. AI Traffic a double HUGE YUCKY. l mean, common, in this day and age you design a flight simulator that the AI traffic is so screwed up, so l downloaded AI Traffic 3 and then purchased the licence, what a real waste of time and effort. The airports are not to the class of the planes finding their way to the gates etc. Huge failure on the designers side. This has  set this flight simulator back to the dark ages. Planes, another Huge YUKY. Far behind the times. Remember this is my personal experience. l have purchased some ad on planes, and everyone are no where the quality of FSX, as well plenty issues with all ad on planes. They do not work as they should. There is nothing more frustrating, as when buying an add on then install it and does not work properly. Xplane have made it so easy to install  ad ons but yet so difficult to work and repair issues. Ground handling ad on same thing. Why is X plane ad ons so difficult to set up? l have spent wasted hours on YouTube to get them to  work properly. But a feather in Xplane caps are the taxiways and runways flowing with the earths curves.

In all honesty XPlane has been the biggest disappointment by far, instead of getting ahead it has just slipped backwards.l did not expect to be having to down load programs and sit for hours on end setting up taxi way routes from gates to the apron. Such a hassle to remove the static planes, XPlane will have to lift their game for l will not be purchasing anymore ad ons. l will not mention a famous and well known plane developer group, but in compareson to FSX and P3D, to the XPlane11 plane, the XPlane never came close to FSX one.

P3D  V4 was also a huge disappointment, it is as if they are stuck in a time zone and cannot move forward with their scenery, basically this is all they need to do to be the best of the best.

Summary:
 1) FSX:  Great planes weather engines, AI traffic, ground handling, realistic airports, ATC.  Average scenery. Extremely easy to install programs and repair. Abundance of great  FREE ad ons
2) Xplane11: Fantastic scenery, plus cars and lights trains etc. Average airport scenery. Very Average plane ad ons, for l have purchased the some of the top planes, and they really suck. So disappointing in comparison to FSX and P3D. Easy to install ad ons, but time consuming to set up and use and repair. Heaps of good quality FREE ad ons.
3) P3D V4: Yes the weather, planes, airports, GSX, plus the many thousand ad ons is a massive PLUS. For the price one has to pay for ancient technology in the scenery field, was a huge failure for me. Look at XPlane11 and the later Areosoft sim2 scenery which has photo realistic scenery. Where in XPlane11 one can get satellite images which melt in with the standard and add on scenery's. with yOrtho4XP what makes it the best, and it has blown me away. 

As you have said that the top designers are moving over to P3D and XPlane11, if this is the case and they give the same quality planes as what we got in FSX and P3D, in my view it will not help X plane too much due to the robotic and washed out ATC, upmost terrible AI program, and structure But if P3D give us the Xplane and Aero2 sceneries then will they be the Number 1 seller for many years to come. There is no way will l fork out $200.00 for a simulator that offers me nothing, and yet l have to spend many  hundreds of dollars for what l all ready have. Agreed competition is great and it keeps up the game, but when the competition does not phase the competitor in the aspect of matching the competition, then why waste the time, effort,to capitalise on them.

This is constructive information, and hoping it may reach the designers so that they may improve for the better, Had noted there were a lot of squabbling going on, l will not lower my standards, because you all know what l have said is the truth. Rather take this information and use it to improve the  products.

For me Flight simulation has become boring and frustrating. Rather spend the monies on an expensive drone and get some real pleasure.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Alfred Stone

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Wait, you dredged up a year and half old thread for your first post? And the mantra that P3d4 is "old technology" is so far from the truth that it's become laughable. The only obvious thing that P3d4 still shares with FSX are the common file formats like BGL, MDL, etc..  And even those have been modified by LM. The P3d4 rendering engine is totally different than the one in FSX and the two sims don't look anywhere near the same. I suggest that if you loaded up your XP11 with a payware weather engine, AI aircraft, ATC and scenery, you might have a different view of XP11 too. It also is far better than FSX.

I'm happy that you are satisfied with FSX, but it isn't even close to either P3d4 or XP11.