[14JUN17] How not to mess up a perfectly good Prepar3D v4 installation...

[Ephedrin 418]

22 minutes ago, aceridgey said:

I have a horrible feeling that there is not much appetite in the scenery development world to adopt this approach.

 

Even the 'big players' have created product migration like you outline above.

 

That is worrying indeed.

 

Alex

Above all that is one thing: cheap!

[vmounier 4]

Above and beyond, Robert and PMDG, as always! A very insightful post, and timely reminder for us all to stay cool and take the upgrade process seriously and carefully.

It does raise very serious issues as there is no verified way to find out how an existing add-on was ported to V4, and no "V4/64-bits" seal of approval available. I am troubled by the fact that LM did not see fit to embed such a compatibility check mechanism in such a milestone release - something that would have made the use of V4 SDK mandatory for add-on creation, export and installation, and would have trimmed down their support queue and our headaches significantly.

After many different issues, spanning a wide range of symptoms and probables causes, including the corruption of unicode config files by both add-ons and P3D itself, I am left hesitant to fly my beloved 777 and 747 in anything but ugly default scenery, and that sucks.

I guess time will tell.

[planiac 2]

I presume using the Migration Tool is also a no no?

[Farlis 2,280]

4 minutes ago, planiac said:

I presume using the Migration Tool is also a no no?

Do you need it spelled out? Robert said just that in his opening post. 

Do NOT use utilities designed to allow you to “unify” your installations by feeding non-Prepar3D v4 scenery/utilities into Prepar3D v4

 

[garrett_frank 150]

1 hour ago, aceridgey said:

I have a horrible feeling that there is not much appetite in the scenery development world to adopt this approach.

I bet you're right.

So it will be incumbent on us consumers to demand that scenery developers advertising their products as "Prepar3D v4 compatible" to have compiled their products using the correct SDK. Although there's a saying about wishing in one hand and doing something else in the other...

[Ian McPhail 55]

Captain Randazzo, your excellent advice came one day late for me, I killed my v4 installation by trying to force every European airport that claimed to be compatible with the new sim.  

Your advice is absolutely spot on, it should be more widely shared in the community.

My punishment, I had to do a full reinstall of the sim.  I am only now only flying the PMDG Queen and the T7 from default airports or to a few like the latest Aerosoft ports.    I eagerly await the arrival of the re-built 737NGX.

Patience is required.

[BuddyDog 36]

Thank you for this enlightenment, Captain.

So how do us sheep know which add on's (global sceneries, regional sceneries, payware airports, flight tools, aircraft) were actually engineered using the correct SDK procedures?

Do we trust what they say on their websites?

 

[StewCal 12]

So how do we truly know that a developer has done their due diligence?  I hope someone can come up with a list that will help in that regard.  I am going to assume that the more reputable scenery designers would use the proper SDK porting.  In the mean time I'm going to be careful what I install, and will install sceneries one at a time to make identifying problems easier.

[captain420 3,099]

I noticed a performance decrease with dynamic lights on while using Flightbeam's updated KSFO HD and FSDT's airports. They have both updated to P3D v4, so are you saying that there's a possibility that they might've not followed P3D v4's SDK thoroughly and thats the reason why I'm seeing such a performance decrease at these airports? And I also notice with dynamic lights on, the runway looks extremely grainy, noisy, fuzzy and just downright ugly. I'm beginning to have doubts whether or not FB/FSDT's so called updated airports are fully P3D v4 compliant then.

[Randy Dettmer 7]

Great post!  I bet you are going to be saying this 1gig more times over the next year lol.

I spoke to John and Ed from Orbx in person for a good while at Flight Sim Con 2017 last Saturday.  If its in your FTX Central application then its ready for V4 and you can install it....its made for V4.  Airports are coming soon BUT not until they are ready.

That's a very nice thing they have done with FTX Central.  I wish more scenery makers would go that way - 1 click install for everything you own.

Quality Wings is developing their new B787 for V4 and the FS packages guys wont make installers until their stuff is ready for V4.  I have installed about 40 airports from Flightbeam, FSDT, Flytampa and a few others that were said to be ready and they work just fine. Keep in mind that V4 graphics options have been extended/expanded...running everything to the right is going to slow even the best machine.  Its all about finding the right mix for your computer.  You'll see scenery makers optimizing textures as they learn.

Like Rob said, aircraft are another animal and they must be compiled for 64 bit or they just wont work right.  The makers that seem to kick out airplanes every other week are likely to do just enough to get it in V4 for now and maybe truly adapt it later on. But those are the airplanes that are no where near what we have come to expect from PMDG - they were/are "budget"  addons from the start.  Trying to be nice there.

I got a chance to talk to Rob McCarthy, lead programmer for P3D V4.  He said there is a whole set of new tools in the SDK for V4 the dev community has to work with.  As they learn and see what they can do with those tools we'll see some amazing stuff.  Also, after talking with him its clear they support our addon devs to the fullest.  I confirmed this with every dev I talked with - they all say LM is the best sim developer they have ever worked with for support.   

I'm not too worried about the addon guys not doing the right thing.  They all want to see what this new animal can do.  I think same as aircraft, scenery will makers will mirror what we see now in quality and compatibility.  Crap scenery makers will be crap in V4 while the big guys will do their best optimize for V4 so they can sell me more pretty shi....stuff.

Doing a reality check, V4 hasn't been out a month and look whats there already.  This was not like this when FSX released...not even close.

 

[brucewtb 247]

I agree with others in this thread that there is probably little appetite among developers to follow Robert's wise counsel.  I don't have P3D4 yet and having come across this thread it may be sometime before I do.

Bruceb

[por930 51]

Looking at the various "lists" of software that will work in P3Dv4, brings up the situation some are simply mods to get them to work in v4, rather than correctly coded and installed as per LM requirements. You see terms,.... the product will port straight in, it is patched, it has a revised installer...etc. Very few have the statement, the products code and installation method has been rewritten as required by LM to make it 64 bit compliant.

I recently posted in the FSDT forum asking why their P3Dv4 software installed so differently to another developers 64 bit sceneries. FSDT said they had followed the LM SDK requirements, other developers may have simply changed the loader. The other developers forum says, their scenery has a patch with several files that was needed to be loaded after 'normal' installation, and to remove some papi bgl files.  This would say to me, the latter developer with normal installation and a patch may work, but not be LM or 64 bit compliant. Both developers sceneries work, but the sceneries will behave very differently, RAM wise..... 

64 bit flight sim software is a game changer. It needs some sort of 'compliance with LM SDK terminology' all developers can use, stating their product complies. If it does not have this  industry accepted 'terminology', then we accept the software may not be fully 64 bit compliant as required by LM. 

[Greggy_D 935]

2 hours ago, Farlis said:

Do you need it spelled out?

Rude.

[ahuimanu 50]

I just want to chime in with the rest of the chorus: how can we KNOW about this compliance with the new tools?  Can we source this in the community? I am old enough to know Robert's "good ol' days" of being able to finish a flight and I can't risk screwing this opportunity up for anything.  I DO NOT TRUST the 3rd party market enough to know that their v4 compliance is true compliance. How can we help each other with this?

[DavidP 1,408]

21 minutes ago, ahuimanu said:

I just want to chime in with the rest of the chorus: how can we KNOW about this compliance with the new tools?  Can we source this in the community? I am old enough to know Robert's "good ol' days" of being able to finish a flight and I can't risk screwing this opportunity up for anything.  I DO NOT TRUST the 3rd party market enough to know that their v4 compliance is true compliance. How can we help each other with this?

That indeed is the 64 bit question . It is a little like "the check's in the mail".