Returning flightsimmer looking for advice

[stigt 13]

I have been away from flightsimming for a couple of years, but I am planning to return shortly. My own experience is from the FSX days. I never tried Prepar3d, but I would really like to kickstart my old hobby again, reading all the good stories about version 4. In FSX I had a lot of addons to try and make my simming experience as real as possible. I used FS Global for mesh, ultimate terrain for realistic scenery, REX for weather, and ofcourse the whole PMDG line as my favourite airplanes.

I recently bought a powerful new PC (Intel Skylake Core i7 6700K 4.00GHz 8MB / Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme / Kingston 2x8GB, DDR4, 2666MHz, CL15, HyperX Fury) and I am looking around for products which will enhance my future prepard3d experience. 

What would you recommend as the best mesh/scenery/weather/ai traffic packages for Prepar3d v4 ?

edit: disregard the old system specs in my signature, forgot to update them...

[Richard McDonald Woods 168]

Hi Arjen,

Please do not rely on just a few opinions for your feedback.

I would suggest taking time to read/re-read as many forums as possible in order to 'get a feel'. You may also find that you can update some of your original software for free. Only then decide a cautious way forward suited to your specific needs.

HTH

[Sartanius 399]

Hey there, Arjen.  Welcome back!

Those are sage words from Richard.  There are lots of opinions here, and that's healthy.  Take your time.

I use FS Pilots 2010 for mesh, but haven't "installed" it into P3Dv4 yet since it isn't/won't be updated for P3Dv4.  I may need another solution for mesh.  I use all the Orbx FTX products for landclass, etc, and they are mostly updated for P3Dv4, but not all of them yet.  All the FSDreamTeam/FlightBeam/FlyTampa sceneries (i believe) have been converted to v4 and I have many of them installed.  I use Active Sky 2016 for weather (currently beta for P3Dv4) and MyTraffic 6 for AI (which is working very well for me.

Not saying this is the "uber" collection and configuration for P3Dv4, but it is working for me right now.

 

[stigt 13]

Thx for the replies so far guys, I will take my time to get myself acquainted again with this whole new sim. I dont want to screw up a virgin install with suboptimal addons. First I will buy prepar3d and start toying with it, and install my old yoke, throttle and rudder again. Then I will slowly start adding proper v4 addons. 

More suggestions/tips are most welcome people..keep 'em coming!

[Copper. 78]

It is time to make the move. I chose to move over from fsx to p3d v4, COMPLETELY/TOTALLY for these reasons:

addon compatibility/availability 

future prospects of add on development in all sim platforms current and future

XPlane was/is the only real contender, but it lacks maturity in the 3rd party development arena. I fear that without PMDG or Aerosoft support, that XPlane will struggle to attract the sim crowd, as wherever these two parties go, the feeder developers will follow. And where they <developers> lead to, sim users follow. At the moment, everyone is flocking toward P3D. And so, P3D it is.

 

I have P3D v4. I have FTX global and trees, and two payware airports installed with PMDGs 747. Active sky 16 for weather and a mix of REX and ASCA for cloud/sky Textures. I also bought Matt Davies' PTA - which has improved the look of things in v4. Lfpg - taxi2gate and Aerosoft egll (both airports are not officially v4 ready, and this is reflected at egll where I have no runway markings).

 

My impressions of P3D v4 - you can achieve more in v4 with the same hardware that you were using with/for fsx. DO NOT expect to be able to move all the sliders to the right, no matter what you see or hear on the internet. One still needs to be judicious about resource allocation. E.g. Where you place your sliders.

If you are not computer literate like me, it will take some time to learn the idiosyncrasies of this new platform to extract as much performance from your machine, and the sim as possible. This is the part of the process where I'm stuck now. I'm trying to work out what lessons/tweaks I can port from fsx into v4, and which ones simply don't work anymore.

overall, it seems v4 uses more of your pc resources which is reflected in higher CPU temps for me. I am in the steady 75-80c temp range, ALWAYS. 4790k CPU with oc to 4.3. I don't know if this is normal but I'm uncomfortable at that temp. I have a water cooler. New thermal paste applied. Still at 70-80C. I want to bring it down to 60-70C like I was for fsx, if that is realistic. GPU works fine as does it's temps. Gtx 1070 gets no hotter than 52C.

i am trying to fine tune my system and v4 install. I am doing so as best I can by flying between lfpg and egll. I have the aforementioned add ons installed. With most sliders in the mid range (high), I get approx 25-30fps on the ground, 21-25 airborne within 20nm of the two airports, and more than 30fps at altitude.

the airport scenery/buildings can be rather slow to load (black) sometimes.

 

thats about all I can share. Good luck!

[Lenny777 299]

"What would you recommend as the best mesh/scenery/weather/ai traffic packages for Prepar3d v4 ?"

 

Orbx stuff. MyTraffic6. ActiveSky. I would also get the EFASS NG for total flightplanning. And of course P3Dv4 is a godsend at 64 bit where you can now stretch the wings of your new system.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Also, if your starting from scratch consider the Aerofly 2 sim, with Orbx LOWI. That will give you all you need to,get back in the air, and works great with a modern PC.

Of course P3D v4 is excellent too, though to get the most out of it you'll be adding a lot of programs.

Just get both, and an Oculus, and you'll be happy. 😊

[Anxu00 176]

14 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Also, if your starting from scratch consider the Aerofly 2 sim, with Orbx LOWI. That will give you all you need to,get back in the air, and works great with a modern PC.

Of course P3D v4 is excellent too, though to get the most out of it you'll be adding a lot of programs.

Just get both, and an Oculus, and you'll be happy. 😊

P3Dv4 64 bit also requires many repurchase of the add-ons that many of us on previous P3D have again.  So in a sense being late to the party means that you only need to buy once for 64 bit.  From what you are looking for, you can pretty much get from the current vendors that already have P3Dv4 products.  PMDG, AS2016 (for weather).  LM refunds your license if you are not happy but unfortunately not for others.  To be honest, at the moment, other than removing the memory limit, after adding back my add-ons, performance is the same for me, plus now I have to repurchase many add-ons, so I am also seriously considering other options such as XP11, FSW, or Aerofly 2, where the license for the base sim is not as stiff, or just stay with P3D 3.4.  Either way for you, at the end,  the planes you are interested in using should be the decision factor rather then the SIM, and given that you like PMDG, then I would say P3Dv4 should be the only one suitable for that.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

There's some repurchasing for v4, but it's limited. 

So far I've only had to pay for FSUIPC, everything else is a free update (and I've got a LOT of payware!) 😊

The only things I can think of off the top of my head that will require payments for v4 are fs2crew, the gtn 750 and the Aerosoft 'bus.

For the OP, though, he'll be buying a bunch of fresh P3D v4 add ons, that will likely last him well into the future.