Prepar3d as secondary sim?

[laserit 93]

To be fair, if you've historically been using P3D the costs have been minimal concerning addons and P3D versions.

I can definitely see how moving to the P3D platform for the first time can be intimidating, especially if your knew to the ESP platform.

[Anxu00 176]

13 hours ago, Upkeep said:

This is especially the case as I like tubeliners, though I do try out GA occasionally, and would possibly be content with a GA only secondary sim. 

If you like tubeliners, like detailed major airport sceneries, don't mind paying for a decent weather injector like AS2016, then the base license, PMDG, Airports, Weather injector sit you back 5-6 hundreds, and you would have a nice secondary tubeliners sim platform.  If I were to have the time and patience for tubeliner, that's what would make my tubeliner sim.  Right now, I am enjoying GA flying with Ortho4XP in XP11 too much to think about whether I need to get into a tubeliner (I have the PMDG, the weather injector, the paid airports sceneries already, so my cost would be the base sim), which right now is just not my thing.

[MrFuzzy 2,117]

I will give you my impressions and personal opinions, having tested them both.

Graphically, P3D v4 looks much better once you install at least ORBX FTX Global textures. You can save money on HD trees, since the default animated 3D trees look awesome. I like P3D graphics much more than XP11's, which looks underwhelming to me even after tweaking it and installing HD mesh, water overhaul and VFR landmarks, because glitches such as color banding on sky and water and reflection bugs persist, ruining the experience.

On the other hand, XP gives you the opportunity to download real world ground textures from Bing, Google maps, etc. and improve at least the look of the terrain significantly, at the cost of much time to be spent looking for good sources and downloading, and huuuuge amounts of hard disk space.

P3D v4 ATC is basically the same as FSX and therefore much better than XP11's. In XP11 you can't even tune on ATIS frequencies and request airport directions and landing clearance in VFR flights, and often (always!) the controller keeps requesting for instructions you already have executed. XP11 ATC is very bad, I would not even consider it beta, rather alpha.

On the simulation / flight model point of view (premise: I am neither a real life pilot nor an expert!) to me XP ground handling is terrible and the effect of wind gusts seems exaggerated. On the other hand, XP has sloped runways while P3D hasn't, and looks a lot smoother than P3D at fps <30.

Add-ons: yes, most P3D add-ons are payware. Real world weather, however, can be obtained for free with FSXWX + FSUIPC (the unregistered version works just fine).

Altough with the sad, strictly personal consideration that all flight simulators currently available for PC are still underdeveloped with respect to the hardware potentialities, I believe that P3D could give you something - at least something "different" - in addition to XP11 experience. So if you have money to invest, you may consider to buy P3D as well.

[CarlosF 1,234]

7 hours ago, enek0id said:

Graphically, P3D v4 looks much better once you install at least ORBX FTX Global textures.

Even with ORBX global textures, P3D still looks too cartoonish for my taste.

[Mountain Man 142]

On 7/31/2017 at 2:53 AM, tonywob said:

I recently picked up P3D v4. What really frustrated me immediately is that everything is payware, and the base  sim needs lots of addons for it to be decent. At a minimum, I needed a camera system for doing views, a basic weather engine, ORBX global and some aircraft. All of this costs a lot of money and coming from X-Plane  where people release tools and addons for free, this frustrated me. Not only does the sim cost $200, but you are then required to pay out even more money for things that other sims have built-in (Which is just wrong in a sim that costs so much money). Oh, and when P3D v5 comes out with minor features, you'll have to pay that $200 again.

To be fair, the P3D EULA explicitly states that it is not intended for the home user or as entertainment software, and I suspect it is priced accordingly.  Even X-Plane's professional edition carries a substantially higher price tag than its home-use version.

[Mountain Man 142]

21 hours ago, Upkeep said:

...the best action for me:

1. Drop the idea of P3D completely

2. Concentrate any available budget on one sim: XP

Instead of spending money on add-ons, spend the money on putting together the best computer you can so you can max-out XP11.  I think that would have the best long-term payoff.

[Vindeballe 60]

On 30/7/2017 at 8:58 PM, Upkeep said:

I have been thinking for a while of getting Prepar3d as well a Xplane. I have been an Xplane user since version 9 and also have 10 and 11 which I use all the time. I have a modest amount of payware aircraft and I have no problems with XPlane at all. I particularly like all the community material including airports and utilities, many of which are free. I like the regular updates, the forums, and everything else. In short, I enjoy XP. 

However, I would also like to try something different as well, just for variety., but I have a limited budget and would really want to keep any available expenditure to Xplane, and continue with this as my primary sim. 

Is it worth my getting Prep3d as well, bearing in mind that I would probably limit payware to one PMDG or so.  I have a feeling that I would not be very satisfied with just a vanilla version. Does anyone run Prep3d as a secondary sim, and has that made any sense?

I know a lot of posters use both. I would just appreciate some advice on the matter. As far as I can see there is very little freeware around for Prep3d, so if to make it usable I have to spend a lot it is probably a non starter and I would just keep to XP. 

So, would be interested for some views. 

Thanks so much

Upkeep

Try asking in the P3D forum, they are just as religious about there favorit sim. 

They all have there pro and cons, personally I like the look of P3D better then X-plane 11, but that is personal taste.

[tonywob 4,768]

Indeed, you will get a very different answer in the P3D forum.

If you are already invested in the platform then going to v4 is likely a no-brainer, but for anyone new to simming or migrating from X-Plane, the prices are going to come as a shock.

[sd_flyer 6,030]

Talking about P3D vs XP11... a funny review 

 

[Upkeep 8]

Thanks again everyone for all the replies. Everything has been very helpful and I do appreciate all the comments made.

Thanks again.

Regards

Upkeep

[tonywob 4,768]

I think the OP is happy with the replies here, so closing this topic just in case it degrades into a sim war :)