Are you happy with P3Dv4?

[WebMaximus 372]

1 minute ago, Guevorkyan said:

Short answer: Very.

Long answer: Very much.

[tull 290]

I bought it yesterday and I think it is fabulous!

Regards

Paul EGCC

[EddieB 15]

Eh, Kind of underwhelmed myself. I was hoping for a little more frame-rate improvement moving to 64-bit. But as others have said, the default KSFO for me is a huge frame hog with the A2A Constellation. Once I'm in the air from any major airport, the stutters stop. It is still a 10 year old program with a botox injection and I guess I was expecting more. I still fly it for sure as the ATC is well above par with other sims. Until LM re-writes a new sim from scratch, this will always be the original FSX with a new facelift in a 60 year old's body. Just my opinion.

[swiesma 625]

I had again a perfect flight yesterday from ORBX LOWi to JustSim Hamburg, with all kinds of ORBX stuff, Vector to its fullest, Black Marble, PMDG 737, AS16, ENTEX, VATSIM etc.

 

Not one single issue, perfect visuals, stunning performance. A great experience overall. Would have never been possible with v3.

[WebMaximus 372]

11 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Eh, Kind of underwhelmed myself. I was hoping for a little more frame-rate improvement moving to 64-bit. But as others have said, the default KSFO for me is a huge frame hog with the A2A Constellation. Once I'm in the air from any major airport, the stutters stop. It is still a 10 year old program with a botox injection and I guess I was expecting more. I still fly it for sure as the ATC is well above par with other sims. Until LM re-writes a new sim from scratch, this will always be the original FSX with a new facelift in a 60 year old's body. Just my opinion.

To a large degree I concur but like someone else said a couple of posts/pages back let's hope now that we have 64-bit 'out of the way' maybe that means the devs both LM as well as 3rd party can start focusing on other things to further improve the platform and who knows...maybe our 60 years old one day will hit 20 again 

[bonchie 2,305]

Not really, but I'm not satisfied with XP11 either. 

With P3Dv4, it's still the graphical limitations of the ESP engine that bug me (hard transitions to airport grounds, how water intersects with land, how city textures just spill over into the water, etc.).

With XP11, it's the atmospherics, the ground handling, the lack of good weather, and the general lack of direction by LR on fixing long standing quirks about their program. 

The frustrating thing is that both sims generally solve the other's problems within their own context. 

So while I really like P3Dv4 when compared to it's predecessors, I'm still waiting for a holy grail moment. Another coat of paint on the ESP engine isn't it. 

[ricka47 611]

I was hoping for more of a revolutionary change in v4 and instead it was an evolutionary change and that is not all bad by any means.  But, much from FSX that needed updating is still there.  As noted above, maybe now that 64-bit is here, some of the things that have needed fixing for a long time can get addressed.

[WebMaximus 372]

Maybe a mix of P3D and XP 😉

[swiesma 625]

@bonchie I always say that the perfect flightsim would be a mixture of XP11 and P3D :-)

[David Roch 1,973]

7 hours ago, swiesma said:

@bosflo Install some ORBX addons, crank up the LOD and set the texture_size_exp and your eyes will drop out compared to v3 :-)

Hi Stephen,

Can you please elaborate on that one?
Thanks!

[Cargostorm 151]

1 hour ago, WebMaximus said:

To a large degree I concur but like someone else said a couple of posts/pages back let's hope now that we have 64-bit 'out of the way' maybe that means the devs both LM as well as 3rd party can start focusing on other things to further improve the platform and who knows...maybe our 60 years old one day will hit 20 again 

Hopefully they do not come up with 4k or 8k textures, 1000s of dynamic lights and shadows that will bring the hardware of the sim further to its knees.

There are a few things that have been discussed over at the LM forum and here and really needs to be adressed to make V4 superior to V3. With PTA, the visual difference is not apparent at first.

1. Loss of performance (fps) when using dynamic lighting. If an airport like EDDF V2 Prof. is equipped with lots of lights, the sim will go into its knee. I see a fps drop when using 4x MSAA of about 50 to 60% (Intel 4970K, Nvidia 980TI), which is significant. As a TrackIR user, the more fps the more fluent will be the image when the  head moves upwards or sidewards. Unfortunately, DL cannot be switched off when using PMDG aircrafts, as they do only support landing and tax lights with DL on. So we are in a trap with the PMDG aircrafts: either you just fly at day or you live with the performance loss that DL currently provides.

 

2. Delayed Texture loading and blurries when using photo scenery. Under certain situation (even with moderate slider settings), the sim will not keep up during flight with texture loading and textures become blurry. Other people reportet that they even lost autogen at the arrival airport as a consequence.

 

3. The add-on.xml method has it bugs when using with scenery components or traffic bgl files. It can result in CTDs, API.DLL and other errors. At first it is not apparent as everything seems to work. But again, certain scenery combinations can make the sim crash as a result of this "new" method. LM has recognized this and hopefully will provide a fix.

 

4. You have to make compromises with addons during the transition time: FS9 AI aicrafts are no longer supported. Older airport sceneries may no longer work. OrbX Objectflow is still in beta but introduces regular stutters in regular 2 seconds intervals when active. But this will hopefully be solved.

 

[WebMaximus 372]

Yep, sounds like P3Dv4 still has some distance to cover before it will be the super version some have said it already is.

As for nr 1 on your list I wonder if this could be a solution?

Reason I'm thinking that without even having P3Dv4 installed myself yet is they mention P3Dv4 users are not required to have DL enabled to experience volumetric lighting effects whatever that means...

[Cargostorm 151]

14 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

As for nr 1 on your list I wonder if this could be a solution?

Reason I'm thinking that without even having P3Dv4 installed myself yet is they mention P3Dv4 users are not required to have DL enabled to experience volumetric lighting effects whatever that means...

Would be indeed interesting to see a side comparison between the volumetric lighting effects of the 737 immersion package and the dynamic taxi and landing lights in PMDG aircrafts. Thanks for making me aware of it.

[SpiritFlyer 987]

10 hours ago, swiesma said:

 

 

@bosflo Install some ORBX addons, crank up the LOD and set the texture_size_exp and your eyes will drop out compared to v3 :-)

Exactly, system speed, stamina and stability ARE delivered in P3Dv4. In fact, I found that even increasing the LOD has little performance downside while completely eliminating any autogen pop-ups.

All the posts about positive results from nearly all adopters with the equipment to run it, and the doubts and fears expressed from those that haven't and don't changes nothing.

Either do, or don't, but there is no point in trying to blend the two opposing opinions into a grey foggy bottomless nothing that gives the false appearance of moderation, but which just negates the meaning of both sides!

Ah..., or something like that...I think... 

Kind regards,

[pmb 5,137]

Which value do you guys crank up LOD to?

Thanks and kind regards, Michael