Until I took an Arrow to the Knee...

[Chock 17,769]

Just for a bit of fun, here's a comparison between the Just Flight Piper PA28R Arrow III (or IV or whatever) in FSW and in P3D V4, and purely for the comedy value of alluding to that 'Arrow to the Knee' meme from Skyrim, I took this particular Arrow to Kneeland Airport in California. And you thought this comedy stuff was just thrown together eh?

Some things to note: FSW is on medium settings with no AI traffic because my PC struggles a bit with it at the moment and will continue to do so until I put more RAM into it (next week), and it is apparent that FSW is not optimised properly yet since it is rubbish in full screen mode and shouldn't be if P3D V4 can run like this, because P3D V4 is on the other hand on pretty high settings and has Active Sky and Cloud Art in there and also has Terraflora in there as well and the AI traffic is up high too and all the fancy HDR lighting options are ticked. 

For performance reference, the computer has a ASUS Strix RX480 GPU with 8Gb of DDR5 RAM, the processor is a Kaby Lake 7th generation i5, the motherboard is a ASUS Prime Z270P with 4Gb of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM on it, both sims get about 45 FPS on the noted settings with that hardware at present, but performance is brought down somewhat by FRAPS.

Other things worth noticing: The lighting in general on the textures in FSW is better because of all that PBR malarkey, but the PA-28R does not have internal objects casting shadows in the VC (yet), which are there in P3D, although FSW does have directional lighting affecting the surfaces, so things like the ambient light falling on the panel do look better than in P3D and FSX, but those large moving shadows certainly are missed in the FSW version at the moment as they do add a lot to the feeling of being there:

 

[AOB 78]

Thanks for posting. I like the cockpit shadows on the P3D and not having the fencing around the airport, but thought the scenery was a little bit better in FSW overall. 

[hs118 707]

Odd how both of the sims did not accurately reflect the landclass around the airport. Poor Alan, dodging the trees.

I am really liking the atmospheric look in FSW in all the videos so far. PTA is a must for P3D to get accurate Rayleigh scattering but it seems that FSW has it built into the shaders.

Also, TruSky has a ton of potential. Hoping they continue development...it looks great.

 

 

[ca_metal 2,024]

Nice video! FSW is really shaping up well.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

Great video Chock!  Thanks for sharing.  I concur on all the points made.  There seems to also be a difference in "feel" (handling) from FSW and P3D.  I sense a subtle difference between the two sims when I fly them, but you didn't mention it.  Would like to know your thoughts on it.

[Chock 17,769]

To be honest I wouldn't say the two sims feel desperately different in terms of flying around, you can see from that video the control inputs are not any different at all; nor is there any difference in the switch functionality and options between that Arrow in P3D and FSW (or FSX for that matter). As a result, the Arrow seems to be able to get in and out of that tiny strip okay in either sim and flies just the same as far as I can tell.

Nevertheless, with A2A's AccuFeel technology built into it, FSW does have some AccuFeel rattles and shakes which are not in P3D (you can hear these one the video in the FSW landing), although they are in my copy of FSX-SE because I bought the A2A AccuFeel V2 add-on for that (can't get it for P3D V4 yet). But... unlike with the payware version of AccuFeel, you don't get any GUI slider options in FSW to tweak that AccuFeel to your preference, you just take what you are given; I think it would be nice to have that available in FSW. So yes, you can notice some touchdown sounds in the FSW landing which are not present in the P3D one, but apart from that it isn't hugely different in my opinion, although I do know that when sideslipping, AccuFeel would have given me some warning rumble sounds to replicate the elevator buffet one feels when getting close to the edge of the stall and would also have given me the airflow noise one hears when doing that. I suspect this is the main reason why people are saying FSW flight feels a bit different.

What really is apparent though from this video however, is that here we have P3D V4 which has ASP4 (49.99), ASCA (29.99) and TerraFlora (23.99) added, so that's 100 quid's worth of add-ons to have it look that way, not including the costs of the sims, where FSW is also cheaper, nor the 27.99 it costs for the Arrow for either sim. Discounting the cost of the Arrow add-on, since they both had to have it bought for each sim (damn this flight simming malarkey is expensive lol), which kind of cancels out that cost, FSW has nothing added to it and it looks pretty good, whereas default P3D would probably also need Orbx FTX Global in there (which would be 99 quid) to get a similar look (so now that's up to 200 quid in add-ons if that would have been in there as well).

Personally I just use Ultimate Terrain Europe 2 instead of FTX since I normally only fly around Europe and I like the lighting it adds (although I have customised the light textures myself lol), but even that is 25 quid. So yeah, you can have P3D look good, and personally I think the TerraFlora trees in this vid make it look better than the default FSW (Orbx) ones, but it's not for free that I got that look, although that TF add-on is cool considering it is worldwide and only 20-odd quid. Even then I think the sky in FSW looks way better than in P3D in spite of that HiFi cloud art helping it out in P3D, which is pretty much a necessity for P3D (either that or REX), because the default clouds in P3D look awful and it only has default weather themes unless one adds Active Sky or some such, although at present FSW is stuck with preset themes too, but just look at how good they are even then, so god alone knows how cool they may  end up looking when you can have metars defining their appearance.

Looks, and how we can add them aside, the reason I mention all this, is that with fancier weather than a stock ESP-based sim, and fancier terrain than one too, plus tweaks to the flight model, DTG will be faced with optimising FSW at a point where it already has many of the tweaks we often add to our sims. It's easy to get 130 frames per second on P3D V4 when it is straight out of the box on the options settings it comes with, providing one has a fairly decent PC, and I am impressed with what Lockheed Martin has achieved in that regard, since even on a fairly run of the mill PC P3D can run okay if you forgo some of its options (not something one can do too much in FSW at the moment), but once we start adding all that stuff and turning on those lighting effects, those frame rates start coming down to the level FSW is at prior to it having some optimisation and (hopefully) some additional GUI sliders to play with, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. 

Clearly DTG have played about with this stuff and probably still are doing, as no doubt LM are too, for example, the preceding experiment at making ESP 64 bit which DTG had - aka Flight School - had traffic lights on the roads in the terrain changing with the AI traffic, and although it was kind of cool to see, I can understand why they binned it off because really, at 1,500 feet, you certainly can't see that occurring lol, so it was probably a bit over the top to have that in there, although it would be kind of nice to have that be a GUI switchable choice for those who wanted it, I dunno, if maybe you wanted to play at being a traffic control chopper pilot or something.

A lot of the above is of course just my opinion, comparisons are always kind of fun to do, but I leave it up to everyone else to make of this one what they will really. As it stands FSW is kind of fun, and I'm happy to support it by coughing up for that Arrow when I already had it for P3D and FSX, but there's still a way to go with FSW although I do think it is starting to look like a serious contender. It is certainly a lot of bang for your bucks, even if you don't get the Arrow and simply fly the default PA-28 around instead, although of course you won't be able to have the gear retract on that one, well not unless you slam it into the runway at 1,500 fpm lol, doing that will always retract wheels into the wings on any aeroplane, even ones with fixed landing gear. 

[Murmur 3,941]

Nice comparison video. I think FSW visuals already look one generation forward compared to P3D (+addons). This is very evident if you compare side by side the various matching images from the video.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

15 hours ago, Chock said:

"To be honest I wouldn't say the two sims feel desperately different in terms of flying around..."

Aye....I totally forgot about Accu-Feel being part of FSW by default.  Thanks for the detailed explanation nonetheless.