Which is better, P3D v3.0, or v3.4?

[Noel 4,483]

I know I'm a luddite by this forum's standards but what's happening is I've had 3.0 going since it was released, finding no reason to go thru the hassle to update since all works very well for me.    I have no plans to go to v4.x until I do a complete new hardware build which I'm pushing out as far as possible, waiting for Ice Lake & nV Volta if they turn out to be as good as we hope.  I'm on a 3930K/GTX Titan for the past 5+ years, still going strong enough.   Recently I have experienced some issues w/ scenery and a few other oddities, like unable to start or end a flight at KSAN or KPDX, and I have FTX PNW & NCA/SCA sceneries installed.  So I've thought about reinstalling 32bit P3D and everything that goes w/ it.

Please give your thoughts on whether or not 3.4 was a good move over 3.0 if you recall your experience w/ that.  I'm assuming it must be better but before going thru what it will take time-wise to reinstall it all I'd like to hear some opinion if you have moment.  Thanks!

[scottb613 1,186]

Hi Noel,

Each release includes bug fixes and improvements - I don't think I would go back to v3.0... I found P3Dv3.4 stable and enjoyable... There was a Win10 bug going around that caused P3Dv3 to crash... I think there is a recent update out that corrects the Win10 bug - which some of your issues may have been related to...

I'm running P3Dv4.1 now on an i2700K and GTX970 and it really works quite well with moderate settings...

Regards,
Scott

[Noel 4,483]

Thanks Scott that's good to know.  I just purchased the 64-bit update of the Majestic Dash 8 because of the sale price for future use.   Maybe I should choke down the $199--already paid that twice for v2 and 3--and just go all the way to v4.x. The other thing is, so far, it's only those two airports that are causing real troubles, and there's a big world out there!  Seems to still work great everywhere else.  It's such a PITA to reinstall everything and I have plenty I'd sure rather wait until the big hardware upgrade to go 64 bit.  

I wonder what would cause this issue w/ KSAN/KPDX, both default airports in FTX regional scenery.  It seemed to start acting up when I installed FTX OpenLC NA a month or so back, prior to then no problems anywhere.  I uninstalled it but to no avail so reinstalled it again to no avail.  If I were to only update 3.0 to 3.4 would I just uninstall the client and reinstall a new client?

[scottb613 1,186]

Hi Noel,

I hear ya - I just made the move around a month ago and I'm still working on getting everything up to speed...

I had all the usual suspects - fairly heavy in addons - for V3...

The problem I had with the Win10 bug and V3 expressed itself like this - I'd try to load a plane and scenery - it would start the loading process with the progress bar would start incrementing - towards the end of the process - it would freeze for a moment and then crash to desktop... This bug was discussed at length on the LockMart forum...

The work around I used for a month or more was - choose the default piper cub at some small out of the way airport - start the sim - it would run - then swap to the plane I wanted to use and move to the airport I wanted as well... It seemed to work - your mileage may vary...

Regards,
Scott

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Please give your thoughts on whether or not 3.4 was a good move over 3.0 if you recall your experience w/ that.  I'm assuming it must be better but before going thru what it will take time-wise to reinstall it all I'd like to hear some opinion if you have moment.  Thanks!

On my system, 3.4 was better though I had to do homework about video drivers.  They made some VAS improvements there but it looks like there was some bug in the video drivers that was causing P3D to hold onto VAS.  376.19 did not have the bug and I'm still on.  I have both 3.4 and 4.1 installed (just installed 4.1 yesterday).

[Noel 4,483]

Thanks for that Gregg.    So what is 376.19?  Something after 3.4?

[Noel 4,483]

6 hours ago, scottb613 said:

Hi Noel, .....It seemed to work - your mileage may vary...

Regards,
Scott

Thanks Scott, I'm on Win 7, of course, as a proud luddite!

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

49 minutes ago, Noel said:

 So what is 376.19?

That's the Nvidia driver I use.

[Noel 4,483]

Well, I'm prepping to reinstall P3D and will probably go w/ 3.4 for now.   I was getting major pauses up to 4-6 seconds flying the Dash 8 over LA area which I never had before so I think it will be worth trying to start over w/ a complete new install.   I don't have much of anything installed on this Win 7 OS except for P3D w/ its addons so I tend to doubt these pauses are coming from other Windows services.   

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

2 hours ago, Noel said:

Well, I'm prepping to reinstall P3D and will probably go w/ 3.4 for now.   I was getting major pauses up to 4-6 seconds flying the Dash 8 over LA area which I never had before so I think it will be worth trying to start over w/ a complete new install.   I don't have much of anything installed on this Win 7 OS except for P3D w/ its addons so I tend to doubt these pauses are coming from other Windows services.   

You don't have Aerosoft Los Angeles installed, do you?  I used to get long pauses when downtown loaded.

[Noel 4,483]

9 hours ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

You don't have Aerosoft Los Angeles installed, do you?  I used to get long pauses when downtown loaded.

No I don't and as I may have mentioned I've really not added anything in the last 4 or 5 months or so except FTX OpenLC NA that seemed to be when I began seeing these pauses AND also .   And I've not been able to start or end a flight at KSAN nor KPDX, so I went ahead and started the process last night.   Everything is proceeding well so far w/ P3D 3.4 installed, Global, OpenLC, FTX NCA/SC, KPSP and KRDD.    I'll stop after installing the Dash 8 and see how she goes now.   I'm pretty amazed how long this install went w/o needing any fixing, but then again this is why when something works well I don't like to mess with it, thru and including doing the incremental updates which I really want no part of.  In fact, I'd much rather see LM avoid these incremental 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 updates and just do a complete update every 1.5y-2 years or something along those lines, and beta test the hell out of it prior to release.  This would give all of the content developers some breathing room instead of them having to try to keep up with these incremental updates.

[Mitch24 194]

I spent around $300 to upgrade to V4.. we've all had to do it.... just get it over with 

[Bobsk8 12,489]

I have used 3.4 since a month after it was released. Number of crashes in all the time.... Zero.. Good FPS, all my add ons work and never had an OOM. I am not going to fix what isn't broken. 

[Noel 4,483]

9 minutes ago, Mitch24 said:

I spent around $300 to upgrade to V4.. we've all had to do it.... just get it over with 

Quite frankly I don't see the point for me because I don't get OOMs--unless that changes w/ 3.4 at which point I'll likely pay the freight then.  When I do my next major hardware revision I will definitely jump in then as well, and right now I'm not sure when that will be.   Now if LM decided to make a few minor revisions to ATC and a few other things that interest me that would be a different story, but as I say w/o OOMs I can hardly see the point.

[Mitch24 194]

4 minutes ago, Noel said:

Quite frankly I don't see the point for me because I don't get OOMs--unless that changes w/ 3.4 at which point I'll likely pay the freight then.  When I do my next major hardware revision I will definitely jump in then as well, and right now I'm not sure when that will be.   Now if LM decided to make a few minor revisions to ATC and a few other things that interest me that would be a different story, but as I say w/o OOMs I can hardly see the point.

You can say this now, but LM is continually developing.. and you will get quickly get left behind. When everyone else has all the cool features and latest sim technology you will upgrade. Especially when developers start going 64-bit only.