P3D? Hello AVSim. Happy to be here

[chubbard 0]

Hello AVSim community! I'm brand new to the forums and I thought my inaugural forum post should probably be an introduction.

I've been flying (what would become) the Microsoft Flight Simulator since it was the subLOGIC Flight Simulator, which I used on the Commodore 64, and Atari 520ST, then finally switching to the Microsoft licensed version on an early 80386-based PC. I got my private pilot's license right after I graduated college in 1988 and flew Beechcraft Skippers and C-172s for a couple of years before I decided to give up a very expensive hobby in favor of going back to school.

I didn't "fly" in any form again until 2004 when, on a United flight coming home from somewhere on the east coast, I discovered United lets you listen in to ATC on one of their audio entertainment channels. That got me hooked again, resulting in the purchase and installation of a copy of FS9.

I was blown away by how far the simulator had come since its inception! I was instantly hooked. I started out flying the 172 (or was it a 182?) just around my local area, but I eventually switched to the Baron 58, the KingAir 350, the LearJet 45, and, finally the Boeings. Somewhere along the way I discovered add-ons, and I added on! I added scenery packs, higher resolution terrain, ActiveSky weather, and a variety of payware and freeware airplanes and utilities.

Eventually I settled on two planes that I flew regularly, more or less forsaking all others. Those were the Flight 1 Cessna 441 (which I LOVED!), and a freeware version of the (then new) B787. To those two planes I added the Reality XP JL2 and JL4 glass cockpit avionics packages and never looked back.

Somewhere along the line I learned about virtual airlines, and ended up flying about 1,000 hours I think for one called Livewire Airlines. I really enjoyed being a part of the Livewire community. They weren't as uptight as other virtual airlines I'd sampled, that often tend to take themselves far too seriously. At the same time, they have a very active user community that included some active and retired airline pilots. It was interesting just to read about their experiences and advice. Apparently Livewire is no longer in existence, which is a shame.

Unfortunately, a hard disk crash brought my flight simming days to a screeching halt sometime in 2010. I was sick about it, and the prospect of trying to re-install the sim and all the add-ons and get everything re-licensed and reconfigured the way I had it before was just too much, so I closed that chapter and moved on to other things.

I have a couple of weeks off over the holidays this year, and I started to get the itch to go virtual flying again, so I've decided to try to get back into it. I was very sad at the news that Microsoft had decided to give up the simulator franchise, and more so with the announcement of their gamified "Microsoft Flight" endeavor. I imagine some Microsoft exec got a huge bonus for that bit of brilliance. I sure hope so anyway.

I was wondering if anyone would step in to fill the gap. It seemed like X-Plane might be the only game in town. I did actually try X-Plane 10 for a few days a year or so ago, but hated it. Probably I just didn't wait long enough to get over its learning curve before throwing in the towel.

About that same time I also learned that Lockheed had taken over development on what had been (I guess) FSX, but after my bad X-Plane experience, I didn't feel like dropping a bunch more money on virtual flying right at that moment, so I forgot about it. That is until last week, when I decided to try again. This time it went with Prepar3D v4, and, I have to say, I was initially very disappointed. Actually, I'm still pretty disappointed. What the hell happened to all the aircraft?!? There's no real C-172 substitute (in my opinion), and all the Boeings went away. Yeah, I get it, Boeing is a Lockheed competitor, and I'm sure some wise exec at LM decided they couldn't possibly include the enemy's airplanes in their sim. But are they really a competitor? Really? I mean I don't think Lockheed has been in the commercial airliner business since the L-1011 days... 30 or 40 years ago. Nevertheless, the Boeings are gone and the Prepar3D stable is populated with a plethora of Lockheed military aircraft and ancient prop-driven Lockheed airliners. I know a segment of the flight sim community will appreciate and enjoy those, but they don't interest me at all.

Also, I'm surprised the scenery is still at about FSX levels. I'm not sure, because I never used FSX, but the scenery doesn't seem to be a lick better than it was in FS9 with whatever improved terrain mesh add-on I had installed. That was 13 years ago. Honestly, by now I did really expect scenery (towns for instance) to be based on satellite imagery. I just mean 13 years ago there was already some experimentation with adding Google Earth textures over the landscape and, at that time, I really figured that the flight sim of the future (Microsoft FS-14 say) would have the world looking like the world. Maybe that was too ambitious, but I'm still kind of surprised things haven't seem to moved beyond the state of things 13 years ago.

I'm also disappointed to find that ATC hasn't really advanced. Man, when I discovered in-sim ATC in FS9, I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I loved it! I still do, but I would have expected some increase in sophistication over the last 13 years. Instead P3Dv4 is the same limited set of voices and same limited behavior that FS9 had. I expected the simulator 13 years down the road might finally provide better support for IFR approaches and standard departures. But no, still pretty much the same old one trick, vectors-to-ILS pony. I guess. It could be I'm just doing it wrong and nobody has shown me the error of my ways yet.

So anyway, I've been slowly working my way up the P3D learning curve, but I obviously have a long way to go. I need to find a "permanent" plane to fly, but, I have to tell you, the current me HATES and despises virtual cockpits. I know the future, enlightened me will LOVE them, but right now, they seem like a gimmick rather than an advancement. I'm sure I'll come around. In the meantime, I need a 2D panel, and, so far at least, the only plane I've been able to get to actually load a 2D panel is the Baron 58. I had high hopes for the Beech KingAir 350, because I used to like that plane in FS9, but, when I try to load its 2D panel, nothing shows but a black box (and, after I've tried, NO 2D panel on ANY plane, including the Baron, shows up anymore until I restart the sim).

So, for now at least, it looks like I'm stuck with the Baron. It's not that the Baron is *terrible*, but I'd really like my general aviation plane to be something with a turboprop (or at least a turbocharger!). I was very disappointed to find that the Baron is still just the same old Baron from FS9, with the same old 2D panel, still low res, still optimized for a 4x3 display.

Initially, I couldn't figure out how to get P3D to take advantage of my three monitors, but, after much messing around I did finally figure out how to define a custom wide display that spans all three monitors WITHOUT fish-eye distortion but WITH sufficient "over the nose" (over the 2D panel) visibility to actually see the runway while trying to land. Once I learned to do that, life got a lot better and things have been slowly improving in increments as I learn more. With the new wide display, I learned to re-size the Baron 2D panel to present a proper aspect ratio (circular gauges rather than fat elliptical ones), and add in the GPS, throttle quadrant and radio stack. That gives me a nice panel that I actually enjoy using (well, "enjoy" might be over-stating it, but it's certainly a workable panel now). I also have ActiveSky added back in (the new 64-bit P3Dv4 version) and continue to love it! Through a combination of aircraft.cfg tweaking and adjusting the elevator axis response curve via the new 64-bit FSUIPC v5 for PS3 v4, I have the Baron pretty flyable with my PFC "Cirrus" control yoke. Before then the elevator trim was WAY too sensitive all the time, and the elevator control itself was too sensitive at cruise speed.

And I've let myself get carried away! I have and will have many questions about P3D, and I know there are experts here that can help me with those. I'm looking forward to those exchanges, but they're for another post (and are probably more at home in the P3D forum anyway).

For now, I'm happy to have found you guys, and I'm looking forward to learning from and interacting with you via the forums over the coming weeks and months. Thanks for letting me in!

Charlie Hubbard

Kennewick, WA

[Johan_Dees 84]

Beware for a lot of grumpy old men, word not allowed and more.. woehahah!

[Chock 17,769]

Welcome to Avsim 

[Jim Young 2,356]

54 minutes ago, chubbard said:

Man, when I discovered in-sim ATC in FS9, I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I loved it! I still do, but I would have expected some increase in sophistication over the last 13 years.

I suspect you will never see an ATC program that fits your specifications.  Radar Contact tried.  Now we have ProATC-X for FSX and P3D.  It is being updated once a year and they are trying very hard to meet your specifications.  You know the default ATC could not be upgraded as Microsoft laid off the team building FSX?  And there was quite a long period of time before P3D first showed up.  And they are tied somewhat with the Microsoft EULA which will never to released to anyone. The release of a team of techs meant no more support for FS9 too.  Bummer!  So we have been "struggling" over the years and now P3D has arrived and they are doing some modest upgrades to FSX.  I am sure a decent ATC program would have been developed between 2006 and the end of 2017 had the FSX team survived.  I personally like ProATC-X.  It uses the latest NAVDATA and the ATC is fairly accurate (but not perfect).  It rightfully uses a co-pilot to help you fly the heavies.  It makes mistakes though on occasion and every mistake is huge in this hobby.  However, since it is being updated once a year (think the next update will be in April 2018), I have some confidence in it getting more and more accurate.  It works great with the PMDG 737 but not with the PMDG 777 and 747 as the co-pilot does not have the PMDG programming.  We'll see that in 2018.  Right now it is the best on the block.  German developers so you know it will be perfected one day soon!

For monitors, throttles, and other hardware for P3D, I would recommend visiting those particular forums in the Hardware section.  We have a lot of experts who visit there frequently and assist members with their questions.  Yes, some have posted monitor and throttle and other hardware questions in the P3D Forum but members complained that the info was not in one place as much of it applies to other simulators too.  So the owner set up the Hardware Forums.

P3D will eventually grow and get better too but I doubt it will satisfy everyone.  Everyone has a different computer system and moving those sliders around sometimes do not work when they are moved to the max or near the max.  Then they get upset.  I keep telling everyone P3D is fine in default mode where you fly just the defaults in default scenery, airports.  Then you add commercial addons like the PMDG 777 or FSDT airports and things start to go south fast if you do not reciprocate with lowering the sliders.

Enjoy!

Best regards,

Jim

[Sartanius 399]

Welcome, Charlie.  I certainly understand your disappointment with the basic stable of default aircraft in Prepar3D, but some are quite a bit better then those we had in FSX days.  I assume you have yet to try the 3rd party addon aircraft, especially the study level GA aircraft from A2A Simulations and the study level Boeing tube liners from PMDG.  Not to mention the host of addon scenery and airports... the list goes on and on as the money literally flies out of your wallet (lol).  I do believe that, as you ease back into the obsession, you'll discover more to love about where we are as a hobby, and will look forward to the steady progression towards more and more realism as the months and years pass.

Again, welcome!

[chubbard 0]

Hi dmiannay,

Thank you for the response. You're right, I haven't yet tried any of the high end 3rd party payware aircraft. It's still early days though. The big impediment so far has been the 2D panel issue. I saw someone post not long ago that most of the big payware plane foundries have stopped producing 2D panels entirely and only offer VC options. From the little looking around I've done, that does seem to be the case. This fact, more than anything else, leads me to believe that VCs must be the way to go, and there's just some piece of hardware that I'm missing or some procedure that I don't know about or don't understand that makes them seem so cumbersome to me.  It's too bad too, because there are some planes, like the Flysimware Cessna 441, that l would really like to fly. But that plane has no 2D panel option. So, until I can find out the secret to a good VC experience or to building my own custom 2D panel, I'm holding off until I can learn more.  I have been tentatively looking at, for example, Sim Innovations' "Air Manager" product with the eye to possibly building my own 2D panels. I used to modify existing FS9 panels pretty successfully, but that was years ago, and I don't even know if the process is the same under P3D.

Another thing holding me back on aircraft like the PMDG models is the complexity of the things. PMDG has an outstanding reputation for making high end, faithful simulations of very complicated aircraft, which is awesome for those people that want to experience as close to the real thing as they can without leaving the comfort of their computer room.  But I'll tell you, that's not me. There's a fine line here I guess. I want a realistic flight model, certainly. I'm happy to look up V speeds in a table based on weight, density altitude, etc. I want to know an appropriate flap schedule for conditions, and limitations on things like thrust reversers and spoilers. But I was actually okay with the likes of the old Boeings that came default in FS9 (only better flight models and appropriately tuned APs would have been nice).  What I'm not interested in is messing about with things like B737 hydraulic systems, the APU, the power buses, cold start procedures, bleed air systems, cabin pressurization and so on. I think it is incredible that the high end payware planes can simulate those systems, and I know it is exactly those kinds of details that interest a large segment of the Flight Sim population, but I don't think that includes me. During my time flying with Livewire Virtual Airlines, there was a rabid set of PMDG devotees that really enjoyed that kind of thing, and I remember one guy in particular once mentioned that he spend literally hours setting up his FMC, so it was tweaked just the way he wanted it for the optimal (or most realistic?) flight profile from airport A to airport B. He said, that part of it was actually more interesting to him than the flying part. I can't fault a guy for that level of interest, time, patience and, it was fun to read those guys' forum posts, but I didn't want to join them. I want a plane that starts up with the engines running, that will let me get from A to B. On the flight I am happy to worry about flap and gear retraction at the appropriate times, throttle settings, transitioning between pressure altitudes and flight levels appropriately, and getting guided to and shooting an ILS upon arrival. I want auto-throttle, auto-brakes and an auto-pilot I can actually figure out how to use, and I want speed brakes and reversers that behave somewhat realistically. Hopefully there is a middle ground out there. Actually, I'm embarrassed to say, I *did* have the PMDG 737 for FS9, and I was so intimidated by the vertical learning cliff that had to be scaled to fly the thing, I never flew it. I went back to my 787 for dummies.

[chubbard 0]

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

I suspect you will never see an ATC program that fits your specifications.  Radar Contact tried.  Now we have ProATC-X for FSX and P3D.  It is being updated once a year and they are trying very hard to meet your specifications.  You know the default ATC could not be upgraded as Microsoft laid off the team building FSX?  And there was quite a long period of time before P3D first showed up.  And they are tied somewhat with the Microsoft EULA which will never to released to anyone. The release of a team of techs meant no more support for FS9 too.  Bummer!  So we have been "struggling" over the years and now P3D has arrived and they are doing some modest upgrades to FSX.  I am sure a decent ATC program would have been developed between 2006 and the end of 2017 had the FSX team survived.  I personally like ProATC-X.  It uses the latest NAVDATA and the ATC is fairly accurate (but not perfect).

Hi Jim,

I was wondering if there was an add-on ATC package out there that tried to take the built in FS9 ATC to a new level. In general, when flying "casually" I'm okay with the simplistic vectoring you get out of the built in ATC, but I do think it would be fun and interesting to be able to optionally request certain approaches if you wanted to and have ATC know what to do to get you there. The interesting thing is, the default GPS unit that was in FS9 and is still in PD3 (Garmin GPS 500) is often aware of several additional approaches other than just "vectors to the ILS", so those are all in there lurking in a database somewhere. I'm sure they're no longer current, but I'm totally good with that. It's nice to be able to look up approach plates on the web and have them match with the simulator, but I'm never ever going to fly these in real life, so if the internal versions are not current, I don't mind.

Anyway, with a lot of extra approach options available in the built-in GPS, I'm surprised that out-of-the-box ATC still doesn't know about them. Or maybe I just don't know what I'm doing yet. I did discover just yesterday, for example, that, if I select a particular approach in the GPS, and go missed at the destination, the ATC menu now gives me the option of flying the published missed approach procedure, and then, if I do that, and call them back later, once established in the holding pattern say, they'll do the normal FS9 missed approach thing, which was to vector you back around for another shot at the ILS.

It just occurred to me that I don't select an approach in the GPS until ATC has already told me to "expect ILS runway whatsawhat".  Maybe if I picked a different approach early, they'd have me fly it instead? Why have I never tried that before?

[Jim Young 2,356]

I have been with FS since the beginning and had FS9 but never saw it as anything great.  In fact I was extremely excited when FSX was first released.  But I understand your desire for a better ATC.  In fact, I think we all want anything, whether ATC, an aircraft, or scenery to be as real as possible.  The technology is not completely there but I see some nice features with ProATC-X.  I have used ProATC-X with the default ATC on many occasions though and it is good especially for seeing other aircraft, using the proper takeoff and landing runways, etc.   With the default and ProATC-X you can be vectored, change runways for landing, or even go to another airport in case of an emergency.  Anyway, hopefully you will find what you need in P3D and ProATC-X (if you get it) in the future. 

[chubbard 0]

2 hours ago, Jim Young said:

I have been with FS since the beginning and had FS9 but never saw it as anything great...

Interesting how perceptions vary. FS9 may not have been a big advance from whatever immediately preceded it (FS 2002?) I don't know. My thing is, before FS9, the most recent version of Microsoft Flight Simulator that I'd run was circa 1992 or something like that. Compared to that, FS9 was a big deal!

And thanks for the tip on ProATC-X. I haven't heard of that before. I'll definitely look into it though. It sounds promising.

[pete_auau 1,158]

27 minutes ago, chubbard said:

Interesting how perceptions vary. FS9 may not have been a big advance from whatever immediately preceded it (FS 2002?) I don't know. My thing is, before FS9, the most recent version of Microsoft Flight Simulator that I'd run was circa 1992 or something like that. Compared to that, FS9 was a big deal!

And thanks for the tip on ProATC-X. I haven't heard of that before. I'll definitely look into it though. It sounds promising.

there  are  other  atc  like   pf3   pilot2atc 

[Sartanius 399]

4 hours ago, chubbard said:

The big impediment so far has been the 2D panel issue ...  This fact, more than anything else, leads me to believe that VCs must be the way to go, and there's just some piece of hardware that I'm missing or some procedure that I don't know about or don't understand that makes them seem so cumbersome to me ... So, until I can find out the secret to a good VC experience or to building my own custom 2D panel, I'm holding off until I can learn more.

I agree the VC panels can be a bit difficult at first, especially since all you've ever used in flight simulation has been 2D panels.  However, in an attempt to create a more realistic experience, VCs are definitely the next logical step.  The barrier for most is how to get to the switch or button you need at a critical moment to properly operate your flight.  With the 2D panels, all the switches and buttons were right there, fixed in place and easy to click.  The trick with the VC panels is being able to move around easily (and realistically, like really turning your head). Changing views in the cockpit is the key, and a new addon called ChasePlane really makes it easy and natural.  Read up on it and watch some YouTube videos to see how easy it is to move around the cockpit.  Once you get past the initial awkwardness of not having everything right there in front of you, you will never go back to 2D panels.  It really is more natural and realistic, and the VC cockpits are configured exactly like they are in real life, which contributes to the natural progression of making addons more like the real thing.

I can't say that your experience will be the same, but I'd venture a guess that most who held on to their 2D panels till they weren't available anymore, are now perfectly at home in the VC world.  But, at the end of the day, if you really just want 2D panels, there are still aircraft out there with 2D panels to suit your liking. There's no "one size fits all" in this hobby, and that's the beauty of it.  Enjoy getting reacquainted with the hobby!

[Stoley 3]

Welcome to AVsim Charlie hope you enjoy 

[simbol 5,819]

Welcome to AVSIM, I understand and relate to your comments.

I suggest you look at the Phenom 300 and Cessna planes from Carenado.

Also the PMDG Boeing series which are a must for any Boeing lover.

If you need help with anything do not hesitate to ask me at any time.

Best Regards 

Simbol 

[pedrotrindade 335]

Welcome to Avsim Charlie.