Dear all,

Those of you thatsaw my other topic on the TFDi 717 will know that I'm in the process of setting up a new P3Dv4 installation after having been away from simming for the about two years. In the meantime much has changed, and all kidns of updates and upgrades have been released, sometimes even without the possibility of a 'upgrade price', requiring a full purchase once again. As an aside, there are several toold that I've never had and do wish to have now, given how far along they appear to have come. Please see the list below: If I'm choosing between two products, I'll note that, and I'd love to hear which one you prefer. As for the others, your opinion on its usefulness in P3Dv4 is much appreciated.

• FSUIPC5: I've always had this nifty little tool. I mostly use it for assignments of my Saitek controllers, storing different button assignments for different plane models. If P3Dv4 has a way to handle this, though, I'm not sure I want to spend the 35$+ on it, as there doesn't seem to be an upgrade path from FSUIPC4 to 5.
• Ezdok Camera Addon v2: Given how much I liked the first version, the 12$ upgrade seems like a no brainer, but what do you all think? How many people use this?
• Prepar3D tweak assistant: This is where things get a little murky for me. I understand you can tweak the shaders with this, and the result may be amazing. How many of you use it, and to what extent has it enhanced your sim?
• Active Sky Prepar3D v4 (ASP4): Seems like an awesome addon, but with a steep price (~60$). It seems like it's worth the money, given how people rave about it!
• REX4: I believe I bought three version of Rex: one for FS2004, than REX Essentials for FSX, and finally the Overdrive upgrade. Clearly the textures look great, but how do they compare to current Prepar3D v4 textures? Have default textures been upgraded somehow to make REX4 obsolete, or at least 'less useful'?
• ASCA vs Rex Skyforce3D: Now here's my biggest issue. Having read multiple forum threads as well as watched a bunch of Youtube videos, I still can't make much sense out of this. They both seems to include somewhat the same features, but not quite... So any opinion as to what is preferred would be most appreciated!

Any thoughts about these products, but especially about ASCA vs Skyforce, would be much appreciated. Looking forward to see what people think of all of this... Above all, I'm amazed by the progress made in the last two years. It seems like the sim has truly reached new heights in that time!

I love EZDOK but many others like Chaseplane which is a competitor.

I would go for Active Sky as it consume less space than skyforce.

P3D requires less tweaking, it is not like FSX, you should invest money somewhere else rather that tool.

Good luck 

Simbol 

 

+1 on Chaseplane... there really is no comparison IMHO. 
+1 on ActiveSky as well... a comprehensive weather add-on with an impressive legacy.
+1 on ASCA with ActiveSky.  With my aging PC, ASCA cloud textures give me much better performance in thick cloud cover.  Of course, YMMV.

Concerning FSUIPC... it isn't really necessary anymore, certainly for the higher-end 3rd party aircraft, but it is still very valuable for the types of things you were using it for.  Certainly don't want to do anything to impugn all the amazing work Pete Dowson has done, but it appears to be waning in popularity for Prepar3D due to Simconnect.  Of course there are a wide host of opinions about this.

Tweaking tools are fine, but, like FSUIPC, not really necessary.  P3Dv4 does a fine job as-is out of the box.  But again, this is subjective.  Some folks love to tweak, and some folks don't.

Enjoy your return the flight sim world, Benjamin.
 

Agree with the others regarding ASCA and ASP4. FSUIPC is a must *IF* you want complete control over control assignments. Really the most efficient way to maintain different control profiles for different aircraft.

 

Vic

FSUIPC, Active Sky and Ezdok are my must haves. 

 

3 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

• Prepar3D tweak assistant: This is where things get a little murky for me. I understand you can tweak the shaders with this, and the result may be amazing. How many of you use it, and to what extent has it enhanced your sim?

That's commonly known as PTA.   I'm not going to call it a must-have, but it is really neat, and surprisingly simple to use (you can simply load presets people make, rather than wading through options, if you choose). I came from Flight Sim circa 2009, so, you can imagine my wonderment coming to P3Dv4 + ASP4 + ASCA + PTA on a brand-new computer.

 

Thanks all for the useful comments. Let me just recap everything...

• FSUIPC: sounds like it’s been declining in popularity a bit! I think I’ll leave it for now and get it if I find that it would still be as useful to me as before.
• ezdok: sounds like there is something else on the market as well... what do you believe makes Chaseplane better than Ezdok? It does sound like I might want to lay off on this one too, for now.
• PTA: agin some mixed views, so may lay off of this too for now. If somebody perhaps knows a good YouTube video or review that shows comparison shots of default as well as PTA alternations, that would be useful thoug! I haven’t been able to find such a thing so far...
• ASP4: all around positive reviews, so this I’ll deifnitely get!
• REX4: so far nobody has mentioned this. Cna I take that to mean that it’s obsolete, or perhaps not tha5 useful anymore?
• ASCA vs Skyforce: sounds like people are leaning towards ASCA, at least in this thread?

So far, thanks for all the comments, it’s been very useful so far! If anybody has more to add, feel free of course.

Chaseplane is more 2018 then ezDok in my opinion. The developer is very proactive so it feels like you’ll get your monies worth for quite awhile. The essence is the same for both programs. Map some views to navigate your cockpit and assign joystick buttons but chaseplane right now seems the better investment. I would highly recommend it.

If you need to save money wait on PTA. It’s just not necessary to get back into things. Eventually it’s nice to add some flare/realism to your sim.

Envtex seems to have taken the lead for textures over REX4. There probably isn’t a noticeable difference for most but Envtex, like Chaseplane has had more active development in the past year. I use Envtex and it’s great. Works and really improves on default textures. Plus you can get envshade for $5 and skip the whole PTA thing as it’s a simple shader addition.

Skyforce vs ASCA is a hot topic. Honestly, I think Skyforce looks significantly better but it’s pretty raw. I have had issues with it. Some weird performance issues with overcast and active sky weather engine. In networked mode it was all kinds of crazy for me. The weather engine does a 20 second injection which doesn’t bother me like it does some people but it’s jarring. That and the weather engine isn’t very stable. I feel like it’s got a great future but it can be a pain. Go with ASCA if you want to spend your time flying and wait to see what happens with Skyforce.

FSUIPC

Only have it installed to link virtual airline software to sim.

Chaseplane

Chaseplane after years on ezdok chaseplane unlike ezdoc is constantly updated and worked on, A very easy to use UI. A support forum thats maned and it's easy to get support. The world moved on with P3D v4 so did the camera add on world.

PTA

If anyone over looks the value of PTA it's a huge mistake. This App transforms your sim to a different level from a flat lifeless sim to one with depth. VC lighting, landscape , clouds. All can be adjusted independently You can start with Matt preset and it's easy to learn and adjust to your liking. Yes it's a must have without question unless anyone likes flat lifeless landscapes and washed out lifeless VC with no depth.

VC lighting

ASP4

It really is the only weather engine to have. End of.

ASCA

Well this is a topic on its own really. I used it for a long time,still do. Now looks is a personal thing. To my taste ASCA is ugly even crude. So I used REX Soft clouds with ASCA and that imo was a great combo.  Envtex came out and many prefer there cloud textures over the stock ASCA ones. I bought Envtex and still imo thought REX Soft clouds looked the best. But......Envtex sky textures working within ASCA is a thing of beauty. You install there sky texture within ASCA and you get something like 65 skies textures that are now matched to where you are in the world and weather conditions. Envtex for this sky depiction with ASCA is worth the asking price.

REX SF 

Forget the weather engine, turn it off you have ASP4. After using ASCA default with soft clouds and envtex. SF from day one is a new level that i've never seen before. Its brings clouds that can look like one clouds not many clumped together to bring you clouds that can be 10's of thousands of feet tall. CB etc.  Screenshots don't come close to seeing it running in the sim.

Also I've found since using SF I can up ASP4 cloud levels to 10 and min cloud distance 140 nm and max to 170 nm. That is a sim changer when your a high flyer than the ugly 90 mile flying carpet.

The perfect combo imo

ASP4 for weather, ASCA+Envtex for only sky textures and SF for cloud structures and stunning textures.

Edited March 3, 20188 yr by Nyxx

2 hours ago, Nyxx said:

FSUIPC

Only have it installed to link virtual airline software to sim.

Chaseplane

Chaseplane after years on ezdok chaseplane unlike ezdoc is constantly updated and worked on, A very easy to use UI. A support forum thats maned and it's easy to get support. The world moved on with P3D v4 so did the camera add on world.

 

If one has many different types of aircraft, FSUIPC for control assignments is a no brainer. I tried Chase Plane on a friends flight sim and hated the motion effects compared to what I get with EZdok. Also when the internet goes down, he loses it...

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

If one has many different types of aircraft, FSUIPC for control assignments is a no brainer.

I don't know why you needed to quoted be Bob? but hey...I agree with you on FSUIPC if you like to do that as many do. It's a fantastic tool for that if you need them options.

.Chaseplane...

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

I tried Chase Plane on a friends flight sim and hated the motion effects. Also when the internet goes down, he loses it...

You can tune and fine tune all effects within the very easy to use UI.

No Bob, your Friend is wrong.

You better inlighten your friend because he will not "lose it". It was fixed.

If you personally prefer Ezdoc that's great it's good we have choices these days.

Edited March 3, 20188 yr by Nyxx

5 hours ago, Nyxx said:

Also I've found since using SF I can up ASP4 cloud levels to 10 and min cloud distance 140 nm and max to 170 nm. That is a sim changer when your a high flyer than the ugly 90 mile flying carpet.

You sure about that type of performance? I am a fan of Skyforce and I am all in on the level of realism it provides over ASCA but I have performance issues with overcast and using AS weather engine. I have a 1080ti and it for some reason that combo max’s out the GPU. It drops my FPS below 30 but I don’t get the problem when I use one or the other in the same situation. 

18 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

You sure about that type of performance? I am a fan of Skyforce and I am all in on the level of realism it provides over ASCA but I have performance issues with overcast and using AS weather engine. I have a 1080ti and it for some reason that combo max’s out the GPU. It drops my FPS below 30 but I don’t get the problem when I use one or the other in the same situation. 

Yes am sure. The only problem I had and still not a FPS problem was when I had cloud draw to 250 nm, I found i did not have any clouds after 180 miles. But HiFi said that was a memory problem, hence why it's down to 170 nm. Full overcase is np and I even run SSAAx4. I do have DL turned off as I fly in the daylight. We can swop GTX if you like to test hehe. Joking aside it might be other setting? Running a flightsim is a minefield of setting addons......the list goes on...BTW I have FPS locked at 24(25) so I might be at 26 and would not know it.  As long as its as smooth as silk I don't look at FPS so i run the lowest number I can get away with. Giving the cpu as much room to breath as I can. 

I have read other with 1080Ti having overcase problems. I don't know what the solution is. I have 7/8th un ticked in AS but no idea if that helps or not. Also use DTX5 512 res for all clouds.

Edited March 3, 20188 yr by Nyxx

Speaking of FPS, what is the impact of PTA, and does it work with things like Rex texture direct? Looked at the directions on their website, looked pretty confusing. 

15 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Speaking of FPS, what is the impact of PTA, and does it work with things like Rex texture direct? Looked at the directions on their website, looked pretty confusing. 

No impact on FPS Bob and yes it works with Rex textures Direct. Well... i have used Rex Soft clouds with PTA and now SF. I did use texture direct but that was before PTA you could ask REX to be 100% sure but SF comes with PTA presets and they say SF works with texture Direct.