Hi Guys

As a long time user of FSX ( don't shoot me 😃) I like to keep an eye on the developments and improvements in the land of P3D.  I bought V2 back in the day and whilst it looked prettier than FSX it always seemed to suffer with worse AA and lower performance in very heavy weather so in the end I went back to FSX, (i just like to get into the sim and fly, none of this tweaking mlarky). 

Then P3D V3 came out so i bought it but I never really got around to installing it, So now V4 is here and i know of certain advantages ( no more worrying about VAS) and have been thinking of giving it another try ( not going to ditch FSX yet, haha) I have two PC's both similarly specs ( I7 4770K and an I7 4790K both running at 4Ghz with GTX970's, Yep i was one of those that bought 2 cards 6 months before the 10 series came out). I would like to give P3D another try and want to install it onto my gaming rig before making a final decision about buying a copy for my Flight Sim rig.

So do many of you still use V3 or should I just go for V4?

Final footnote ( you still with me) I currently have 8GB ram (i realise I will probably need to buy another 8GB.) and run a single screen setup running at 1920x1080.

Any advice would greatly be appreciated.

Many thanks

Daz (Dkentflyer)

V3 is still good and you have the optimizations of DX10/DX11 built into the sim, so better than FSX at least. Also most add-on sceneries work with P3D v3.

Having said that, I have only P3D v4 and X-Plane 11 on my machine now and haven't looked back. 

 

I have been using V3 since it was released. Zero problems, and crashes and average FPS around 30-35 with a 4 year old middle of the road PC. I run most sliders from mid to 3/4 high positions. I will wait till I have a couple of thousand dollars to buy a new PC and version 5 comes out, most likely. 

Daz,

I use P3D V3, V4 and XP11 on my machine (4970K/1080TI). Optically, you wont't see much a difference between V3 and V4. Just yesterday I did a flight in V3 and at day it nearly looks the same as V4. I do use a number of addons however to upgrade the look of the sim (ORBX FTX Global, AS16, ASCA Envshade, Envtex, REX). If you want to use your FSX addons, you could go for V3. Nearly everything is compatible or can be compatible with some know how. Good thing is, you know that the sim will be static (no updates, no trouble).

If you want to go with the development and use the latest "bells and whistles" (like dynamic lighting, improved autogen, improved performance etc.), V4 is the way to go. However, then your hardware (RAM, GTX970) will definitely be the bottleneck. While most of the FSX addons will work in V4 too, they wont't be optimized.

So it depends how many addons you have and what your plans are hardware-wise. Usually I would quote go for the latest and newest, but there are still many people happy with their 32bit addons in V3. I only use V3 for a particular aircraft that is not available in V4. The rest I fly in V4 or XP11.

Regards,

Chris

 

 

Edited July 17, 20187 yr by Cargostorm

You may as well get P3Dv4, most top line aircraft addons are being built for 64 bit now. And as you say, no VAS worries. I went straight from FSX to P3Dv4 and the performance improvement is considerable (although I did upgrade my system at the same time).

There will be compatibility issues with some older addons (particularly aircraft need to be updated to 64 bit), but much scenery works fine out the box and most of the popular utilities have been updated.

Edited July 17, 20187 yr by ckyliu

6 hours ago, Dazkent said:

So do many of you still use V3 or should I just go for V4? Daz (Dkentflyer)

I use V3.4 and have zero plans to change that until LM does something worth upgrading for, which for me is involves enhancing ATC, and I don't know if they've already done this, but the heinous moving map in P3D which came unaltered from FSX is so crude I'm shocked they didn't improve on it if indeed they didn't in V4.  I still use it to set waypoints.  The other massive thing they could do w/o massive coding effort is to create an 'optimizer' that would, for example, let the use input their minimum FPS target AND their maximum GPU utilization.  The optimizer would make adjustments in realtime, for example adjust LOD and/or scenery complexity variables and the 'lighting' sliders like cloud and terrain shadowing--these areas force all users who care to maintain good fluid performance to STOP their flight and make manual adjustments.   There is so much that could be done with this simple concept.  Next time you're in a super complex airport like KPHX HD you can dial back LOD and autogen/vegetation to almost zero and not see it while on the ground, freeing up massive resources to cope w/ taxiing in that complex environment.  After t/o, autogen/vegetation/LOD can be slowly adjusted up as tolerated.  This would help users tailor performance to their specific platform and IMO a whole lot could be done with this idea.   But instead you get lots of new features w/ each release you'll never use or see.

V3.4 works fabulously and as you're reading here V4 adds little to nothing visually, especially if you don't own absolutely the most high end system available today.  I NEVER run out of VAS and I do multi hour flights x-country in PMDG stuff and the lovely Majestic Q400 is my go to plane for regionals.   Unless you're just itching to send LM another $200 I'd stay pat until V5 at least!  Plus, you already own V3.

Edited July 17, 20187 yr by Noel

P3D v3? What's that..........😎

Keeping one year version 3 and now flying the v4

But this year, I never flying back V3...

If you don't want new sceneries and new aircrafts then the version 3 is well. But there are a lot of upgrades costs after evolution in v4, this the price of the future.

No regrets to be in version 4 because is awesome.

I would go straight to V4.3.

You can keep FSX installed in parallel.  (I have it but never use it anymore).

8 GB RAM is OK.. that is what I have.

At this stage of the game I would stick with V3 and wait for V5 which might be a game changer requiring 3PD to charge update fees. They are not going to update the addons for free forever and I'd hazard a guess that V5 is less than a year away. I went from V2 to V4. I've gone from V4 to X-plane 11. I'll what for V5 to be released before I decide which track I'm taking. But I'll beat my front teeth that the upgrades of FSX/P3D addons to V5 will be fee based across the board.😁

Edited July 17, 20187 yr by Guest

I am still on v3. I will buy a new pc and move to v5 when it comes out next year.

With your current hardware I would go with v3.  Then plan for a hardware upgrade and v5.  With your current GPU u won’t be able to enjoy the eye candy that v4 offers.  

41 minutes ago, mpw8679 said:

With your current hardware I would go with v3.  Then plan for a hardware upgrade and v5.  With your current GPU u won’t be able to enjoy the eye candy that v4 offers.  

That to me is flawed logic... no one forces you to enable "eye candy" that might have a performance impact..

Certainly not a reason to prefer V3 over V4 

54 minutes ago, mpw8679 said:

With your current hardware I would go with v3.  Then plan for a hardware upgrade and v5.  With your current GPU u won’t be able to enjoy the eye candy that v4 offers.  

Strage statement. I have similar specs as the OP and have both V3 and V4 and V4 runs better than V3.

56 minutes ago, MikeT707 said:

Strage statement. I have similar specs as the OP and have both V3 and V4 and V4 runs better than V3.

Yes v4 runs better then v3.  However that is not the argument.  He already has v3.  To fully take advantage of v4 u need a lot more then a GTX970.