One of the elephants in the room with P3D

[dave2013 1,123]

I'm disappointed to hear about this I must say.  I'm still using FSX:SE and intended to switch to P3Dv4 in a few months in the hopes that LM has greatly improved the terrain engine and that the graphics are much better overall.  I'm actually not doing it solely for the 64 bit feature as I rarely have the VAS issue being that I don't use payware airports and super highly detailed scenery products. 

So I'm wondering: is it worth it to make the switch?  What do you guys think?

Thanks.

Dave

[pmb 5,137]

I can only speak for myself. I made the switch to Prepar3d1.2 in 2012 and never did regret it. There are enough visual improvments (lighting, shadows, density of autogen...) beyond 64 bits making me stay with it. It's just that some legacy areas have been neglected over the years. This doesn't mean they are worse than in FSX, just not better. Those chewing gum mountains have been with us for ages now.

So my - clearly personally biased - suggestion would be to make the switch. I would just wait for the proper point in time. A very rough estimate would suggest Prepar3d5 to appear in spring 2019 and you would have to pay for it again, so it might be wise to wait for it.

And who knows, sometimes there are signs and wonders in this world. Maybe a couple of those legacy issues may even get eliminated in version 5.

Kind regards, Michael

 

[Bobsk8 12,489]

Going back to FSX after using P3D wold be like going back to DOS after using Windows. 

[Raging Bull 23]

15 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Going back to FSX after using P3D wold be like going back to DOS after using Windows. 

Overly dramatic and not at all. Probably no different to be honest. 

[blackbird7 3]

There are definitely issues in P3D that bother me, but overall, I still find it a great and immersive experience, even when flying at low altitudes.

However, my number one issue with P3D is the delayed loading of buildings and textures when panning. It's no fun when you are on the downwind leg and you look back at the airport and see nothing but black runways and buildings. They do load after a few or sometimes several seconds, but it definitely kills immersion when performing traffic patterns. 

I have never flown in XP, so I can't speak to whether or not I would like it more or less than P3D. I understand that they both have their pros and cons. Developer support for FSX/P3D has kept me happy with my current platform. 

[MatthewS 761]

Autogen in P3D (and FSX) is comical!

Oversized houses (that are the size of warehouses) and oversized trees!

Just compare any scene in P3D to real life and you will see just how bad it is.

And no, ORBX scenery doesn't fix the problem.

I never fly with autogen.

Edited September 25, 2018 by MatthewS

[dave2013 1,123]

It sounds to me like P3D is better than FSX overall, but since the terrain engine is essentially the same with some minor fixes and enhancements we still have many of the same shortcomings we've lived with for years with FSX. 

I'll likely go ahead and wait for P3Dv5 at this point.  Hopefully LM will improve things further and fix the popping autogen, stuttering, and blurry textures that has always plagued FSX.  I believe that better hardware can also improve these issues, but there's only so much you can do with a nearly 15 year old terrain engine.  Only a major overhaul of the terrain engine would really do the trick, but I don't foresee LM spending the money and resources to accomplish this.

Dave

[Mace 1,896]

9 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I'll likely go ahead and wait for P3Dv5 at this point.  Hopefully LM will improve things further and fix the popping autogen, stuttering, and blurry textures that has always plagued FSX. 

LM has already done great work toward minimizing or eliminating these things in P3Dv4.  For example, I do not notice much autogen popping these days, or at least with realistic visibility and draw distance settings, it's not an issue for me.  And only the occasional stutter/long frame.  Yes, a problem is the mesh pop and the black airport thing.  You guys know what I'm talking about.  Improvements are still very much needed.

[joemiller 269]

3 hours ago, Raging Bull said:

Overly dramatic and not at all. Probably no different to be honest. 

No difference? Bull ! Come on... The differences are massive.

[joemiller 269]

But wait... doesn't LOD and TEXURE SIZE EXP=  fixes this terrain issue? 

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

5 hours ago, ErichB said:

  Right now, the beginners choice is xplane.

One of my flightsim buddies just got a 6 TB drive, just for XPlane scenery...

We are all in for a ride 

[pgde 571]

I made the switch to P3D in version 3 and don't regret it. I don't understand the "huge" cost people are saying (I am not accusing anybody of exaggerating). Here is my experience:

1. I am not an Orbx user but MegaScenery user. Cost to upgrade: zero.

2. I have all the FSDT airports. Cost to upgrade: zero

3. Also, all Flightbeam airports. Cost to upgrade: zero

4. Active Sky, Toposim mesh are used. Cost to upgrade: 0 (AS may have had a small cost, I forget if this is the case)

5. And, Turbulent Design, Flytampa, iBlueYonder, all zero.

I use a combination of freeware and default aircraft. I could care less about learning systems. They do have some limitations but I am sure that freeware authors will come out with new aircraft. IRL, I have my PP cert and don't need to spend hours learning systems when I have proven I have IRL.

So the only cost was for the P3D software (and a new/previously owned video card -- a 1070 8 Gb to replace my old AMD R9-270X, 2 Gb). The card cost was $225 (purchased here). I needed it for other non-game software so not all the cost could be counted for the P3D change.

Edited September 26, 2018 by pgde

[edpatino 1,959]

Reading the previous posts, all I can say is that I'm running P3Dv4.3 and will for sure wait and buy P3Dv5 when it's released, but why to wait for one year or more to enter into P3D?. I can fly VFR with P3D and it's quite good and satisfactory for me, apart from the fact that is a full-developed simulator with tons of good and complex aircraft, excellent AI Traffic, ATC, real weather and flight planners addons that make the flights quite immersive and close to real!. Also, finding the proper few tweaks, P3D can become super fluid.

And FSX, a thing of the past, as well as FSX:SE, being old 32-bit platforms. No comparison possible.

Cheers, Ed

 

[Chock 17,769]

6 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I'm disappointed to hear about this I must say.  I'm still using FSX:SE and intended to switch to P3Dv4 in a few months in the hopes that LM has greatly improved the terrain engine and that the graphics are much better overall.  I'm actually not doing it solely for the 64 bit feature as I rarely have the VAS issue being that I don't use payware airports and super highly detailed scenery products. 

So I'm wondering: is it worth it to make the switch?  What do you guys think?

Thanks.

Dave

I would definitely say it is worth making the switch from FSX to P3D, but it's a bit hard to swallow at the time since as I say, it feels a bit like paying for something you've already got (more on this below). How I got around that, at least to some extent, was to make a mental cut-off point in my purchasing of stuff, and from that point onward, I only bought stuff which was FSX and P3D compatible, or which offered some sort of transitional discount, so that I was future-proofing things to some extent.

A case in point for this was the purchase of the FSX version of the Quality Wings Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I bought that when I was on the cusp of switching to P3D, but I did so in the knowledge that Quality Wings/Flight 1, had promised that buyers of the FSX version would receive a substantial discount if they subsequently also chose to buy the P3D version too. There was a bit of a time limit on that deal, but even that time limit was fairly generous, and so the P3D version of the 787 only ended up costing (I think) something like an additional 25 quid to buy because of that.

To be fair, it's important to get it in your head that in switching to P3D from FSX-SE, you're not really 'buying what you've already got' in quite a few regards, not least the fact that development and support remains ongoing. First up, there is of course the fact that it is 64 Bit, and that as we know means it won't bomb with some pretty things thrown at it; specifically, things such as that QW 787 will take FSX-SE down if there's some half decent scenery running too, and it invariably does it at the end of a three hour flight as your shiny payware airport swings into view, which was incredibly frustrating for me since that would generally occur with an Air Hauler 2 flight, so I'd not only have to make the flight again, but also I'd often have missed the delivery deadline for cargo and get penalised for it as well, thus flying the route again knowing that was going to happen was a bit like rubbing salt in a wound.

It was experiences such as this which made me switch, I had bought the V1 version of P3D out of curiosity, but I never was that impressed with it still being 32 Bit, however, when the 64 Bit version of P3D arrived, that was the factor which made me go for it properly and I do actually have two licences for P3D V4, because I have it on a laptop as well as a desktop. So I can in all honesty say that P3D V4 was so good, I bought it twice lol. Note here that for anyone else considering this, many add-on licenses do not allow me to install products on both copies, P3D licensing is a bit more strict in that regard.

But, there is no denying that straight out of the box, whilst P3D V4 does offer the promise of a lot of potential with its 64 Bit architecture, when you get past all the fanfares and marketing speak it is quite a surprise to see how fairly cack P3D looks 'straight out of the box', and that's because for most users, they're used to a tweaked and souped-up FSX which has been honed for many years with various add-ons until they've got it the best they can in terms of appearance, so to go back to a stripped base program is quite a shock visually at least. One particularly shocking thing is the weather/clouds in a default P3D V4, they look appallingly bad and I can promise you that the first thing you'll want to do is address that. For me that was one of the annoying expenses, because I had bought Active Sky via Steam for the FSX-SE version, and that meant there was no P3D V4 Active Sky discount upgrade route available to me to add Active Sky and AS Cloud Art to P3D V4, so I waited until they had a slight, but nevertheless welcome sale to purchase it. 

A big plus for P3D V4 is that it has cloud shadows, which can of course be added into FSX-SE too if you pay for a couple of reasonably inexpensive add-ons, but even so, that is one expense you don't have to indulge in again when switching to P3D, since the capability is built-in. There are numerous other plus points to P3D V4 over FSX/FSX-SE and they're fairly easy to find out about, so I won't rehash that here, suffice to say that the performance improvement on modern hardware is perhaps the greatest reason of all to make the switch. But back to the other aspects of doing so...

As with the discount for that 787, users of the iFly 747 and 737 for FSX get the pleasant news that there is a fairly generous discount for upgrading these to a P3D version. So that's another big thank you and some further respect for Flight 1 in having acknowledged that although there is indeed some work involved in converting an FSX product to be a P3D V4 product, it's not the complete do over that some developers would have you believe it is since all the research and development work, and indeed the 3D modeling and image work for the textures (unless they are going for increased polygons and resolutions, which they generally are not), is already done. This is never more obvious than when you come across several products which are literally a 'dual install' capable .exe file, allowing them to be installed in both FSX and P3D. There are numerous Just Flight add-ons which enjoy this capability, and along with a few other good reasons to do so, is one of the reasons why I'm a supporter of their efforts, because they're one of the developers who have not blagged people into believing that they've inexplicably somehow had to do all the R&D twice.

This sort of thing is in fact why I flatly refuse to buy the PMDG 737 NG or the 747-400 for P3D V4 when I had previously bought them for FSX, since they offer no discounted upgrade path at all. As a result of that, since their new 747-8 requires the 400 base package, I won't be buying that either. I did however buy their DC-6 because I never had that for FSX, so it's not as if I have some of total boycott of PMDG, but I do nevertheless suspect that I'm not the only one who thinks having to buy a 747-400 base package - when I already have an iFly 747-400 - just to get a 747-8 (which they frequently have pointed out is a very different aeroplane to the 400 variant) is not exactly good value since it would come to the best part of 200 Dollars to do that, as opposed to iFly, who'll be throwing their 747-8 upgrade at their 400 users for free. I like the PMDG 747-400, it's great in FSX and not bad value for what you get, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy it twice at full price lol. PMDG make some great stuff, there's no denying that, but I think their marketing strategy often leaves a lot to be desired, and they're certainly not alone in that.

These are some of the difficulties/choices/decisions you will come up against if you do decide to switch to P3D from FSX. But as I say, if you look around, there are some developers who've been kind enough - and indeed smart enough - to realise that a bit of loyalty to their customers is such that it will engender the same response in return. And some other developers better be aware that it's a two-way street; the hobby can get expensive, and that makes loyalty from your customers a commodity which in the long run, is of more value than making a quick buck from selling them what is largely the same product twice during a transitional period for a base sim package. As noted, I don't expect to get things for free, and I'll cheerfully pay for the work involved in creating different versions for different platforms if there is indeed work involved, but I want honesty from such transactions and the marketing behind them.

So in the end, if you want to make a switch, consider making it a 'rolling switch' by looking out for products and developers who are inclined to make that easier and less expensive.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Chock

[vin747 316]

11 hours ago, Chock said:

Even the GUI of P3D is a miles better design than any other competing flight sim. 

I have all three Sims.. I agree with all that you said except the above.. Xp11 gui is miles ahead of p3d4 and LM needs to catch up with xp11 on gui design.. 

But for widebody tubeliners, p3d4 is the way to go..