The recent release of the TBM 900 by Hot Start for XP has inspired me to install another SSD and venture into another sim world, been using FSX/P3D for many years and time to try something new with XP. I'm pretty much a GA fan and hope to build a home cockpit using the TBM 900, it's that good, and XP seems to be the go too platform for home cockpits? But will continue also with my P3D set up!

Upgrading to the 64bit version of P3D was a way to get rid of OOMs for good, and most people saw that as a no brainer (apart from a few die hards like me) However, upgrading to v5 is not likely to be quite as clear cut.

Edited October 29, 20187 yr by Christopher Low

1 hour ago, Simicro said:

I heard that default scenery XP is better than FSX/P3D. What about the default planes? Are they good, at least for GA AC (eg the Baron often seen in YouTube videos) or we must go payware to have quality planes?

Scenery is different and better in some parts (the roads are awesome). Lighting (at night) certainly is better. For quality planes you still need payware. Imho at least. XP11 simply didn't click with me. Too much things missing or not as good as in P3D, even with addons (weather, weather related textures, ATC, planes, airports (way too many empty airports)... well, everything apart from some of the graphics).

Thanks Jeroen. I get the picture.

11 hours ago, pracines said:

Not totally sure what you mean by manually (aero.sors?), but, (wasn't sure if you knew) FSAerodata does it automatically. You would have to have a Navigraph subscription as well, but, there is no great harm in that; both reasonably priced.

Please disregard if you knew this already.  

 

I actually didn't know about FSAerodata, so thanks for pointing that out.  Yeah, I use aero.sors.  I actually don't mind updating it so much as the fact that P3D still needs updating in the first place.  The scenery and database is all FSX era, which is over a decade old and makes this sim feel like a dinosaur.  FSAerodata and Navigraph sounds nice and all, but paying for subscriptions isn't really my cup of tea (although I do do one time navigraph airacs for some of my airliners just to keep things reasonable).  

I would rather not stifle progress and always willing to update to next version and in the case of a major version, than compatibility and finances dependent.  Its a hobby, and hobbies are expensive. But if you want to progress and have improvements, then paying for them is inevitable. At some point, there will be a time when all the addons we know will completely break compatibility in order to truly make a big leap in features and performance.  Thats a very hard pill to swallow considering the investment, but eventually it will happen and we certainly cant expect free upgrades for major rework done on addons. The good thing is that the current version 4.x is quite stable and performing rather well if you have the right setup so you can stay on it until you are ready for any major revision upgrades. But I gather, if you want the latest aircraft or scenery, they will stipulate that you need the latest and greatest of versions because its compiled that way to optimize and solve bugs.