FSX'ers. Understand this please.

[spilok 1,133]

NO MORE TWEAKING!  How does that sound?   With P3d v4, and all P3d's before, there is NO MORE TWEAKING.  You don't use Nvidia Inspector, you don't use bufferpools, you don't use or NEED anything.  The 64 bit program runs flawlessly and I've never tweaked a thing.  Actually, it's discouraged!  I was an FSXer for many years.  After the switch about 2 years ago, I've experienced ZERO OOM's and I've never had to tweak anything.  The scenery is crystal clear as long as the eye can see, and the smoothness....ah, the smoothness, it's unbelievable, even in dense airports. 

Flight Simulator was meant to run on 64 bits...not 32.  I just can't imagine spending a hard earned dime on anything that is literally antiquated.  This is my humble opinion, but I can back it up.  I do every day when I fire up P3d.

 

Stan

[PWJT8D 446]

I never have tweaked anything in P3D, also never have used Nvidia Inspector. I find that it gives me a really reliable simulator. Once you start messing with stuff is when you get problems. I know that may not be the case for everyone, but thats just me. 

[SimonC 116]

I humbly disagree. While the level of tweaking we needed in FSX is in P3D definitely not needed, there are two tweaks that I incorporate, which are definitely OK (and also supported by LM):

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

(gives me sharper textures, as I can afford it with 1080TI)

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.05

(gives me more FPS, as I can afford it due to a good CPU which is also overclocked)

My sim is very stable (I really don't remember it crashing for months now).

[Simicro 247]

Couldn't agree more with the OP!

Moved to P3D a month ago and did not have to do a single tweak.

What a pleasure to finally spend time flying instead of tweaking!

[garydpoole 183]

I totally agree with your comments. However, by posting them here, I can't help thinking that you're kinda preaching to the converted 😉

Perhaps it should be in the FSX forum...? 

[Nemo 1,305]

I kinda miss all this exciting tweaking sessions during FSX times 😉

[Tim-HH 572]

I doubt that many FSX users are still with FSX because they think it's the better simulator. It's more because they have older hardware or do not want to purchase most of their addons again.

[JPLS 5]

14 minutes ago, Tim-HH said:

I doubt that many FSX users are still with FSX because they think it's the better simulator. It's more because they have older hardware or do not want to purchase most of their addons again.

Right ! ... and I would add "... or they have some doubts about P3D EULA".

 

[Chock 17,769]

I never really faffed about with the settings much in FSX, I figured it was a bit like chasing rainbows, and since I don't use NVidia GPUs, I never used its inspector either. To be honest, the only OOMs I ever had with FSX were when the QW 787 showed up with its large amount of glass displays, prior to this I was just careful to manage my expectations of what it could realistically get away with graphically and it was generally okay, when P3D V4 showed up and I bought the QW 787 for that too and saw that it ran a bit better and was in no danger of having VAS issues, it was that which prompted me to switch to to P3D as my main option for a flight sim.

I wasn't especially impressed by preceding versions of P3D and to be brutally honest, apart from the fact that P3D has cloud shadows, I wasn't that impressed with it in its V4 form either, at least when straight out of the box in visual terms; it really doesn't look vastly different from FSX-SE and in some respects it is worse, notably in its weather depiction, which makes getting hold of something like Active Sky pretty much compulsory. P3D V4 does perform better than FSX-SE though, even regardless of it being far less likely to run out of VAS, and it's this which I would say is among the best of reasons to switch to it if you are a fan of variants of MSFS.

It isn't all rainbows and fluffy unicorns though. Visually P3D V4 is far behind XPlane and FPS-wise AeroFly FS2 still makes XPlane, FSX and P3D look like a bad joke, although both Aerofly FS2 and XPlane still have a lot of catching up to do in many other regards. So when you balance it all up, P3D is a more well-rounded solution as a general flight sim, but only because there are so many add-ons available to throw at it, and this does, ironically, make it a lot like real world aviation but not in a good way, in that the amount you have to spend on tarting it up makes it an expensive toy to own and operate. 🤣

Edited November 5, 2018 by Chock

[Michael Moe 495]

3 hours ago, SimonC said:

I humbly disagree. While the level of tweaking we needed in FSX is in P3D definitely not needed, there are two tweaks that I incorporate, which are definitely OK (and also supported by LM):

TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

(gives me sharper textures, as I can afford it with 1080TI)

FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.05

(gives me more FPS, as I can afford it due to a good CPU which is also overclocked)

My sim is very stable (I really don't remember it crashing for months now).

I have a 1080ti as well but never tried the EXP=10 option. Does it produce more heat to the CPU as the highresolution texture does? 

Any risks of having blurry close up if CPU and GPU is overworked or Will it start blurry far away first? 

Thanks Michael Moe

[SimonC 116]

3 hours ago, Michael Moe said:

I have a 1080ti as well but never tried the EXP=10 option. Does it produce more heat to the CPU as the highresolution texture does? 

Any risks of having blurry close up if CPU and GPU is overworked or Will it start blurry far away first? 

Thanks Michael Moe

It might use more GPU (I don't think it does really), and if even, not that I would care - I have my sim quite balanced usually running at about 60% on the GPU, so I have enough overhead for those heavy-weather approaches. EXP=10 actually only loads more into VRAM, so the sim does take longer to load, but comparing screenshots, one can see better sharpness in the distance.

Don't know about the 2nd. I fly airliners, and wouldn't be using those settings if I were seeing blurries. And on topic of blurries: I never see them in normal operations.

Edited November 5, 2018 by SimonC

[Pat Mussotte 92]

The only reason why I reinstalled and keep my fsx is to fly the PMDG MD11 with just the aiport I use for the most time. It's may be antiquated but for the time being it's the only way to fly the MD11(The only worth it IMO) without any kind of troubles like runway misalignement!

Regards

[Christopher Low 5,352]

Quote

You don't use Nvidia Inspector

I use Nvidia Inspector with P3D v3.4 because I need 4x SGSS AA for an acceptable reduction to shimmering.

[Raging Bull 23]

I never had the ‘issues’ the OP stated. And what’s wrong with NI? It’s a great program used for so long in the FS world. 

Doesnt seem much sence to change to something visually not that better. 

[AnkH 2,261]

33 minutes ago, Raging Bull said:

Doesnt seem much sence to change to something visually not that better. 

This argument appears from time to time by long time FSX users, but it is not more correct if repeated hunderd times. With considerably high settings including dynamic lightning and most shadow options turned on, P3Dv4.x DOES look a lot better than FSX with max. settings.

Of course, if you have your FSX perfectly configured, you won't suffer from OOM normally, but this means you are far away from max. settings and/or longhaul flights with lots of addons and complex planes.

In contrast, with a powerful computer, you basically can crank up pretty everything in P3D to at least "very high" and still get reasonable performance, no OOM and yet the fully visualy glory.

Simple example: if you have autogen draw distance on the maximal possible setting inside FSX, this equals "medium" in P3Dv4.x.