What features would you like to see in P3Dv5?

[ErichB 3,642]

6 hours ago, John_Cillis said:

However Xplane11 is very weak in city detail scenery inclusive with FSX and P3DV4.xx.  I did find Manhattan poorly represented in P3D4.4 however, a missing new WTC I easily caught and added with freeware.  The Freedom tower is finished now, along with nearby supertall towers closer to central park, and I hope P3D adds those in the future or some kind freeware vendor.  Also, SFO scenery, and LA scenery were poor until I added MSE which enhanced them.  But Xplane11 failed entirely there with the exception of some good add-ons for PHX, SFO and SAN...

Again, I think there is an unrealistic, if not unreasonable expectation on the developers of both platforms to provide very specific visual detail.   Their job is to create plausible visual environments at best, and leave it to the add-on community to do what they do best.

[eslader 1,783]

5 hours ago, ErichB said:

Again, I think there is an unrealistic, if not unreasonable expectation on the developers of both platforms to provide very specific visual detail. 

Agreed. Hyper-detailing every airport and/or city would be expensive. It would make the final product (more) expensive. That's unneeded.

[ErichB 3,642]

I really do hope that P3D V5  delivers a  terrain model equivalent to what is able to be depicted in XP.   I have been watching XP videos alot  lately and to come back to P3D is somewhat of an underwhelming experience.  The snap, crackle, pop of terrain, slow loading of autogen, oversized autogen, slow loading night lighting at altitude,  - that has to go.  

Truly hope LM steps it into overdrive, cuts loose everything holding it back (no more backward compatibility of anything), and wows people back to this platform.  

[d.tsakiris 418]

15 hours ago, MatthewS said:

Fix the ridiculously oversized autogen houses and trees.

Actually, one of the developers over at ORBX once stated that the autogen isn't oversized, as it has to "fit on" the sat pics that are used for land class or photoreal sceneries.

Regarding the rest, most of it can be or has already been addressed by third-party developers. Some of it of course can't...

And while we're at it, I'd like to say that the default ATC is surely incomplete, but it does offer certain possibilities add-ons don't: E.g. loading up a scenario, dialing up the correct frequencies and just flying VFR. In all other ATC add-ons I know, you have to load a flightplan - and stick to it. No diverting, because the ATC add-on isn't "prepared" for it. Comprehensive ATC is sorely missing in flight simulation.

[ErichB 3,642]

29 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

Comprehensive ATC is sorely missing in flight simulation

Canned spagetti ATC will never be real ATC.   There will always be limitations.

Edited March 12, 2019 by ErichB

[Mace 1,926]

2 hours ago, ErichB said:

I really do hope that P3D V5  delivers a  terrain model equivalent to what is able to be depicted in XP.   I have been watching XP videos alot  lately and to come back to P3D is somewhat of an underwhelming experience.  The snap, crackle, pop of terrain, slow loading of autogen, oversized autogen, slow loading night lighting at altitude,  - that has to go.  

Truly hope LM steps it into overdrive, cuts loose everything holding it back (no more backward compatibility of anything), and wows people back to this platform.  

Erich -- I can't remember the last time I saw autogen popping in P3Dv4.

I mean, maybe I saw it once or twice when I was dialing-in my performance, but not since then.  

The mesh pop, yes, and that would be nice to fix.

[ErichB 3,642]

2 minutes ago, Mace said:

Erich -- I can't remember the last time I saw autogen popping in P3Dv4.

I mean, maybe I saw it once or twice when I was dialing-in my performance, but not since then.  

The mesh pop, yes, and that would be nice to fix.

Rhett, I still find batch loading of autogen.  Less than it used to be,  but it's still 'a thing'

[mpw8679 428]

3 hours ago, ErichB said:

I really do hope that P3D V5  delivers a  terrain model equivalent to what is able to be depicted in XP.   I have been watching XP videos alot  lately and to come back to P3D is somewhat of an underwhelming experience.  The snap, crackle, pop of terrain, slow loading of autogen, oversized autogen, slow loading night lighting at altitude,  - that has to go.  

Truly hope LM steps it into overdrive, cuts loose everything holding it back (no more backward compatibility of anything), and wows people back to this platform.  

+1.  With my home made ortho and xvision, xplane scenery looks almost real.

[MatthewS 761]

1 hour ago, d.tsakiris said:

Actually, one of the developers over at ORBX once stated that the autogen isn't oversized, as it has to "fit on" the sat pics that are used for land class or photoreal sceneries.

 

The vertical height is ridiculously oversized, not the "footprint", which makes every single floor house look like a warehouse. 

Just compare any P3D pic to real life and you will see that the autogen is too tall, which creates a fall sense of altitude, you feel far closer to the ground than you are.

I find the effect so "cartoony" that I turn off autogen buildings.

Edited March 12, 2019 by MatthewS

[eslader 1,783]

2 hours ago, ErichB said:

There will always be limitations.

That's definitely true, but I have trouble believing that p3d's ATC, which is the same as FSX's ATC, represents the best possible canned ATC. Even just using an RNG to determine instruction outcomes would be an improvement. RNG roll, if it's less than X cleared direct Y. If it's more than X, stick to the flight plan. Awareness of SID/STARs would be nice as well. And how about awareness of speed? I can't count how many times I've been turned final in a jet, and ATC clears me to land even though there's a Mooney on short final. ATC could tell the Mooney to speed up, or it could have slowed me down earlier for spacing. But instead it pretends the Mooney isn't there until I'm at DH and then tells me to go around.

 

There's a ton of improvements that could be implemented for ATC, especially given that it's now really obvious to the devs that there's a strong interest in accurate IFR simulations. I get the impression that even when FSX first came out, MS was kind of surprised at how many people were hopping in jetliners and actually going places. It's like the whole thing was built around the idea that Xplane had - that all we want to do is donk around close to the airport.

 

 

[Mace 1,926]

3 hours ago, ErichB said:

Rhett, I still find batch loading of autogen.  Less than it used to be,  but it's still 'a thing'

It's definitely still a thing if the AG settings are set too high on a machine, yes I will say that.

And in my opinion AG shouldn't be so cpu-intensive, especially the buildings.  If they want to thread something else out in v5, autogen would be a leading candidate.

[threexgreen 3,139]

On 3/11/2019 at 9:51 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Without seeing what your hardware is I cannot comment. You don’t even say what sim you’re running.

I swapped a 3Gb 7800GTX for a 8Gb 1080 and in FSX saw no difference whatsoever with fps. But when I installed P3D v3 the performance was transformed. That’s because L-M rewrote the code to push the graphics processing into the GPU. That will continue with future releases.

I'm on an i7 6700k at 4 Ghz with a 1080Ti on a 4k TV running P3D v4.4. My GPU is running at 99% with 4k in demanding scenarios. I tested the same scenario with a full HD monitor and the GPU was around 40-50%. Still, not a single sign of improvement in performance. My CPU is never anywhere near fully utilized. That's why I'm certain the ESP engine, as good as it's been made by LM, is holding a lot of things back.

At some point, there is no use in further tweaks and improvement of an old engine. A new start is needed.

Edited March 12, 2019 by threegreen

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

5 minutes ago, threegreen said:

I'm on an i7 6700k at 4 Ghz with a 1080Ti on a 4k TV running P3D v4.4. My GPU is running at 99% with 4k in demanding scenarios. I tested the same scenario with a full HD monitor and the GPU was around 40-50%. Still, not a single sign of improvement in performance. My CPU is never anywhere near fully utilized. That's why I'm certain the ESP engine, as good as it's been made by LM, is holding a lot of things back.

At some point, there is no use in further tweaks and improvement of an old engine. A new start is needed.

My 1080Ti with the i7-8086K running at 4.6Ghz can return 60fps when airborne with the GPU at 40-50%. Your CPU is the bottleneck despite your claim it isn’t.

You need to lower your settings if GPU is at 99%. Nothing wrong with the sim, just ambitious settings for your hardware.

Your CPU should be working flat out. Mine is and it’s a lot more powerful than yours. Check your settings for CPU/GPU. Something not right.

[pgde 571]

11 minutes ago, threegreen said:

I'm on an i7 6700k at 4 Ghz with a 1080Ti on a 4k TV running P3D v4.4. My GPU is running at 99% with 4k in demanding scenarios. I tested the same scenario with a full HD monitor and the GPU was around 40-50%. Still, not a single sign of improvement in performance. My CPU is never anywhere near fully utilized. That's why I'm certain the ESP engine, as good as it's been made by LM, is holding a lot of things back.

At some point, there is no use in further tweaks and improvement of an old engine. A new start is needed.

You are aware that running at 4k creates 4 times the number of pixels than full HD? And that load has been shifted to the GPU not the CPU in recent releases of P3D.

[threexgreen 3,139]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

My 1080Ti with the i7-8086K running at 4.6Ghz can return 60fps when airborne with the GPU at 40-50%. Your CPU is the bottleneck despite your claim it isn’t.

You need to lower your settings if GPU is at 99%. Nothing wrong with the sim, just ambitious settings for your hardware.

Your CPU should be working flat out. Mine is and it’s a lot more powerful than yours. Check your settings for CPU/GPU. Something not right.

Like I said, it is running at 99% in demanding scenarios. Airborne I get around the same FPS as you at the same workload. My settings are reasonable. I use MSI Afterburner to check on hardware and I have never found my CPU to be an issue.

 

59 minutes ago, pgde said:

You are aware that running at 4k creates 4 times the number of pixels than full HD? And that load has been shifted to the GPU not the CPU in recent releases of P3D.

Yes, I am aware of that. The CPU remark wasn't meant to say I was looking for more CPU utilization, just a bit more info. The bigger role of the GPU in P3D is the reason I was expecting some improvement on full HD with much less workload on the GPU compared to 4k in a demanding scenario. Nothing though.

 

Edited March 12, 2019 by threegreen