On 8/19/2019 at 7:50 PM, Skywolf said:

Its gonna be atleast 2 years before we see addons come for MSFS2020 (this is from what I can infer from the roadmap).  I need PMDG/A2A guys to show up there.  

I've got P3D v4 and XP11 to fly while I wait for the good payware add ons for MSFS2020, 2 year is no time at all if things turn out as they seem.

One thing is for sure. LM need to make significant improvements in v5. Superficial improvements won’t cut it for me. I want to see most or all of the bugs in the underlying ESP code fixed. In no particular order they are:-

• Stars appearing with the sun above the horizon.
• Being able to set each end of a runway closed for takeoff or landing independent of the other end.
• Ai aircraft with more intelligence when landing so they know where the fast exit is and they depart the runway far quicker than at present.

New features such as volumetric cloud would be very welcome.

If none of these are fixed then I will stay with v4. That version was a major step forward with 64-bit introduced. Each major version should have significant improvements over the previous one.

Given another player is now in town I would expect LM to react accordingly to retain and even increase its customer base.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Given another player is now in town I would expect LM to react accordingly to retain and even increase its customer base. 

Unfortunately the main customer base (Commercial/military) is probably quite happy with the existing arrangement and it's small incremental improvements.

The casual simmer is not the main base, and may be less so if there is licensing issues with the return of MS.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Given another player is now in town I would expect LM to react accordingly to retain and even increase its customer base.

Concur with everything in your post except for this last paragraph.

@cowpatzis right in that us individual / home users are not the target audience, we're merely beta testers for LM.

I live in hope that v5 will bring major changes to the sim experience. But I think a lot of it will only be incremental and any large change will be reserved for the back-end processing, CPU or GPU.

I think the problem going forward will be the third party addon developers with a new sim in town, they are already have problems with two sims to develop for ORBX has done very little in P3D this year. Airport devs are trying to update there back catalogue, if they start developing for a third sim that will put a strain on there resources. Some took the load off by dropping the 32bit FSX.

8 hours ago, cowpatz said:

Unfortunately the main customer base (Commercial/military) is probably quite happy with the existing arrangement and it's small incremental improvements.

The casual simmer is not the main base, and may be less so if there is licensing issues with the return of MS.

I disagree. There was no need for a 64-bit version if the default aircraft and scenery are used. v3 would have satisifed the military. v4 was for us users and all the addons we use. The casual simmer probably isn't bothered about addons. It's the serious simmers like us that it was developed for. Just my opinion.

7 hours ago, F737NG said:

Concur with everything in your post except for this last paragraph.

@cowpatzis right in that us individual / home users are not the target audience, we're merely beta testers for LM.

I live in hope that v5 will bring major changes to the sim experience. But I think a lot of it will only be incremental and any large change will be reserved for the back-end processing, CPU or GPU.

Tweaking to the CPU/GPU will not be sufficient for this user to upgrade. I suspect I wouldn't be alone.

9 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

One thing is for sure. LM need to make significant improvements in v5. Superficial improvements won’t cut it for me. I want to see most or all of the bugs in the underlying ESP code fixed. In no particular order they are:-

• Stars appearing with the sun above the horizon.
• Being able to set each end of a runway closed for takeoff or landing independent of the other end.
• Ai aircraft with more intelligence when landing so they know where the fast exit is and they depart the runway far quicker than at present.

Be sure to port this on LM forums, otherwise you have to chance they will put it on their list 

S.

3 minutes ago, simbol said:

Be sure to port this on LM forums, otherwise you have to chance they will put it on their list 

S.

I have but it's dispiriting when you never get an acknowledgement from them. Hopefully they're taking note.

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=134677

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

There was no need for a 64-bit version if the default aircraft and scenery are used.

Many significant advances were made in SimDirector and SimOperator, together with the weapons, DIS, CIGI and VR integration. All these features (and the new graphics) have added to the memory footprint, so a 64 bit version was inevitable.

No matter how many addons we cram on it, we end users are only using a small-ish part of all the features that this platform offers. Whatever we may think important for us, may not have the priority in the total development roadmap that we wish for.

I wouldn't expect decisive steps regarding P3D any time soon. Highest priority usually is the protection of the commercial customers' investment. A single ProPlus license is equivalent to 38 Academic or 11 Pro - and no customer going ProPlus will only have one single license. In Lockheeds shoes I would release a version 4.6 this fall, then 4.7 and 4.8 next year, with a 5.0 to come in 2021. Since Microsoft is thankfully taking the pressure off the P3D development roadmap, I would stretch it out, give the platform more time to mature before taking the next big step. This may sound controversial, but just think about it. Lockheed does not need the end user market. But on the other hand, every user complaining on the net about the platform makes it look bad. So if simmers jump ship to a new platform, the development team can relax a little, and concentrate on customers who really depend on the platform and what it can do. Even counting in the end user market this strategy IMHO works. When MSFS is released, I think that it is better for P3D to be the stable platform, where users can comfortably turn to, than standing toe to toe with Microsoft by releasing a new version of P3D at the same time.

Best regards

Edited August 21, 20196 yr by Lorby_SI

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I have but it's dispiriting when you never get an acknowledgement from them. Hopefully they're taking note.

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=134677

They do.. it all goes into a system they have where all new feature requests and bugs get prioritised to be addressed.

S.

On 8/20/2019 at 12:11 AM, BMW969 said:

LM has one way out - to replace the engine before Microsoft😉

That sounds a lot like the recent Boeing philosophy, and look where that got them....

Edited August 21, 20196 yr by Christopher Low

I really have no idea what P3D v5 might bring.  I'd like to think it will have some major improvements to warrant a complete new version number and re-purchase, but lets be realistic with our expectations: it is not going to magically turn P3D into something which can compete with the new MSFS.  P3D is still a sim built from the core of FSX, and yes LM can improve it and expound upon it, but they aren't going to re-write the sim from scratch and revolutionize entire aspects of it in one go.  v5 will be an incremental improvement, and while it might make a big jump forward it won't be so sizeable that it can match a modern built from scratch Microsoft simulation.

I'm looking forward to seeing what v5 becomes, and if it comes soon I might even buy it while we wait for MSFS, but I'm also being realistic in my expectations for it too.

On 8/19/2019 at 2:37 PM, kingm56 said:

At this point, does it really matter?  With MSFS 2020 on the horizon, how many people would be interested in purchasing another version of P3D built on the same/tired ESP engine?  I love P3D and plan to use v4.5 well after MSFS2020 is released. However, I have no desire to invest in a new sim that requires hundred, if not thousands, of additional dollars to achieve a realistic environment/flying experience.  I can’t imagine there are many simmers willing to invest heavily into V5 until they have more fatality on MSFS2020.  I could be wrong; yet, anecdotally i have lost all interest in ESP...MSFS 2020 previews have been that good...

I remember the same kind of discussions when FSW was promoting  it's soon to be released sim. 

I'd like to think LM has on many of their orbiting satellites the ability to take ultra high definition images of earth and mesh and apply this to their next sim platform.

It's interesting to see people raving about MSFS 2020 and its features and all we have seen is one video. As long we haven't read a first test preview of an REAL copy its nothing more than vaporware. Do you remember some movie trailers where you thought "oh, what an interesting movie, lets watch this!" and after you have seen it you realized it was a piece of shi-tzu?