Prepar3D version 5 announced

[Tuskin38 6,450]

I doubt LM is trying to compete with MSFS. They’re two different types of products, one is (intended to be) a training aid, the other is an entertainment product.

[RamonB 449]

Each SIM has its own pros and cons, so what.... I enjoy what I have and what they offer.

I will keep buying P3D versions for a long time, along with MSFS and whatever comes around for those two, still
have FSX-SE installed on spare PC's elsewhere.

[Noodle 626]

18 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I doubt LM is trying to compete with MSFS. They’re two different types of products, one is (intended to be) a training aid, the other is an entertainment product.

Well...I hear discussing P3D usage is frowned upon in this establishment, but I think it's an open secret there is rampant abuse of what P3D is supposedly intended to be.

I agree with you though that neither platform is likely to be threatened financially by the other. But I don't think that necessarily translates into a lack of competition when it comes to features.

For instance, are customers who use P3D as a training aid really clamoring for sloped runways? For fluffier clouds? Those things seem to be driven by entertai...errr, academic user request. 😉

[TravelRunner404 596]

Saying P3D doesn’t care about Joe Flight Simmer and his money is just something people say and assume without any true evidence. In fact, the evidence is quiet the opposite. Their lead software engineer made the release announcement on FSElite as exclusive. That’s not something professional products who generate 90% of their revenue from “serious military training” do. I could list many other things but you don’t have to look hard to find more evidence. Flight sim community is not a novelty to them.

Has anyone noticed the response of v5 overall is quiet deflated? Sure you have critics and opinions but the lead up and launch to v4 was much more robust. There are like 3 half baked threads with maybe 4 pages each. Developers aren’t making big announcements either.

It’s crazy what MSFS2020 speculation has done in less than a year. I believe the idea of the product alone has delivered a borderline knock out punch to P3d and the v5 response so far could be a canary in the coal mine.  
 

Next year at this time will be super interesting.

[FDEdev 955]

22 minutes ago, TravelRunner404 said:

It’s crazy what MSFS2020 speculation has done in less than a year. I believe the idea of the product alone has delivered a borderline knock out punch to P3d 

Even without MSFS on the horizon I doubt that many simmers would be exited about v5. Reading the changelog it looks more like a version 4.6 or maybe 4.9.

  

 

[suncoastflyer 685]

Look on the brightside, the devs in the WebAssembly thread have somewhere to go now. Another 'major' release, same old ESP. Maybe the performance will be a bigger leap than I expect, who knows. I might pick it up if the addons are available quickly enough, as like an interim to the new sim, but I won't be spending much else I'm afraid.

[David Mills 4,729]

I was dumbfounded when I saw the new P3D V5 promo. It looks like something from 30 years ago. The desert scene looked like what you saw back in 1990 when you flew too far from Meigs Field in Chicago -- just bland, repetitive nothingness. Even worse, the large airport looked like some beginner had just purchased airport-design software and was making preliminary attempts to outline the very basics of his first airport. There was no detail whatever. The rivers were simple straight lines with no attempt made at accuracy nor even of representing a shoreline. Worst of all were the stale, decades-old graphics tiles across the river from the airport. Again, no attempt was even made to portray what exists at that location in the real world. The tiles are abruptly truncated at water's edge in a particularly slipshod and lazy way. Look at the video again. I can't believe this actually came from LM.

I remember several people on this board were speculating that P3D V5 would utilize Google Maps to simulate the world in the same way that Bing Maps are used to create the spectacular scenery in MSFS2020. Others speculated that LM and Microsoft were secretly working together and that P3D V5 would be using the same graphics engine and scenery as MSFS2020 but with the addition of LM's military aircraft and training. Well that doesn't appear to be the case, does it? The P3D promo looked horrendous. And, remember, the promo showcases the BEST the sim has to offer. Again, I am flabbergasted.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But I believe that P3D is now completely devoid of commercial airliners and business jets. I saw the new P3D weather can be "customized," but does that mean live, real-world weather now? I don't think it does. What a halfhearted effort! My guess is that the P3D development team originally planned to produce a good update. But after learning what Microsoft and Asobo were doing, simply viewed their own project as less important and made only a tepid effort thereafter. I believe LM did hire some new programmers out of high school from the "Girls Who Code" educational experiment. So I'll give credit where credit's due.

On April 1 and 2, I fell for several pranks on YouTube from channels I subscribe to. One channel operator announced he was retiring from YouTube (which wasn't true). Another channel, run by a dedicated bachelor, announced that he was getting married (and again fooled me because I didn't realize it was April Fools Day). When I first saw the P3D V5 demo, I was skeptical that a company with the massive assets of LM would publish such a poorly done, lackluster promo. I wondered whether I'd been punked again.

[Beardyman 604]

I must say that  v5 change log looks really good, but P3D team have done it way too late.

Such changes should be started when v4 was introduced, now it is like swan song.

[David Mills 4,729]

Exactly right! LM had their big chance when they updated from 32 to 64 bit -- which, in the end, didn't amount to squat. P3D V5 amounts to less than squat.

We need that guy who screams in the comparison videos. 🙂

Edited April 8, 2020 by David Mills

[tweekz 2,165]

I have nothing against P3D.It's great someone took care of FSX while MS was away. But this trailer doesn't impress me much tbh.

[honanhal 1,420]

I have to say I share the impression of what many here seem to be saying: much too little, much too late.

If LM had any intention of seriously competing with MSFS (and maybe they didn’t!), they needed to pull out something unexpected and extraordinary — revolutionary, not evolutionary.

This ain’t it.

James

[Dominique_K 10,133]

The promo trailer and pics don’t say much about v5. Hazy or dawn/dusk sun, mostly indistinct ground, no much to see about the aircraft. The first thought which came to my mind was a rhyming saying we have  « Quand c’est flou, il y a un loup » (when it is blurry there is a flaw). Difficult to make a more unconvincing promo. 

The <drums rolling ON> « Foundation of Next Generation Simulation and Training » <drums rolling OFF>  is a long list of overdue fixes showing that it is the good ole ESP platform with some red put on the cheeks. Why not ?  This is welcome but I don’t see anything  about the flight modeling (including water physics), the weather model engine (including icing), the air dynamics over relief (downdraft, updraft etc). The terrain resolution which is now a 14 yo feature has apparently not changed. I would be extremely happy to be wrong.  

On a side note, I admire all those above who are still clinging to the legal fiction that P3D is not for entertainment when you have aircraft here to please the kids like the F35 and F 22,  a mostly cosmetic PBR at every corner and a MP lobby.

The jury is still out. A lot of goodies for an already good platform but nothing really to hop up and down to agitate fluffy things.

LM has had until now a trial period. They’d better keep it. In anycase my old v3 will be off the computer.

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by domkle

[Kopteeni 819]

I'd love to see someone challenge what Asobo is doing with MSFS but so far the competitors don't seem to be even close. X-Plane Vulkan update seems to be bringing some promising performance upgrade so I'm gonna sit back and hope they can produce something nice with that. Laminar is a clever and enthusiastic team, but still very small in terms of man power.

[Bigt 192]

4 hours ago, Noodle said:

Feel bad for LM, although not seriously.

I'll be the first to admit I haven't paid close attention to P3D development over the past 8ish years so I could easily be wrong, but this announcement appears to be a tailored response to new features found in MSFS.

If that's the case, then it seems rushed, piecemeal, and a little bit desperate. The preview video I saw looked like an aggressively mediocre facelift of a sim i stopped flying almost a decade ago. The dramatic cinematic panning didn't showcase any "wow" scenery. The sloped runway scene depicted a cringeworthy landing that highlighted poor "physics". And the clouds somehow looked worse than the previously respectable TrueSky implementation in FSW, and nowhere near as good as MSFS.

Now maybe this update and these features have been expected for a long time and have nothing to do with MSFS. If so, then half of what I said is invalid...except the half about it not looking nearly as good as MSFS.

I don't mean that as a slight against P3D. In fact, I've been participating in another thread where I'm pushing back against someone i think isn't giving MSFS a fair shake. No hypocrisy intended.

I just don't think the two compare favorably. If you're a P3D fan and you're looking at this in a vacuum because you're not interested in MSFS, then I can see why this might be exciting. 

Sarcasm and the look of disgust on my face are hard to convey in written language. I realize he was talking about LM and I should have commented further. I don't think LM, overall, could give a rats you-know-what. They have bigger things to do and bigger things they make money from such as our US defense contracts. Do they ultimately care if they are competing with MSFS...I highly doubt it.

[arsenal82 120]

Excellent work done by Lm

if all work as suggested this will make p3d a great fly training sim and a very much welcomed