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Bert Pieke

P3DV5, one month in..

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I had to check my calendar, but yes, I've had V5 for one month (only).. seems longer, somehow..

So here is one man's journey..

I bought the Professional edition, counting on the LM 14 day refund policy if it did not outperform my highly tuned V4.5. HF2 configuration.

After 48 hours, I was seriously considering returning V5 for a refund.. I saw little that was better, and lots of things that I did not like, starting with the User Interface.  One of my favorite airports, Orbx KORS also looked totally wrong and Larry Robinson's Ferries flat out did not work.  Also, P3D crashed whenever I approached KSEA..

However, after spending some quality time with Orbx Central, migrating scenery libraries, and beginning to understand the new settings, I discovered that this sim actually performed amazingly well on my aging Haswell 4770K 8GB system when not near Seatlle, and it deserved to be given another chance. 

So, what happened since then?

- LM released HF1 which fixed some of the bigger problems like the crash on approach

- Orbx started to update their scenery packs and airports so they looked right again

- I began to identify a "sweet spot" for my scenery and performance settings

- I discovered that the "Enhanced Atmospherics" option looked fabulous when Clear Skies were selected

- I disabled my Victoria+ scenery pack which was the cause of the Seattle crashes

and I generally migrated more and more Orbx scenery away from V4.5. and onto V5.

Long story short.. I really like V5 now.  It feels smoother and looks better on my system.

Larry Robinson's coastal sceneries still do not work, and I am keeping V4.5. around for local flights around Vancouver Island.

Reason for writing this post, is that I just flew a scenic flight from Pitt Meadows to Victoria, repeating an actual flight that I flew as a passenger in a C172 with a university buddy who was looking to share his flight rental expenses with two friends.  I took lots of photographs on that flight (it was in 1972, I believe) and up to now I have never experienced the feeling of "being there" quite the same way as I felt it today, in spite of flying the identical flight in FS9, FSX, P3DV4... etc in the past.

For those of you who fly tubeliners, which according to Avsim surveys is about half of our membership, this story probably does not have much relevance.. but for the other half that likes to fly GA aircraft below 10,000 feet most of the time..  all I can say is that the day that Orbx announces that Larry Robinson's scenery packs are supported in V5,  that day I will pull the plug on V4.5. and park it on my 2 TB harddrive, where I still have a copy of FSX (just in case).. :smile:

My system: 4770K@4.1, GTX 1070, 1080 32" monitor.

P3D set to unlimited fps, vsync off, and fps limit set to 29 in nvidia NCP.

 

Edited by Bert Pieke
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Bert

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And.. since I always get asked this, these are my current settings:

Graphics: FXAA=off, AA=4XSSAA. Ani=8x, TexRes=2048, Vsync=off, fps=Unlimited
    LOD=High,TessFac=High,Mesh=5m,TexRes=1m, UseHighResTex,
    Scene Comp=ExtremelyDense, AutoGen=High,Veg=Normal,BLg=Dense,DynamicVeg=off
     Water Detail=Medium, no Bath, no reflections
     SpecEff=Medium
     HDR=On (0.85/0.05/0.97), DynRef=off, LandLights=on
     Shadow qual = High, Shadow Draw Dist = Low, Casting+Rec = both for Internal and External
      Enh Atmospherics=on,  Cloud Res=Medium,  Weather: Clear Skies. 

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Bert

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Glad to hear your enjoying it Bert.


David Murden  MSFS   Fenix A320  PMDG 737 • MG Honda Jet • 414 / TDS 750Xi •  FS-ATC Chatter • FlyingIron Spitfire & ME109G • MG Honda Jet 

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• 10900K@4.9 All Cores HT ON   32GB DDR4  3200MHz RTX 3080  • TM Warthog HOTAS • TM TPR • Corsair Virtuoso XT with Dolby Atmos®  Samsung G7 32" 1440p 240Hz • TrackIR 5 & ProClip

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Great observations Bert.  I’ve stayed in v4.5 for tubelining but have firmly landed in v5 for GA.  I’m sure over time I’ll move all of my time to v5.


Dave

Current System (Running at 4k): ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-F, Ryzen 7800X3D, RTX 4080, 55" Samsung Q80T, 32GB DDR5 6000 RAM, EVGA CLC 280mm AIO Cooler, HP Reverb G2, Brunner CLS-E NG Yoke, Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS & Stick, Thrustmaster TCA Quadrant & Add-on, VirtualFly Ruddo+, TQ6+ and Yoko+, GoFlight MCP-PRO and EFIS, Skalarki FCU and MCDU

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I worried about the cost of upgrading all my add-ons but the total cost was less than $40 for a lot of airports, aircraft, scenery and utilities. Much of that "free lunch" was due to the good will gesture by ORBX, who are probably thinking that their True Earth for P3d series will help them through the MSFS 2020 transition (which obviously doesn't need TE). Providing free upgrades to legacy products certainly is an incentive to buy future ORBX products.

 Despite all the grumbling, the beta implementation.of TrueSky turned out to be pretty good, when combined with Active Sky. Overall performance in P3d5 is improved over P3d4. My one remaining issue is how much messing around it took to get VOXATC to work. Maybe there will be a miracle and an official update might magically appear.

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Good report, I'm still on the bench warming it, too deep into P3DV4.5+ and XP11.4 soon 11.5+.  I just don't want any more messing with addons, fixes, at this stage.....first snows of winter perhaps! 🤣

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Bryan Wallis aka "fltsimguy"

Maple Bay, British Columbia

Near CAM3

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Good write-up, Bert.

I am flying A2A GA all the time atm, mainly with modified Orbx TrueEarth (I have been making some real watermasked ortho to go with it).

Lots of fun, and ActiveSky + Enhanced Atmospherics + skimming over the new waves far too low + better performance = a whole lot of fun.


Oz

 xdQCeNi.jpg   puHyX98.jpg

Sim Rig: MSI RTX3090 Suprim, an old, partly-melted Intel 9900K @ 5GHz+, Honeycomb Alpha, Thrustmaster TPR Rudder, Warthog HOTAS, Reverb G2, Prosim 737 cockpit. 

Currently flying: MSFS: PMDG 737-700, Fenix A320, Leonardo MD-82, MIlviz C310, Flysimware C414AW, DC Concorde, Carenado C337. Prepar3d v5: PMDG 737/747/777.

"There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

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Nice story Bert. Are you excited about the TE Washington  announcement? One thing that I'm looking for is increased stability and higher frame rates as P3D v5 progresses. I just ordered a Titan X Pascal, so I'm very tempted to order P3D v5 again and see how much better it will be. FPS were very good with my gtx 1070 but I was Vram limited.


A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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Good to hear that....I did transfer all sceneries....Still waiting fro 777 and FSL products to make final saying....What I am not impressed but still testing is weather....Hooked yesterday SF to see results and with TS I don't like it at all....like flying above bowl with milk...terrible. Don't like like night flying...to dark with TS...Today again over Atlantic - but no TS and looks more realistic and with clouds by SF all around me and of course more realistic...Other than that I am impressed with performance...FPS stable vRam as well.......BTW Landing lights are killers for now to the point I can't use them at night, period....simply can't see - absolutely nothing in front of you. Hopefully few fixes are around the corner that will make it all better....👍


Virtual Air Canada - Alex Luzajic

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I installed it today and all ORBX with it. Initial impression, performance is better of course. However, there is something about it what was off for me, I am not really sure maybe I didn't take my time on it or I used to XP for the past few months. Perhaps I would need time on it to judge, maybe when I see my favorite planes like PMDG and FSlabs there, I'd get used to it. Let's see 

Edited by omarsmak30

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 64GB DDR5 6000MHZ RAM, RTX 2080Super 

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Have not looked back since the first week. There was nothing in 4.5 that hasn’t been ported to 5 that was a deal breaker for me. All my lovely A2A birds, majority of my orbx stuff etc have been great and only getting better as everything matures.


Nick Silver

http://www.youtube.com/user/socalf1fan

Ryzen 7 5800x, 32gb ddr4 3200mhz ram, RTX 3080 FE, HP Reverb G2 v2, 4K Tv Monitor

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Agreed.

However, I don't love it enough to keep it on my system.

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Thanks Bert.  I haven't made the purchase yet.  4.5 works well and I have so many airports that I am not ready to jump into the installation mode.  I appreciate your comments though.

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2 hours ago, DJJose said:

Nice story Bert. Are you excited about the TE Washington  announcement?

Not sure... PNW performs really well, and who knows what TE Washington will do to my system..


Bert

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