Wow, so much wrong in this thread.

We don't know what type of flying the OP is looking to simulate, where his favourite part of the World is, what his PC setup is, nor what is his budget is for add-ons. And yet several people have listed a copious amount of pricey add-ons, suggesting that they are essentials.

@benwbriscoe let us know what it is you are looking to do with your flying. Tell us what PC specs you are running (that will affect which add-ons are recommended to you) and may be also let us know what sort of budget you have (you can easily end-up spending several hundred £/€/$s).

However, you don't have to spend a fortune to have a good experience. A few well-considered purchases can make a lot of difference.

N.B. The more you add, the better it *can* look, but the more things that *could* clash and/or eat performance.
 

Edited May 21, 20206 yr by F737NG

8 hours ago, F737NG said:

Wow, so much wrong in this thread.

We don't know what type of flying the OP is looking to simulate, where his favourite part of the World is, what his PC setup is, nor what is his budget is for add-ons. And yet several people have listed a copious amount of pricey add-ons, suggesting that they are essentials.

@benwbriscoe let us know what it is you are looking to do with your flying. Tell us what PC specs you are running (that will affect which add-ons are recommended to you) and may be also let us know what sort of budget you have (you can easily end-up spending several hundred £/€/$s).

However, you don't have to spend a fortune to have a good experience. A few well-considered purchases can make a lot of difference.

N.B. The more you add, the better it *can* look, but the more things that *could* clash and/or eat performance.
 

My specs are:
ASUS TUF Intel Z390-PLUS 9th Gen ATX Motherboard USB 3.1, Dual M.2, DDR4
Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8 Core Processor (3.60GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo) 16MB L3 Cache
64GB 3000MHz DDR4 (4 x 16GB) - Corsair Vengeance LPX 
8GB SUPER NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Graphics Card 
1TB M.2 PCIe QLC 3D Performance NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
2TB SATA III 6GB/s 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive 64MB Cache 8ms

I mainly fly commercial airliners, based out of the UK and travelling all over.

2 hours ago, benwbriscoe said:

My specs are:
ASUS TUF Intel Z390-PLUS 9th Gen ATX Motherboard USB 3.1, Dual M.2, DDR4
Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8 Core Processor (3.60GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo) 16MB L3 Cache
64GB 3000MHz DDR4 (4 x 16GB) - Corsair Vengeance LPX 
8GB SUPER NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Graphics Card 
1TB M.2 PCIe QLC 3D Performance NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
2TB SATA III 6GB/s 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive 64MB Cache 8ms

I mainly fly commercial airliners, based out of the UK and travelling all over.

So you have a nice system that will allow you to run any complex payware airliner add-on at high settings. Only thing to watch out for is VRAM maxing out on the GPU while we await another hot fix for v5.

Aircraft -
One of: PMDG 737NGXu, PMDG 747, FSLabs A320 or for something slightly different, the Majestic Dash 8-Q400, depending on what floats your boat. You'll have a lot of fun (re-)learning to operate any of these.

Tools -
If you have peripherals, the payware version of FSUIPC6 to improve joystick / yoke calibration (among many, many other things that the add-on offers).

Lorby-SI add-on organiser. A powerful freeware tool to organise your additional scenery and create backups of P3D's most important files.

Alpha India Group AI Manager One-Click Installer (AIG AIM-OCI). All the freeware AI aircraft you could ever dream of having.

Weather engine -
ActiveSky by HiFi SimTech.
New version currently in beta. Majority of people already own the previous version 'ASP4' and have availed of the time-limited free update. No brainer.

Replacement ground textures -
Most people flying IFR go for some of Orbx's landclass products. I'd wait for a sale though, they normally come around every couple of months at the moment.

If you're into photoscenery textures, there is Orbx's TrueEarth series. Very nice and certainly more realistic than landclass, but does affect the sim's performance when in an airliner and takes up a chunk of disk space.

Freeware photoscenery options:
italyphotoreal weebly
airhispania forum 'escenario fotográfico gratuito de España'
Blue Sky Scenery for about a dozen of the western states of the USA.
Not as pretty as TrueEarth, but the prices are excellent.

Payware airports -
FlyTampa and Flightbeam Studios make the absolute best airport scenery out there. You cannot go wrong with any of the 'more recent' releases.
Honourable mentions go to FSDreamteam's Chicago and Orbx's Innsbruck. Both also stunning.

One final thing -
Complex flight planning (if you're interested) can be done for free through the SimBrief website, which can export a generated flightplan in different formats to P3D's own map and also to your chosen airliner's FMC.

Apologies for the thesis and welcome back!
 

Edited May 22, 20206 yr by F737NG

17 hours ago, PhotoReal Earth said:

TrueEarth really takes up a lot of space. And how many regions are available?
So better to wait for MSFS and in the meantime enjoy normal photoreal sceneries

You are in the wrong forum praising MSFS one reply after the other, which is not even out and being negative about P3D : this is the P3D forum !

I think ASOBO can make a HUGE profit releasing MSFS trading cards or one of that sticker collector albums so the guys can show off and trade their screenshots also without internet 😅

22 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Does trolling give you some sense of satisfaction?  From my perspective it shows an insecurity.

FSLabs A3xx series is probably the most comprehensive, followed very closely by PMDG if you prefer Boeing.  Maddog (Leonardo Software), Majestic (Dash-8 Q400), Aerosoft CRJ and/or Airbus 330, Quality Wings 787 ... for aiports and scenery too many to list (Orbx, FlightBeam, FSDT, FlyTampa, Aerosoft, LatinVFR, and many many more).  For the most part you can complete the entire experience from walk around, entering the aircraft, prep (lost of checklists), fuel request, de-ice, ATC, push back, Air traffic, flight, FS2Crew for co-pilot, landing, exit to terminal and buy a hamburger at the McDonald's inside the terminal.  If you're looking for this plus "career" type products there is Air Hauler 2 and many others.  If you want the "complete" experience, P3D can provide that.

Some of the aircraft also have shared cockpit, so if you want to fly with a friend.

If you want to step it up to full size cockpits, there is ProSim and several companies that provide complete cockpits.

Cheers, Rob.

Is GSX v3 coming soon, Rob? (The one with the Hamburger/coke option!)

Thanks guys, this is all really useful. Much appreciate all your contributions.

1 hour ago, PhotoReal Earth said:

You should be aware that for any orbx product you need orbx "central".

And you should be aware that this "central" is phoning home.
Since years I've read in the forums that people with really good hardware suffer from microstutterers and regularely short pauses. They were told a lot of solutions for this, but none of the suggested solution worked.
They've spent a lot of money to run P3D (updating hardware, buying sceneries) and now were totally frustrated about these immersion killers.

So my advices to the orbx theme:
1. Before installing anything from orbx, especially orbx central, you should make an image / fullbackup from your system, so that you can get back and rid of the orbx central routines and scripts in the depths of windows and P3D programs.
It's always good to have a fullbackup before making big changes, so this advice can't be wrong.

There are enough ???vendors / social media managers / influencers??? from orbx in the forums

Orbx Central is an installer and product manager. It does indeed "phone home" when run to both make licence checks and of course access the files on the servers. It could not work otherwise. However, it can be closed and when it is closed, it does nothing at all. The belief that it remains running even when closed is possibly founded in the ability to "minimise to tray", when clicking on the x, in which case, like all other software, if it is left running, it continues to run. Simply removing the tick from the box will result in Orbx Central closing altogether.

You appear to harbour some odd misconceptions.

 

 

Edited May 22, 20206 yr by Reader

11 hours ago, benwbriscoe said:

My specs are:
ASUS TUF Intel Z390-PLUS 9th Gen ATX Motherboard USB 3.1, Dual M.2, DDR4
Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8 Core Processor (3.60GHz, 5.0GHz Turbo) 16MB L3 Cache
64GB 3000MHz DDR4 (4 x 16GB) - Corsair Vengeance LPX 
8GB SUPER NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Graphics Card 
1TB M.2 PCIe QLC 3D Performance NVMe SSD/Solid State Drive
2TB SATA III 6GB/s 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive 64MB Cache 8ms

I mainly fly commercial airliners, based out of the UK and travelling all over.

Right now with P3D v5 you will be limited by your VRAM. TE GB is a no brainer. There are plenty of UK2000 airports available from an excellent dev that updates his airports for free or a small fee.

BTW, don't believe the non-sense about ORBX Central. The software has evolved into an excellent utility that doesn't harm your P3D installation. There were some growing pains, but after some updates, OC works great and should not be feared.

4 hours ago, PhotoReal Earth said:

And you should be aware that this "central" is phoning home.

A lot of add-ons do call home for license checks. 

MSFS is a whole simulator designed to run in the cloud in huge parts and Microsoft is well known for not being very economical in data collection. So what‘s your point here?

2 hours ago, DJJose said:

Right now with P3D v5 you will be limited by your VRAM. TE GB is a no brainer. There are plenty of UK2000 airports available from an excellent dev that updates his airports for free or a small fee.

BTW, don't believe the non-sense about ORBX Central. The software has evolved into an excellent utility that doesn't harm your P3D installation. There were some growing pains, but after some updates, OC works great and should not be feared.

Is this an issue with P3D v5?

If you mean is it an issue with P3D v4.5, the answer is no. The change to Direct X 12 in P3D v5 has introduced some teething problems.

5 hours ago, PhotoReal Earth said:

Since years I've read in the forums that people with really good hardware suffer from microstutterers and regularely short pauses. They were told a lot of solutions for this, but none of the suggested solution worked.
They've spent a lot of money to run P3D (updating hardware, buying sceneries) and now were totally frustrated about these immersion killers.

Torsten  

Immersion is fabulous w/ P3D 4.5 and I have no microstutters, and in P3D 3.4 which ran on my former 7 y/o system had no problems whatsoever w/ microstutters--I only upgraded as the old system was likely close to end of life.  But I learned how to eliminate them completely the simple way which is to run unlimited in-sim, and vsync to a 30Hz refresh screen which my Dell 3440x1440 does.  So, FAR from being 'totally frustrated' w/ P3D my enthusiasm amped up dramatically w/ the installation of v4.5. in a new system build.  I did not expect so much improvement from the version change, and it helps to have the hardware to run it very well now.   I still get the rare 'long frame' or pause, but those seem to have all but completely disappeared at least it appears so w/ the installation of FTFF Dynamic which I just learned about a week ago.   

Of course, the other reality is we really do not know what MSFS will bring when it actually launches.  This being said, I am not upgrading to P3D v5 because I want to wait until MSFS debuts.  I could use P3D 4.5 forever and still remain engaged and enthralled with it, it's that complete now, especially w/ FSCaptain!  I did not expect so much improvement from 3.4 to 4.5.

 

1 hour ago, benwbriscoe said:

Is this an issue with P3D v5?

Specify "issue".

DX12 doesn't use shared normal RAM as VRAM when you exceed the amount of your gfx card. If that happens because you have your settings to high V5 will stopp and inform you about the problem. You can use the "Dynamic texture streaming" option in V5 settings but you will loose the performance-gains of DX12. 

2 hours ago, benwbriscoe said:

Is this an issue with P3D v5?

Watch your settings to keep from exhausting your VRAM.  

P3D v5HF1 will soon become HF2. If I were you, I would wait to see if there are any VRAM improvements in HF2.