P3D v5 versus v4. Worth upgrading?

[OzWhitey 3,353]

10 hours ago, BMW969 said:

Could you show a screenshot with beautiful water? My water looks like a rumpled foil with a metallic sheen. Where is the beauty?

No, I've posted some pictures of some beautiful low-level clouds and some imperfect high level clouds from the altitude you wanted  (that I still like better than the sprite-based clouds in 4.5), because you asked.

I could spend some time taking some great water shots I'm sure, but I suspect you'd still find a reason to find them ugly, so I think I'll pass. If you don't like the look of the sim, v4.5 is still a thing. Personally, I'm on v5 with EA on, and that's where I'll be staying. 

Edit: And I'm enjoying my current EA flight over Cape York so much, here's a shot I took just now. YBCS to YPDN, at 17,000 feet and climbing, Active Sky for weather. The immersion of flying through and around these clouds in VR is just crazy! 🙂

Edited June 26, 2020 by OzWhitey

[Noel 4,487]

On 6/19/2020 at 9:49 AM, neil0311 said:

Can someone give me the top reasons to upgrade beyond it’s just the latest version? Is performance better? Worse? Is there a significant bug that’s fixed that changes things significantly?

Ultimately, it's another version of the same thing you've been using forever, w/ a few improvements, just like every other iteration that has come out of LM.  If you pretend to be, or are, a qualifying student so will buy the cheap academic license, then perhaps it will be worth the cost to get some of those improvements.  But you're also describing your hardware as "a reasonably high-end machine".  Presumably you have at least 8Gb of VRAM to exploit which seems from what i read here to be more or less a minimum requirement. Being heavily invested in v4.5, as it's completely stable, mature, beautifully effective, I am opting out of v5.x until the new kid arrives which shoul offer something quite different than the old pig re-lipsticked yet again, and again, and again...If MSFS2020 for some reason bombs, there's always a relook at P3D, by then perhaps it will be v6, or significantly improved again in the string of incremental hot fixes and .x releases sure to follow.   All of the videos, screenshots etc from V5 come nowhere near the same we're seeing from MSFS2020, in fact most often I could not discern the difference between v4.5 and v5.x from those same videos and screenshots.  Now I didn't say there aren't differences, but from what I see they're largely underwhelming.   Just another person's perspective which reaches back decades in flight simming experience.

Edited June 27, 2020 by Noel

[Christopher Low 5,341]

I suspect that 8GB VRAM is only a minimum for users trying to run with complex weather @ 4K resolution. I would be extremely surprised if that amount of VRAM is required for clear skies @ 1080p (which is how I run P3Dv4.5HF2 at the moment). Of course, I would love to be able to fly through realistic clouds, but after reading various delightful tales of CTDs on these forum pages recently, I would prefer to have confirmation about VRAM requirements @ 1080p resolution before I make any upgrade decisions

Edited June 27, 2020 by Christopher Low

[chapstick 2,757]

35 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I suspect that 8GB VRAM is only a minimum for users trying to run with complex weather @ 4K resolution. I would be extremely surprised if that amount of VRAM is required for clear skies @ 1080p (which is how I run P3Dv4.5HF2 at the moment). Of course, I would love to be able to fly through realistic clouds, but after reading various delightful tales of CTDs on these forum pages recently, I would prefer to have confirmation about VRAM requirements @ 1080p resolution before I make any upgrade decisions

I use 1440p on an 8GB GTX 1080. I run the sim well within that limit, with the caveat that it's really a balancing act between choosing EA on/off, texture resolution, and add-on scenery. For example: I can't run LVFR sceneries at 2048 textures/EA off without DXGI'ing. Their sceneries use a ton of PBR. However, I can run 2048/EA off at, say, FlightBeam's SFO just fine. My go-to settings are 1024 textures and EA off. With those settings, I can go to any airport with tons of PBR (e.g. LVFR) in the QOTS or Mad Dog without crashing. The obvious downside is that 1024 textures can look really bad depending on the developer. So, if I'm at an airport where there's plenty of VRAM headroom, I bump up the textures to 2048.

I imagine if you're at 1080p, it'll be a similar experience.

[Christopher Low 5,341]

Yes, there is a noticeable difference between 1024 and 2048 textures at some airports on my PC, so I would not be keen to go back to 1024 on a regular basis.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

3 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I suspect that 8GB VRAM is only a minimum for users trying to run with complex weather @ 4K resolution. I would be extremely surprised if that amount of VRAM is required for clear skies @ 1080p (which is how I run P3Dv4.5HF2 at the moment). Of course, I would love to be able to fly through realistic clouds, but after reading various delightful tales of CTDs on these forum pages recently, I would prefer to have confirmation about VRAM requirements @ 1080p resolution before I make any upgrade decisions

I'm sure you've seen all the posts about people running out of VRAM. P3D v5 sucks it up like a sponge. I wouldn't suggest trying to run P3D v5 HF2 with less than 8GB (although anything is possible), and this is a sim that is really designed for 11GB+.

[Ricardo41 5,936]

19 hours ago, Noel said:

Ultimately, it's another version of the same thing you've been using forever, w/ a few improvements, just like every other iteration that has come out of LM...  the old pig re-lipsticked yet again, and again, and again.

Perfect summary.

 

[aidanlegras 7]

How is VR looking at this point with complex aircraft like Flight Sim Labs A320? I have been putting off upgrading to P3D version 5 because I am concerned that its VR performance despite some improvements will still be essentially useless. 

MSFS 2020 looks pretty reasonable for this stage of development but their is very few high end aircraft such as FS Labs A320 that I am interested in at this stage. I'm looking for some advice on the latest reviews. 

[out 769]

6 hours ago, aidanlegras said:

their is very few high end aircraft such as FS Labs A320

Is there any? 🤔

[Anxu00 176]

My apologies to resuscitate this thread.  I have been absent from P3D for almost two years.  I still have P3D 4.5 on my machine, and now would like to know if P3D 5 is now ready for me to jump up.  Latest thoughts please.  Thx 

[chapstick 2,757]

25 minutes ago, Anxu00 said:

My apologies to resuscitate this thread.  I have been absent from P3D for almost two years.  I still have P3D 4.5 on my machine, and now would like to know if P3D 5 is now ready for me to jump up.  Latest thoughts please.  Thx 

Yes, unless you have some favorite add-ons that haven't been updated for V5 yet, which are few and far between at this point. 

[F737MAX 5,557]

47 minutes ago, Anxu00 said:

My apologies to resuscitate this thread.  I have been absent from P3D for almost two years.  I still have P3D 4.5 on my machine, and now would like to know if P3D 5 is now ready for me to jump up.  Latest thoughts please.  Thx 

Yes, overall performance, default vector data, shaders (Enhanced Atmospherics), 3D cloud tech (Volumetric Clouds), autogen management, and lots of other little details have been noticeably improved.

Some older airport sceneries need a compatibility file to exclude default objects bleeding through (available here). Others with v5 installers may require a reinstall.

The fly in the ointment is that P3D's move to DirectX 12 has caused people with a GPU with 8 GB VRAM or less to suffer from OOMs when settings in P3D are too high / too much PBR texturing is used by third party developers in aircraft and/or scenery.
While memory management has improved since v5.0, and it's not as common as it was, we still see people have CTDs in v5.3 HF2 when the scenario is too demanding.
You can mitigate against it. However, it usually means finding a balance between VRAM usage and the detail displayed.

[787flyer 633]

Just to add, I only had 2 occasions where an OOM resulted and one of those was related to some default setting I had after a P3D update and I had the Texture Resolution set to 4096. I lowered it to 2048 and didnt see the problem again.

[Anxu00 176]

Thanks folks

[brucewtb 247]

Well the only improvement I noticed moving from 4.5 to 5.x was a performance gain of about 15%.  Visually no difference and maybe worse.  I don't care for EA or Volumetric clouds (at least compared to the way 3D clouds are depicted in MS2020 which despite imperfections is considerably better than P3D).  And now with the update from 5.2 to 5.3 I seem to have a 20% drop in frame rates that I am attempting to debug - so that performance gain of 15% has vanished. Glad I kept 4.5 installed particularly as the F1 GTN 750 doesn't look like being supported beyond 5.3 HF2.

Bruce