On 6/19/2020 at 12:32 PM, BerndB said:

Well, the right answer is a clear YES, because the main driver for the upgrade is that there will be no more development of V4.5. Even most new Add-ons will concentrate on V5 of course. 

The second point is that you have a better performance, if your setup can take advantage of directX 12. And the new Athmospheric system looks great and real without any shader tweaks.

I have an EVGA RTX2080 TI 11GB so I assume that should support DX12 and anything needed.

My system is only 18 mo old and has an 8 core i9 cpu and 32GB RAM.

 

 

8 minutes ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

I'm finding that there is so much more life out there than endless tweaking, messing about with flight sims. 

 I haven't found a need to tweak V4 or V5. 

15 minutes ago, neil0311 said:

I have an EVGA RTX2080 TI 11GB so I assume that should support DX12 and anything needed.

My system is only 18 mo old and has an 8 core i9 cpu and 32GB RAM.

 

 

That´s sounds perfect. With my Rig V5 is running very smooth and stable. I have no CTD´s. I even use add-on airports which are not for V5 already, without issues too. I´ve just wiped V 4.5 from my systems off, yesterday.

7 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

Where is the wow factor? The killer feature? 

You are aware that it's not primarily intended to be a flight sim for entertainment aren't you? It is intended for education and training, primarily for military and related business customers, so we are, more often than not, at best secondary targets for sales of it. Yes this does mean that it's a hard sell to us because of the requirement of very good (i.e. expensive) hardware, but this is not Lockheed Martin's concern.

So if the Peruvian Air Force is looking for a turnkey classroom training solution for mission planning, their military budget Minister is not going to be going to their Air Force Academy's Commander: 'Well Colonel, I know it would be useful for training your cadets, but I'm sorry, the fact that you need two 800 quid graphics cards means the Defence Ministry simply cannot authorise its purchase because of the strain it would put on our six hundred Million Dollar budget this year. You're just going to have to use your real F5 Tigers for pilot mission training instead.'

And similarly, that conversation is unlikely to continue with...

'But Minister, it has a killer DX12 feature where the engines look like they have heat blur coming off them!'

'Killer heat blur feature you say? Well this changes everything Colonel! I'll have my people get onto Banggood.com immediately and order two NVidia Sexbomb 9000 GPUs for our Air Force Training Programme. For Great Justice! And now to other matters, concerning our planned invasion of Luxembourg and our use of Call of Duty for infantry training because of its amazing graphics and killer depth of field feature in the display options...'

Edited June 20, 20205 yr by Chock

45 minutes ago, Chock said:

You are aware that it's not primarily intended to be a flight sim for entertainment aren't you? It is intended for education and training, primarily for military and related business customers, so we are, more often than not, at best secondary targets for sales of it. Yes this does mean that it's a hard sell to us because of the requirement of very good (i.e. expensive) hardware, but this is not Lockheed Martin's concern.

So if the Peruvian Air Force is looking for a turnkey classroom training solution for mission planning, their military budget Minister is not going to be going to their Air Force Academy's Commander: 'Well Colonel, I know it would be useful for training your cadets, but I'm sorry, the fact that you need two 800 quid graphics cards means the Defence Ministry simply cannot authorise its purchase because of the strain it would put on our six hundred Million Dollar budget this year. You're just going to have to use your real F5 Tigers for pilot mission training instead.'

And similarly, that conversation is unlikely to continue with...

'But Minister, it has a killer DX12 feature where the engines look like they have heat blur coming off them!'

'Killer heat blur feature you say? Well this changes everything Colonel! I'll have my people get onto Banggood.com immediately and order two NVidia Sexbomb 9000 GPUs for our Air Force Training Programme. For Great Justice! And now to other matters, concerning our planned invasion of Luxembourg and our use of Call of Duty for infantry training because of its amazing graphics and killer depth of field feature in the display options...'

It’s a good write-up, chock, but i think it perpetuates some myths.

My take:

1. LM are indeed trying to make it look pretty. The main new features in v5 are some nice clouds, oversaturated sunsets and neat new waves. In other words, eye candy.

2. Are we truly not the target market? If you look at the LM showcases, they’re usually standard consumer sim products. 
 

1st hit on the LM site showcase is Captain Sim: The LM site notes:

”Some key highlights included:

• Cabin with 3D windows, interior, stewardess and animated pilots”

The other showcase i saw was katin vfr. Now, maybe the airlines are using prepar3d with captain sim planes to train their aircrew on how to land at KMIA.

Alternatively, the home flightsimmer may be a much larger part of p3d’s market than is sometimes recognised.

 

I think that if an organization is using P3d for training, they are likely to be using VR and minimizing the number of consumer 3rd party add-ons. They might have a specialized complex aircraft like the ones A2A sells to the military. Do they need a state of the art system? Probably not. Would it help? Sure.

I'm not saying LM are actively not trying to make it look good, clearly whilst they are making the thing, they would be interested in improving the visuals of something which is intended to simulate a training environment. I'm just pointing out that the wow factor for a training sim is not going to be the same as it would be for a flight sim marketed as an entertainment game and pitched for an XBox or Playstation, which P3D is not, nor would it be the main priority.

A fundamental difference is that if we look at the new MS sim which Asobo is developing for MS, that is clearly intended to have potential for other uses of the world environment which is being created, but it is also a piece of software intended to recoup its costs through both PC and XBox sales by appealing to the games market, since it involved an initial investment outlay, and we all know that eye candy sells stuff, so wow factor visuals is a priority.

Conversely, Lockheed Martin is not a gaming company, they could shut down P3D tomorrow and it would probably be a footnote briefly mentioned at the end of the next shareholder's meeting, because LM is a company which made $2.091 Billion in the first quarter of this year from its aerospace and other interests. They probably spend more on cups for their drinks machines than they do on developing P3D.

Edited June 20, 20205 yr by Chock

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Mace, you can force the 2004 update even if windows tells you you’re not ready - that’s what i did.

Well, I know I can force it.  I am ready for build 2004, but not to the extent that I want to force it.  I figure if Microsoft thinks my rig isn't ready for build 2004, then I'll take their word for it.  In the meantime I can work around the LatinVFR KMIA + Maddog vram usage with a settings profile, and in every other situation I've been good so far.

One thing I do want to do, is write down HF1 vram usage with certain scenarios like LatinVFR KMIA+Maddog.  I can see if HF2 changes that.  My guess is it will not, and that there will only be better error-trapping routines for low mem situations.  I'm a little surprised that Lockheed-M announced early next week for HF2, and yet haven't lifted the NDA.  That suggests that they will work right up to, or close to, release time.   

I'm already steeling myself for the Nazgul-esque screams when HF2 doesn't cure all ills.  

49 minutes ago, Mace said:

Well, I know I can force it.  I am ready for build 2004, but not to the extent that I want to force it.  I figure if Microsoft thinks my rig isn't ready for build 2004, then I'll take their word for it.  In the meantime I can work around the LatinVFR KMIA + Maddog vram usage with a settings profile, and in every other situation I've been good so far.

One thing I do want to do, is write down HF1 vram usage with certain scenarios like LatinVFR KMIA+Maddog.  I can see if HF2 changes that.  My guess is it will not, and that there will only be better error-trapping routines for low mem situations.  I'm a little surprised that Lockheed-M announced early next week for HF2, and yet haven't lifted the NDA.  That suggests that they will work right up to, or close to, release time.   

I'm already steeling myself for the Nazgul-esque screams when HF2 doesn't cure all ills.  

Its really strange your PC is "not ready" for it, look at my old PC to your and 2004 installed perfectly. Very strange.

20 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Its really strange your PC is "not ready" for it, look at my old PC to your and 2004 installed perfectly. Very strange.

I believe Microsoft got smart and now do staggered deployments of updates. Imagine if they rolled an update out to every copy of Windows all at once and it had some massive, system breaking bug they didn’t catch?

 

I am not sure what the algorithm is to determine who gets what when but I finally got it myself last week. Took a few weeks for it to say my pc was ready and it was available.

21 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Its really strange your PC is "not ready" for it, look at my old PC to your and 2004 installed perfectly. Very strange.

It must be some combination of hardware that I have, that MS deems not ready for the update.   

Right that or they really are staggering the update.

Edited June 20, 20205 yr by Mace
cain't spel

New Member here, just wanted to say that v5 has boosted my FPS by 10!, even at hard hitting airports like EIDW mkstudios and EGLC London City UK2000!, and I'm running old i5 2500K CPU @ 4.3 and not dropping below 30fps!, with GTX 1060 and SSD, its buggy but great platform to build on that's for sure, Prepar3d v4 had problems and so will v5, but they will be resolved as time passes.

P.S. Hope they update Taxi2Gate LFPG for v5 so I can test that too.

On 6/21/2020 at 6:29 AM, Redlight316 said:

New Member here, just wanted to say that v5 has boosted my FPS by 10!, even at hard hitting airports like EIDW mkstudios and EGLC London City UK2000!, and I'm running old i5 2500K CPU @ 4.3 and not dropping below 30fps!, with GTX 1060 and SSD, its buggy but great platform to build on that's for sure, Prepar3d v4 had problems and so will v5, but they will be resolved as time passes.

P.S. Hope they update Taxi2Gate LFPG for v5 so I can test that too.

Yes, P3D v5's performance increases are particularly noticable at well-designed airports. I have a lot of addon airports that I never actually used due to frame rate issues and microstutters in P3D v1/2/3/4. Now I'm finding that I can run them, with the AI cranked up to 100%, and they look great!

On 6/20/2020 at 8:19 PM, Dave_YVR said:

 I haven't found a need to tweak V4 or V5. 

I think i have spent 10 times more hours tweaking V4 to have it running fine then i had to fiddle around with V5.

I'm still on the fence with v5 since I seem to have v4 dialed in and running well, at least for my tastes anyway.  The MS offering does look enticing which also keeps me hesitating on the P3D upgrade - who knows how and what this will ultimately turn out to be in the end.  The cost of hardware also plays a role in my decision, if that's a requirement to make things work properly, but I never upgrade my hardware unless I cannot get things working on what I have anyway - not to mention add-ons that may have to be re-purchased.  Meanwhile, I will continue to monitor the forums to see how things progress on all fronts and continue enjoying this hobby as it is today.