Can someone briefly tell me the differences between V4 and V5?  I have seen videos of V5 and to me it looks very much the same is in V4.  Is there a convincing reason to upgrade that I am not seeing.  I generally fly jetliners, specifically FSlabs and PMDG.  

For me the performance is so much better in V5, the water, the enhanced atmos! I would never go back to v4!

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by rob0203

Do most airports translate over?  Is it a complete uninstall reinstall or is it just installing client, etc? 

much better performance in V5.  The key is making sure you have enough VRAM.  In V4 and other DX11 titles, if you ran out of VRAM you would get stutters.  In DX12 games like V5 if you run out of VRAM you get a CTD.  I run in 4k with 11gb of vram.  I don't have all my settings spiked and only run with textures in sim at 2048.  Certain aircraft hit VRAM harder like tfdi 717 and maddog MD88.  But I wouldn't go back to V4.  CTD's are very very rare for me.  I'll be getting the new nvidia 3090 soon which will give me 24gb of vram to use.  exciting times.  Just about everything I ran in V4 is compatible in V5 with either updates from the maker or compatibility patches from inibuilds.  The shading/lighting is also much better.  TrueSky mostly looks fantastic and is still just in beta.  Overall it's a nice update provided you have the right hardware and correctly tuned settings. 

Does Truesky eliminate the need for Sky Force? 

2 minutes ago, Zimmerbz said:

Does Truesky eliminate the need for Sky Force? 

skyforce isn't officially compatible yet.  But no.  I use activesky as a weather engine with asca for clouds.  So you need a weather engine but it acts as the texture engine for truesky.

I upgraded from FSX to P3D.  I was thinking about getting 4.5 but decided on V5.  The main reason for me going to V5 was there was a major airport upgrade.  They got rid of some old abandon ones and added some new ones as well as updated a lot of airports. Most of my add-ons worked ok with free updates from various vendors. Just had to update FSUIPC and Pilot's FS Global Real Weather.  HF2 has been very stable so far. 

John C.

 

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by johncott

Installed V5 last week with the latest installer but still using V4.5 as not all my addons are compatable. Overall I like it as others have said, runs smooth and the True Sky has potential but I still like some of the Rex cloud textures I have in V4.5. The EA option is still a beta and I have noticed on the ground that backlit trees and some other objects have a flashing effect when it is enabled.The Active Sky P3D beta is working well as all V5 compatable aircraft that I installed. I was sursprised the default airport layouts are more up to date with taxiways etc. and match current charts,  Installed ORBX base with the NA land class, skipped Vector because it actually looked more accurate than V4.5 with Vector installed at least in my home area. Overall it was a very smooth transiition and I have not had any failure to launch or CTD. Like others I was planning on MSFS but glad I opted to stick with P3D and look forward to further LM upgrades in the future. 

Just now, CW46 said:

Installed V5 last week with the latest installer but still using V4.5 as not all my addons are compatable. Overall I like it as others have said, runs smooth and the True Sky has potential but I still like some of the Rex cloud textures I have in V4.5. The EA option is still a beta and I have noticed on the ground that backlit trees and some other objects have a flashing effect when it is enabled.The Active Sky P3D beta is working well as all V5 compatable aircraft that I installed. I was sursprised the default airport layouts are more up to date with taxiways etc. and match current charts,  Installed ORBX base with the NA land class, skipped Vector because it actually looked more accurate than V4.5 with Vector installed at least in my home area. Overall it was a very smooth transiition and I have not had any failure to launch or CTD. Like others I was planning on MSFS but glad I opted to stick with P3D and look forward to further LM upgrades in the future. 

Thanks.  Does the V5 installer install on top of 4.5 or does it completely remove it and then require a fresh install of everything?

4 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

Can someone briefly tell me the differences between V4 and V5?  I have seen videos of V5 and to me it looks very much the same is in V4.  Is there a convincing reason to upgrade that I am not seeing.  I generally fly jetliners, specifically FSlabs and PMDG.  

V5 has improved water, atmosphere, and DX12 support. DX12 is good and bad. Good because you can get better performance but you can also run out of vRAM if your video card doesn't have at least 8gigs of VRAM.

I'm still on v4.5 because most of my airports would require updating at an additional cost and I'm currently happy with my sim and all my excellent add-ons. Looks and performs well for now.

21 minutes ago, Zimmerbz said:

Thanks.  Does the V5 installer install on top of 4.5 or does it completely remove it and then require a fresh install of everything?

Completely different sims. You can keep both on your system.

I installed V5 on a separate SSD and it does require a new license purchase, it is not an update for V4

1 hour ago, CW46 said:

I installed V5 on a separate SSD and it does require a new license purchase, it is not an update for V4

Ok, so this confirms that V5 would be a complete reinstall of everything that is compatible.  Thanks

Guys,

I am soon upgrading from v4 to v5.

I pretty much have most complex add-ons.

Any tips on what to keep before uninstalling everything?

e.g. I saw UTlive and ORBX don't require an uninstall and just require moving folders.

Any other stable shortcuts suggested?

Thanks!

 

For me one of the big improvements from V4 to V5 is the mesh and the much more accurate coastline and vector data. I actually stopped using ORBX vector for V5 becuase it is less complete and it removes al the default streams.