Hi, it's me again, a Prepar3D newcomer.

There are so many add-ons for P3D, and it is really hard to decide on what's essential and what's not - I've read many previous threads about that but most of them are about Prepar3D v4 and previous versions. Given that Prepar3D v5 have so many new features, including EA which renders many environmental add-ons obsolete, I decided to create yet another thread about that.

Currently I have FSLabs A320, Active Sky P3D and FlightBeam KPDX. What else do you think I need?

Another unrelated question, does Chaseplane add stall buffet and other sorts of aerodynamic effects? If not, what add-on do you recommend for this? I was thinking of Accu-Feel, but I am still not sure.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to P3D and you are going to love it as there are many products out there that will help make this platform much more robust. I am just going to give some ideas related to the eye candy for the sim because most people rely on several products to give the platform a nice level of visual fidelity and realism.

You will want to purchase many products from Orbx. Many of us on this forum have spent hundreds of dollars on Orbx products and they are well worth the cost. I would recommend purchasing several regional packs which include products like Pacific Northwest, Pacific Fjords, Central Rockies, England, Germany North, Germany South, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand North, New Zealand South, and many, many more. Most of these are about $35 to $45 USD each and well worth it. 

Regions, however, do not cover the entire globe, so for that I would also strongly recommend some Global packages. Definitely get the Global Base Pack and Global Vector products. In addition, it would be smart to get the landclass products for the different areas of the world such as Open LC for North America, Open LC for South America, Open LC for Africa, and Open LC for Europe. These are important to add realism to areas that are not served by Orbx regions and many happy users on this forum use. Each one of these is around $50 USD.

Also, It would be really important to get the True Earth products, which are photoscenery with autogen houses, buildings, and trees placed accurately on the photoscenery. There are some great areas in the world where True Earth is available like Northern California, Southern California, Washington State, Oregon, Florida, Netherlands, Great Britain North and Great Britain South. These cost about $35 to $45 USD each and the great thing is Orbx will continue to produce more areas in the world. 

To round things off, I would also recommend their excellent Trees package, which replaces the default P3D trees. Also they have a great Buildings package, which replaces the default P3D buildings. There are also tons and tons of airports to buy and Orbx also offers many free airports. 

Many of us on this forum are real fans of Orbx products because they help make P3D be significantly more realistic than what default gives us. I would possibly look to purchase Orbx products when they go on sale from time to time. In order to get a really nice looking simulator with nice eye candy, it would be good to start budgeting to spend just a few hundred dollars ($500 - $1,000).

Of course you can spend less and focus perhaps on flying in just a small area and expand as your budget allows because you will also want to spend money on many other great add-ons like planes, weather utilities, cloud and airport textures, specialty airports, etc., etc., etc., that are available for us.

Good luck and welcome to the world of P3D.

Well, it's hard to answer without knowing what your goals are...the type of acft and the regions/locations you want to fly will define the sort of acft and airport scenery add-ons you may want.

As far as wide-area scenery, I would start with one Orbx OpenLC product in a region you're interested in.  Each of the four OpenLC products cover an entire continent.  I find that that OpenLC is all I really need for wide-area scenery enhancement when flying complex jet airliners...I have all the US Orbx regions, but what they bring to the table is pretty much lost when at flight level looking down, and some of them really clobber performance--their Southern California product being the heaviest hitter, requiring powerful cutting-edge hardware to power through it without getting radar vectors direct to Stutter City.  If you're into regional turboprops and/or GA, then adding the regions, and perhaps also the TrueEarth areas might be of interest, but I'd suggest you try one first in an area you're interested in to see if you find the value-added worth the price and the performance impact acceptable to you..

In conjunction with the OpenLC, I use the Ultimate Terrain X vector scenery to correct roads, coastlines, water bodies, etc.  It's fairly long in the tooth, but still works well in P3D through v5, and does not need a lot of hands-on configuration management.  I cannot say the same for Orbx' competing Vector product.

I am not a fan of add-on scenery mesh because of the proliferation of altitude mismatches that mesh causes with add-on scenery, and I'm underwhelmed by the rather extensive terrrain shape-shifting that occurs when you add more mesh LOD levels.  I've used them in the past, and have left them out in my last three builds without feeling like I'm missing much.

As far as utilities, I still consider FSUIPC 6 and its companion program WideFS to be the Swiss Army Knife of flight simming.  The free P3D Addon Manager by Lorby-SI and the free ADE (Airport Design Editor) utility are also indispensible to me.  The AIG One-Click Installer provides a complete AI traffic solution with a little work, and also free.  The freeware SODE plus the payware GSX add easily-managed ground handling, including intelligent jetways that mate right up to the acft doors. I use Opus FSI to do custom camera (view) management...there are several other utilities (CameraPosition X, EZ-Dok) that also do this.  One of my favorite utilities is the inexpensive AviaServer RemoteCDU utility, which allows implementation of remote FMS CDU/MCDU operation, EFBs, and even overhead panels on a tablet or networked PC.  I use the excellent free LittleNavMap program for a moving map display on a networked PC.  Radar Contact v4 is still one of the best self-contained ATC programs around--it was payware for over a decade and has now been gifted to us for free by its authors.

There...sorting through all this should keep you busy until, oh let's see, next summer or so.

 

3 hours ago, MikeT707 said:

You will want to purchase many products from Orbx. Many of us on this forum have spent hundreds of dollars on Orbx products and they are well worth the cost.

IF the budget is not an issue... sure..

With MSFS on the doorstep, indeed part way into the house, this changes IMHO..

I can be had on Global and LC products... but everything else can be found for free in MSFS.. That should be a consideration.  🙂

That's very true if you are just coming into the hobby.

Unless you are really interested in a particular spot for low-and-slow flying, I’d skip Orbx region packages and especially True Earth as the value proposition just isn’t there. (After all, if all you’re going to do low-and-slow flying in that spot, you can just buy MSFS for only a little more!) Global is good value and gives you night lighting in addition to much improved textures.

Orbx Vector is essential if you’re going to do any flying, even at 40,000 feet, anywhere outside of Europe or North America. Default coastlines are unbelievably primitive in many parts of the world. Personally, I turned off most of the extra roads that come with Vector, since they just slow performance down while blocking autogen and not looking good (that’s a one-time tweak). But the coastlines and rivers are must-have.

You also need Activesky for weather. I’d say Rex textures are borderline essential for clouds if you’re on 4.5 but maybe not with 5 and EA.

Orbx LC packs are fairly good value but still add up quickly, so it’s mostly a question of how much you want to spend.

If you’re going to be flying airliners, GSX is essential. PFPX used to be essential but Simbrief has in many ways surpassed it (and it’s free!).

You will probably want to buy one cycle of Navigraph if you’re flying addon airliners, but you don’t have to subscribe and can replace it if/when it gets out of date enough it bothers you. Charts are usually findable free on the internet.

James

Edit: Forgot to mention FreeMesh, which is great and...free. 🙂

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by honanhal
Forgot something!

How to install FreeMesh in V5?

5 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

IF the budget is not an issue... sure..

With MSFS on the doorstep, indeed part way into the house, this changes IMHO..

I can be had on Global and LC products... but everything else can be found for free in MSFS.. That should be a consideration.  🙂

Again "other-Sim-babble" nobody asked for. 
 

Whats wrong with you? OP asked for P3D addons. Is MSFS and P3D addon?

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by JoeFackel

Hi!

If the moderators think that this is an unnecessary ad, just delete my message.

But I wanted to say that I myself can't fly in P3D without the effects that EZCA provides.

The new MSFS simulator has something similar, but FSX and P3D didn't have it. This adds a sense of presence. The video shows this:

 

Chaseplane. Orbx global would be my first two

• GSX
• Any payware airports that you like

That's it for essentials on top of what you already have.

It really depends on where you'll be flying your FSL A320. If you'll stay on the U.S. West Coast, then Orbx Global, North America, Vector nor separate mesh products will be needed. Just get the appropriate TrueEarth regions - closest you'll get to replicating MSFS scenery.

I don't know how Accu-Feel interacts with the FSL Airbus. It's a nice extra, but not often noticed and not essential.

I also wouldn't bother with any cloud textures or shader add-ons either until we see how Enhanced Atmospherics matures in the base sim.

From your previous post about P3D, if you're not going to be able to spend more than a year or so on flight simming, I would be wary of trying to achieve too much. P3D add-ons can add up very quickly when trying to get that elusive 'perfect sim' experience. Not to mention that the more you add, the more data that needs to be processed, the lower the performance.

If you decide to install lots of AI plane models, do yourself a favour and buy the FSReborn AI Lights Reborn Professional Edition.....

https://www.fsreborn.com/ai-lights-reborn-professional-edition

7 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

IF the budget is not an issue... sure..

With MSFS on the doorstep, indeed part way into the house, this changes IMHO..

I can be had on Global and LC products... but everything else can be found for free in MSFS.. That should be a consideration.  🙂

I would not advice MSFS with all its issues to anyone who wants to fly now without all kinds of AP/Garmin/Flightdynamics issues and if you want to fly complex jetliners.

And he already has the A320 FsLabs so he is interested in complex jetliners, which is not possible with MSFS.
 

Edited October 11, 20205 yr by GSalden

12 hours ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Hi, it's me again, a Prepar3D newcomer.

There are so many add-ons for P3D, and it is really hard to decide on what's essential and what's not - I've read many previous threads about that but most of them are about Prepar3D v4 and previous versions. Given that Prepar3D v5 have so many new features, including EA which renders many environmental add-ons obsolete, I decided to create yet another thread about that.

Currently I have FSLabs A320, Active Sky P3D and FlightBeam KPDX. What else do you think I need?

Another unrelated question, does Chaseplane add stall buffet and other sorts of aerodynamic effects? If not, what add-on do you recommend for this? I was thinking of Accu-Feel, but I am still not sure.

Thanks in advance.

Like the others also have mentioned:

Orbx FTXGlobal is a good start. If you want to make it more real than also Orbx OpenLandclass.

If you are interested in photorealistic scenery than the Orbx True Earth series. If you like flying in Europe than FranceVFR has a lot of great photorealistic scenery.

And many P3D addons are available on Simmarket.

👍🏻

6 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Like the others also have mentioned:

Orbx FTXGlobal is a good start. If you want to make it more real than also Orbx OpenLandclass.

If you are interested in photorealistic scenery than the Orbx True Earth series. If you like flying in Europe than FranceVFR has a lot of great photorealistic scenery.

And many P3D addons are available on Simmarket.

👍🏻

I see, thank you.

At first I was planning to get the Orbx True Earth, but it looks like it doesn't have seasonal variants, which was something I've really wanted. So I am planning to stick to the Orbx Global, I guess.