Is This The End of Prepar3D v4.5

[SAS443 1,723]

31 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

I still don't understand why so many folks over at the MSFS forum are so sensitive to, and so triggered by, any criticism of MSFS. 

There are plenty of threads (rightfully) criticizing parts of MSFS, especially avionics, AP and IFR flying. And they are rather civil.

As usual, it his more of how you convey the message rather than what you say. Just like in real life. 

This forum experienced similar divided camps when V5 was released and we had a brief v4 vs v5 camp.

[Rocky_53 1,579]

I think P3d is awesome and love it for airline flying, but when it gets down to flying low and slow, then MSFS2020 for GA flying wins hands down IMO. Of course it's early days and the nayasayers, who at one time would have included me, would knock it for all manner of things. The funny one I like is when simmers get knocked for liking eye candy 😆 as though there is nothing else positive about MSFS. Sure, it has a way to go, and bug fixes and updates to develop, but when you look at it now and consider what it's likely to be like in 12 months time, I think it is really exciting. But back to whether it is the end for P3d, nah, well certainly not for the next couple of years, but I do believe once MSFS has left primary school and graduated with fellow students such as PMDG, AS, A2A, etc etc then perhaps P3d would have to bring something special out of the bag to compete.

[FlyBaby 659]

MSFS has positioned itself to be the sim of choice in the future (even with many saying that they will switch when it matures).

MSFS has done many things that the current sim do not, such as:

• ·        Mass Marketing & Community Engagement (from the trailers, to the discovery series, Social Media outreach, to the twitch Q&As)

• ·        Truly partnering with others for various aspects of the sim (weather etc.)

• ·        A Store that will guarantee revenue as 3PDevs seek to tap the user base (MSFS oil well)

With mass appeal (and mind-blowing good looks), it only makes sense that 3PDevs will focus on developing for MSFS. Flightsim.to has almost 1,000 freeware addons in just a little over 2 months after the release.

I think that XP and P3D will always be around, but I doubt that LR or LM can do any major future development when their user base is shrinking, and they have no other source of revenue besides the sale of the sim itself.

With regards to P3D, I stopped buying “upgrades & bug fixes” with LM thought that an Avatar somehow enhanced the immersion. And I really can’t see XP12 offering anything groundbreaking (not to mention the 1 year cycle of Betas) that would bring new users to the platform.

With 3P Devs not investing much in these legacy sims, they will only be left with the small loyal user base that won’t generate enough revenue to justify any real investment going forward.

[BigDee 119]

Here a recent example from a post by JoeFackel:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/587470-pmdg-737-ng3-delayed-to-12-months/?do=findComment&comment=4385153

His statement gets knocked down by all means, altough the obvious is stated there: Flight Simulator is obvisously far away from a good simulator. PMDG, the only hope for simulation enthuasists turns early into a delayed status project. Nothing worth for me to wait until 2022 or 2023 or perhaps forever. It`s good to have P3D and X-Plane and to see how they will evolve.

[shivers9 1,174]

48 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Sure, it has a way to go, and bug fixes and updates to develop, but when you look at it now and consider what it's likely to be like in 12 months time, I think it is really exciting.

I am glad that you are excited. Please don't take this as an attack in any way. I just want to point out that for the past year we have been beat to death by MS about how great things were going to be when the "Sim of the Gods" got released. Then at release the noise changed to oh my this is going to be wonderful in a month or two when it get fixed. Next we started to get some input from Dev's about serious flaws and then the incomplete SDK. Then some of the big Dev's started to talk about needing at least 1 year before they could expect to have a SDK that would support deep systems like PDMG and several others. So since most of the better system type add ons need a year or so of work with a decent SDK that gets us to maybe... just maybe we will have great add ons some 3 years from the announcement and already we hear that MS has to change everything to DX12. That along could add another year to the process. It is fine that some folks are enjoying the MSFS2020 release but I am afraid my friend it is much to early start talking about the death of P3D and X-Pain. Even if all the 0's and 1's get sorted out, it all still has to survive the MS Board of Directors and those who have been around for a few years know exactly how much one of their meetings can change the safety of their games.

[Rocky_53 1,579]

1 hour ago, shivers9 said:

I am glad that you are excited. Please don't take this as an attack in any way. I just want to point out that for the past year we have been beat to death by MS about how great things were going to be when the "Sim of the Gods" got released. Then at release the noise changed to oh my this is going to be wonderful in a month or two when it get fixed. Next we started to get some input from Dev's about serious flaws and then the incomplete SDK. Then some of the big Dev's started to talk about needing at least 1 year before they could expect to have a SDK that would support deep systems like PDMG and several others. So since most of the better system type add ons need a year or so of work with a decent SDK that gets us to maybe... just maybe we will have great add ons some 3 years from the announcement and already we hear that MS has to change everything to DX12. That along could add another year to the process. It is fine that some folks are enjoying the MSFS2020 release but I am afraid my friend it is much to early start talking about the death of P3D and X-Pain. Even if all the 0's and 1's get sorted out, it all still has to survive the MS Board of Directors and those who have been around for a few years know exactly how much one of their meetings can change the safety of their games.

Hey Sam, I agree with you 100% the release of MSFS has been a dog's dinner, bugs and half finished aspects which really should have been sorted before it's release, Even Asobo have agreed with that! But I guess what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm alone, I'd like to think I'm a realist, is that while I believe P3d is a superb sim, and will be for quite some time, I do believe MSFS will be the go to sim in the future. Perhaps when I suggested 12 months, I was a little over optimistic, but the actual technology that it employs is something the simming community has been crying out for for years! Like FSX when it was first released, there were many, many updates and bug fixes over a long period. But sure, P3d is awesome, and I love it. I have just finished a stunning flight from Bristol down to Valencia with real weather, NGX, VoxATC, REX, and all the usual bells and whistles in P3d V4.5 and it was amazing! I love it, but for GA, I am focusing on MSFS and enjoying watching it grow. 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Rockliffe

[GSalden 4,656]

56 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

Hey Sam, I agree with you 100% the release of MSFS has been a dog's dinner, bugs and half finished aspects which really should have been sorted before it's release, Even Asobo have agreed with that! But I guess what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm alone, I'd like to think I'm a realist, is that while I believe P3d is a superb sim, and will be for quite some time, I do believe MSFS will be the go to sim in the future. Perhaps when I suggested 12 months, I was a little over optimistic, but the actual technology that it employs is something the simming community has been crying out for for years! Like FSX when it was first released, there were many, many updates and bug fixes over a long period. But sure, P3d is awesome, and I love it. I have just finished a stunning flight from Bristol down to Valencia with real weather, NGX, VoxATC, REX, and all the usual bells and whistels in P3d V4.5 and it was amazing! I love it, but for GA, I am focusing on MSFS and enjoying watching it grow. 

I have stated the following several times :

You cannot have the best eyecandy + best weather + complex jetliners and expect the best performance too.

It always will be a compromise between detail and performance. Doesn’t matter what sim.

In 2008 I already started with using PR scenery as I wanted the outside world to look as good as what was possible with good performance. Back then I wrote that I hoped that someday the future was streaming PR scenery into Fs 

Then I tried TileProxy which downloaded PR tiles and put them into FSX/P3D. As blurries appeared above 100 knots I switched to PR packages which I still use. 

Till just before MS began with releasing info about their new to come Fs many people claimed that it was all about complex ac and not so much about PR scenery.

Many of them now are liking it in MSFS, which is good.

As I have all PR scenery + custom AG + modified Shaders in V5, I now am waiting for V5.1 with improved EA.

In the meantime I am trying to get my Prosim ac working in MSFS. Even if several OVH features do not work I can test performance with a 737-800....

Imho the future is bright with all flightsims ..

 

 

[F737MAX 5,598]

8 minutes ago, micstatic said:

To me the most MSFS thing about P3D is avatar mode. An arcade gimmick.

Not to a US Marine in a virtual training session it's not. 🙂

[micstatic 4,319]

1 minute ago, F737NG said:

Not to a US Marine in a virtual training session it's not. 🙂

fair point

[SAS443 1,723]

@GSalden Prepar3D is constantly getting more advanced graphics, and payware airliners are evolving all the time. The things we have today was unthinkable just 4 years ago (64bit sim, dynamic lightning, DX12, FSL A320 with its ATSU/CPDLC etc). And all this work is based on a constantly improved platform... boundaries are pushed further every year.

We have today, a much better looking sim and better/more advanced airplanes and performance has increased big time since just 2016,  so I think we can expect both stunning visuals and even more realistic aircraft. History has proven it is possible.

Like you wrote, we have indeed a bright future

Edited October 24, 2020 by SAS443

[kaha 205]

What I would love to have is P3D with MSFSs scenery. It's easy like that. And I believe a new Zen 3 beast with a 3090 could handle it already.

Dreaming.....

Karl

[dave2013 1,130]

10 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

@GSalden Prepar3D is constantly getting more advanced graphics, and payware airliners are evolving all the time. The things we have today was unthinkable just 4 years ago (64bit sim, dynamic lightning, DX12, FSL A320 with its ATSU/CPDLC etc). And all this work is based on a constantly improved platform... boundaries are pushed further every year.

We have today, a much better looking sim and better/more advanced airplanes and performance has increased big time since just 2016,  so I think we can expect both stunning visuals and even more realistic aircraft. History has proven it is possible.

Like you wrote, we have indeed a bright future

I agree that P3Dv4/5 is a fantastic platform.  We've come a long way from FSX.

The only real disappointment with P3D for me is flying over areas of the world not covered by ORBX openLC.  ORBX dropped the ball and never finished the promised world coverage, so whenever I fly over Asia or the Middle East the scenery is always somewhat of a letdown.  Other than that I think the scenery is actually pretty darn good.  One must understand that I've been simming since 1984, so what we have now compared to what I've been used to for most of my life is pretty awesome.

Dave

[Bob Scott 7,720]

I've hidden a bunch of posts that had nothing to do with the topic...I think a lot of us are getting tired of every topic on every forum getting hijacked to a SimZilla discussion.

Enough already.

 

[Anxu00 176]

I have been out of the FS scene for a year, although I heard about MS2020, I did not pay too much attention to it much.  Since I have just updated my system, my read and the answer to the OP is that my P3D 4.5 will still be useful for what meager times I have for FS (yes, the 1 year hiatus was solely due to lack of time) for at least 1-2 years.  I am not seeing any advantage to go to P3D v5 nor will I touch MSFS 2020.  I rather have the time spent doing some leisure flying rather than spent all of it in complex setup and tweaks.  It has been a blast reading this thread and realizing that I have not missed anything much 🙃

Cheers, Vu

[micstatic 4,319]

Last night was a prime example why I still love p3d. Vatsim had a Friday night event. Took out the fslabs a319 in conjunction with my Skalarki fcu and mcdu. Msp to Chicago midway. Countless other addons enhanced the ride.  It was incredible. Life has been a little hectic these days. So I can’t fly as often as I would like. So when I get the chance I cherish it.