P3D v4.5 HF3 vs 5.1 HF1 EA Off vs 5.1 HF1 EA On

[Biology 1,347]

Hi,

I am a Prepar3D newcomer from X-Plane, as I love flying airliners and I was unable to find PMDG/FSLabs/Leonardo SH alternatives for X-Plane. However, I am quite confused because of the hate P3D v5+ gets. How stable is v5.1 HF1 compared to v4.5 HF3? Is it indeed overall smoother and stable enough to be my main simulator? I really like the look of Enhanced Atmospherics but there are many people reporting lighting issues with it such as some regions of aircraft being dark even with direct sunlight and broken dynamic lighting, so I am torn between these three options. Without Enhanced Atmospherics, everything, including sky colors, looks ugly and I don't know how to make it look good. Especially the look of 2D clouds is weird for me, mostly because the cloud textures look so sharp and detailed, which makes the fact that they are 2D a lot more obvious. I really would love the smooth/soft Ultra Weather XP-ish clouds, but not sure if such a thing is available for P3D. So, given that I already have P3D v5, which one do you recommend for me?

Thank you.

Edited November 21, 2020 by BiologicalNanobot

[GSalden 4,656]

Here all versions were/are stable. Once you have tried V5 EA on icw a weather program you’ll never want to go back to V4.

[Biology 1,347]

25 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Here all versions were/are stable. Once you have tried V5 EA on icw a weather program you’ll never want to go back to V4.

Thank you. I indeed love EA, and this is why I am too hesitant to switch from v5.0 HF2 to v5.1 HF1. Clouds and haze look really nice, but it comes with drawbacks like slightly weird sunset/sunrise sky colors and visual issues like this (which reportedly wasn't the case in v5.0 HF2):

And

[GSalden 4,656]

[airbusa 8]

hello gsalden,

do you have your modification in the cloud cfg file with hf1 5.1 still active or default?

best regards

oliver

[GSalden 4,656]

18 minutes ago, airbusa said:

hello gsalden,

do you have your modification in the cloud cfg file with hf1 5.1 still active or default?

best regards

oliver

Hi Oliver,

If I am correct my mod is now the default values.

I have to update 2 pc’s so it will probably be the coming week that I will have the opportunity to take a look at it.

regards, Gerard 

[airbusa 8]

thanks gerard then i will look next week

yes 2 pc setup is a lot of work i run on 2 pc prosim a320 😀

[tymk 105]

Since you already have v5, you'll need to make it work for you I guess... 😉 I do agree that for serious tubeliner flying, the performance improvements that v5 offers over v4 may be worth some of the trade-offs.

As for the appearance of the "stock" sim, the sad truth is that both v4 and v5 look really bad out of the box, but with v4, a lot could be improved by using PTA/TomatoShade. In v5, this is no longer an option, so you're stuck with either the horrible default look (which can only be improved slightly by using better sky textures, but is otherwise even worse than v4 due to the badly overdone contrast) or the current unfinished Enhanced Atmospherics.

A lot depends on the way you fly. During the day, with the transparency/sorting issues (i.e. objects showing through haze and clouds) finally fixed, the daytime visuals are actually very good. As you can see in Gerard's first shot, the clouds look great and the atmospheric scattering is first-class. Problems start between sunset and sunrise. While the clouds still look good in Gerard's second shot, the moment the sun goes below the horizon, things really start to go downhill. You can look here (and forward a bit to 1:07:00) to see what I mean. Welcome to Mars... 😉

I really hope this is going to be improved in the next version, but it's becoming rather obvious that LM lack the "art direction" or expertise to adjust the visuals so that they resemble planet Earth (or that they simply don't consider it a priority).

For the time being, I'm sticking with v4.5 HF3, because I don't fly in very performance-critical areas or use very performance-hungry aircraft, so the ability to have natural colors at all times of day (plus the ability to adjust the visuals using PTA) is more important to me than performance gains. As always, YMMV...

Tym

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2020 by tymk

[Biology 1,347]

@tymk thank you. At this point stability is really my main concern, as all I want is to set a relatively good-looking simulator environment and forget about installing & tweaking stuff until airliners for MSFS are out. I am so confused, v5.1 HF1 with EA looks so much better but people are saying it's not as stable & bug-free as v4.5 HF3...

It's really so hard to choose.

Edited November 22, 2020 by BiologicalNanobot

[flycln 435]

5.1hf1 has been rock solid for me so far. Much better performance than 4.5 and with the right addons it can look spectacular. 

[kenthom 19]

How does night flying look?  I fly NGXu a lot at night enjoying the look of airports that are lit up.

[vin747 316]

Just did my first full flight with 5.1 HF1 and it was great. All or most of the EA glitches have been fixed. Clouds look great at daytime. Don’t use EA at dusk. Don’t look straight down at your aircraft or you will see grids. 
 

can someone confirm if ASP3D does smooth transitions now with their latest RC2?

[skysurfer 76]

I turned EA off after flying at night and during sunrise and sunset. Everything is too dark and I was unable to see most of runway lights, airport lights etc in various sceneries. Some switches in PMDG aircraft are blue and flickering. When I turned EA off everything reverts back to normal.  

[nicboyGS 34]

On 11/21/2020 at 5:27 AM, GSalden said:

What are you so excited about this picture, the color is not right and the sky is too hazy, and the cloud is flat and patterned. 

[SAS443 1,723]

17 minutes ago, nicboyGS said:

What are you so excited about this picture, the color is not right and the sky is too hazy, and the cloud is flat and patterned. 

For P3D this is good result. Everything is relative, calm down.