This is why I can't go back to P3D

[ThomseN_inc 1,128]

Funny how people now bash P3D/FSX. A Sim they happily used for decades, proudly filling up screenshot threads to show that "as real as it gets" look proving what their rig is capable of. Today it's "Minecraft look", "radioactive clouds" and what not...people...

[DavidP 1,408]

5 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

get ready for P3D folks telling you MSFS is all about eye candy and P3D is the real thing with its Minecraft graphic 😏. 

So why antagonise people with clickbait? 

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

1 hour ago, ThomseN_inc said:

Funny how people now bash P3D/FSX. A Sim they happily used for decades, proudly filling up screenshot threads to show that "as real as it gets" look proving what their rig is capable of. Today it's "Minecraft look", "radioactive clouds" and what not...people...

So flying P3D, you would still praise how good FS9 looked? No, you'd say, geez, p3D looks a millions times better than FS9.And you'd be right.

[Noel 4,486]

2 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

I'm in the flightsim doldrums these days.

I'm not, I'm more excited than ever, and ever spans some 35+ years.  I have 100% awareness of the pros n cons of P3D 4.5 and MSFS patch 7.  I logged an average of maybe 24h/week in P3D for years n years w/ the $100's of addons downloaded, installed, setup, each and everyone of many addons to make P3D good enough to use that much.   Truthfully, w/o the addition of FSCaptain to P3D 4.5, I'm not sure how many hours I would have logged the last several years but I'm pretty confident it would have been a lot less.  I attribute this to the fact beyond the good quality of the 4 planes I had settled on for my pilot career in FSCaptain, GSX 2, ASN4 and all of that ORBX scenery, flying really became rather boring for me.   Aiming for good pilotage score in FSCaptain became the meat required to keep me at the table. 

When MSFS arrived and a kind soul here helped me w/ axis sensitivies for the TBM, a new dawn appeared for me.  I did not expect the accuracy of the scenery to play that big of a role after the initial wow factor.  To be honest, since getting MSFS up and running immediately after launch I've started maybe 10 sessions w/ P3D using FSCaptain which I always do.   Of the ten, I might have completed 4 or 5.  Of those, one was remarkable in that FSCaptain made me go to an alt airport after an engine failed and I got bonus points for this.  But the vast majority has been spent in MSFS.  The TBM930 has been amply capable and fun to fly and I've been exploring the big planet we live on, setting IFR flights up in familiar places and it really adds a level of immersion, the scenery, the lighting, the vast array of very well done airports everywhere I've been I can't imagine how they did it.  Even this pedestrian rural airport 40m from my home was a delightful place to discover, simple but so plausible versus the pretty mediocre stuff you find in comparable types of airports in P3D.  I've experienced some of the most rewarding challenging and so realistically plausible landings in the Pacific Northwest in typical marine weather there.   What's been remarkable is I haven't come near the boring piece I had w/ P3D without the added structure of FSCaptain to add meaning.   Some has carried over, the piloting behaviors it scores on so that maybe has helped.  I do more hand flying than ever before which in itself adds challenge over flying the AP all the time which in part came from trying to meet the requirements for a smooth flight as far as PAX might go in FSCaptain.  Seeing areas of the world that reflect reality is very meaningful to the immersion, and this has real value in this hobby for sure.   Some favorite shots of late...

The lovely Cote d' Azur at Nice FR:

The medievil village of Rotenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria:

La Pontaise Olympic Stadium in Lausanne Switzerland:

That little pedestrian airport 40m from home.  The planet is peppered w/ so many really nice airports it's fabulous.  Performance is earth shattering for what is happening around and beneath you.  The lion's share of this sim has already mostly been done.  The fine-tuning will come.  Compared to what you see happening here, dialing in the AP, ATC and a few other things really minor, even if very meaningful.  The robust SDK will come.  Looking at this post pasted from the PMDG forum Nov 22 it appears over a year out before the SDK gets there.  But good news there is nothing there that suggests PMDG believes they aren't being heard by Asobo even if they would like to see things move faster. Once again, would you rather wait for MSFS to reach the level of maturity it will take for PMDG's stuff to arrive, or fly now and enjoy it for what it is?

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/589974-pmdg-update/?do=findComment&comment=4412307

 

[ThomseN_inc 1,128]

4 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

So flying P3D, you would still praise how good FS9 looked? No, you'd say, geez, p3D looks a millions times better than FS9.And you'd be right.

Might be right but i wouldn't call FS9 word not allowed taking into account the technology that was available when it was produced.

[marsman2020 1,310]

You guys have it all wrong.  What we are missing in MSFS2020 is the trains.  Trains are a must, remember!

Check out this sweet train spotting shot from XP11:

How can we ever have a next-generation sim without the trains?  What will the people whose primary use of a flight sim is to park near the rail lines and watch the trains do?

Also, we need liveries for the trains and "train types" defined per rail line so all the rail lines have the right types of trains on them.

Edited December 1, 2020 by marsman2020

[ThomseN_inc 1,128]

27 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

You guys have it all wrong.  What we are missing in MSFS2020 is the trains.  Trains are a must, remember!

Check out this sweet train spotting shot from XP11:

How can we ever have a next-generation sim without the trains?  What will the people whose primary use of a flight sim is to park near the rail lines and watch the trains do?

Also, we need liveries for the trains and "train types" defined per rail line so all the rail lines have the right types of trains on them.

For that reason MSFS has animals to watch. Very useful too!

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

Well.. I didn't really think the P3D screens the OP posted looked all that bad. Sure MSFS looked better but not by much. If you really want to see the difference go to a random small airport in the three sims and then it'll be hard to use those others. Lately I've been jumping between small airports/strips in either the TBM or King Air in MSFS. Doing jobs in OnAir. It's always fun to go to a new place in MSFS, and the fact that those small airports are almost payware quality while in the others they are atrocious is hard to deny.

However that said. Personally, I am getting weary about the issues in MSFS. Since last patch I'm getting CTD where before there were none at all. And I would really like some bigger aircraft with high fidelity simulation. Say, a Majestic Q400. Hopefully in time we'll get there, but I can't deny I am slightly concerned atm. Redoing flights in OnAir because the sim crashed is getting kind of old.

[captain420 3,099]

You can definitely tell a huge difference, especially on a 55" display at 4K with ultra preset.

Edited December 1, 2020 by captain420

[mtaxp 666]

6 hours ago, F737NG said:

 the XP Zibo 737.

This one is now getting a new rewrite for c++, new graphics and new FMOD sounds and all the NG series (600-900).

 

[omarsmak30 4,065]

Thing is at the moment, P3D has the best third party airliners. However for folks like me, whom not real pilots and didn't have the chance to be in the office above the clouds, having very good scenery, clouds, lighting.. etc is equally important to the aircraft itself. 

[a321 207]

Whilst I understand the Draw of the Graphics. You can not even begin to compare on a Simulation level. You are willing to forego all of the system depth, the reliable and predictable auto pilot, the work put into the add-ons planes etc to get stuff as close to real life as possible, to basically sit there and look at pretty graphics whilst using a sim that at the moment is far away from simulation as it could be....wow. 

Why bother at all. 

[Scottoest 1,561]

40 minutes ago, a321 said:

Whilst I understand the Draw of the Graphics. You can not even begin to compare on a Simulation level. You are willing to forego all of the system depth, the reliable and predictable auto pilot, the work put into the add-ons planes etc to get stuff as close to real life as possible, to basically sit there and look at pretty graphics whilst using a sim that at the moment is far away from simulation as it could be....wow. 

Why bother at all. 

Pretty sure I've never seen anyone in here say they are willing to "forego" high-fidelity simulation, and more that people are willing to be patient and wait for that end of things to be ironed out more, because of the things it DOES do well NOW - such as the visual immersion, which is a not-insignificant part of the experience of flying. Particularly if you're not in an airliner.

Saying it's "as far away from simulation as it could be" is just hyperbole, and not really worth responding to.

We are three months into what Asobo is planning to be a years long journey, and some people like the glimpse of the future enough to go along for the ride instead of going back to what they used to use.

Edited December 1, 2020 by Scottoest

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

5 hours ago, ThomseN_inc said:

Funny how people now bash P3D/FSX. A Sim they happily used for decades, proudly filling up screenshot threads to show that "as real as it gets" look proving what their rig is capable of. Today it's "Minecraft look", "radioactive clouds" and what not...people...

I would never bash Flight Simulator X. I thought it was amazing back in 2006, gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment, and it holds a special place in my heart. Prepar3D on the other hand, while I am grateful it helped keep the hobby and ecosystem alive, the extremely slow progress has been frustrating.

I got v2 because of all the hype back then, didn't use it much because it was less stable and it looked and performed worse than Flight Simulator X. v3 was a joke at full price, v4 brought the much-needed 64-bit architecture but nothing earth-shattering, and while v5 had my attention, the amount of issues at launch turned me away. And now we have a new simulator that made up for all the lost progress in the last 14 years and finally brought flight simulation back to pushing the graphical benchmark of modern AAA titles, as it used to be.

That said, considering that it still needs a lot of time to mature, I really hope progress on Prepar3D will continue at a faster pace. Even if the engine, visuals and stock content are far behind for 2020, there is still a lot they can do.

[HighTowers 1,434]

Agree with Chaotic Beauty.   P3D filled the big void circa 2010-2020.  Sure it was highly outdated visually and still is in my opinion, but the high fidelity aircraft are why P3D is still on my system.  Thing is the Ops screenshots are showing Default MSFS 3 months from release vs P3D matured 10 years with a whole bunch of paid addons. More perspective?  120 months vs 3 months.  If thats not glaring enough, I dont know what is.   Once MSFS finally gets some high quality aircraft that match P3D aircraft or better, P3D is dead to me. Uninstall with pleasure. It served me well, but I am excited for the flight sim future. We have a very modern sim visually, and technologically. What we been hoping for , for the last 10+ years.   And when I say high fidelity aircraft, new developers are going to come in, and take advantage of the space and the much bigger marketplace of users.  The well known aircraft devs out there could be in for quite the competition. We already seen what freeware devs can do at FBW, and its only a matter of time before we start seeing great flying machines to our liking.   

Again its not knocking P3D.  Must have 2-3000 hours flying it the past 10 years, but the curtains are closing fast.