Future of p3d ?

[coastaldriver 920]

It does occur to me that there is a great deal of misunderstanding of what actually has happened with P3D - the light, sky and waves. For decades the bench mark has been fancy photo derived texture manipulation - static graphics and all the limitations that came with trying to replicate movement. Well P3D has bolted in the most advanced programming around from the world of motion-graphics (think film industry etc) which manipulates light pixels on a screen in a formidable manner because its is based on real mathematical equations used by physicists electrical engineering as they have worked out how light shifts, how clouds change shape (light and direction) and water moves on the surface and how objects react. (I have read numerous papers in this area as I struggled to come to grips with EA and True Sky and NVIDIA's wave motion. Forget the hype about bing map displays, that is a secondary problem - I want to see the light change properly, the clouds develop and move realistically and wave representation that behaves like real water all on a PC screen - some ask, now if your running a flight simulator lets do something that you and I never do - speed up the movement not 5 km per hour not 60 km per hour but 1000 km per hr- Get the picture!

Want to see how good P3D is and where the future is - take the stock standard F35 and go fly it but drive it hard to its maximum theoretical speed M1.3+ so now your simulator is recreating motion, light and cloud that has to behave and respond at 1.3 X the speed of sound - and it does flawlessly! Thats why the Concorde for V5 will be such a blast to have such an accurate representation of a genuine supersonic aeroplane out of your box on the desk! Lets just say your not worried about seeing aunt Flo's house at M1.5 it went past you before you finished thinking about it!

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

33 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Thats why the Concorde for V5 will be such a blast to have such an accurate representation of a genuine supersonic aeroplane out of your box on the desk! Lets just say your not worried about seeing aunt Flo's house at M1.5 it went past you before you finished thinking about it!

I trust you will be observing the rules about sonic booms over populated areas! 😉 Auntie Flo will not be amused at her pets taking off vertically when you fly Concorde over her house at supersonic speed. 🤣

Rules is rules! 😁

[SimeonWilbury 220]

6 hours ago, Multisim said:

The way I see it though, Prepar3d as well as its 3rd party market is as close to being abandonware as you can get. I guess the significant parts you're refering to are things like going 64-bit. I think that's just maintenance and catching up for old time's lack of development, it's hardly something exciting compared to what one should expect from a big software developer. It's hardly new either, I've seen zero things to be excited over in Prepar3d for several years now. And there is zero communication from LM, zero roadmap, zero plan, zero response to bug reports, zero bug fixes. Almost half a year since the last tiny hotfix. Even though most bugs originating from FSX haven't even been fixed yet. That's not what I call active development.

I think this is a misunderstanding of how the P3D Development process and LM as a developer work.

• There has never, at least in my experience been a huge amount of communication from LM regarding P3D Development. The reasons why have been gone over ad nauseam in this thread so I won't repeat them.
• As others have already pointed out above, newer versions of P3D have not amounted to mere 'maintenance', the implementation of EA and Volumetric clouds alone disprove that. I also think the task of porting a platform like ESP to 64bit while maintaining extensive legacy support was significant enough in of itself. Improvements in P3D have rarely focused on the aesthetic side of things but the work that has happened regarding the internals is equally as important imo.
• Perhaps we share different tastes in this respect, but I heartily disagree regarding reasons to be excited over P3D. The addon front still has some great aircraft on the horizon. P3D itself will almost certainly continue to be developed and I can see substantial potential in development of EA and the like.
• I think the prevailing attitude regarding updates is very linked to contemporary Video Games where you have lots of 'rolling content' and constant tweaks and updates. P3D has always had a long time between updates and that in my view is completely fine, so long as when updates are released they are stable and work as intended. Certainly I prefer P3D's update pattern to the prospect of being subjected to what appears to still be a chaotic update regime with MSFS.

P3D is not abandonware, far from it. It is certainly doing fine in contrast to the state of FSX when I started simming back in 2011/2012. Does that gurantee it won't eventually be outshined by other platforms? No, but I think those foretelling its imminent demise at the moment are exaggerating.

[Rogen 1,087]

I think people missunderstand the P3D market.

Commercially you'd want a simulator where you can define specifically built senarios and weather along with programmed failures so that pilots can train, perform checkrides practice and repeat such training etc. in a realistic cockpit enviroment.

All this of course comes at a cost typically where the simulator is expected to earn x amount of income to make it's budget in the schema of the organisation.

Even updating such a system in a standard commercial sense comes into play where downtime equals income not earned and an update has to come with an advantage and also have a rollback plan incase of update issues.

This is what P3D does and what MSFS does not do.

Maybe in the future MSFS will imping onto P3D's market when MSFS is a stable sim and can achieve a certified rating, but let's not forget P3D is not frozen in time as FSX was.

Cheers

 

[Les Parson 99]

9 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I trust you will be observing the rules about sonic booms over populated areas! 😉 Auntie Flo will not be amused at her pets taking off vertically when you fly Concorde over her house at supersonic speed. 🤣

Rules is rules! 😁

Check your PM

[scotchegg 4,186]

8 hours ago, SimeonWilbury said:

No, but I think those foretelling its imminent demise at the moment are exaggerating.

I don’t imagine that it’s imminent, but I get the impression its attraction as a home platform is on the wane. When I see people weighing up where to put their money outside of this forum, it’s all MSFS vs XP. P3D usually isn’t in the conversation anymore.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

I bought 3 airports for P3Dv5 today. FlyTampa Montreal, JustSim Heraklion and Orbx Vienna. Plenty of life left in a very stable sim for this user.

And seeing all the AIG Ai at each airport just makes it so much better.

I couldn’t contemplate trying to cope with the alternative with all its problems. I’d rather be flying than scratching my head. Stability beats pretty scenery every time for this user.

[jcomm 5,939]

My latest purchases were all P3D-based too. I had to opt between IL2 GB and P3Dv5.2HF2, and indeed the latter is the one giving me, again, the best simulation experiences, mainly flying my FSLabs fleet.

Now I can just look fwd for thei ( FSLabs ) announcement of Concorde X  64 bit version !!!

[d.tsakiris 418]

I am also planning on buying a number of add-ons for V5 during all these Black Week sales...even one from Aerosoft!

Edited November 27, 2021 by d.tsakiris

[G-RFRY 1,712]

I only purchase P3Dv5 addons now, 5 in last few weeks and have not purchased anything for other sim since release. 

[Afterburner 374]

While scenery add-ons that enhance a region (such as the ORBX FTX series) are no longer a selling point for P3D (since photorealistic scenery is available by default at no additional cost for MSFS), I hope that 3rd party developers will keep making new airports for both sims. After all, each simulator will equally benefit from improved airports (as their default versions are not that detailed). This is where P3D shill shines in my opinion: With realistic and consistent weather thanks to Active Sky (without the problems reported by users in the sub-forum of the other sim), study-level airplane add-ons and a rich and diverse AI-traffic environment provided by AIG, it is a big joy to land at a high-quality airport that lets you see its life and complexity. I don't care about checking the location of my house beneath me during approach or cruise flight, but I love to get my passengers and baggage unloaded after parking via GSX and to spot other airplanes at that airport. (And maybe to right-click and select the AI plane to follow it a little bit).

In a nutshell, you can't beat MSFS if you want sightseeing, but when it comes to the experience of landing a jet at a big quality airport, P3D still has the edge if you use the above add-ons. For that, I still see some demand for good airports for P3D.

[SimeonWilbury 220]

11 hours ago, scotchegg said:

I don’t imagine that it’s imminent, but I get the impression its attraction as a home platform is on the wane. When I see people weighing up where to put their money outside of this forum, it’s all MSFS vs XP. P3D usually isn’t in the conversation anymore.

I don't necessarily disagree in this respect. I generally fall with the crowd in this thread who are of the opinion that LM need to offer more in future versions to avoid other sims pilfering more of the consumer market share (and in the case of MS even possibly threaten their standing in the profession realm in the longer-term). But nor am I necessarily a Doomer in that respect, even if P3D doesn't change drastically it's still got a few years left in it which is enough for me to continue investing in it for the time being. The challenge for LM is ultimately attracting new Users as much as retaining old ones.

Certainly some groups will be gone for good, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's already been said here there the other sims offer Casual Simmers without so much of a demand for study-level realism a lot more for their cash, but with the state of the SDKs atm P3D with some more development still has a potential niche in the Study-level market I feel. Ultimately time will tell in that regard.

5 minutes ago, Afterburner said:

it is a big joy to land at a high-quality airport that lets you see its life and complexity. I don't care about checking the location of my house beneath me during approach or cruise flight, but I love to get my passengers and baggage unloaded after parking via GSX and to spot other airplanes at that airport. (And maybe to right-click and select the AI plane to follow it a little bit).

When it comes to photoscenery personally I am most interested in the scenery immediately surrounding the Airport as opposed to when I'm mid-route at 30,000 feet (honourable exceptions would be when flying over Alaska and other areas with beautiful natural scenery). Hence my favourite sceneries tend to be those that include the surrounding environment (FlyTampa's VHHX, OMDB come to mind). More of that (and some sloped Runways!) and I'm set!

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

For those of you that have GSX Level 2 the Cartayna package is an excellent enhancement. It’s free at SimMarket. https://secure.simmarket.com/javier-iturralde-lind-cartayna-files-gsx-level-2-configurations.phtml

As well as greatly improving the jetways (glass ones allow you to see your pax boarding) it also adds parking aids at many airports.

The three I bought yesterday all have Cartayna-supplied files. Another generous free addition to P3D. 👏

[jcomm 5,939]

My next buy is actually going to an ATC Robot, and although it appears to work in all platforms, I am planning to use it on P3d v5.2 HF2 ** only **

I have never been able to complete a flight using IVAO, many moons ago, and I was never able to even install the VATSIM client because I always give up thinking I do not have the time to properly use it.

An ATC robot as OnCourse PF3 looks like the best choice right now. If any of you use it and / or have any hints / suggestions, please do ! 😉

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

My next buy is actually going to an ATC Robot

Have you tried Radar Contact v4? Now free and much loved by many.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/547732-radar-contact-and-jdtllc-in-transition/