Future of p3d ?

[Afterburner 374]

Christopher, do you use the in-game FPS target?  If yes, I would turn it off because it lowers the frame rate over detailed scenery.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

I have the framerate set to Unlimited.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,955]

@Christopher Low, try installing MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner SS. They provide valuable info on the CPU and GPU load. As soon as 100% is hit for either the stutters will start.

Being able to identify which will help you adjust your settings. I can get stutters with VSync Off and fps of 40+.

Turn it back on and it’s ultra smooth at 30. More isn’t always best. 😉

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html

 

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 540]

This is the main problem concerning v6: support.

 

[Ronaldo1978 26]

26 minutes ago, Juliet Alpha said:

This is the main problem concerning v6: support.

P3dv6 needs to be even better than MSFS, no doubt about it. But I think they are working a bit longer (at least two years) and v6 will be a huge step forward. And we should not afraid that it could break compatibilities. If you decide to use MSFS, you are doing a platform change anyway.

[d.tsakiris 418]

I disagree. Backward compatibility is one of the main advantages of P3D. For me, and I suspect strongly also for LM's “important customers“. That said: I do think a significant step forward can be made (concerning mainly graphics) without breaking that compatibility. I hope that is what LM are aiming for here.

[okupton 309]

1 hour ago, Juliet Alpha said:

This is the main problem concerning v6: support.

 

Surprised to see this comment from Fslabs considering they are the only major aircraft developer for P3d with anything in the pipeline that I am aware of.  

totally understand their point about demand, but are they really expecting to release the Concorde in the coming months for V5 with no plans to update it to p3dv6, which may be released before Concorde is? 

[Zangoose 1,631]

19 minutes ago, okupton said:

Surprised to see this comment from Fslabs considering they are the only major aircraft developer for P3d with anything in the pipeline that I am aware of.  

totally understand their point about demand, but are they really expecting to release the Concorde in the coming months for V5 with no plans to update it to p3dv6, which may be released before Concorde is? 

I suppose it will depend how much work would be involved to make their products work fully in V6 before committing to the development costs of doing so. 

V6 is also a paid upgrade so not everyone is going to upgrade straight away. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by Zangoose

[okupton 309]

6 minutes ago, Zangoose said:

I suppose it will depend how much work would be involved to make their products work fully in V6 before committing to the development costs of doing so. 

V6 is also a paid upgrade so not everyone is going to upgrade straight away. 

I would say not much work is necessary since majestic already made their product v6 compatible, but that’s speculative. 
 

But you’re right.  We’ll just have to wait and see what v6 brings and how the community reacts to it.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

If P3Dv6 is not a revolutionary upgrade, how many addon developers are even going to bother with it? In other words, update installers/compatibility etc.

[DChockey08 299]

45 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

If P3Dv6 is not a revolutionary upgrade, how many addon developers are even going to bother with it? In other words, update installers/compatibility etc.

I think all depends on how difficult the changes are. If it's simply pointing the installers in the direction of v6 instead of v5, I can see developers doing that. Even if they don't, I think we could see some sort of migration like we've had in the past. 

I'm hoping that v6 is either completely revolutionary and blows everything else out of the water, or makes smaller tweaks that fix issues that have irked us for years, but keeps compatibility simple. Either one, I'm happy with, though I believe it will be the latter. 

[Baber20 1,438]

I am betting on P3D V6 to be a revolutionary upgrade from V5. No point in doing a V6 with bug fixes and performance improvements. That would be V5.4 no ?

Either way I am super excited for V6. I think we are in for some nice surprises !

[neilhewitt 494]

9 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

If P3Dv6 is not a revolutionary upgrade, how many addon developers are even going to bother with it? In other words, update installers/compatibility etc.

In all honestly, it doesn't matter if it's a revolutionary upgrade or not. It matters how many users it has and how straightforward it is to develop for. If there's enough money to be made in developing for it, developers will make products for it. It really is that simple. There is a threshold of market size below which the startup costs probably wouldn't justify it, but beyond that, why would any developer miss out on available money?

Unfortunately, that threshold is now much higher than it once was, because of - yeah, I'm going to say it - MSFS. To bring developers who have left P3D back, the size of the market for P3D add-ons would need to be a significant fraction of the size of the market for MSFS add-ons. If we're all being realistic, that's not going to happen. Even if v6 is literally the best simulator ever made and all the 'hardcore' simmers who went over to MSFS come flocking back, MSFS will still have millions of users and a bigger market size for many products, particularly aircraft. Cheap, high-volume add-ons is the order of the day at the MSFS Marketplace. 

The single best upgrade LM could make would be to make P3D compatible with MSFS aircraft and scenery so developers could make one product for both, maybe with dual installers. Instant market share. I'm not sure that's even technically possible but if it was, it would be a huge technical task and without a licensing and co-operation deal with MS, it's doubtful LM could keep up with the changes necessary to make it happen long-term. 

It's possible, though unlikely, that LM could license the base tech from MSFS in the same way that it licensed ESP to make P3D originally. But MS was exiting the flight sim market at that point and ESP was never a big seller, so it made commercial sense to do that deal. I don't see that it makes sense now. 

My money is on v6 being an improved version of v5 with better atmospherics, maybe a new flight model, and a bunch of graphical updates (DLSS, frame generation etc). Maybe some kind of streaming terrain option. Maybe AI-generated buildings. I absolutely don't think it will be an all-new platform with a new rendering engine.

[Ronaldo1978 26]

22 hours ago, d.tsakiris said:

I disagree. Backward compatibility is one of the main advantages of P3D

The base is at least 17 years old (FSX), even 20 years old if you would include FS2004. I think the elevation issues with older afcads at v5 was the beginning ...

If you want to get the developers back you also have to modernize the SDK.

[d.tsakiris 418]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo1978 said:

The base is at least 17 years old (FSX), even 20 years old if you would include FS2004.

Like I said, I think a big portion of that "base" was already rewritten. I'm not going to go through all of LM's release notes here, but suffice it to say the lists were pretty long each time. Even MSFS isn't 100 % new, as far as I know...

1 hour ago, Ronaldo1978 said:

I think the elevation issues with older afcads at v5 was the beginning ...

With V5, LM updated the mesh. For some older add-ons, that would certainly be a problem. But not for all add-ons, and the affected ones can be corrected, by the developer or even by the customer.