Future of p3d ?

[Ray Proudfoot 9,217]

I hope you have some energy left after that mammoth swim!

Good luck and I hope you continue to enjoy P3D. Many of us still do. 😁

[willy647 196]

Why are so many against the forced updates for MSFS ? It never gave me any problems and from a support view I think it makes sense everyone is on the same release.

I have MSFS on my desktop and P3D on my laptop (old thing which will not run MSFS). I use the laptop when we weekly meet to fly in a computer club. P3D is running absolutely fine, but each time it is getting used to the cartoonish  scenery.                     

[Ray Proudfoot 9,217]

1 hour ago, willy647 said:

Why are so many against the forced updates for MSFS ? It never gave me any problems and from a support view I think it makes sense everyone is on the same release.

Speaking personally it's the lack of control.  I prefer to manage my updates as and when they become available. If others update P3D and the general consensus is positive that's my green light.

There are other reasons but there's no need to go into those. I fly IFR and currently flying Concorde from Sydney to Auckland. Not much to see at 55,000ft over ocean.

[Dazkent 113]

I completely agree, i really don't like forced updates. Its one of the reasons why i am still flying with P3D/FSX . I recently have been learning to fly the QW 757 and am really enjoying the whole experience.

A platform that offers updates that you can choose to download if you so wish is a big attraction for me.

 

 

[IanHarrison 535]

2 hours ago, willy647 said:

3D is running absolutely fine, but each time it is getting used to the cartoonish  scenery.                     

What a funny thing to say. Cartoonish?  I tried that other sim whilst in the UK and found the "real  streaming" scenery to be quite unrealistic, major landmarks missing and buildings just generic representations.

[Daube 389]

11 hours ago, willy647 said:

Why are so many against the forced updates for MSFS ? It never gave me any problems and from a support view I think it makes sense everyone is on the same release.

I have MSFS on my desktop and P3D on my laptop (old thing which will not run MSFS). I use the laptop when we weekly meet to fly in a computer club. P3D is running absolutely fine, but each time it is getting used to the cartoonish  scenery.                     

The cartoonish default scenery can be mitigated to a certain level by using photo-sceneries, such as FranceVFR or the "TrueEarth" products from OrbX.

The problem for me was, in P3Dv4, the impact of some of this kind of sceneries on the FPS. FranceVFR recent sceneries were simply unusable on my computer, OrbX TrueEarth were better but still with a certain impact. But that was in P3Dv4. I heard P3Dv5 was providing better performance ?

 

[Daube 389]

8 hours ago, IanHarrison said:

What a funny thing to say. Cartoonish?  I tried that other sim whilst in the UK and found the "real  streaming" scenery to be quite unrealistic, major landmarks missing and buildings just generic representations.

When comparing default sceneries, I'm not sure P3D does very well, does it ?

For UK especially, one would have to use the OrbX True Earth product, which is very good but far from perfect, and you would still get P3D autogen on it, which is the worst of all the current sims 😕 

[brucewtb 261]

I just want to point out that a lot of MSFS2020 updates are not compulsory - all the World updates of which there are 12 are optional and there are many others.  You can save a lot of disk space by only enabling the features that you want in Content Manager.  There is no shortage of annoying things in MSFS2020 but compulsory updates isn't one of them.

Bruce

[Christopher Low 5,564]

9 hours ago, Daube said:

The cartoonish default scenery can be mitigated to a certain level by using photo-sceneries, such as FranceVFR or the "TrueEarth" products from OrbX.

The problem for me was, in P3Dv4, the impact of some of this kind of sceneries on the FPS. FranceVFR recent sceneries were simply unusable on my computer, OrbX TrueEarth were better but still with a certain impact. But that was in P3Dv4. I heard P3Dv5 was providing better performance ?

 

I have a very mediocre PC by 2023 standards, but framerates in P3Dv4 are not the problem (and I run ORBx TrueEarth at maximum scenery complexity and autogen density settings). It's the stutters that are the problem. I have disabled all of my AI planes recently, and this has improved things quite a lot. However, there are still isolated locations where I get stutters that simply do not make any sense. One of these is the runway 26 departure at EGHH Bournemouth. Another is the runway 21 departure (after having barely left the ground) at EGKB Biggin Hill. I guess this one could conceivably be London loading in the background behind me.....but it does not happen during the 03 departure (when I am facing London)! I also noted one yesterday when turning sharply left after the runway 30 departure at EGFF Cardiff, and yet I have performed a more gentle left turn at this airport during a quick circuit (in other words, a bit wider than yesterday's departure) without experiencing any stutters at all.

They absolutely baffle me

[GCBraun 2,525]

All (non-content related) updates being compulsory, specifically OS, drivers and sim, is the ideal scenario to optimize support and maximize stability. I am glad we are very close to this, if not there already. 

[Daube 389]

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

I have a very mediocre PC by 2023 standards, but framerates in P3Dv4 are not the problem (and I run ORBx TrueEarth at maximum scenery complexity and autogen density settings). It's the stutters that are the problem. I have disabled all of my AI planes recently, and this has improved things quite a lot. However, there are still isolated locations where I get stutters that simply do not make any sense. One of these is the runway 26 departure at EGHH Bournemouth. Another is the runway 21 departure (after having barely left the ground) at EGKB Biggin Hill. I guess this one could conceivably be London loading in the background behind me.....but it does not happen during the 03 departure (when I am facing London)! I also noted one yesterday when turning sharply left after the runway 30 departure at EGFF Cardiff, and yet I have performed a more gentle left turn at this airport during a quick circuit (in other words, a bit wider than yesterday's departure) without experiencing any stutters at all.

They absolutely baffle me

I understand your feeling on that topic. My computer has a non-overclocked i7 8700k coupled with a non-overclocked GTX1070ti. 

In FSX or P3D any version up to v4 (I don't know for v5), a stutter-free experience could never be reached. However, the stutters were not really the most frustrating thing for me. After all, I have always been getting stutters in ANY simulator, FSX, P3D, XPlane, MSFS, etc... so maybe at some point I stopped focusing on that. No, the real problem for me is the big variation in performance (FPS) depending on what you are looking at. In FSX and P3D (up to v4), the schema has always been the same: fly away from big cities and airports, you get nice FPS. Get a big city or medium to large airport on the screen, FPS crawls down to the 20's or less, no matter if there are AI aircraft or not in it. This has been a constant over several versions of the sim, even with the poor default buildings.

You mentioned having nice framerates even with OrbX TrueEarth, so your hardware must be way ahead of mine. From my side, even with just OrbX PNW (the old "regional" product, not the TrueEarth one), flying over Seattle was creating a very big impact on the FPS. To the point that taking off from Vashon Muni (I love that little airfield) was not a comfortable experience at all. And keep in mind, that was in 2D mode ! Later on when I switched to VR, the problem became even worse.

I've seen a few simmers claiming the performance was much better in PD3v5 and this problem/impact was not happening. Unfortunately these were the same claiming this problem didn't happen for them in previous versions of the sim, so I give absolutely zero value to their claims. At that time though, I gave a try to XPlane 11 demo and discovered I could fly low level in Seattle with crazy scenery complexity, full road traffic, and quite a reasonable FPS impact. That when I started using both sims, depending on what kind of flight I wanted to do. XPlane for complex sceneries, liners etc... and P3D for flying in remote, low-density areas.

In that context, the possibility of P3Dv6 relying on a new, modern graphic engine was a truly awesome theory. I would love to see P3D benefiting from better performance and rendering (sorry, I don't like the way P3Dv5 looks right now). Re-discovering my older P3D addons in a new graphical environnement would be a total blast for me. But I fear I'm being too optimistic there. I don't think LM would be able to switch to a new graphic engine such as Cryengine without very deep modifications that would make older addons incompatible. I hope I'm wrong of course, but the hope is tiny.

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by Daube

[jcomm 6,209]

I mostly miss flying my FSLabs A319 A320 in P3D... Looking fwd for the announcement of a new version.

and... for the 4bit Concorde !!!

[Ray Proudfoot 9,217]

Yesterday I flew Concorde into UK2000 Gatwick using P3D v3.4. Around 4 miles out it turned into a horrible stuttering mess for several seconds before returning to relative smoothness. This despite many settings being lowered to keep VAS within limits and 1920*1080 in use. With VSync, fps were locked to 30 - this on a relatively powerful PC for that simulator.

Flying the PMDG737 into the same UK2000 airport in v5.3HF2 was far smoother despite higher settings, res of 3840*2160 and far more Ai present. A very short drop from 30fps was noticed but a big difference to v3.4.

The improved performance can be put down to the way processing is now handled via Affinity Mask settings. v5 performs better than any previous P3D version and I anticipate there will be further improvements in v6.

[Christopher Low 5,564]

3 hours ago, Daube said:

.....You mentioned having nice framerates even with OrbX TrueEarth, so your hardware must be way ahead of mine.....

 

You are mistaken. My PC is an i5 7600k/32GB DDR4-3600 RAM/6GB GTX 980Ti powered system.The difference is that I can quite easily accept 20fps over a massively detailed area like London (even though they are almost certainly significantly higher than that elsewhere). I do not know the precise framerates that I am getting in different locations, and that is because numerical figures do not concern me. I am solely interested in whether it feels acceptable or not.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

.....The improved performance can be put down to the way processing is now handled via Affinity Mask settings. v5 performs better than any previous P3D version and I anticipate there will be further improvements in v6.

That is one reason why I have not upgraded to v5. The more flexible options in v5 with respect to affinity mask settings are worthless with a 4 core 4 thread CPU.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Christopher Low

[Ray Proudfoot 9,217]

42 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

That is one reason why I have not upgraded to v5. The more flexible options in v5 with respect to affinity mask settings are worthless with a 4 core 4 thread CPU.

Fair enough. It does require a CPU with a minimum of 6 I would say.