Sticking with P3DV5 even with the developers leaving

[jcomm 5,939]

3 hours ago, evaamo said:

 I am surprised you didn't mention PSX in your post, to me it is the most stable experience of them all. 

Hey Enrique !

Got tired of PSX. I couldn't stand it's graphic limitations, impacting on basic runway lighting systems representation which I think it should have had from the release and until recently only got updated to a very simplistic PAPI implementation.

The author took the time to implement a rather poor "runway slope" model that in some cases ( most of those I have tested ) present more problems than advantages. The ground slope model is too simplistic and innacurate enough to be useless IMO. Yet he never implemented proper runway lighting systems, based o rw data that is long used by P3D and XP ad now also MFS.

Weather modelling while interesting presents a lot of limitations too in PSX for my nowadays liking and the kind of detail that is beginning to become available for platforms like X-Plane 12 and MFS.

It's great for type rating and the more detailled I know for the simulation of a 744, but I also prefer to spend my time in a better way than standing in front of a PC simulating an airline flight 😕 and, if I wanted to do it I would rather go XP11 + Hotstart Challenger 650 or P3D + FSLabs A319/20 while the Fenix doesn't get available for MFS...

I am placing some expectations in XP12, will continue to install monthly licenses of P3D, and will revisit MFS when the Portugal & Spain updates get released.

Edited February 6, 2022 by jcomm

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I have recently expanded my P3Dv4 airport collection, and I am enjoying flight simulation as much as I have ever done. I have reinstalled Aerosoft Gibraltar Professional (and added photoscenery and autogen of southern Spain), JustSim Brussels v2/PrealSoft Brussels City (and added photoscenery of Belgium), and ORBx LDDU Dubrovnik (adding Project OpenScenery photoscenery of Croatia and Montenegro). I have also purchased ORBx ESGG Gothenburg Landvetter and ESMS Malmo (and added photoscenery of southern Sweden), and JustSim LMML Malta (with added Project OpenScenery photoscenery of Malta, and TopoSim 20m freeware mesh). I only fly basic circuits at these and other airports in my PMDG 737s and 777, but it is more than enough to satisfy my current flight simulation desires.

[davenicoll 104]

Whilst my machine can handle MSFS 2020 very well, since the recent update on Prepar3d to v 5.3 plus the hotfixes I feel it has breathed new life into the sim for me and find myself hardly going to MSFS 2020 now.

 

I do have almost all scenery plus aircraft I require in Prepar3d and am perfectly happy.

[simfan1983 185]

I've been flight simming since 1983 and P3Dv5 HF2 is now very stable and smooth for me. I have no desire to go through the growing pains of another platform, or to pay for stuff that doesn't work well in the hope that it will get better at some point in the next decade.

[188AHC 2,138]

Wow what a bunch of old fart flight simmers. I admit to bring a member of the over 70 club myself

 Soon to be 73.snd have been simming since the most rudimentary stick airplanes were depicted. Then came Bruce Artwick's first Flight Simulator release. I've owned every version of MSFS since. It's been a great ride. 

[Sparkrite 188]

15 minutes ago, 188AHC said:

Wow what a bunch of old fart flight simmers.

Ah Yeah, but how many broke their teeth on this bad boy?

[Christopher Low 5,354]

My first flight "simulator" was Psion Flight Simulator for the ZX Spectrum 48k (Christmas 1982).

[rocketlaunch 614]

On 2/6/2022 at 1:52 PM, Christopher Low said:

I have recently expanded my P3Dv4 airport collection, and I am enjoying flight simulation as much as I have ever done. I have reinstalled Aerosoft Gibraltar Professional (and added photoscenery and autogen of southern Spain), JustSim Brussels v2/PrealSoft Brussels City (and added photoscenery of Belgium), and ORBx LDDU Dubrovnik (adding Project OpenScenery photoscenery of Croatia and Montenegro). I have also purchased ORBx ESGG Gothenburg Landvetter and ESMS Malmo (and added photoscenery of southern Sweden), and JustSim LMML Malta (with added Project OpenScenery photoscenery of Malta, and TopoSim 20m freeware mesh). I only fly basic circuits at these and other airports in my PMDG 737s and 777, but it is more than enough to satisfy my current flight simulation desires.

I use to love my old car but did not realise how bad it was until I drove a new one. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,960]

20 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

My first flight "simulator" was Psion Flight Simulator for the ZX Spectrum 48k (Christmas 1982).

Is that the one that had four dots on the ground that passed as “scenery”? 🤣

If so, that makes two of us.

[F737MAX 5,608]

1 hour ago, rocketlaunch said:

I use to love my old car but did not realise how bad it was until I drove a new one. 

If the new car didn’t require me to hold left lock on the steering wheel when leaving the driveway, could let me see objects and terrain more than 10 miles in the distance, and didn't feel like I was driving on a suspension test road when it should have been a smooth race track, then I would agree.

If Asobo can fix some of the basics in MSFS, then I'd happily move across again. Let's hope SU8 delivers.

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 540]

I, in this version of Prepar3D, have pretty much everything I need, from scenery and airports to the most complex of airplanes, and therefore don't need new releases (I would like, out of curiosity, to see the Concorde from FSLabs although I think it is too complex for me).

Who knows, maybe for me version 5 will be the last of Prepar3D, not because I won't use the platform anymore but because the new features of 6 may break the ecosystem I have today and that I already know won't be supported. But the truth is that I am very well with version 5.3 and I don't feel any need to change version, platform or even stop using it.

I know I can (everyone can) use MSFS simultaneously with P3D but... it honestly doesn't grab my attention. And then I read things like a... guy out there (I don't know who he is and it doesn't matter) claiming that "he's ready to delete a.... 1TB HDD? full of addons because he won't use P3D anymore" and I thought to myself "I can't do that, it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of euros over the years... I just can't delete that. I can't afford that, money is hard to come by". And then there are addons that I have a lot of affection for: Busselton and Friday Harbor, FSLabs, AI Lights Reborn from Symbol, AI Traffic (I've never had it as good and complete as it is now)... even NGXu which I recognize is excellent even though it comes from an arrogant company that treats its customers very badly. I even have Aerosoft word not allowed... You can't give all that up because of a few rays of sunshine and some sceneries downloaded from the cloud WHERE REALLY THIS DATA IS AVAILABLE. I'm sorry, but I can't do it (and who cares? I do).

I only ask one thing: since the companies don't care about P3D anymore at least leave the activation services on so that I and many others can continue to install our "ugly, old, outdated" addons as legitimately as ever.

Finally, excuse my English. I use translator (as if it wasn't obvious...).

Edited February 9, 2022 by Juliet Alpha

[DChockey08 299]

I think others have summarized my thoughts but just to join into the discussion:

I fly pretty much exclusively jets. And I enjoy as realistic a simulation experience of the systems of that aircraft as possible, even at the expense of eye candy. There's a reason the Level-D flight simulators have such inferior graphics: because who the heck cares? It's not the point. It's secondary. 

I love the way P3D performs and looks right now. I have a ton of add-ons that make the sim look great and I'm satisfied. Does MSFS look better? Sure, in many places it does. However, that's not enough to offset what's missing. And what's missing makes it an unusable platform for me.

- Real sets of editable AI flight plans with real AI models (I know this is slowly coming along, but it's not there yet for me.)

- Historical weather. This is a deal-breaker right off the bat. I don't fly in real time. I fly when the flights I'm simming are scheduled to fly. Weather is extremely dependent on time of day. Flying during the day with night weather or vice versa is not right. 

- FSLABS, PMDG, etc. Huge deal breaker. The study level aircraft we all love are simply not there yet. FBW was fun to try out, but it's impossible to go from the FSLabs bus to the FBW. 

So when I think: which is the better simulation platform? On it's own, MSFS. With all the stuff we have added in? P3D, hands down. Now, when all stuff is (hopefully) added to MSFS, the conversation will be different. To be honest, when it released I thought "give it 18 months and I'll be on this platform". Well 18 months later and I think we're still 18 months away.   

In my opinion, it's not a question of 'if' but 'when'. Maybe P3Dv6 will have be thinking differently though... 

[neilhewitt 494]

5 minutes ago, DChockey08 said:

Historical weather. This is a deal-breaker right off the bat. I don't fly in real time. I fly when the flights I'm simming are scheduled to fly. Weather is extremely dependent on time of day. Flying during the day with night weather or vice versa is not right. 

This. So much this. Not to mention that there's no way to read the weather data (other than wind speed) from SimConnect in MSFS, so for example replacement ATC software has to use the NOAA web service to get live weather, and so doesn't work with weather themes and wouldn't work with historical weather even if it was available.

The fact that when asked about historical weather in a Q&A the response from the product owner at MS was 'why would you want that?' tells me that we are simply not the audience the sim was designed for. Live is fine if that's what you want and when you want to share an identical world with other players, but when you want to fly alone in a time and date- or weather-specific scenario with as much realism as possible, you've clearly stepped outside the design goals for MSFS, and the lack of openness in some areas of the sim - and I don't care if it's because of licensing agreements or because MS just doesn't want competition for features like ATC - is stopping us from fixing that the way we could with other platforms.

It's enough to make a man grumpy.

[DChockey08 299]

22 minutes ago, neilhewitt said:

The fact that when asked about historical weather in a Q&A the response from the product owner at MS was 'why would you want that?' tells me that we are simply not the audience the sim was designed for. 

This is what worries me the most. MSFS is a game and is designed as a game.

Now that doesn't mean it can't also be used as a simulator (eventually), but if you ask for a feature like that and the answer is "well why would you need that in the game?" it makes me wonder if it ever will be a simulator on P3D's level. 

[micstatic 4,319]

The fact that Microsoft is unwilling to do this basically declares they will never become a commercial use simulator. Because of that other sims will continue to prosper since they will always have that niche. As a result that always leaves the door open for those sims to also continue to offer solutions to the home user. I’m actually surprised Microsoft doesn’t appear to want to tap into the very lucrative commercial market.