P3D v5 Disappearing Autogen and Blurries, still a Thing ?

[Christopher Low 5,332]

9 minutes ago, Gabe777 said:

Regarding your response, I did not know about V6... interesting.

So you'd recommend upgrading to v5 over v4?

I would wait for v6 to appear before making any upgrade decisions. For all we know, it could be released next week.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

Hi Gabe, I forgot to mention decent ATC. 🤣

You could buy v5 now but in all honesty I’d wait for v6 if you have a lot to reinstall. I’d be very surprised if LM didn’t ensure backward compatibility. What new things it has I have no idea but evolution rather than revolution is likely. Early next year is my guess.

RC4 will continue to work unless something radical changes in v6. That seems unlikely. It’s fine in v5.

Active Sky and FSUIPC will need to be bought I guess. We should be grateful for AS. Imagine if they had folded.

As for performance with a 3080Ti it should be fine. My 1080Ti in 4K struggles at night and with EA On but I prefer daylight flights anyway. As ever, tweaking is key and a 30Hz monitor with VSync enabled helps enormously.

[RobPol471 173]

I solved the problem of texture blurring with TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP = 10 in [TERRAIN] of Prepar3D.cfg.

[coastaldriver 915]

Gabe777 I know a lot of people are still using older versions of P3D (same for the older MS range (MS2004, FSX) but I certainly would go with V5.3. It is very good indeed and I have to say has been completely trouble free for me no matter what the complexity of the model or the density and complexity of scenery. It runs smooth as silk constantly heavy weather or complex scenery. I get no blurries no stutters and no lags as the GPU tries to catch up with the CPU. Now I am running P3DV5.3 on an Intel machine (I5-10500 running at 3.10Ghz with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super with 8GB RAM is a modest 16GB. When installed I let the system run the presets it calculated and have only tweak via the program sliders, I limit FPS to 30 I have water set at ultimate and Cloud density at very high. Everything else is very dense. The only thing I have turned off is shadowing for a variety of parts (buildings, vegetation etc) for the simple reason nice to do but not visually obvious in flight even in a real aeroplane. I use EA  and HD. Now I have the latest version of FSUIPC and a substantially ORBX world for reasons of the better quality of LC ORBX offered compared to standard. I do not use Global Vector you don't need it. 
I have a heck of lot of addon scenery (up to 700 separate airports) from a variety of developers (a whos who of that sort of stuff) never have any issues with these airports displaying or load times etc. I do limit AI traffic to 50% and airport activity to about the same (matter of personal choice really) To be honest the stock ATC in P3D is woeful and no better than it was in FSX so yes the Radar Contact ATC does work and Ray is the guru on it (lots of info on the thread) so the answer there is I rarely use ATC at all (prefer the peace and quiet) but more importantly I can never anticipate the logic of what the program (P3D) is trying to do as it is never what ATC does except fleetingly in real life. Why is this so? well the answer is that high level training organisations do not use the automated AI ATC of the program but an instructor or other person to feed in ATC stuff as required.

So yes V5.3 is well worth the effort and the addon xml method is a winner. Oh and by the way I keep all my scenery (even all of ORBX) on a separate drive from the sim program and let the scenery config manage it - no problems with that at all) I think a lot of users do not see the many refinements the programmers have made to P3D particularly with the way it is geared to bolt in and addon applications so the less you tweak it the better it does and if you work with not against it it runs just fine. Many of us are still coloured by earliery sim experiences that were dictated by 32 bits poor CPU-GPU communication. This is is now a proper 64 bit architecture program and quite robust as well. 

FWIW.

Edited November 27, 2022 by coastaldriver

[Gabe777 132]

20 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I would wait for v6 to appear before making any upgrade decisions. For all we know, it could be released next week.

Hi Chris.

Is it really coming out ? It seems only yesterday 5 was out.

As for price, it's dawned on me that I can pay 10 bucks for a Pro license...  suck it and see !

[Gabe777 132]

17 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Hi Gabe, I forgot to mention decent ATC. 🤣

You could buy v5 now but in all honesty I’d wait for v6 if you have a lot to reinstall. I’d be very surprised if LM didn’t ensure backward compatibility. What new things it has I have no idea but evolution rather than revolution is likely. Early next year is my guess.

RC4 will continue to work unless something radical changes in v6. That seems unlikely. It’s fine in v5.

Active Sky and FSUIPC will need to be bought I guess. We should be grateful for AS. Imagine if they had folded.

As for performance with a 3080Ti it should be fine. My 1080Ti in 4K struggles at night and with EA On but I prefer daylight flights anyway. As ever, tweaking is key and a 30Hz monitor with VSync enabled helps enormously.

Thanks Ray.

I won't ask why it doesn't work in MSFS... hardly surprising as so much is invisible to devs ...

I think I'll hold on and wait for v6 ... although v5 has a monthly option of 10 bucks for the Dev license.

Should be able to get a good idea of what's what, for the price of an hours heating !

 

Cheers

Edited November 27, 2022 by Gabe777

[Gabe777 132]

8 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Gabe777 I know a lot of people are still using older versions of P3D (same for the older MS range (MS2004, FSX) but I certainly would go with V5.3. It is very good indeed and I have to say has been completely trouble free for me no matter what the complexity of the model or the density and complexity of scenery. It runs smooth as silk constantly heavy weather or complex scenery. I get no blurries no stutters and no lags as the GPU tries to catch up with the CPU. Now I am running P3DV5.3 on an Intel machine (I5-10500 running at 3.10Ghz with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super with 8GB RAM is a modest 16GB. When installed I let the system run the presets it calculated and have only tweak via the program sliders, I limit FPS to 30 I have water set at ultimate and Cloud density at very high. Everything else is very dense. The only thing I have turned off is shadowing for a variety of parts (buildings, vegetation etc) for the simple reason nice to do but not visually obvious in flight even in a real aeroplane. I use EA  and HD. Now I have the latest version of FSUIPC and a substantially ORBX world for reasons of the better quality of LC ORBX offered compared to standard. I do not use Global Vector you don't need it. 
I have a heck of lot of addon scenery (up to 700 separate airports) from a variety of developers (a whos who of that sort of stuff) never have any issues with these airports displaying or load times etc. I do limit AI traffic to 50% and airport activity to about the same (matter of personal choice really) To be honest the stock ATC in P3D is woeful and no better than it was in FSX so yes the Radar Contact ATC does work and Ray is the guru on it (lots of info on the thread) so the answer there is I rarely use ATC at all (prefer the peace and quiet) but more importantly I can never anticipate the logic of what the program (P3D) is trying to do as it is never what ATC does except fleetingly in real life. 

So yes V5.3 is well worth the effort and the addon xml method is a winner. Oh and by the way I keep all my scenery (even all of ORBX) on a separate drive from the sim program and let the scenery config manage it - no problems with that at all) I think a lot of users do not see the many refinements the programmers have made to P3D particularly with the way it is geared to bolt in and addon applications so the less you tweak it the better it does and if you work with not against it it runs just fine. Many of us are still coloured by earliery sim experiences that were dictated by 32 bits poor CPU-GPU communication. This is is now a proper 64 bit architecture program and quite robust as well. 

FWIW.

Thanks for that.

I know what EA is but what is "HD" ?

Also, do you use EA in conjunction with Active Sky ?

I've heard ASCA with EnvTex is a good combo.

Like you... I have 100s of payware airports and expensive study level planes. So I really would like to return to it.

I think I'll try the Dev license that's 10 bucks a month for 5.3.

A month is enough to get a good idea of how it will perform.

If 6 comes out, then we'll see what it's like then.

 

[Gabe777 132]

So it appears that v5 upgrades for FSUIPC and Actice Sky are just 10 and 25 bucks respectively.

I'm pretty sure that my aircraft and Orbx addons are free

So I can test out v5 for about 50 bucks.

Think I'll do that.

Cheers for all the advices !

[Christopher Low 5,332]

P3Dv5 was released on 2020 April 14, which is 2.5 years ago. I have no information whatsoever regarding v6, but I would be very surprised if we see a v5.4 considering that v5.3 was released a full year ago.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Christopher Low

[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

@Gabe777, good luck with your trial. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I forgot to mention the whole world terrain and coastlines including rivers have been totally revamped in v5. So much so that I no longer use Ultimate Terrain X for Europe, NA or the Caribbean.

I'm currently flying Tapai to Hong Kong in a Qantas liveried PMDG737-900. The improvement over v3 and v4 is tremendous. I just use FTX Global to green-up the ground textures and FS Global Ultimate for more detailed hills / mountains.

And finally you can run road traffic with no stuttering. That bug has been around for 10+ years.

[Gabe777 132]

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Gabe777, good luck with your trial. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I forgot to mention the whole world terrain and coastlines including rivers have been totally revamped in v5. So much so that I no longer use Ultimate Terrain X for Europe, NA or the Caribbean.

I'm currently flying Tapai to Hong Kong in a Qantas liveried PMDG737-900. The improvement over v3 and v4 is tremendous. I just use FTX Global to green-up the ground textures and FS Global Ultimate for more detailed hills / mountains.

And finally you can run road traffic with no stuttering. That bug has been around for 10+ years.

Thnx Ray.

I like Ai cars especially at night. Moving red lights is immersive.

Of course this stuff is standard in MSFS, but overall it has a lot of maturing to do.

At least in P3D it's easy to get pin sharp cockpit shadows. Still haven't managed that yet in MSFS.

And GSX just works !

 

 

[coastaldriver 915]

Gabe777 - you will not be disappointed. Your earlier query. I use both Active Sky and True Sky depends on what I am after. I really like True Sky and think it has a depth and solidity to cloud display that is quite obvious but it just cannot managed high level cloud such as cirrus very well at all. Lot of people have issues with haze but that is the nature of true sky and EA it is more realistic. 

I no longer use ENVTEX or ENVSHADE - it worked for a while but something is now broken with it (I suspect it may have been a MS update of some sort - because it worked fine with 5.3) and I cannot get it to work anymore. Not that I miss it really. 

To be honest I have not bought much new stuff in the way of aircraft for 5.3 ( a few specifically but they were done properly for 5.3) A lot of older stuff you will find was upgraded before everybody ran off to MSFS. I got most of my earlier stuff to install via the tweak that you set up a registry entry to get the installer to think it is doing V4 but it reroutes it to V5 no problems. The only models that have not gone across are those that had 32 bit and older gau gauge files (Captain Sim in particular) and for which the developer has refused or has not been prepared to upgrade to 64 bit. I have all my Carenado, Milviz and A2A models operating perfectly and few others as well (such as the CoolSky DC-9). 

As a long time simmer I have to say and it is my opinion others would probably disagree (fair enough) P3D as it is, is the kind of quality flight simulator program I always hoped would emerge. The graphics are crisp and PBR really picks it up not to mention the shaders and the Enhanced Atmospherics and True Sky. Thanks to LM keeping the original ACES-MS ESP engine I have been able to retain a quite extensive collection of older models and some are simply amazing now in P3D. Ray is right about coastlines etc and quite frankly once you get higher you cannot tell the difference between MSFS and P3D and in some areas P3D is streets ahead visually not to mention bug free performance with no update breakages. All in all it stays on my box I do not need a high speed bandwith internet to work, I get real time and historical weather thanks to AS so what more could you want. 

[newtie 533]

2 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

I have all my Carenado, Milviz and A2A models operating perfectly and few others as well (such as the CoolSky DC-9). 

Hey coastaldriver-

Which Milviz aircraft have you got working in 5.3 and how did you do it?

I also have the CoolSky DC9. How did you squeak that in?

I was flying V4 up until recently to retain access to all those outstanding Milviz aircraft including their helicopters. Love that old 737...

[coastaldriver 915]

Newtie

I have the Milviz Beaver and Otter in P3DV5.3 all they required was modified xml installer(provided by Milviz - there is a link on their forum) this enables the xml files for the Milviz aeroplanes correctly for P3DV5. They all then work perfectly without any issues. What happens with Milviz is that they have a variety of xml installers packaged but they do not work correctly with V5 hence the updated installer from Milviz - which by the way was quite generous as there is no charge and that they have effectively abandoned the P3D/FSX market for other things! Should work for the other aircraft they have as well. 

The Coolsky DC-9 I had (have) (there were a few issues)but upgraded to the F1 Package (It was quite cheap). F1 have the rights to the Coolsky models and packaged the Classic DC9 with the DC-9 80 and Super 80 all together. They install without issues into V5 and run perfectly. 

A2A by contrast made you pay for a 64 bit upgrade for the Connies, I did that but it was quite expensive, the rest of their stuff I got from them as freebies subsequently (B17, P40 and P38 for example). I have to confess I rarely use the A2A Connie now as I much prefer the Manfred Jahn's team Constelattions (749 and L1049G are available via Cal Classic as upgrades to P3D and FSX Native - Tom Gibson did the work. I grafted in the Virtavia L1049 VC which is a recent P3DV5 release and is actually very nice indeed. So I get all my preferred Connies with a modern and good VC. By the way if I have the urge I do take out the A2A version but it is an L049. 

PMDG's DC-6A/B also went into V5 also (That just requires the registry hack to trick installers into putting into V5)

Any much off topic hope this helps. 

[newtie 533]

Thanks a lot for this!

I will start tomorrow on the Milviz aircraft followed by the Cool Sky. I think I have the F1 release but will have to check on that.

Not sure if I own the PMDG V4 version of the DC6. Will look into the reg hack which I’m sure is out there somewhere.

Cheers,
Mark