P3D V5.4 is available

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 540]

This is a small glimpse of what can happen if v6 has no support from the developers. It's sad...

Edited May 26, 2023 by Juliet Alpha

[BerndB 349]

6 hours ago, vhaaland said:

A year has passed since P3D was removed from my system. It was fun flyring the PMDG 777 again on v.5.4. Worked flawlessly.

Only thing not working still on 5.4 is Flytampa EHAM, which has strange ground textures. Has not found the reason yet, but perpahps some layering issue.

have you tried to re-run the "add-to-Sim" command again. There is a small batch file in the Mainfolder for EHAM.

[Greggy_D 936]

I’ve never understood the need for developers to lock their addons to a specific point release/build.  Literally, one of the biggest pain in the asses surrounding P3D.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I decided not to bother with v5, so this surprising release is irrelevant to me.

[chapstick 2,757]

5 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I decided not to bother with v5, so this surprising release is irrelevant to me.

Then don’t post?

[lownslo 592]

1 hour ago, Sparkrite said:

Remember, a lot of P3D users seem to be 'jumping ship' and may well be //42 new target patrons.

 

A purely financial decision may dictate, no update, however this may not be a prudent business decision.

This^^  Myself, until all my add-ons work in 5.4 I'll be staying with my well-tuned 5.3 HF2. 

I'm with the crowd that believes 5.4 is a little gift from LM before they bring v6... we shouldn't get our hopes up that our v4 & v5 add-ons will work with v6.

[GSalden 4,657]

54 minutes ago, lownslo said:

This^^  Myself, until all my add-ons work in 5.4 I'll be staying with my well-tuned 5.3 HF2. 

I'm with the crowd that believes 5.4 is a little gift from LM before they bring v6... we shouldn't get our hopes up that our v4 & v5 add-ons will work with v6.

You are probably right. They have made v5 the best they could make it incl the best backwards compatibility possible.

V6 will almost certain be a new start and who knows : perhaps developers start making Addons for it….😊

[Sparkrite 188]

I have gone back to 5.3HF2, for the time being. Chaseplane just did not behave itself in V5.4.

Incidentally, I also opened a ticket at //42 and got back the standard reply..........."maybe we will, maybe we won't" 🤷‍♂️

Through the use of 'hoodwinkery' I managed to get the shaders from Envshade/Plus into V5.4 and they worked perfectly, so I assume not much

work needed there to have it work with the V5.4.

Why, oh why do Devs have their S/W locked to point versions? All they have to do is have a warning that the S/W may not

work correctly with 'untested' version(s) updates.

 

Edited May 26, 2023 by Sparkrite

[IanHarrison 522]

5 hours ago, simfan1983 said:

I won't upgrade unless ChasePlane is updated, but as far as I can tell 5.4 doesn't have any significant changes that would affect me, so I'm happy to stay on 5.3. According to PMDG, LM didn't even tell them that a new P3D version was in the works, so it's hard to blame addon makers if they are less than enthusiastic. Parallel 42 gave up on P3D development after 4.5 so I guess they don't have any staff left who know how to do the update. I don't blame them, but what goes around comes around in the long run.

Smooth zoom and static cameras are all it tells me will not work when I start P3D. I really don't use those, just need the cockpit views. So, if they work on those, as stated, then all should be good.

 

Edited May 26, 2023 by IanHarrison

[Sparkrite 188]

Just now, IanHarrison said:

Smooth zoom and static cameras are all it tells me will not work when I start P3D. I really don't use those, just need the cockpit views. So, if they work on that, as stated, then all should be good.

 

Yep, my cockpit views work (sort of) albeit it jumps to new view as opposed to smooth pan/zoom.

But what really does not work is, if you are outside and pan/zoom then when you return to cockpit ( say by pressing F9 ) the view is all over the place

dependent on what panning/zooming you did while outside.

I have a key assinged to give me default 'Pilot view' in the cockpit, I now have to press it twice to get this view, if coming from an outside view.

One press brings me inside, God knows where, and the second press will give me my default view.

[yvesamuel 17]

Finalyn I reverted to 5.3 HF1. Impossible to fly long hauls. After 6 7 hours,  4 to 5 fps over north east USA or Canada.
I'll wait...

 

Yves

[KL Oo 700]

13 hours ago, Skywolf said:

These fixes were pending, and they got them out that is it (still grateful). 

My question is why it took them 18 months to release what is essentially a very minor set of fixes that I can't imagine took more than a few months of programming. There's nothing revolutionary in here.....

[vidha 91]

18 hours ago, BerndB said:

have you tried to re-run the "add-to-Sim" command again. There is a small batch file in the Mainfolder for EHAM.

Yes I did. Also tried EHAM on vanilla install with no other addons, same issue. Very strange.
 

[BerndB 349]

I think about revert back to MS-Flight Simulator 5.1. Would be interesting to see, if the actual hardware would handle it without stutters. ONLY THEN real satisfaction can be felt.

The problem left is, that i do not have a Floppydrive for 3.1/4" in my PC. Hmmmm....🤔Problems, problems everywhere....

Edited May 27, 2023 by BerndB

[neilhewitt 494]

23 hours ago, Sparkrite said:

Would it not also be your 'job' to protect the good name of said company?

And to that end, peeing off 1000's (probably) of customers by not updating (most likely in this case just a version unlock) software they paid for certainly would

not do anything to help the brand.

Remember, a lot of P3D users seem to be 'jumping ship' and may well be //42 new target patrons.

A purely financial decision may dictate, no update, however this may not be a prudent business decision.

I take your point, and of course you are right, you would have to weigh the reputational consequences of effectively abandoning your P3D customers vs the financial implications of doing the work. Put it this way, if it was a few hours' work for one developer to fix this, and I planned to continue selling the product, then I'd definitely do it; but I would probably wait until I had someone with spare time between other projects, rather than taking time from doing other work. And I'd be non-committal when asked about it, to give myself wiggle room to change my mind. If it were weeks of work for a full team, OTOH, I'd be weighing the decision as to whether it was worth continuing to sell the product at all, or to officially end-of-life it and say no further updates. Other developers have done exactly this before.

Thankfully I'm not the CEO of anything, and while I run a large software engineering organisation for my employer, I don't have to make the commercial decisions about what to do and what not to do with those teams.

I appreciate others may feel differently, but if //42 were selling a product that I wanted on MSFS, say, I would not refuse to buy from them on principle because I felt that they let me down on P3D support for ChasePlane. If there were other equally capable alternative products, then my feelings about their past behaviour might come into play, but short of them having done something so outrageous that I feel morally obligated to boycott them, I'm not going to get that upset about it. I mean, people remember the FSLabs spyware debacle, but they still buy their products. But that's just me. I would not claim to speak for anyone else.