why is anybody still using P3D

[Rogen 1,092]

2 hours ago, turbomax said:

tell me why is anybody still using P3D in year 3 after MSFS

You could also say "Tell me why is anybody still using MSFS after 3 years", hey it's not even commercially rated... and its nick name is the "Download Simulator".

People do like to like to play other games too, like War Thunder, Farm Sim, Train simming and Truck simming, there's even a Goat sim.

Plus lets not talk about all the "remastered games" people still play.

And it you look at the Steam Stats, Euro Truck Simulator 2 has around 24,000 playing atm,  Farming Simulator 22 has over 15,000 in game atm, whereas MSFS the relatively paltry ~4,500 playing atm, little more than a rounding error compared to the major money making games that have half to more than a million playing at any one time.

Really it's a niche of a niche.

Cheers

 

[Joseph29 225]

In relation to the bad MSFS AI is airport AFCADs. You can't (or is extremely difficult) edit 3rd party AFCADs. You buy a airport scenery for MSFS not only is the AI broken but you can't edit the AFCAD of the airport so the AI planes (when the AI does work) park at the right spots!

[shivers9 1,174]

- For the same reasons that I don't want a car that runs on 5000 Magic Double A Batteries that double as a fire starter for my backyard grill.

- Because P3d is the basic platform used to train F-35 Pilots around the world and therefor seems like a good choice for flying Lancair Legacy and DA-62 because it works!

- And for my top reason....A2A is known for building some of the best and most accurate GA aircraft around and after at least 3 years they still can not get them to work in the MS flying thingy. That makes me wonder even more about the question...Is MS2020 more of a scenery simulator or a flight simulator?? 

Pretty simple really.

[Rein2 117]

Still use P3D because for me it's the best simulator!!! And I can make a comparison with MSFS because I also have that one but hardly use it. I am not impressed with the photorealistic earth because that's not what I'm looking for in a sim. Further more I don't like the forced updates. I want to make the choice by myself to update or not. And I don't like to be dependent on a service running in the Azure-cloud. Is there a service level agreement available where I can take a look at. What is the guaranteed uptime for MSFS? 99,999%???? And most of all I don't trust MS that much. They once shutdown the ACES studio. They can do that again and shutdown the servers. Then there's nothing left. 

I like P3D because it is stable as a rock and I like the landclass region's. LC is like an artist impression of our earth and that's very nicely done. Enough scenery which can be adapted for p3Dv5 with tools like ADE, modelconverter, etc. And enough airplanes to choose from.

So I stay with P3D.

 

 

[Beardyman 604]

i had MSFS for roughly 6 months and got rid of that, came back to P3D.

With ORBX improvements, Pilot's mesh and a bit of tweaking with Reshade my P3D looks very good.

In fact it is so good that my low level cross country flights with A2A Bonanza are pure joy - joy that i hadn't using MSFS...

[blaunarwal 432]

@turbomax

Because I have a lot of addons for the P3D platform.

Because also MSFS needs a lot of addons to make it what I want.

Pictures and videos I saw of MSFS, with ugly clouds and trees. The buildings on the streamed scenery look worse than in P3D, just brown boxes even for churches.

Videos with unrealistic flight behavior of the aircraft, even worse than 3rd person view flight war games 20 years ago. I admit, it could have improved meanwhile.

The promises they made before release and what we got in 2020 was far less. Countless updates since which break addons.

Microsoft abandoned flightsimulation after FSX. I don't forget this. 

The scenery is streamed. This gives a huge advantage but also has some backdraws like dependance on Microsoft (which betrayed us once before)

I know P3D well. That enables me to mod it on my own. I don't want just to fly, but also to create.

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

It’s a reasonable question so I’ll first give my reasons why I’m happy to stay with P3D.

1) It’s stable. I haven’t had any DXGI crashes in 5 months after changing how I update Nvidia drivers.

2) I can choose when to update to a later version.

3) There are plenty of quality 3rd party airports.

4) The only additions I’ve made to the default scenery are FTX Global and FS Global for mesh.

5) I can continue to use Radar Contact.

6) The weather injected from AS is very acceptable. Historical weather is also a huge asset when departing from airports 8 time zones from my home.

7) FSL Concorde has just entered beta testing. I’m still using the 32-bit version with all the drawbacks of VAS.

8) I can see roads in my area that match the real world. Not individual buildings such as football stadiums but that’s not a problem.

9) Active Sky can provide historical weather.

Now the reasons why I won’t yet buy MSFS…

1) Forced updates.

2) Clouds that occasionally resemble volcanic eruptions. No cirrus clouds. No weather radar too.

3) Which version to buy - Steam or Store. Standard or Premium? Too complex.

4) Airports purchased via Store are encrypted meaning AFCAD cannot be edited.

5) Aivlasoft’s EFB cannot read all taxiways due to reasons I’m not familiar with.

6) I would have to buy the PMDG737 a third time. That’s not going to happen. No short to medium release of FSL Concorde but I’m unlikely to buy it twice.

7) The P3D Vertx DA62 is near reference level and the MSFS version is nowhere near as good.

😎 I would have to spend time reprogramming all my GoFlight units via Pollypot’s GIT. Result would be same as now but lots of work required.

9) Financial. 150 airports for P3D would become useless and how many are available for MSFS. Despite claims MSFS default airports are better than P3D’s they are still a long way from how they actually look. Hence the thriving 3rd party market.

10) Extreme Prototypes Lear 25 is not available.

Some people have both but I want a sim that best serves my preferred way of flying. I don’t want the trouble of keeping two sims up to date.

I happily accept the scenery and frame rates with a 4000 Nvidia card makes MSFS very attractive. But there remain reasons why I cannot entertain buying it and P3D will remain  my primary simulator.

[turbomax 3,287]

13 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

to train F-35 Pilots around the world and therefor seems like a good choice

hmm, I never had the wish to become or train for one. If I did, I would probably choose DCS.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

MSFS funding was only giving by MS Phil Spencer on the remit that it is developed for Game pass and fully optimized for the game console and mobile gaming platform.

And yes I have MSFS not used it for months and then only to get the forced updates.

Yes I was a bata tester NDA long gone.

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by G-RFRY

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 541]

@G-RFRY

Who will get the priority from MS, the PC virtual pilot or the XBox gamer? I bet on the second one...

[turbomax 3,287]

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

2) Clouds that occasionally resemble volcanic eruptions.

I mentioned that recently in the MSFS forum too but was told that was fixed, they hadn't encountered those in a long time now. Cirrus clouds I agree, not insight, Concorde in MSFS could probably be quite successful. Radar Contact: don't know why nobody has ported that over to MSFS, but I think you might be pretty much the only one still using it. I found performance on my new pc with AMD 7800x3D runs P3D totally smooth with everything maxed similar to MSFS (without FrameGeneration that is), but at the price of antique graphics. Access to weather via SDK is also still missing from MSFS. standing by for FS expo - if they really implement that Unreal graphics engine properly that could reanimate P3D.

[jlohrenz 133]

Did this same question get posted in the FS2004, FSX, and XP forums as well?  Figure we should just close up shop on all other sims and just use MSFS is it is so ELITE.   Why do I drive a Honda instead of a Ford or Chevy?  I mean everyone has their own likes and dislikes.  For me with my cockpit it is more stable than MSFS right now.

Yes I have a ton of money dumped into add-ons for P3D, but that doesn't tie me down to it.  If / when something better comes along (maybe MSFS will get there some day) I'll jump on board.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

I don`t blame Asobo for MSFS but MS wanted a big reveal at the 2020 show which forced their hand.

The MSFS forum was started with no sim, and it was hailed as the first sim that would not need tons of addons, HA HA HA HA HA 🤣🤣🤣.

[turbomax 3,287]

44 minutes ago, Rogen said:

you could also say "Tell me why is anybody still using MSFS after 3 years"

no need to ask since I use it myself and know pretty well why users use it. it has been updated and new features added to it ever since, while this P3D update could be the last one.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

1 minute ago, turbomax said:

no need to ask since I use it myself and know pretty well why users use it. it has been updated and new features added to it ever since, while this P3D update could be the last one.

Would like to put money that, when MSFS is complete funding from MS will stop Phill has said as much on an interview about supporting third party studios. MS main focus is buying studios.