9 hours ago, Pete F said:

One question that's come up is in regard the Orbx global Base Pack is they do a bundle containing Base, Vector, Buildings, and TerraFlora. The latter isn't of much interest, but I wonder if the others were considered worthwhile?

P3Dv5 updated the whole world in respect of detailed coastlines, cities, towns, rivers, lakes and roads. The only additional ground scenery I installed is ORBX FTX Global as its ground colouring is more to my liking. I don’t think you need anything else in that selection.

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Pete F,

For finding your way around an unfamiliar airport it’s ideal. But with a Navigraph subscription the SIDs and STARs are kept current plus runway designations.

Thanks Ray, but that would never fly on a flight deck, if you excuse the pun. For finding our way it's our iPads with Jepp charts, and only that is approved. Company policy prohibits anything else. We do have AMM on our Aerodrome plates now, which is handy when the GPS in the iPads behaves ... and the AMM chart doesn't zoom right out by itself without warning. Which unfortunately it does with monotonous regularity.

"Finding my way" in relation to this type of flight sim would mean having relatively accurate airport representations so when I'm landing in a typhoon at VHHH etc I know when I become visual what I expect to see. Then once I'm on the ground where I need to go and how to get there. Not too long ago we used to think we were very clever to use Google Earth and work back our altitude/distance from the threshold to get a rough idea of what the picture should look like at minima. These days photorealistic interpretations are available for the cost of a cheap meal. We can study charts all we like, but for me there's no substitute for seeing the real (albeit simulated) thing.

 

3 hours ago, vadriver said:

frankly, i suggest you find a "procedural trainer" for your refresh .... there's too much in-consist in using PC's

I did indeed start with a procedures trainer, but that became so old it was useless.* It also didn't provide any visuals at all. There's a learning curve with any of this stuff so I figured I may as well get full use of my P3D, given I've invested a significant amount of money to buy a specific computer/monitor/joystick etc just to get to this point. In a week or so I'll begin preparation for my next round of sim (actual sim) checks so in the meanwhile I'll get myself up to speed on how to better drive P3D. The main interest is early next year when many of the changes to my flying will occur. P3D should be an extremely valuable tool for that time. I've only just begun to scratch the surface of what functions are available so I'm looking forward to finding more. Rather than distracting from this thread I'll start a seperate thread once the time comes on how to setup scenarios on it, as so far I've only been able to physically fly to a certain position and save that. Then I can re-load it and have another go at the approach etc. 

 

*As an aside, I've had P3D for the past 2 years or so, and found the FMS in it VERY close to the real thing, and I have many years on the real aircraft. There's a very slight discrepancy on an RNAV approach if I recall correctly, but to be honest I can't even remember what it is off the top of my head. Everything else loads and functions pretty much as it should. Even the real aircraft vary depending on what FM build is loaded in each airframe. Indeed there's no standout differences that I've been able to find so far. If there was I wouldn't be wasting my time with it, as I have found that with other entertainment style sims

21 minutes ago, Pete F said:

Thanks Ray, but that would never fly on a flight deck,

My mistake. I thought you were flying an A330 on a home setup.

8 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

My mistake. I thought you were flying an A330 on a home setup.

I fly both, but I have a company iPad with Jepps, Airbus performance apps etc which I also use on P3D. I feel it's best to keep things as consistent as I can between the two environments. It's free and what I use every day at work. One thing that's missing is the GPS position while taxiing, however the same can be said when I'm in the work full-motion sims. Nevertheless there are +/- so I'll keep solutions like that in mind for later if required. 

Ok, I have installed the Orbx World database and also the Australian one. Just a bit of local flying to confirm they worked and it seems fine. The World data seemed to change the rendering, especially of water. Maybe some subtle differences with the Australian data, but nothing really stood out as exceptionally different, albeit on a fairly brief fly around Sydney, Australia. The International terminal didn't look much different, and was kinda/sorta/not really correct. I guess I'll need the airport packages to get them more realistic, and that's something I'll look at further down this rabbit hole. Thanks for the suggestions and I do appreciate the generous guidance provided from forum members to get me this far.

One thing I've been reminded of is P3D crashes randomly. It's done that from day one on even on the previous version of P3D when installed on a brand new computer purchased specifically just to run this app. I'll need to track down what the issue is there, at the moment it's just an annoyance, but it will become a genuine issue if/when I use this more, especially for LOFT exercises.

As another aside, when testing the add-ons I did notice some more differences between the real aircraft and the Aerosoft simulation. Nothing major, and I only noticed them because I was flying in a way that wouldn't be routine in normal line flying. I'm still amazed at just how good the developers' work is

4 hours ago, Pete F said:

One thing I've been reminded of is P3D crashes randomly. It's done that from day one on even on the previous version of P3D when installed on a brand new computer purchased specifically just to run this app. I'll need to track down what the issue is there, at the moment it's just an annoyance, but it will become a genuine issue if/when I use this more, especially for LOFT exercises.

What is the error message? If it’s a DXGI Device Hung message that can hopefully be resolved by following the tips in the pinned topic at the top of this subforum.

No error message I can see Ray, but I'll need to investigate further when I get a chance and go through the forum for clues. The app just crashes but doesn't affect the O/S.

6 minutes ago, Pete F said:

No error message I can see Ray, but I'll need to investigate further when I get a chance and go through the forum for clues. The app just crashes but doesn't affect the O/S.

If you’re located at an ORBX airport it’s something that affects a lot of us. I had it yesterday. No indication of what the problem was. Just move to another airport before closing P3D.

Ok thanks Ray, that's not good news. 

In case it's something others are seeing also and want more info on for diagnosis: This was happening to me with a plain vanilla P3D v4 with the Aerosoft A330 Pro aircraft the only add-on. ie no Orbx (indeed I'd never even heard of that before you guys steered me in the right direction). After the update v5 it seems the problem is still there. The only other app on that computer was Zwift, an online cycling program, which I no longer use. It's otherwise a plain Win 10 machine used just for P3D

Pete, just to be clear P3D only causes shutdown problems at ORBX airports. Not CTDs during ops. Look in Control Panel - Event Viewer for reasons for the crash.

Hi Pete,

 

Ray's suggestion is a good one with looking at the Windows Event Viewer. Hopefully this gives a clue as to what is crashing.

 

A couple of other thoughts while you are investigating... you mentioned V5 update.

 

1. When you did the update on your PC, did you clear the P3D shaders cache? See here for more info: https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=120861

Also it may be worth deleting the Prepar3D.cfg file (save a copy somewhere else first) and then have P3D rebuild it on start-up. You will need to adjust your P3D settings again but this is relatively quick to do if you have some screenshots of what your settings were before hand.

 

Those two things have solved a few issues with other P3D users suffering from freezes and inadvertent crashes after updates.

 

 

2. For the A330 specifically make sure the Aerosoft installation is not in a Windows Program Files folder.

Also, do you have any anti-virus running on your PC that may impact file access?

Pete, you don’t say what your default aircraft is. That the one that shows on the Scenario screen where you choose Airport, Time and Aircraft.

More complex aircraft don’t like being the default. It’s best to choose a Cub as your default and then make your selection on the Scenario screen.

I need to do that for the PMDG737 which would cause problems if it were the default.

Sorry for the delay, been away.

Just to clarify, P3D was crashing intermittently in a seemingly identical manner with V4, and the update to V5 didn't seem to make any real difference.

I believe the default aircraft is the A330, as that's the only aircraft I use. 

I'll see how this stability issue pans out, at the moment it hasn't been a major issue, just an annoyance to note. There's no antivirus software on that machine as it doesn't get used for anything other than driving P3D

Pete, when using a more complex 3rd party aircraft always start P3D with a default aircraft like the Cub.

On the scenario screen select the Cub and airport then save it and choose the option to make it the default scenario.

Then close and restart P3D. The Cub will be selected on the scenario screen. Then select the A330, airport and hit OK. That’s always worked for me.