I tried v6 recently, but got a stutter fest in my install within every are with denser scenery ( default only ) with ASP3Dv6 installed too.

Since the Concorde is releasing, and I am really missing, not quite the PMDG 777 but surely the FSLabs 319 and 320, I thought about going v4 or v5.

I tested both versions in the past, but I don't recall the results ( too long ago ).

I guess that one of the main differences was v4 being DX11 while v5, just as v6 already DX12, but then again even in MFS I reverted to DX11, so... no big deal for me...

I just hope / whish for good performance. Might even revisit v6 if they update it in terms of performance.

P3D is always a bit of a work to get good performance wise 😕 and I honestly don't have the patience to go searching for the best affinity masks for my rig. I basically have a Ryzen 5600x 6 core processor with SMT ( the AMD HT ) disabled, so, no HT at all.

Ah! Another big advantage of installing v4 is that I will be able to use Hervé Sors tools !!! 

The latest V5.4 update has provided the best performance I have experienced with any previous version of P3D, however the volumetric cloud option as is needed work. The best visuals I see are with EA on and use Rex Sky Force for the clouds. The primary disadvantage of going to V5 was losing some add on product compatibility. I think V4.5 was the sweet spot for add on compatible products as it was one of the primary flight sim's before the elephant in the room showed up. My current V5.4 shares the PC space with XP12. 

Edited August 12, 20232 yr by CW46
typo

I tried moving back to v4.5 because of he work needed for installing each FSX scenery into v5. However, I couldn't get the performance I wanted with the FSL birds. I gave v5 a try (just when v5.4 was released) and there was all the performance I wanted. Sadly, there are no replacement textures v5 for default jetways and terminals (they are horrible!), and I can't go to KJFK or KMIA using the GSX jetways instead.

P3Dv5.4 advantages over P3Dv4.5:

1. Better performance - overall smoother flight, less stuttering

2. Much better stock vector data - no need to use addon vector data any more

3. Enhanced Atmospherics - more realistic sky and atmosphere IMO

4. More accurate stock airports - most airport locations, aprons, taxiways, runways, and buildings are more accurate, however, many still lack adequate parking

My 2c.

Dave

 

45 minutes ago, CW46 said:

The latest V5.4 update has provided the best performance I have experienced with any previous version of P3D, however the volumetric cloud option as is needed work. The best visuals I see are with EA on and use Rex Sky Force for the clouds.

How is performance with Rex Sky Force ? What about the volumetric clouds slider in P3D5.4 ? Do they give any recommendation for it regarding RSF in  order to benefit for it ?

No one has mentioned the whole world coastlines, rivers, towns etc being updated. Try locating to South Korea in v4. Fairly basic coastlines. In v5 they’re as good as Ultimate Terrain X packages used to be for a few parts of the world.

The number of parking positions at many default airports in v5 is much lower than v4. That limits the number of AIG aircraft that can be placed. But with third party ones, no problem.

v5 performance is much better than v4 especially v5.3HF2. I don’t have 5.4 yet which I understand is quite different.

Thank you all for your contributions !  

I completed the install of P3Dv5.4, Orbx Global + Libraries + Global Airports(free version), PMDG 777 200 LR, FSLabs A319 and 320 (was tricky at first because I wasn't aware that I had to opt for the Experimental channel in the Control Center, but a rapid search at the FSLabs Forum solved the problem 🙂 ), Active Sky P3D  and Aerosoft Madeia X.

Tremendous Performance - no stutter like in P3Dv6.

Great scenery - more than enough for me...

Lot's of time to start studying the Concorde (have a nice book about it 🙂 ) and will invest in the SL versions of the Airbuses to get the new tablets too !!!

Loving it !!!

(Ah! and OFC, Hervé, as usual, was extremely helpful with his mandatory tools !!!)

Edited August 12, 20232 yr by jcomm

I'll say that Enhanced Atmospherics can't measure up with Tomato Shade / Reshade. And I do not have stutters in v4.5 at all. Because I have good enough GPU. 

It's all about tweaks. Any sim can be good if you know how to tweak. 

 

Spoiler

 

5 hours ago, jfri said:

How is performance with Rex Sky Force ? What about the volumetric clouds slider in P3D5.4 ? Do they give any recommendation for it regarding RSF in  order to benefit for it ?

No performance issues on my system with RSF ( I7-8300K with AMD RX 6700 XT) albeit my sliders are not maxed out. I have the volumetric slider set to off so the RSF clouds display. I never saw more than one cloud layer using volumetric clouds, and they tend to display the waffle effect which looks odd to say the least. I also use Active Sky with RSF and I must say that I prefer that combination over the previous use of Hifi ASCA with Active Sky. Going through a line of weather looks quite realistic, the position of thunder storm clouds agree with the NGXu radar display and the clouds themselves look very good. I choose the random setting option in RSF, each session has a different cloud style and sky color set for variety. It was on sale for $15 so after trying it I uninstalled ASCA. RSF has a detailed manual included and there are multiple options with in the program for personal preference.

All depends on what you want. 
 

Despite the indisputable performance gains in v5.x, I’m half way decided to go back to v4.5 simply due to addon compatibility. 
I figure the CPU / GPU perf increases to n the last several years are enough to make up the difference (for me). 

4 hours ago, CW46 said:

No performance issues on my system with RSF ( I7-8300K with AMD RX 6700 XT) albeit my sliders are not maxed out. I have the volumetric slider set to off so the RSF clouds display. I never saw more than one cloud layer using volumetric clouds, and they tend to display the waffle effect which looks odd to say the least. I also use Active Sky with RSF and I must say that I prefer that combination over the previous use of Hifi ASCA with Active Sky.

Do you mean that RSF takes over the role of volumetric slider so it can be set to off ? I have mine set to High and I have some problems with performance. Could I set it to off and gain performance with RSF and at the same time gain visuals ? And btw is this slider about numbers of cloud layers ? I think it's about quality.

5 hours ago, PavlinS said:

It's all about tweaks. Any sim can be good if you know how to tweak. 

That's what the FS2004 zealots at the other site say as well. 🙂

Cheers

Yer killin’ me… 😂

Hi,

Stutterfests are generally related to the maxing out of resources, e.g. maxing out CPU or GPU where usually it's the maxing out of GPU that results is large dropping of frame rates.

Fortunatelly the current batch of hardware available can for the most part render such occurances pretty minimal.

So whether you choose v4.5 or v5.4 or v6.x, having suitably powerful hardware combined with matched tuning can result in the sim output looking as good as it can be, as well as performing as well as can be.

A great aspect of P3D is it's tunablity where a default install can be tuned to achieve maximum asthetic's and performance for the chosen hardware.

Personally I run v4.5 because so far the later P3D versions don't fill enough of column B vs. the column A of v4.5.

I've included a couple of pics from my tuned v4.5

Be nicer to have a P3D screen shots thread under the P3D main forum... (hint hint moderators, be good for XP as well).

Cheers

Over Southampton Commons heading to EGHJ Bembridge.

 

Somewhere in Australia (there is a town on the other side of the ridge, don't remember the name though)

 

Flatstick over Florida

The AA in the below pic is 8x MSAA which does pretty good at smoothing out the powerlines.

Edited August 13, 20232 yr by Rogen

Regarding optimization, for the very first time since v4 and previous versions I guess I decided to try "sending" the heavy work to the GPU, or at least that's what I believe I've done based on the recommendations I decided to follow from the video linked bellow.

Indeed I get a stable 30 fps and contrarily to P3Dv6 I tried a couple weeks ago, my CPU temps keep within normal values and I didn't yet experience any stutters.

I decided to:

1) Start by setting AA to NILL in the sim settings, but I had to revert it to 2xbecause otherwise I couldn't see the aircraft in the vehicle selection window :-/, but then I force antialising on the GPU at 8x in NCP. Same for anisotropic filtering.

2) I lowered Tesselation one setep from High

3) While I have EA on, I do not use it's Volumetric Clouds (slider is full left ).

It works good so far.

I was missing Active Sky à lá P3D so so so much!  ASXP does it's work too, but IMO in P3D it allows for a level of sophistication that is unpaired... I just whish we could have in P3D the temperature effects on geopotential height...

Weather consistency, and even depiction, is 2nd to none in some aspects in P3D with AS... No way as good for my liking in either XP or MFS.... They both have strong points too, for different reasons, but coherency, precision in cell depiction and returns in a Weather Radar 🙂

Aaaaaaaand !!!! I will soon have a CONCORDE !!!!

 

 

Edited August 13, 20232 yr by jcomm