2 hours ago, Beardyman said:

EA is good as long you stay below clouds, above you will see strange things.

Are you confusing EA with Volumetric Clouds? I use the former with no visual nasties but don't use the latter as the clouds are not realistic.

44 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Are you confusing EA with Volumetric Clouds? I use the former with no visual nasties but don't use the latter as the clouds are not realistic.

REX + Volumetric Clouds OFF looks great. Better than XP 1000%, and probably even more realistic than MSFS.

I am throwing my 2 cents in as an exclusive P3D v5.4 user. I was on the alpha and beta team for MSFS and used it for about 6 flights after it was released....Just not my sim and I did buy the Fenix and some addons...BUT, if I was brand new to flightsim with minimal dollars invested, I am probably going to strongly consider going all in on MSFS24. For another reason...All of the new FCU stuff coming out has support for MSFS. I bought my winwing as they had P3D compatibility I am still awaiting on which may not happen period...

57 minutes ago, V_Pilot said:

REX + Volumetric Clouds OFF looks great. Better than XP 1000%, and probably even more realistic than MSFS.

ASCA for me works fine. I believe they improved the Atmospherics in v6 but there wasn’t enough there for me plus the danger many addons wouldn’t be compatible.

I’ve just landed in sunny and warm Orlando, 1hr 45m since departing a cold Montreal. I have everything I need. 😁

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

ASCA for me works fine. I believe they improved the Atmospherics in v6 but there wasn’t enough there for me plus the danger many addons wouldn’t be compatible.

I’ve just landed in sunny and warm Orlando, 1hr 45m since departing a cold Montreal. I have everything I need. 😁

Slightly off topic but Ray, are you using the T2G KMCO newest version and if so what do you think? It's on sale right now and I have the old one I should really upgrade...

21 minutes ago, ywg256 said:

Slightly off topic but Ray, are you using the T2G KMCO newest version and if so what do you think? It's on sale right now and I have the old one I should really upgrade...

I assume I have the latest version as I’ve had it for a number of years. Yes, great rendition and well worth getting.

https://secure.simmarket.com/taxi2gate-kmco-p3dv5-p3dv4.phtml

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Doesn't that rather depend on the altitude you're flying and the type of aircraft in use?

Currently I'm flying Concorde from Montreal to Orlando. Subsonic until I reach the coast. But even at FL330 / Mach 0.95 there's not much to look at and that's with clear skies. With cloud cover there isn't anything to look at.

Once I'm supersonic over the sea I fail to understand how any of the three major sims is an improvement over the other two.

OTOH, if you're toddling around at 1500ft in a Cessna MSFS offers a clear advantage but that's not how I fly.

Of course if you're toddling around in a civilian plane at just Mach2 and barely 55.000 feet nowhere but over flat water and clear skies, P3D can be enough.

But when I'm simulating interceptions in my Mig-25 at 80.000 feet at Mach 3, I'm very happy to have a nice rendering of the land below me 🙂

Edited November 17, 20241 yr by Daube

1 minute ago, Daube said:

Of course if you're toddling around 

I don’t toddle. 😁 I fly faster than a bullet out of a rifle. 😉

16 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

FSX was 32-bit running on DX9. There was no multithreading - everything ran on one core so modern CPUs were wasted. Performance was dreadful and was probably why the Aces Team was disbanded a couple of years later.

I think you're being far too harsh on the Aces team, and forgetting the reality of the situation.

FSX was being developed in 2004-2006, and the hardware requirements were set early on. For them to design the platform on anything other than 32-bit and single-core would be ignoring the reality of the hardware market at the time. Multicore processors simply didn't exist - at best you had Pentium 4s with HyperThreading that simulated an additional core for latency and responsiveness improvements, but didn't give you any meaningful processing uplift (~10%). It's one thing to design a game to run on maxed settings based on future CPU advancements, but to build a game that requires at minimum a CPU and OS combination that doesn't exist yet?

Basic FSX didn't age well because single core improvements slowed down at the same time. From 1998 to 2006 we went from 300Mhz to 3Ghz, and then added IPC improvements on top. Everyone knew that that would eventually end, but they didn't know when. With P4, it ended. While we've had some clock speed increases since then (looking at my 7800X3D hitting 5.1Ghz) it's slowed dramatically and with hindsight the FSX team should have known that, the same way you and I should have known what last week's winning lotto numbers would be. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it's not particularly valuable.

To their credit, I am impressed with the work that Phil and team did for FSX SP1. It's factually incorrect to say that FSX does not support multiple cores - SP1 started the threading work that has continued to this day, and it made a huge difference to FSX. Even running on a P4 with HT was noticeably faster, and then once the Core2 Duo came out it became playable. If you don't believe me, install FSX out of the box and look at your performance and core usage, then install SP1 or SP2 and see what happens.

I will also disagree with @jason74 and say that each sim is an updated version of the former, and based on the compatibility there's a fair bit of FSX code in FS2020. Each sim builds on the one before, and I've been impressed with P3D. Yes, it shows that it was once FSX, but each version (and there have been numerous since FSX) has improved the visuals and the performance. The biggest jumps were between P3Dv2 and P3Dv4 - the former was essentially a less buggy FSX and between v3 and v4 they radically changed the performance and stability. Adding multi-core or going to 64-bit (at least in C++) is not a "change a compiler setting" kind of change, it's hard work and even what ACES did with FSX SP1 is impressive given the code base they were working in.

It's surprisingly easy to criticize folks who do work hard enough that none of us would make it past an entry level interview for them. I've been writing code for 40+ years and I'm smart enough not to mess with multi-threaded C++. I respect those who do, and it's a lot harder than most people realize.

Cheers

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

I think you're being far too harsh on the Aces team, and forgetting the reality of the situation.

I don’t have your encyclopaedic knowledge of FSX but I do remember seeing it on Microsoft computers at a flight sim show back in 2006. I don’t know what they changed from earlier versions but performance was much worse than earlier versions. And remember, Microsoft were showcasing it on their own computers so you’d imagine they would get the fastest available. It was still poor.

All this is a bit pointless as it was 18 years ago and FSX was the last version Microsoft produced for 14 years.

In the intervening years we relied on LM who did wonders.

On 11/16/2024 at 12:40 PM, kingm56 said:

Promoting the false narrative that MSFS is merely "eye-candy" does a great disservice to newcomers in the flight simulation community. The truth is that MSFS is a significantly more advanced simulator than P3D. It features an integrated weather engine, a superior physics system, and an extensive selection of aircraft equipped with advanced avionics.

If you have the budget, consider waiting for the release of MSFS 2024, which promises an unprecedented variety of aircraft, many offering robust FMC/MCDU simulations. At the very least, don't fall for the misconception that P3D is the superior simulator—it simply isn’t.  If you do decide to purchase P3D, be preaperred to spend hundred of extra dollars to achieve a reasonable simulation.  You'll need a weather engine, additional ground textures for VFR Flights, camera controls, etc...

I'm not promoting a "false narrative".  I said that I use MSFS for eye candy and VFR flying.  I do use all the other features of MSFS that you mentioned but my primary use of the sim is for flying low and slow.  I have already purchased MSFS 2024 in September and await its release on the 19th.  I very much look forward to it.  My "narrative" is that I like using it the way I use it, and you and others may like using it for other reasons.  Budget has never been a problem or a consideration (P3d is far more expensive than MSFS).  We all just love what we love.  "Different strokes for different folks"!

On 11/16/2024 at 8:40 PM, kingm56 said:

It features an integrated weather engine

Yet somehow there is no working weather radar in the sim and apparently will never be. Hopefully it'll change in MSFS 2024.

On 11/16/2024 at 8:40 PM, kingm56 said:

a superior physics system

This needs to be proven. I heard different. At least taxiing is still not working as it should.

On 11/16/2024 at 8:40 PM, kingm56 said:

extensive selection of aircraft equipped with advanced avionics

Agree.

On 11/16/2024 at 8:40 PM, kingm56 said:

don't fall for the misconception that P3D is the superior simulator

There is no superior sim. At least to my thinking. Everyone can call a superior sim the one that he/she flies most at the moment. You mentioned "an unprecedented variety of aircraft, many offering robust FMC/MCDU simulations", but I doubt they will be of a high-fidelity level like those you buy for a lot of money. I am planning on buying MSFS 2024 as well. But at some time when I am bored with every other sim I fly.

I also agree that everyone can fly whatever sim they want. As long as it makes them happy. Flying study-level aircraft is what makes me happy.

I see people went after P3D in my topic, but as a matter of fact, this was never a P3D thread, it was more a thread about buying P3D to fly PMDG 747 and 777. I don't care which sim to buy as long as it has planes I want to fly.

I bet there are still people flying FSX and it makes them happy.

13 minutes ago, V_Pilot said:

Yet somehow there is no working weather radar in the sim and apparently will never be. Hopefully it'll change in MSFS 2024.

 

Why do people keep saying this when it's just not true?  The weather radar works just fine, at least as good as ActiveSky in P3D, and shows what's ahead.  I'm turning away from this storm, the weather radar is showing the precip off to my left, and you can see the rain falling visually.   No other sim has rain like MSFS, where it moves dynamically.  I've flown approaches where rain is moving across the approach path and it's very eerie, because it looks word not allowed real.  

This isn't MSFS of four years ago.  It's come a long way.

I am a strong supporter (and user) of P3Dv5 and I have never really used MSFS. 

However, if I was starting fresh in flight simulation now, I would probably go for MSFS 2024.

Why? Simply because P3D is slowly, but surely, becoming outdated. 

All the updates/development are going into MSFS. The future is not with P3D unfortunately.