7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Final warning to everyone. Stick to the topic title or it will be locked.

Unfortunately all that does is achieve the goal of the person who doesn’t want the thread to continue.  A better approach might be to just ghost the user for a week or two … let them post away but no one other than moderators can see their posts.

Back on topic, for streaming scenery, I can see the issue … only 42% of the world have fiber connectivity.  Countries like Belgium only 8%?  That caught me by surprise.  Iceland at 89% … France 66%.  If those laser 10 PT storage cubes become a reality, it would be as simple as mailing them or Amazon/FedEx/UPS/DHL them to destination (very much like a DVD/BD disc only a cube).

It would certainly open the potential customer market if streaming was NOT the only option to obtaining the entire planet geo data for use in P3D.  There are more potential customers without than with fiber … which does provide for great market opportunity.

Resolution is still too low in all current platforms, although P3D could be tweaked to support 1024 res tiles (and it was much more impressive), the source textures need to be adjusted also.  I had made some scenery for P3D for my local area at very high resolutions (you could easily see the “STOP” paint marks on roads, dividers … all sourced from USGS (free).  However it did consume 2GB of terrain only data for about 1sq mile.

Looking ahead, we’re likely to need 64GB VRAM GPUs … GDDR7 is about $8-$13 per 8GB or so, but would also need more power and adjustments to address/bus.

As far as simulator platforms, I just don’t see any other platform meeting “my goals” as there is no ROI for them to stay profitable.  Lockheed Martin don’t need “GP consumers” for funding, they have very large contracts from other sources (aka Military USAF).

On 2/8/2025 at 11:56 AM, CO2Neutral said:

You do know what USAF stands for right?  Do you need a hint?

It's kinda sad that you don't seem to understand...

I'm well aware that the USAF uses Prepar3D. I personally own and fly one the very nice P3D addons developed and currently in use by the USAF - the T-38C by MilViz.

But you're continuing to conflate desktop flight sim software with certified Flight Simulation Training Devices. As well as apparently misunderstanding that there are aspects to training far more important than "the flight model" when it comes to IRL military programs.

And as a veteran with relevant experience, no, I don't need "a hint". Thank you 😉

On 2/8/2025 at 11:53 AM, CO2Neutral said:

MSFS “software” doesn’t meet ALL of the above

There you go again - dragging other software into the discussion (again) and ignoring the forest because you're so close to the trees.

Sad...

9 hours ago, dave2013 said:

And you know this how?  Do you have insider knowledge of LM's and the military's use of flight simulators?

Dave

It's public knowledge for those who know where to look.

And as a veteran with relevant experience, yes, I'm familiar with certain aspects. :)

As far as terrain tile resolution swapping (aka morphing terrain as you fly) problem.  There is an interesting read here … hit summary quote:

Quote

Ok, to allow overwrite when booking has been updated.

 this paper, we have presented a new region-based multi-

resolution approach for terrain rendering which improves the

density of triangles inside the tile after selecting appropriate

Level-Of-Detail by an adaptive sampling. Since typical terrain

field consists of regions exhibiting high-resolution geometric

details and others showing rather coarse geometric structures,

this approach employs a geometry morphing and generates for

each tile an error-controlled adaptive tessellation of the terrain.

This technique combines the benefits of both Triangular

Irregular Network approach and region-based multi-resolution

approach by improving the distribution of the density of

triangles even inside the tile. Our technique morphs the initial

regular grid of the tile to deformed grid in order to minimize

approximation error. Thus, this approach uses the wavelet

transform as mathematical framework to localize fine grain

details region where the density of triangles should be increased

to improve the terrain geometry approximation quality. We

investigated the efficiency of the proposed method in terms of

enhancements of the terrain geometry quality. Geometric

approximation error is examined for several resolutions of grids

(8×8, 16×16, 32×32), and results before and after applying the

proposed morphing technique are compared. The results show

that the morphing algorithm is effective to improve the quality

of the geometry approximation. However, its efficiency depends

on the initial distribution of LODs inside the tile

A possible solution?

 

thought I would dig this one up...Read some interesting posts from Rob Ainscough on FSElite Monastir release page about P3D v7 essentially admitting it exists but obviously that he cannot comment more...So what CO2Neutral was claiming seems to be true. Just so you know, I didn't doubt you! 😀

Glad to see Rob is still around.  I’ve always enjoyed reading his posts on the various forums over the years as he always had valuable insight into hardware and prepar3d.  

19 hours ago, okupton said:

Glad to see Rob is still around.  I’ve always enjoyed reading his posts on the various forums over the years as he always had valuable insight into hardware and prepar3d.  

Agreed. Hopefully we see more of him in the near future.

On 2/9/2025 at 1:00 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Precisely. But discussion continues in a totally different direction.

Final warning to everyone. Stick to the topic title or it will be locked.

Hmmm... given the relatively low volume of posts in P3D nowadays...so long as it's not illegal and the post still relate to flight sims generally (and not necessarily on the topic)........... Anyway.... just my 2 cents?  It's kinda entertaining... 🙂

Edited March 15, 20251 yr by Matt Sdeel

1 hour ago, Matt Sdeel said:

Hmmm... given the relatively low volume of posts in P3D nowadays...so long as it's not illegal and the post still relate to flight sims generally (and not necessarily on the topic)........... Anyway.... just my 2 cents?  It's kinda entertaining... 🙂

There`s a Forum for each sim and General anything forum and for hardware and Third party addons, some of use still use 3D and try to help others. That`s what Tom intended the site for.

6 hours ago, Matt Sdeel said:

Hmmm... given the relatively low volume of posts in P3D nowadays...so long as it's not illegal and the post still relate to flight sims generally (and not necessarily on the topic)........... Anyway.... just my 2 cents?  It's kinda entertaining... 🙂

Keeping on topic is important. Far more so than posting for entertainment purposes. That ends up with the topic being locked.

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Keeping on topic is important. Far more so than posting for entertainment purposes. That ends up with the topic being locked.

Thinking aloud here but forum software in general could do with a 'create tangent thread' FUNCTION. 

In practice, if a post inspired you to write a comment that would be off topic you would click the post ID then CREATE TANGENT THREAD. In the original thread the comment would be blank (so not taking up screen space) with the simple VIEW TANGENT THREAD link within. 

If you clicked on the VTT link it would take you to a sub thread which would allow it's own commenting and discussion WITHOUT derailing the original thread with off topic chatter. As the discussion would not be important enough for it's own separate forum discussion it would not be visible as a thread title so also would declutter the top level thread list page. 

It would also be easy for mods to click on a post and MAKE TANGENT THREAD rather than need to issue warnings which would keep everyone happy. 

🤔

On 1/4/2025 at 6:10 AM, sloppysmusic said:

I agree, I expect they'd do some market research during development to see what serious simmers and flight trainers want. Unless they pull off a graphical miracle or make a great deal with a live map service the success will depend entirely on how good the flight simulation itself is. 

I paid for the pro version of 5 this year (my first p3d) and decided to hold off 6 and wait for 7 as msfs satisfies my tourist flying (and not much else sadly).

 

Don't forget that per their license agreement with MS, LM is not allowed to mass market P3D as an entertainment sim. Unless they totally change P3D with code that is totally different than the original, they are very limited how they market the sim. I'm not sure that LM wants to spend that kind of money.

Nothing posted on AVSIM will have any bearing on LM, they have their own forum and have never leaked anything on the next version until they are ready.

P3D In use by LM.

F-35 Lightning II Training | Lockheed Martin,

Edited April 10, 20251 yr by G-RFRY

I hope this doesn’t get interpreted the wrong way but Ray, please hear me out: Can we not threaten to shut down a thread every time someone mentions MSFS in a thread about P3D features? Obviously, I know it’s not that simple, but it’s annoying to see so many threads that end up getting locked (most recently the 787 thread).
 

i love this forum, and I love having discussions like this. I am still using P3D, as many users are, because P3D has features that don’t exist in another sim. Therefore, when talking about P3D as consumers, that conversation can’t happen without comparison to a competing product. 
 

i agree with the user above. Can we please just boot someone who comes into the thread saying “P3D sucks get on MSFS lolz” instead of shutting down the thread every time? 

 
Conversations like “here’s a feature from MSFS that I think is better than in P3D and I’d like to see it implemented” should be fair game, IMO.