Is Prepar3D an end of life sim?

[dave2013]

5 hours ago, sdirand said:

So why bother do it just for the leisure market?

They wouldn't be doing it just for the leisure market.  Having accurate terrain and buildings/vegetation would make a military mission simulation more realistic.

The servers and bandwidth would not be extremely costly.  LM could require a subscription for the streaming scenery, around $10/month sounds reasonable.

Dave

[shermank]

Hi everybody. While we know that P3D does not get the attention it once got, I want to give a big shoutout to ORBX. I noticed recently that ORBX CENTRAL was no longer allowing me to set an insertion point. 

I sent a ticket to their support group. To cut to the chase, I got a reply that a new version had been created...5.6.7

It works perfectly and OC is completely workable.

Those of you who use OC will notice the update next time you boot, if you have auto updates set. Otherwise, I think you can do it manually.

Sherm

[Rein2]

15 hours ago, spilok said:

I fly P3d every day and am still amazed

The same. From time to time, it still amazes me. And I still have so much to discover. Just bought my first TE NA region. Haven't had the time to discover. Also have to make my entry in flying the big jets. I have a ton of scenery and still have to discover a big part of it. Performance is very good. And there is still some development going on; althought at  a slow pace. New things I like to take a look at are FCScenery and P3Dv6. I already have it on my SSD's but haven't had much time to play with it. So enough to do. And 

15 hours ago, Rogen said:

Plus it meets my tinkering desires where I can write and modify practically anything I want.

Yes, tinkering with the simulator and scenery is an essential part of the hobby for me. And we have all kind of tools for it. 

I stick with P3D. 

[jlohrenz]

I think it is approaching EOL for the consumer market.  Part of the drop from P3D 5.x to 6.x was the lack of developer support.  If a v 7.x comes out and it is an entirely new engine nothing will port over...thus fewer consumers will migrate.  UNLESS it blows the competition out of the water and developers come back.

 

I've used p3d up till recently for my cockpit.  Just recently uninstalled it and am migrating over to MS for now.  Their (LM / P3D) market is not us, it is the commercial so I don't think they are too concerned about simmers sticking around.  It was a favor to keep the hobby alive when MS decided to quickly exit the market.

I'm part of a community of simmers that have built dedicated cockpits of 737 and/or Airbus variants.  Many are moving over to MS, so the comment about it being just for gamers isn't really factual its an opinion.

In reality, I hope P3D can surge in popularity again.  Competition is always good and helps drive the industry to (hopefully) better technology and systems.

[Ray Proudfoot]

9 hours ago, jlohrenz said:

Many are moving over to MS,

But which version? It’s entirely possible 2020 has a finite life and aircraft/ scenery designed for 2024 won’t be backward compatible with 20. Same applies to XP11 with 12 now out. It’s not just P3D.

[marlon445]

P3D is EOS (End of Service), but not EOL.
I explicitly hope that LM doesn't want to rely on streaming anything for V7, because if they don't want to, the servers will run out.

At the moment I'm only using MSFS, because if we're honest, it's superior to the P3D in all respects, except perhaps in Afcad editing, but that's a niche within a niche.
But I still keep P3D with all its add-ons warm on my hard drive, because it will still be there in five years' time. Microsoft is a software company and if they don't feel like it any more, i.e. if they don't get enough money out of it, that's the end of the line. 
This has already happened twice, in 2006 after FSX and in 2012 after MS Flight. 
Every publisher does this, from Microsoft to EA to Ubisoft, all of whom keep emphasising that we are only buying a licence and that these products do not belong to us.
That's why I'm cautious. I don't care that a new version comes out every four years or less - the P3D has also cost full price every time from V1 to V6 (Microsoft is even fairer, I bought MSFS and MSFS 24 both on offer for less than half the price), but if Microsoft pulls the plug at some point, my P3D will be ready for use again immediately.

[Afterburner]

Given that it's been more than a year since LM released an update for v6 (it has never been that long in the past), it all looks like P3D is in a dormant state at best - and that applies to the participation of the developers in the official forum (where I rarely see them replying to threads these days). It does not mean that we cannot enjoy using the current versions v5 and v6. I for one still love flying with Majestic Dash Q400 in v5. In combination with Active Sky, ORBX scenery and good add-on airports, the graphics can still look very good from cruise altitude. One of the few aspects where P3D still shines to me is its ease of use and how much life the dense car- and AI traffic can inject into airports and scenery with the help of AI plane packages.

@Ray ProudfootI am observing your discussion in the FSL Concorde forum. What a shame that you got no response to your legitimate inquiry about the HP200LX computer and its lack of cooperation with the runways at Boston airport. I bought the plane on the day it was released, but I frankly never flew on it. This is a dream to any add-on developer: A customer buys their product and never uses it. I do not becry the money I spent, but I expected in full faith that the product would receive more care and more frequent updates. The overreliance on the HP200LX and how it can "strike" the process of flight planning is a big turnoff to me. I wanted something like Concorde-X where you can decide on your own how many passengers you want to take and if the fuel load or runway length are sufficient without anyone changing the number of passengers and telling you that you can't take off. I have been waiting for a more flexible version, but I have lowered my expectations and fly other planes in the meantime.

I use P3Dv5 and MSFS2024 side by side, the latter primarily for low-altitude VFR flights. I highly recommend that you purchase the simulator for that purpose. If you have both, why not treat yourself to a nice sightseeing trip after a speedy flight from London to Barbados?  That way, you can use Concorde in P3D and then fly the sightseeing trip in MSFS2024. The good thing about that simulator is that it occupies relatively little storage space, while it offers the whole world in best graphics. The predecessor MSFS2020 took a whopping 140+ GB, which was too much for me for some occasional VFR flights. The new sim only occupies 23 GB, and it runs well on my computer. It should do well on your.

Edited April 24 by Afterburner

[Ray Proudfoot]

@Afterburner, so nice to hear from you after such a long absence. 😁

You may have guessed I don’t give up easily. So last night I raised a formal ticket. I had to supply my order number and product key. Once I did that there was a dropdown box to select your aircraft. The only option was A32X. Nothing for Concorde.

So I selected A32X and typed out my issue. Exactly the same as on the forum. No response so far bar the automated reply. I’ll post their replies here.

I’m not against buying MSFS2024 once it settles down and predominantly bug-free. Assuming I’m still alive of course. 🤣 I always said that sim lends itself to low-level VFR flying but was shot down for that. I don’t see any real benefits once you’re at FL350 or higher compared to P3D.

There will be a significant learning curve of course and when you read why some things that worked fine in 2020 were radically changed in 2024 it’s a real turn-off.

Back to Concorde. Performance can be significantly improved by changing one parameter in an ini file. It’s to do with the VFE and the monitoring of that panel with all the switches. Turning it off means you need to make a few changes yourself but experienced users will know that.

Steam Lossless Generation also improves fps to the point where I can get 57fps at Heathrow with 200Ai. Give it a try. With those changes it’s eminently useable.

[IanHarrison]

On 4/24/2025 at 2:40 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Steam Lossless Generation also improves fps to the point where I can get 57fps at Heathrow with 200Ai. Give it a try. With those changes it’s eminently useable.

I am losing faith in Steam Lossless. It works fine for me to speed up Airport traffic but it does absolutely nothing to help in AI intensive loading or Airports such as Sydney or Heathrow. 

I find I get better results (more stable, not more FPS) if I turn it off when AI or scenery loads and I am down to 2 or 3 FPS. Probably because my equipment is getting really old.

[marlon445]

27 minutes ago, IanHarrison said:

I am losing faith in Steam Lossless. It works fine for me to speed up Airport traffic but it does absolutely nothing to help in AI intensive loading or Airports such as Sydney or Heathrow. 

I find I get better results (more stable, not more FPS) if I turn it off when AI or scenery loads and I am down to 2 or 3 FPS. Probably because my equipment is getting really old.

Lossless Scaling is not downloadable hardware. If you can't maintain 30 FPS or the FPS you limit, there's nothing Lossless can do.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, IanHarrison said:

I am losing faith in Steam Lossless. It works fine for me to speed up Airport traffic but it does absolutely nothing to help in AI intensive loading or Airports such as Sydney or Heathrow. 

Reduce all Ai to zero in P3D. At Heathrow what fps do you get? If less than 30 reduce scenery complexity until you can.

Having achieved 30 start to increase Ai slider until 30 is no longer achievable. Dial it back to achieve 30.

Now turn off VSync in P3D and in Lossless Scaling. Scaling should be LS1 assuming you're on v3.0.0.1.

Try that.

[IanHarrison]

21 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Reduce all Ai to zero in P3D. At Heathrow what fps do you get? If less than 30 reduce scenery complexity until you can.

Having achieved 30 start to increase Ai slider until 30 is no longer achievable. Dial it back to achieve 30.

Now turn off VSync in P3D and in Lossless Scaling. Scaling should be LS1 assuming you're on v3.0.0.1.

Try that.

Thanks for the advice, Ray. I changed the Nvidia Control panel frame limit to 30. I found that the P3D slider has no effect at all. What controls AI is the AIG Traffic Controller. (maybe because I don't have BGL flight plans?). However, the results of using this are not immediate, so I am trying the FSUIPC limiter. This limits AI according to frame rate, as you know. The only drawback is that planes keep popping in and out of view as fps changes.

Anyhow, I have reduced settings all round and now sitting at the terminal at Heathrow, I am getting around 30fps. I will try a full flight into H/R tomorrow and see what difference these settings make.

Edited April 28 by IanHarrison