12 hours ago, Zylx said:

I hope you don't mind, but I've copied your original post so that I can use what you've done to try to reorganize my own P3Dv5 and setup for other flight simulators. 

Wishing @Rogen would create an all-inclusive legacy one-stop definitive how-to-get the most out of P3D v4.5. Don't think it'll ever happen though.

On 7/26/2025 at 12:39 AM, Rogen said:

That's a bit of a complex question in reality.

Yeah I like P3D v4.5, pretty much everything works out of the box with that version and it looks pretty good with my customised lighting and cloud shaders.

That said, back when I was initially trialing P3D v5, I didn't see anything particularly great about it, in fact there was quite a few cons and still is imho.

Essentially I've since found out LM did really improve ground poly texture loading speed, I don't know if they moved it to GPU processing or if it's the CPU thread separation is what did it, but it is *way* faster and previous bottlenecks no longer exist.

This became apparent once I'd installed a couple of my existing Orbx sceneries, specifically the GoldCoast City Scene & Friday Harbor Airport.

In P3D v4.5 at the Gold Coast I'd have to pause the sim to wait for the ground textures to catch up plus there were many loading stutters along the way, and it was pretty much the same for Friday Harbor.

Low and behold in P3D v5.3 those problems did not occur and if there was one thing I could backport into v4.5 it would be the texture loading & rendering improvements.

Still leaves the effects and exclude issues to overcome, LM could have thought about it a bit more and included docs on exactly what was needed to resolve those issues, or even provided tool sets targeted to automatically making such items compatible, I know in my own company we took great care to provision the instructions and software tools sets to bring an earlier system to a fully functional compatible state, not simply say it was up the the customer to do *whatever*.

And since playing with the shaders and TrueSky cloud rendering config I've gotten it looking fairly reasonable, once I get it fully re-org'd & running I'll also look at Toga Projects stuff to finalise it - although does look like their website has expired... Still on simMarket though, anyone know if online activation is needed ?

The below video highlights the improvement of P3D 5.3's poly load and rendering speed, it covers the Gold Coast in two passes @ 30 fps with no LS.

Cheers

 

Would you be willing to publish instructions on how to convert the effects? I have failed to do this to date, all airports that are not native v5 cannot be used at night.

On 7/25/2025 at 5:39 PM, Rogen said:

 since playing with the shaders and TrueSky cloud rendering config I've gotten it looking fairly reasonable, once I get it fully re-org'd & running I'll also look at Toga Projects stuff to finalise it - although does look like their website has expired... Still on simMarket though, anyone know if online activation is needed ?

TOGA's Envshade and EnvPlus are a must have for P3Dv5 in my opinion.  It can make P3Dv5 look really amazing if you use their high quality shaders (not the performance shaders).  It does require online activation, but just because their main website is down, doesn't mean their activation servers are down.  If that were the case, they probably wouldn't be selling it still.

If you want to be sure before you buy, then try contacting them via the email you can find when you look them up on Simmarket.

On 7/28/2025 at 2:01 AM, bofhlusr said:

Wishing @Rogen would create an all-inclusive legacy one-stop definitive how-to-get the most out of P3D v4.5. Don't think it'll ever happen though.

Sorry, I've not the time for that sort of thing, however I've have made a lot of posts on my various setups, try a search or check my posts via my profile, otherwise is basically experimenting to find what works best.

Cheers

On 8/1/2025 at 3:49 AM, marlon445 said:

Would you be willing to publish instructions on how to convert the effects? I have failed to do this to date, all airports that are not native v5 cannot be used at night.

Sorry I'm not versed enough to be able to develop such a thing... It's an item I wish the P3D dev crew had given some though to themselves...

• I assume you're flying P3D v5 ?
• And what's the night related actual issue that prevents an airport being used at night ?
• Do you have an example airport where it cannot be used at night ?

Cheers

They are usable, but the lights are overexposed if the effects are only v4-native.

There are two new values in the files — IntensityDay and IntensityNight — which determine the brightness of the lights. You can add these manually, but unfortunately this does not 'convert' the effects to v5 — the problem remains.

This has been explained here:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/582896-fixing-dynamic-lighting-in-p3dv5/.

But I have always failed anyway. I'm on v5.

On 8/5/2025 at 7:58 PM, marlon445 said:

They are usable, but the lights are overexposed if the effects are only v4-native.

Hmmm, yeah never looked into it myself.

Looking at that linked post I can see what he's talking about, I'd say take a look at a stock native P3D v5 effects file and compare it with the target file you're wanting to adjust.

And Notepad++ has a very good compare option which will help in finding and exploring differences.

You might also want to take a look at the below links from inibuilds, although they are all MSFS nowdays they did create a series of dynamic lighting fixes and compatibility patches for many 3rd party airports, as well they have liveries and other various bits and pieces available for free download.

https://forum.inibuilds.com/files/category/91-dynamic-lighting/

https://old.inibuilds.com/p3d-v5-scenery-compatibility-files

Cheers

I’m using the 12 TB Ironwolf pro  for (worldwide FC scenery )…WIP

5 TB left to go

P3d 5.4 on a 4 ssdTB (Orbx,meshes,etc.etc)

https://www.fcscenerys.com/
 

FC scenery contains land class autogen and elevations 

which can be inserted in the orbx scenery…not there yet but eventually:)

 I took advantage of the a2a recent sale (Connie,mustang, and Texan)which together with the C182,B35,and Cherokee 180 plus the Extreme prototype Lear 25 makes all this effort worthwhile

Eventually I’ll look into p3dv6 but for now I’m fine 

 

 

Seagate IronWolf 12TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage (ST12000VNZ008/ST12000VN0008) https://a.co/d/flRbBa 

Edited August 19, 2025Aug 19 by Stefti

4 hours ago, Stefti said:

I’m using the 12 TB Ironwolf pro  for (worldwide FC scenery )…WIP

Interesting. But do you need a whole NAS or you can simply install it into your computer (as any other SATA HDD or SSD)?

17 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Interesting. But do you need a whole NAS or you can simply install it into your computer (as any other SATA HDD or SSD)?

Single for now(Sata Hdd)

On 8/19/2025 at 5:47 PM, Luis Hernandez said:

Interesting. But do you need a whole NAS or you can simply install it into your computer (as any other SATA HDD or SSD)?

Agree. Very interesting. The first time I've heard of FCScenery. It looks really nice but it's for U$580.  Who buys and uses them?

I only tried it in Colombia and Argentina. Unfortunately, it's a matter of garbage-in-garbage-out. If you get an area with good imagery, it's the best since sliced bread. But if you happen to fly in a rather poor area, well, you get what I mean. I got Texas during last Christmas' sale, but I haven't yet installed it, because of drive space.

If you wish, there are two or three territories offered for free, Florida included. You may give it a try.

Edited August 24, 2025Aug 24 by Luis Hernandez

On 8/24/2025 at 9:44 AM, bofhlusr said:

Agree. Very interesting. The first time I've heard of FCScenery. It looks really nice but it's for U$580.  Who buys and uses them?

I believe it`s on sale right now (FC)

I like to be able to install scenery locally (it may be the last of its kind:))

 

4 hours ago, stefti said:

I believe it`s on sale right now (FC)

I like to be able to install scenery locally (it may be the last of its kind:))

 

I did some reading. Turns out that $580 might be a good price if that other sim didn't exist and the buyer is trying to avoid that other sim.

On 8/28/2025 at 5:15 PM, bofhlusr said:

I did some reading. Turns out that $580 might be a good price if that other sim didn't exist and the buyer is trying to avoid that other sim.

No voiding ,just expanding

(FC was $260 world wide)

I’m using msfs the most for my VFR ,being able to geographically visualize your flight is unmatched (like Xplane is for IFR)

P3d is still useful ,and with FC gives you a MSFS (almost) like scenario capability,and most of A2A fantastic airplanes (Texan,P51,Connie)never made it into msfs 

I’m using my resources to fit my needs when I need them 

I watch Netflix when I need drama 🙂