Big PC crash.

P3Dv4.5 as well as my back-up drive are gone.

Nothing to retrieve, except from such special companies, for a lot of money.

So, I have to start over.

My question now:  go  I  again with 4.5 or switch to 5.3

Tks for advice

 

Peter

If it were me, I'd go with P3Dv5.4.

I did in the past and never regretted it.

 

I agree with Glenn. V5 is smoother due to using more of the gpu for processing and backward compatible with almost every addon v4 can use. 
LOL duck and cover because the MSFS 2020 and 2024 guys are coming but that’s OK. 

Go with v5.3HF2. There are issues with v5.4. Proven after extensive testing with a Concorde user on FS Labs forum. Significant stutters in 5.4 resolved by reverting to 5.3HF2.

I'd say that, at this point, it depends.

If you're an airliner flyer, flying complex acft into complex add-on airports, then v5 does have some clear performance advantages.  But that said, many P3D add-ons are no longer being sold, for example all the PMDG birds.

P3D V4 has a larger variety of good quality freeware add-ons available, for example the entire former Milviz acft collection, and some really good freeware GA airport sceneries like Orbx' freeware scenery collection and Misty Moorings in the Pacific Northwest.

So I'd say it will depend both on the kind of flying you do, and what add-ons are still available for the platform you might choose.  The landscape has shifted considerably in the last couple years.

And...frankly...if I were starting from scratch right now, I'd be looking at something with a more promising future (like XPlane 12 or MSFS2024) rather than P3D.  I do still enjoy my extensive P3D installations (v4.5 and v5.4), but they were already built-out years ago and they are, sadly but undeniably, drifting slowly towards obsolescence as hardware and software support is frozen in time while airport layouts change and hardware continues to evolve.

I've had very good luck with P3D 5.4 and works well. I cannot compare to 4.5 because I moved from FSX to P3DV5. The only add-on that did not work well was ORBX vector.  If you have ORBX Vector I have created a fix for this product and is available in the AVSIM library.  If you already own P3DV5 and have downloaded various versions, then you can compare 5.3 and 5.4 to see what works better as per Ray Proudfoot's comment. If you going to purchase P3DV5, I'm not sure if you can download the 5.3 version. I only see the 5.4 version available. The only other issue with both P3DV5 and V6 is the special effects do not work with the NVIDIA 50xx cards.  these special effects are things like fireworks, smoke, fountains, Niagara Falls, etc. It may also affect aircraft lighting as well like landing lights. According to LM this is being worked on by NVIDIA with no specific time frame for a solution. 

John C.

Tks all  for your recommendation.

It looks to me that every P3D has his own advantage.  V4 has more add ons available, and v5 looks like have a better

perfomance.

But, as Bob mentioned, they both are old.

I checked the  forum at P3D, and it looks to me, that P3D had his best time in the past.

I have a deeper look inside MS2024,o see is that what for me.

Anyway, a big thank you for the tips.

 

Peter

Nobody (but HDD/SSD space available) won't prevent you of installing both 4.5, 5.3/5.4 (whatever you choose) and even 2024! I've got currently 6 sims installed in my rig.

On 9/13/2025 at 11:13 AM, beechcaptain said:

If it were me, I'd go with P3Dv5.4.

I did in the past and never regretted it.

 

DITTO!

18 hours ago, johncott said:

I've had very good luck with P3D 5.4 and works well. I cannot compare to 4.5 because I moved from FSX to P3DV5. The only add-on that did not work well was ORBX vector.  If you have ORBX Vector I have created a fix for this product and is available in the AVSIM library.  If you already own P3DV5 and have downloaded various versions, then you can compare 5.3 and 5.4 to see what works better as per Ray Proudfoot's comment. If you going to purchase P3DV5, I'm not sure if you can download the 5.3 version. I only see the 5.4 version available. The only other issue with both P3DV5 and V6 is the special effects do not work with the NVIDIA 50xx cards.  these special effects are things like fireworks, smoke, fountains, Niagara Falls, etc. It may also affect aircraft lighting as well like landing lights. According to LM this is being worked on by NVIDIA with no specific time frame for a solution. 

John C.

I use P3D V5.4 and Vector has become redundant. I use approx 25-30 Orbx sceneries, and with 5.4 they say Vector is not needed

57 minutes ago, jfmitch said:

I use P3D V5.4 and Vector has become redundant. I use approx 25-30 Orbx sceneries, and with 5.4 they say Vector is not needed

I fly a lot in the Canadian North and also use FreeMeshX and find the best visual experience is using ORBX Vector, FreeMeshX and ORBX Global landclass for this area of the world.  With the default mesh and default vector data there are lakes and rivers either sticking out of the ground or sunken into the ground. This works best for me and depends on the flying you're doing.

John C.

Please note also that a lot of P3Dv4/earlier exclusive aircraft are also compatible with P3Dv5 (e.g. the Milviz lineup, the Aerosoft DC-8, Coolsky DC-9, Just flight DC-10, etc.). There is even now a guy who has made the Captain Sim 727 work in p3dv5.4. Based on this, I would highly recommend going for P3Dv5. 🙂

Both 4.5 & 5.3 have their pros and cons.

A big pro for 4.5 (for myself at least) is that I can use TomatoShade and a custom cloud shader along with various custom programming I've written.

Plus in 4.5 there tends to be few to no issues with effects and airport and scenery excludes. I have mostly Orbx scenery and airports, both of which do give issues in P3D v5 noting Orbx standalone airports are generally Ok in v5, infact Orbx Central will only display those they classify as compatible, however sometimes that compatibility makes for a worst product...

e.g. Orbx 11S was made compatible for v5 and subsequently introduced many areas with overlapping scenery objects, I reported this to Orbx where they said "oh yeah, we'll look at that later in a service pack" and then never resolved the issue (luckily I had backups and was able to resolve the issue for 4.5 by rolling back selected files). 

Additionally, their supplementary airports included in regions were mostly not updated and leave a lot to be desired... and the same applies for many other developer releases. Mostly though you can fix these yourself if that's something you want to actually do.

V5 does improve performance, especially in the area of background loading and decompressing of ground polys and scenery, although I never went to 5.4 due to the bugs that version contained that LM were never going to resolve (and never did).

I've managed to customise some of the v5 shaders and truesky cloud configs, still it comes with built in effects issues (as effects need to be updated to the v5 format), has, imho, too high a level of base haze, truesky clouds are poor and are high GPU users.

Of course if you're flying a base v5 sim with little in the way of third party products you might find it just fine.

Most of the v5 issues stem from the fact MSFS2020 was released and a quantum shift to MSFS2020 occurred thus forcing developers to move to MSFS2020 if they wanted to stay viable, leaving P3D in the dirt and never allowing the third party's a ROI to update their products, plus LM themselves share a degree of responsibility for not having the foresight to see what was about to hit them.

A similar thing is going on with MSFS2020 and MSFS2024.

Cheers