Jimmy Angel

Thanks for everyone for their suggestions. I did settle on the Carenado Aero Commander for now, though there are several others in this thread that I've added to my wish list. I really like the Aero Commander! It's got a ton of character.

Ah, I forgot about that one. Been around forever, I think. I'll give it a look. Thanks! What's the word on the street for the Carenado Shrike? I love the beat-up look of that.

I have the A2A Piper Commanche, which I like a lot, but I am looking for something a bit less fiddly (and maybe a bit faster) as a starter for Air Hauler 2. Also have the Realair Legacy, but it's not exactly appropriate for hauling passengers or cargo. Are there any other developers who produce quality single engine GA for P3D v3? I don't need A2A level fidelity, but would like to have a flight model that feels and acts right, with a nice looking virtual cockpit. Edit: GTN 750 compatibility would be ideal, though I suppose I can live without it. I am also open to a twin, though my joystick setup isn't really twin friendly. I do know about the RealAir duke, and I am sure I will get that at some point)

I've got one on order. We'll see. My TrackIR Clip has always been a bit frustrating, so I'm hoping the active LED's of the Trackhat will offer better ... errr ... tracking. I'll report back in a week or two. It'll be for Prepar3D plus some other games (Elite, Rise of Flight, ARMA)

Downloaded 3.0 this morning. Seems to be a nice iteration of the platform. I have a fresh install of 2.5 so can do an apple-to-apple comparison, and there's a 10% improvement in frame rates in the same scenario with the same config settings. Not huge, but combined with VAS optimizations a nice improvement to be sure. The ability to adjust HDR is nice. I'd love to see them expand on this with day/night settings (without having to delve into the config). Looking forward to being able to get some Orbx and A2A stuff in place.

So if you open the Twin Otter checklist and then click on the hot links to the view for that particular control/instrument, it all works for you correctly? If so, I am obviously doing something wrong ... but I have no idea what.

This is pretty cool. Thanks! Already referenced the charts to help make some purchase decisions, since I found that the results for the aircraft I do have line up with my experiences pretty well.

The install with the latest beta wasn't too bad, doesn't require jumping through hoops (i.e. Estonia Migration Tool), and was up-and-running for me without issue. However.... Getting the camera to cooperate with some of my add-ons that depend on camera settings was pretty frustrating. This included the A2A Cherokee 180 (with the walkaround utility), and the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended (with the interactive checklist). There are apparently workarounds for this stuff, but I couldn't get them working and eventually gave up and removed EZdok. And, I've gotta' say that EZdok is really powerful, but it's just fiddly as heck in terms of the UI, getting a new plane set up properly, etc. It's not too bad once you figure things out, but if I happen to not use it for a few weeks I feel like I'm relearning it each time. Maybe I'm just old and cranky, but I find the payoff not quite worth the effort. That said, I sure do miss the ability to move between cameras with a flick of my joystick hat. I know EZdok will eventually sing its siren song to me again -- perhaps after the official P3Drelease -- and I'll be back trying to figure out how to make it all work.

Yeah, good point. It's just that GA-Traffic did such a good job of easily generating traffic, and I had full control over plane models, etc. What do you think of the GA traffic in MT6? If you fly from some smallish random airfield does it have any activity, or is it just the regional and hubs?

There's a great tool called FSX GA Traffic that I've used for a few years to quickly and easily generate worldwide AI traffic. I Know I had the bloomin' thing working in P3D at some point, but I did a fresh install recently and can't sort out how to make it work now. Basically, it's not able to see any of my planes, and the "Planes" tab is empty. I've tried using it along with the Estonia Migraton Tool, without success. I know this is probably an obscure utility for obscure usage, but I'm hoping someone has solved this particular issue. I miss my AI traffic.

If you're interested in a nice concentration of payware GA airports, I would say PNW is a great choice. I've bought up a bunch of airports in the sale, and performance is good on my middling system with all but Squamish (pretty demanding, even after turning down settings). If you avoid airports in the main Seattle-Tacoma corridor (and don't push building autogen too high), you'll find decent performance and beautiful scenery for knocking about in something like the Cherokee. Just during this sale, I've purchased Sekiu, Orcas, Squamish, Cle Elum, Walter Sutton's, and Siletz Bay. I already owned Concrete and Israel's Farm. I think I might also pick up Diamond Point and perhaps one other. With all of that, I've got a ton of variety with everything in range for a nice, quick flight. I wasn't really thinking about Norway, but I'll have to check it out after hearing about the freeware airports. Australia is also great, but I don't fly there much anymore because the basic airports are all stock. It was my first region way back in the 4-different-regions days. Still holds up if you aren't too worried about the (mildly) upgraded airports.

Some mumblings on the A2A forums that some folks are taking a performance/FPS hit compared to the 172 or Piper, which would be a bit of a deal-breaker for me since I'm already at the ragged edge of things. Rob: How's it compare for you?

Thanks! I look forward to trying them out.

Sure wish I had 3 monitors. The issue I've had with zoom settings is that a 1.0 zoom (assuming wideview on with my 16:10 display) gives a realistic perspective on the scenery, but creates a feeling of tunnel vision and makes it hard to take in the console at a glance. Decreasing the zoom gives you a bit more peripheral vision and sense of motion, but distorts the scenery. For now, I'm going to try 0.9 and shift the view back in the seat a bit more than is perhaps realistic. This allows me to see the gauges without panning around while keeping the scenery distortion fairly minimal. Combined with TrackIR, it's hopefully a good compromise.

Hi, Marcel. I don't suppose you'd be willing to put up a zip of the textures in addition to the installers? I use JSGME for installing textures, so using an installer complicates things for me. Pics look great and I'd love to try them out.

Yeah, there may not be a point. FSX might just perform better on your platform. Hard for me to say why. Generally I'd say the very poor performance you are experiencing is an outlier, and I wish I had some tips for you. I do know that Prepar3D performs and looks much better on my system, but every system is different. You may want to save yourself additional frustration and take advantage of the generous refund policy, though I know that doesn't make up for your time lost getting it all set up. The biggest advantage of Prepar3d, for me, is the complete lack of fiddling around to try to get decent performance. It's the "set it and forget it" of flight sims. If I had to futz with it in the same way I had to futz with FSX, I sure as heck wouldn't bother.

Yeah, P3D scales with GPU speed unlike FSX which is pretty CPU bound. That said, it seems like you should get FSX-like performance by disabling/lowering some of the Prepar3D specific features (lighting, shadows, HDR, maybe tesselation?). I would definitely fiddle around with default before installing add-ons, just to establish a baseline, but I understand that ship may have already sailed.

Fun video! Thanks for sharing. I can't wait for the consumer version of the Oculus. I know that performance will be a challenge, but I can certainly manage 75fps -- even today -- in pretty high resolutions with a less detailed aircraft if I crank down a few of the sliders. A year or two from now we'll be in even better shape. To my mind, the Rift will probably offer the best experience with a simpler GA acrobatic plane or some-such. The classic SF-260 from RealAir, for example, offers tremendous performance (as good as or better than defaults), and flying through some canyons looking through the bubble canopy would be awesome.

In just about every aspect, P3D is performing better and more consistently for me right now than FSX. This is with moderately complex planes (i.e. A2A 180) and moderately complex scenery (FTX PNW). It's smooth, good frame rate, absolutely sharp terrain graphics, no stutters, beautiful graphics, no visible autogen pop-in, and no endless tweaking or fiddling with settings (at last!) I am actually surprised how much I can crank the sliders in 2.3. The highest detail water and tesellation has almost zero impact on performance. I can now go very dense autogen for trees and dense for buildings (before was dense/normal). Compared to 2.1, I've gained perhaps 30% in slider headroom while also gaining a few frames (and more consistent frame rate). I am, in fact, having a hard time optimizing any further because turning down anything doesn't really provide any benefit. Perhaps that means my CPU and video card are nicely balanced. Keep in mind this is not a top-notch system. It's an older 2600K CPU and a GTX 770. I'm not sportin' twin Titans here or anything. The one exception to overall great performance, I would say, is heavy weather/overcast with cloud shadows. If I turn off cloud shadows, it all sorts itself out quite nicely. I perhaps wouldn't expect my current settings to work well with a complex airliner at complex airports. I know others are seeing bigger problems with clouds, and this is probably a big deal for the IFR heavy iron guys -- so I hope it gets sorted. Meanwhile, I couldn't be happier. They've done amazing things with FSX. It's got me back into simming after giving up on FSX some time ago.

P3D v2.3 is working great for me without any affinity mask tweaks. With previous versions, If I didn't add the tweak to the config I'd get horrible, persistent blurry textures. I suspect that the mention in the user guide is just legacy, pre 2.3 direction that is no longer relevant. This is the first time flying in Microsoft Flight Simulator (or it's variants) -- which started with MSFS 2002 -- that I haven't had to tweak the config at all.

For myself, FSX is just a frustrating platform. Trying to get consistent performance is -- to say the least -- challenging. I gave up on it about a year and a half ago. I just took my first test run of P3D 2.3 in the default flight. Configured the visual settings pretty aggressively (show me the pretties). Hit the afterburners and just buzzed around the landscape low and fast, making tight turns. Amazing stuff. Completely smooth, stutter free, high FPS performance, with great visuals. They must have done something with the affinity mask settings, because it wasn't necessary to tweak the config (as it was previously) to get crisp textures throughout. I know I'll take a few performance hits as I install Orbx scenery and some planes, but I've got plenty of headroom in performance and the sliders. This is just one of those "your mileage may vary" things. Every system, and our own preferences, are different. Some will stick with FSX + DX10 for visuals that are pretty close to base P3D; others will get a significant uplift in visuals and consistent performance via P3D and will appreciate the fact that it is a supported and evolving platform.

I believe the first volume has been released. Anyone take the plunge?

Pretty exciting. I have been hoping for something like this for many years (an extension that could dynamically adjust detail levels for a target frame rate), but figured it was impossible under the current FSX infrastructure. The problem, for me, with FSX and P3D is the small percentage of situations such as approaches or flying over areas of super-detailed scenery. It forces me to either grin and bear it as the performance drops to the point where it significantly impacts the smoothness of the flight, or futz around with loading new settings manually in the middle of flights. Either solution just serves to break immersion. I have more or less transitioned fully over to Prepar3d, so I'll hold out for a release of this product for that platform and buy it without hesitation.

Got the email on this for the pre-order and hopped into the forum to see if anyone had anything to say. The screenshots look fantastic. Love the rugged coasts, water masks, etc. Quality photo scenery plus accurate autogen across a wide coverage area has been a bit of a dream of mine for many years. I Just think it offers great potential for an immersive, no-compromises experience. That said, Investing in the entirety of the UK coverage would end up being cost-prohibitive for me, but I would certainly consider picking up smaller bits of coverage. Couple of questions for the developers if they are lurking about: 1) Do the Photogenesis screenshots on your site represent the 30cm or 60cm products? Both of the respective product pages seem to use the same screenshots. Can you perhaps offer a side-by-side comparison? 2) Performance is probably my number one concern. I was considering picking up the Isle of Man (hey, it's on sale) as a sort of demo so I could use it as a testbed to help me decide if the Photogensis and Autogenesis products would be right for me. Would you say that performance of the Isle of Man and the scenery quality would be similar to what I'll encounter with the larger scenery areas?

I'm running with cloud shadows enabled on my moderately powerful system and performance is awesome. Much better than FSX. Super smooth, and no crashes. I am running cloud shadows at only 10,000 meters, so I have plenty of room to move the slider to the right -- but heck, they look beautiful and since P3D has shifted the load to the GPU, a moderate upgrade in a year or two will actually do something. FSX is entirely CPU dependent, and I am currently running a 3 year old CPU at the same speed (albeit without minor architecture improvements) that I would get from something brand new off the shelf. If I fly in complete overcast, I do have an alternate config with cloud shadows off, but I haven't found myself using it lately. Cloud shadows in moderate clouds is 60 fps + over Orbx Australia. Overcast it drops to maybe 30fps, and 20fps in spurts. Still better than I was doing in FSX with any clouds. (Caveat and disclaimer: I don't fly super-complex commercial airliners) So, yeah, you can't run P3D all sliders to the right on current hardware. Keep in mind that moderate slider settings still have better visuals than FSX (it seems to me that Dense Autogen in P3D for example, is > than dense autogen in FSX, though I haven't done a side-by-side comparison). And, the good news is, next time I upgrade my hardware, I won't be wondering why I can't eek any more performance out of an old platform.