Warmbrak

I have been simming for more than 35 years, and I fly them all. FS2020 will replace FSX and P3D on my system, but X-Plane, DCS, IL-2, BMS, Strike Fighters etc will remain. Outside of streaming scenery in real time and pretty atmospheric shaders, there isn't much that FS2020 is doing that others have not done. There is a lot to look forward to in FS2020, don't get me wrong, but those who think it will be the "be all end all" sim may need to manage their expectations.

I glanced through 19 pages of this thread and came to the conclusion that people are more interested in voicing their opinions (right or wrong) than coming together to celebrate what is an exciting time for all simulation fans. For the people that see this whole thing as a competition - you are probably missing the point and missing out on some great experiences to be had in other sims. I fly all these sims and more. I rotate between them a few times a year as each offers something specific that the others don't. There is not such a thing as the ultimate sim that does everything. I may not be JV's biggest fan, but I am a BIG fan of the quality product they roll out, especially their airports. Being able to experience their great scenery in more of my sims is great news to me. It will also remove some barriers for people believing that sim P has greater scenery than sim X etc., that may be reluctant to try another product. And to everyone that believes that 64-bit is the next sound barrier in flightsim development; think again. Creativity and the sheer will to do better/improve is what is going to drive the next best thing; 64-bit is the gum the developers will be chewing while they are at it. Some people should spend more time flying that posting, myself included. :wink:

I always enjoyed Heinz contributions to the X-Plane community. Rest in peace Heinz.

There are a lot of add-ons and different setups that may cause a patch to fail; hence why LM recommends a fresh install to ensure it will work as intended. I am sorry if the patch did not work for everyone, but there is an alternative. The time wasted posting here and debating the issue to death could have been spent on a re-install. I had to do this for V2.2, but the end result was awesome. This time round the patch worked for me, so I can't complain. My advice is to suck it up and re-install. Just do it and move on.

If you are a FTX customer, why not visit the FTX forums where there is a dedicated Prepared V2.2 OrbX scenery compatibility list? This way you can know which OrbX products have been converted to be compatible with P3D V2 before you buy them. The list is a bit limited outside of Australia at the moment, but it is slowly catching up.

All I can say is that there is a lot of content on this forum where people have gone through the same process as you. People put a lot of effort into compiling compatibility lists, performance tweaks, hardware discussions etc. There is just way too much information to summarise in one post. My advise is that you ready the stickies on this forum, and look through the posts of relevant topics. If you have any specific queries there are many people around that will gladly help you out, but I suspect you may have to take a few hours and read through these first. There are answers to all your questions in this forum, but you are going to have to read through them yourself.

There should be no difference between a hot-fixed/patched Prepar3d 2.2 and a fresh install. Unless you have installed many add-ons and want to start with a "clean" simulator, I can't see the point.

Next week it will be even closer...

No, FTX Global itself is not causing the OOM's; many are running it without any problems, including myself.

P3D v2 as my primary GA sim.

I installed the TBM850 without issue in P3Dv2, and it appears to work ok. The performance is not that great however, and I am experiencing a 30fps drop compared to other aircraft which I assume can be contributed to the G1000 not being optimised for use in Prepar3d (yet).

Awesome! Working now, thank you so much.

My first attempt to get it working has not been successful. I have it installed in FSX, and simply pointed the installer to my Prepar3d V2 folder. It installed fine, but did not show up in the menu. The files are located in the Prepar3d V2 folder under A2A where it should, but no joy. I have since uninstalled my FSX version, and will try to install again. I will report back if I get it working.

There is a difference between posting observations and basing opinions on how unsupported addons perform in P3Dv2. Popular threads are regularly opinion based and pointless, much like this one.

It depends. For instance, with the Aersoft Twin Otter there is very little impact on FPS. With the Carenado TBM 850 there is a severe penalty (FPS between 25-30, down from 60), but could be due to the aircraft not being optimised for Prepar3d V2. I noticed AI aircraft having very little impact on performance. Same with shadows. I have buildings and terrain receiving and casting shadows with almost no noticeable impact on frames, whereas it is very noticeable for others. I am running a GTX 780 to be fair. So it appears that with optimisation traditional performance hogs can perform better than in FSX; it is really hard to tell at the moment, and to say the sim's performance will drop further with additional AI, weather and PMDG is likely, but not quantifiable.

Training can be entertaining B) . These guys have a lot to be proud of; would be great if they featured a Lockheed L-1011 in future.

I am willing to give up on FSX-only addons and stay with P3DV2; it is that good. I will keep FSX installed in order to install and migrate addons, but that is it. I respect that some folks want to stay with FSX, but P3DV2 is the future.

I never had an issue with Steam - been a user for many years now. My Steam installation has travelled with me over various PC hardware upgrades and WIndows installations as well. On new machines I would restore my User folder, then just copy the Steam folder from external drive (or wherever) to the new machine. Simply run the Steam exe in the new location, and it will repair Steam. Running each game will update the DirectX installations etc and one can have games up and running without having to reinstall or download games again from scratch. That is awesome, especially seeing one don't have to hunt for patches anymore. If something breaks after a patch update in Steam, I recommend running a "Validate Install" on your title. In most cases it may detect a botched update and fix it. Worst case the patch introduced something that is not entirely compatible with your hardware/drivers. Good luck with your problem. I know many people don't want to trust Steam and they have their reasons, but there are many of us that do not have issues that are very happy with the service.

Run the TrackIR app before you start FSX - TrackIR will detect when FSX is running and will be ready to go, no need to activate it once the simulator is running. During your simulation session you have the option to re-center your view, or to pause TrackIR entirely. TrackIR is a game changer in any high workload virtual cockpit, as you can view any panel or cockpit region with head movement alone (beats 2D panels any day of the week, my opinion at least). If you have a tricky view that you need to keep still, just pause TrackIR on that view (on FMC, radios etc), adjust knobs, press buttons, and resume the TrackIR. I won't say I am the most experienced user, but I have been using TrackIR for close to 8 years now if I'm not mistaken, and I have not looked back a single day since. Good luck.

This is the first I have ever heard of this condition. Usually designs belong to the client that ends up paying for it, not the architect. Is this common in the US, or something made up? Please quote an example if possible.

I just tried Tapcheck out on my iPhone 5, no apps running in the background, also downloaded the VRS Superbug checklist. The first four or five checklist items worked fine, then the voice stopped working and I had to continue reading through the list. To make things worse, the checklist is based on an external power startup that I don't like, but one is limited to the purchased lists provided i.e. no customisation. The only way to get the voice working again was to kill the app in the task manager, and restart the app. One last complaint is that the checklist requires one to keep an eye on the text on the tap button, and is not ideal. The checklist item for instance would read "IFR probe", while the text "retract" would be written on the tap button to indicate that the probe needs to be retracted. So one moment one is listening to the checklist item, hearing the button name and identifying it on screen in the sim, then peeking back at the app to figure out what is should be set to. Items should rather be read out in full, for instance:"IFR Probe (pause) retract". Then one can tap the button to proceed to next item once verified, or verbally respond with "check" or "retract" so that the app can move on. I do have pdf checklists that I create for aircraft I don't fly often that contains screenshots with markers. Good luck starting up the DCS Black Shark after being out of the virtual cockpit for two years without it. In cases like this, a detailed picture showing the button/switch location can be a blessing. If you can easily implement this feature to display an image when the checklist moves to an item (if image is present for item #1_5 for instance) it would be very helpful for some.

I like your idea a lot! I have purchased SpeakIt! for iOS to use for checklists so that it will read out custom checklists. Although the text to voice capability is brilliant, it has not been designed for that purpose. Having a physical list that gets "checked" by touch is probably the simplest implementation, but not much better than a PDF checklist on a mobile device. The ultimate app could be one that reads checklist items out with voice, then waits for a touch response or voice confirmation. Using text to voice and speed recognition would be the ultimate, and I would be willing to pay double digit $ for it. Throw in something like a Google Docs (or whatever it is called lately) or Dropbox interface so checklists can be prepared and shared on PC and shared using those services, you will reach an even bigger audience. Good luck, and I look forward to see what you come up with! Just read RCITguy's post - I searched all over and never once came upon this app; thanks for pointing it out!

One cannot even compare something like Wings of Prey with a sim like FSX and X-Plane. Forget systems and realism, Wings of Prey features a single "map", not a fully geo-referenced round earth model with land class data, vector data for roads, masses of airports, etc etc. It looks pretty and it is fast because there is not much happening in the background. Yes, the graphics pipeline is very modern and takes full advantage of modern hardware. The only thing that MS Flight did well was that it had a modern graphics pipeline. We will never know if this same system could have been adopted for FSX. All I do know is that if MS kept working at FSX, hardware would have caught up with the sim well before it did. At stock settings (without ini tweaks), FSX is still a pig on many modern systems. Fortunately members of the community found a lot of these tweaks, and with newer shader tweaks and DX9 END mods and more, it is finally performing as we hoped it would shortly after its release. No. FSX should not be final. Yes, it can be done better, and it should be. Will Microsoft be the knight in silver armour? Probably not, and only time will tell. If only MS could let the source code out the bag, seeing that it needs to be rewritten and all B)

Hi VeryBumpy, Thanks for sharing your experiences with this. I have been looking for something like this for a while now, and was actually surprised that FSX developers haven't jumped on this type of thing. I did a search and found the free DSpeech app by Dimio perfect for converting phrases to audio files. I am preparing a test checklist for the VRS Superbug, and if successful, I may adopt this with other aircraft and in other simulations (X-Plane, DCS etc.) as well. I haven't really got it working yet (still need to work out how this thing works exactly), but I hope to get these soon. I am still trying to get a grip on how the checklists.txt file works, how terms should correspond to the folder names for the various checklist sections and so forth. Thanks for the tips so far!

Can anyone say "Can of worms"! Thanks for the comment. From the Youtube links I like the systems that was available in that D Viper; it is unfortunate when the community has to miss out on great products that take such a long to to develop, and this because of irregularities in the industry.