MistyBlue

Understood and appreciated. Looking forward to it whenever it happens. Have a great break!

Related to this...I don't mind the many updates which are appreciated, but is there a way to add an auto-update capability? It would save time going back to download the files again and re-running the installer, versus a notification when you start the app that there's a new update and do we want to auto install it? If it's already been answered, my apologies.

Hi all, I often some AI aircraft parked at gates which are sunken into the ground (just the tails sticking out of the ground). I'm running latest versions of and PSXT, RealTraffic, and P3D (v5 and v6) with AIG models. Specifically this is happening at Flightbeam's KSFO but I haven't tried other airports to confirm if it's happening elsewhere. Any advice on what I may be doing wrong in my setup? Anything I should look for that could be creating what I would assume are airport elevation conflicts? Many thanks!

I will be there and I'm looking forward to finally meeting the legendary Capt Randazzo, the guy who has enabled countless hours of quality sim time for me (and also so much pain in all those upgrades I just HAD to buy to go with his products, haha). Hoping this announcement is the cockpit builders edition, but I'm sure I'll be thrilled with whatever it is. Bring it on!

I have found one of the biggest causes of stuttering for me across multiple different PC's with P3D (v3 and 4) on them is as simple as getting the refresh of the monitor sync'd with the frame rate of the sim. In my case I have set the refresh of my monitor to 50Hz and in the sim chose 50 fps with vsync off. I have a smoothness I haven't seen before. Still some stutters here and there very dependent on what addons and settings you're running, but nothing like before. There is of course the Affinity Mask setting which you can add to the prepar3d.cfg until you find something that makes your frames more consistent. I have mine at 245 for my 4790k processor which seems to work good for me. Mileage will vary. A good post on that is here: I wouldn't change anything else in the config as it seems a lot of those tweaks are moot these days with the advancements LM have made in P3D.

KSAT (San Antonio, Texas). I have already done a lot of research on the airport (I live nearby) and done much of the AFCAD. Started the modeling but much is new to me so it's going very slowly. With KDFW, KIAH, and KAUS already done nicely, KSAT is the remaining point of the triangle for nice (and reasonably short) hops in both commercial and GA aircraft.

I am somewhat of the opposite opinion here. I think that SOME interior structure adds to the immersion factor when sitting at a gate. It may be empty of people inside (late at night some terminals are almost empty) but gate counters, interior columns, waiting area seats, etc make the terminal look more real to me than a window with a fake interior image. As long as it's negligible in terms of a performance hit I don't mind it. As always, the option to turn off those kinds of features allows the best of both worlds.

Looking forward to this one! How are the flight dynamics? How close were you able to get it? I understand because of the way X-Plane models performance it's a lot harder to get it on the mark throughout the same envelope as P3D/FSX.

Mike Ray's books are a great investment (I have several). I have enjoyed them all, and he's a nice guy to boot, having kindly and promptly replied to some noob questions I had at the time.

Glad to hear the Sports Mode improved the experience a little. Seems to boost the contrast and dynamic range without having to change anything on the PC side. I got my 2.0 HDMI cables in and didn't see any performance/color improvement over the 1.4 cables I had. Tried switching to 60Hz but framerates ended up being really choppy so I switched to 50Hz with VSync on in P3D and it's running smooth with frames holding steady around 25 FPSat complex airports with 5% MyTraffic 6. Add heavy ASN weather and it starts hitting frames some though. @WebMaximus, I don't recall seeing a UHD Deep Color setting. How did you enable it?

@Dave, I found that enabling either Sports Mode, or Auto Motion Plus on the Samsung (I set mine to smooth) gets rid of the "Judder" which is what I believe I was dealing with. Will keep you posted on the cables.

@Dave, they are Samsung UN55JU6700F UHD 55" LED TV's. With two side by side, that's around 10 feet in width which is plenty for me. I originally was going to buy 3, but glad I went with two. Unfortunately I have to deal with the bezel right in the middle but that's not an issue in my setup. Not sure about the 4:4:4 thing but I did get the TV's to run at 60Hz. However, performance was terrible within P3D, likely because my 1.4 HDMI cables don't support 60Hz, and I didn't think I could maintain 60 FPS anyway so I dropped down to 30. Clarity has been phenomenal and with the new-found smoothness I'm very happy with the choice. I'm running 1.4 HDMI cables good up to 30Hz...I bought these great, well-made cables on Amazon and I'm very happy with them: http://www.amazon.com/Aurum-High-Speed-Cable-Ethernet/dp/B004QJ9JLW On the Samsung, I switched to "Sports Mode". Didn't have to mess with anything else that I recall. What's nice, in addition to clearing up motion-blur, is that it also seemed to boost dynamic range so HDR wasn't needed in P3D. That helped boost performance a little. EDIT: This TV does appear to support 4:4:4 Chroma @60Hz. Will have to do some testing with the HDMI 2.0 cables I just ordered.

I'm running 2x 55" Samsung curved 4K's and 2x 980ti's in SLI. The 4K's are spectacular and definitely worth the investment IMHO. But I would probably suggest at least a 980 or 980ti per 4K display. 4K's are pretty demanding. For what it's worth, I was having some pretty big issues with what appeared to be stuttering when in fact it was the TV's motion blur causing a ghosting of scenery that looked like stuttering. Once I put my Samsungs into "Sports" mode, which I assume corrects for motion blur, the sim started running super smoothly, something I was starting to think I'd never achieve. I have them set to both set to 30Hz refresh, using NVidia Surround (bezel corrected), VSync on, unlimited frames. I experimented with 24, 50, and 60Hz. 30 seemed to be the best. Refresh sync appears (to me), based on countless hours of playing and tweaking, to be the first thing you need to get right, and the most important determinant of smoothness. It's amazing the difference getting that right can make on the smoothness of the sim. After that, everything is icing on the cake.

Exciting news! My first love and choice would be the NG, particularly since I'm curently building a FDS 737. But I certainly wouldn't complain if it ended up being a triple 7. Looking forward to this coming together!

Just wanted to say I can't wait until the cockpit builder version of the NGX comes out. I decided to step away from my in-progress 737 simpit for a bit and head back to he NGX. I forgot how much I just love all the little nuances PMDG built into the NGX and can't wait to see that translated over to my cockpit!

I've been using the FDS CDU for over a year and I'm very happy with it. I use it with ProSim and my FDS MIP and throttle, but I have also used it with the NGX and it wasn't an issue. Should work just fine with P3D. You don't need the CDU bay if you're not ready for that yet as the CDU itself is designed so it can easily sit on a desktop. FDS support is excellent. They stand behind their products so I think you made a good choice!

Are you starting from a saved scenario? Try deleting (or moving) the scenario files out of the P3D documents folder and it should load back to the original default state. This was happening to me when I saved a flight with the PMDG NGX at FSDT's KFLL as the default flight, and then the next time I loaded the sim everything went to black after it finished loading. No idea why it happens.

Ah, yes. I do remember Flight and they looked pretty good if I recall. Thanks.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is complaining about paying $200. Get the $9.95/mo developer license which comes with 2 copies of Prepar3d. The only requirement is that you develop something. Doesn't have to be a complex airport since they are encouraging beginners starting out to develop. So download an AFCAD builder and tweak an airport and you're good. There are great tools out there that make it easy to do, and you'll be only improving your own experience. Not to mention you'll always get the latest version. From their site: "Anyone can become a Prepar3D Developer. No matter if you are a seasoned developer, or just starting out, we want to encourage you to develop for Prepar3D. A single subscription will provide 2 full copies of Prepar3D Professional or Professional Plus for your use...The program is also open to any individual or business who is interested in using Prepar3D to develop applications and add-ons." That said, I haven't heard anyone mention SpeedTrees. I'd like to see how they look in the sim and what impact they have, but since the release date is tomorrow I guess it'll have to wait. The technology looks impressive though.

Hey Mike, I figured. I'm sure your setup will be pretty awesome. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out and how it "feels".

Ouch! Well I can see why you went that route. Geez, I thought you could easily come in around a 10K price point with reasonably good projectors and a screen. Might have to rethink that idea a little :blink:

Just out of curiosity. What made you choose the 3 TV's versus going with higher quality projectors on a curved screen, like a NatVis setup?

I'm not sure I can agree with that. Otherwise people would find no benefit to upgrading their components. We all know a faster processor is going to yield better results than a slower one given everything else being the same. So while the software may not yet be optimized to perform as good as it could given today's hardware that doesn't mean P3D, or any other software for that matter, won't benefit from it. In my opinion, I believe it WILL have some sort of positive effect. Just how much is yet to be seen.

I'm glad you mentioned this. Hadn't heard about it but after Googling it certainly sounds promising. If not for P3D, then for all the underlying operations on the system. I mean we already see overall performance improvements going from slower to faster RAM, like CL11 to CL8 and 1600 to 2133 that do affect P3D. Things like faster tile loading, and as mentioned previously, reduced stutters. So 1000 times less latency has to mean some nice performance gains system-wide that should spill over to P3D, if not directly within P3D itself. And by the time this comes out, LM may have optimized the code further creating a double-bonus. I'm hopeful!

I'm sure having Steve and his experience there made a world of difference. Hey, how are you liking the NatVIS setup? I'm thinking about contacting Nat in the future for some help with my wraparound visuals.