mmann

I have an i7-4770 @ 3.90 GHz, 8GB ram and a ZOTAC GeForce 750 Ti 2GB video card. P3D only got 20 FPS at best then dropped to 15 FPS with clouds; I went back to FSX where I get 30 FPS (locked) with clouds. P3D didn't stutter but the frame rate hit was unacceptable with my system.

I have to agree with the "ADI with the light green area at the top": http://marvellouswings.com/Aircraft/Trainer/T-45/Pic/T-45%20Sim%20Patuxent.JPG

When P3D v3 came out, I installed and then shortly after uninstalled it. The same thing happened with P3D v3.1; I haven't bothered yet with P3D v3.2. So for now I fly with FSX Acceleration and FS9.1 only. The reasons: 1. 33% drop in frame rate overall. 2. 50% drop in frame rate when encountering clouds. 3. Extremely poor Anti Aliasing. 4. Compatibility with my existing addons. The probable cause for reasons 1 to 3 is that I am running with only a stock clocked i7-4770 and a GTX 750 Ti 2GB graphics card.

I came back to FSX. I first tried P3Dv3.0 but after a short while I dumped it to go back to FSX. I next tried P3Dv3.1 but have returned yet again to FSX. P3D would be great if I was willing to spend $1500 for a video card and another $1000 on a 4K monitor in addition to buying a newer processor than my existing i7-4770. Throw lots of money at P3D and it probably would look and perform fine; otherwise you just end out with a sim that has poor FPS and lousy anti-aliasing (in comparison to FSX).

Now 13.7.3.2.3 billion years.

That would be somewhat accurate if all FSX/P3D owners used stock textures (which are still twice the resolution of FS9). I would guess that a great many of us aren't; so we see the difference an Orbx Region makes and FS9 (or stock FSX/P3D for matter) isn't even close. Orbx CEO John Venema quickly realized the potential of FSX vs FS9 and went with FSX; he quit FS9 development after Vista Australis (VOZ).

Type in "fs9 fsx water" in your search engine and see all the posts from FS9 users wondering if they can get FSX water effects and/or textures into their sim. The other problem with FS9 water (besides the unrealistic textures and awful effects) is that FS9 water has the consistency of molasses which absolutely kills the sims float plane water handling abilities.

Not only the SDK but other development software as well. SBuilderX is much better than SBuilder for FS9. Airport Design Editor has many more functions enabled with FSX compared to FS9.

They are probably going to shift even more processing to the GPU and a NVIDIA Quadro M6000 will be required to handle this.

Which is a big step up from my GTX 750 Ti card with 2GB.

With an i7-4770 clocked at 3.9 GHz and a GTX 750 Ti, my system was obviously not up to running P3Dv3 properly. I was running it with no air or ground traffic and various other sliders set very modestly, but still had frame rates 30-50% lower than I get in FSX. The final nail in the coffin was the disappointing anti-aliasing compared with FSX. Yesterday I uninstalled P3Dv3, until such time as I can upgrade to a much more capable computer.

Not just flight sim's! Expect perfection and 100% satisfaction with anything you do and you are sure to come up wanting.

Except that the OP's equipment is about level with mine. OP's equipment: mine MOBO Asus M5A97: ASUS H-87 Plus Ram 8G: 8G CPU AMD Vishera 4.2 4530 QC: Intel i7-4770 3.90 GHz Video Nvidia EVGA GTX 750ti: ZOTAC GeForce 750 Ti PSU 450Watts: 500 Watts

To answer your questions: Are frame rates and smoothness better. My frame rates are 30 in FSX compared to 20 (dropping to 15 in clouds) in P3D. P3D is smoother, however. Are terrain features better and better rendered and modeled. Where I fly (Vancouver Island) the terrain looks identical (same mesh with same vector data). Are the default airports better than FSX. The airports I have seen were all identical in both sims.

Vector could be held up due to the developer, which is PILOT'S. Orbx just sell Vector rebranded.