Thomas Andersen

Hi Chris I have installed almost all my p3d addons to my new system, as well as other software, so that shouldnt be a factor. My fps increase number is more anecdotal evidence rather than scientific. Even still, I fell pretty confident that my new system yields me significantly higher FPS compared to my old system under very similar conditions. And more importantly I can turn up the eye candies and still enjoy smooth flight. Scenery shadows settings almost on max (quality, distance, cast and receive boxes ticked). That was defininately not possible in my old system (at decent fps). Thomas

My experience of upgrading from 4790K to 8700K system I just wanted to briefly share my experience, as I myself was very curious about this topic before taking the plunge. Before: 4790K (slight OC to 4,5 ghz), GTX 1070, 16 MB ram, Win 7 Completely new system: 8700K (slight OC to 4,8 Ghz), GTX 1080TI, 16 MB ram, win 10 Both systems on a 2k monitor While there were many different views, I felt the consensus was that upgrading from such a system would be dubious, at least you would have to pay quite a bit per extra frame! Which is probably true, given that my new system cost me about 2200 EUR (in Norway). However, after one week of use, I must say that I am very pleased with the upgrade. Clearly, I also got a much better graphics card, so that probably also contributed to the increased performance in P3DV4. And perhaps the whole system worked synergistically to give me increased performance, all though I am not qualified to explain that. But I do see a really nice performance boost, in most situations. Hard to give a number, but If I must I would say about 20-35% depending on the situation. And much less blurries, faster scenery loading time, less stutters. And I am able to have higher graphics settings, significantly increasing the immersion. Most sliders 1 notch from top right. Sparse grid supersampling at 4x. Very high shadows settings. A few FPS examples, although its hard to compare this scientifically due to all the variables. Flying around ORBX Narvik in A2A 182. Getting around 60 fps. Taking off with PMDG 737 from ENBR (with FTX Norway), or Lima in Peru. Around 40 FPS. The key thing is that most of the time I am above 30 FPS, which is my threshold for nice fluid simulation. Still, major urban areas can still be heavy on the frames. Around Los Angeles and London for example. But that is as expected. P3DV4 looks beautiful now and performs much smoother. I can enjoy ORBX scenery in all its glory. I am a happy simmer now. Simming Nirvana is coming closer by the day! 🙂

I am also curious about this. Would be very interested in hearing the actual experience of someone going from 4790k system to 7700 or 7800K. I upgraded from 1 year ago my gpu from a 980 to 1070, and that made a considerable difference in performance, and also important, enabled me to run at high AA settings. I am curious what kind of gains I would experience going from 4790K, GTX 1070, DDR3 and to a 7800K overclocked at 4,8 GHZ, GTX 1080TI and DDR4.

I have no time for writing long essays, but I just wanted to share my experience with trying VR for the first time in a flight simulator. I just bought Oculus Rift with touch controls. Let me cut to the chase and say that I was truly amazed with the experience! VR in a flight sim is as real as it currently gets! The sense of beeing in and actual airplane is incredible. The perception of depth, size and speed takes on a completely new meaning compared to the monitor world. Thats the case when taxing around in a Cessna 172 (which I btw also fly in real life), and its even more the case when I load up the 747. Wow! Over the past few days I had some incredible flying experiences in VR. Approaching Innsbruck airport in a 747. Doing sightseeing in Eagle Country with a Cessna 172. FLying acrobatics in an Extra, the the point of getting dizzy..haha. Flying a low pass with a FA Hornet fighet yet. Coming in for landing and flaring in VR is such an amazing experience. My VR simulator of choice is currently Aerofly with all the ORBX addons currently available. ORBX scenery looks incredible in VR. I notice so much more details than before. With Aerofly I get fluid performance even with high to ultra settings. My system is a 4790K with GTX 1070. I also tried XP11 but Aerofly so far provided the most pleasing visual experience. All the planes in Aerofly look amazing in VR. Sure, they dont offer the same complexity and systems fidelity as certain P3D addons, but VR in Aerofly for me is anyways more about experiencing basic VFR flight in nice landscape. Like many I wished that the resolution could be slightly higher, but its still an incredible experience. I have yet to try P3DV4 but cleary the performance there will be way lower compared to Aerofly. Now I just hope that ORBX (and hopefully other developers) will release much more of their content to Aerofly. Bring it on! My wallet is eagerly waiting!

I upgraded to V2 of Ezdok and I must say that I am very pleased with this software. The motion effects really add to the immersion!

I would say do like I do - go all in on BOTH platforms! Both have their relative strengths and weaknesses :)

I second other posters here, that the lack of extended night lighting is a major immersion killer with XP11 and is something I hope get fixed soon. Seems like its not trivial, but I do hope the development team prioritizes this. Night flying is after all one of the key strengths of XP11. Approaching the cities from low level as night is often mind blowing. But being able to see through clouds at night along with short view distance is killing the immersion somewhat.

I love xplane but its pretty annoying that such a major bug such as being able to see through clouds is not beeing fixed faster!

In one day we will know, but I would expect very similar pricing as in the past. Pricing the way the OP suggest would be "commercial suicide" in the context of the emerging "platform war"

Hawthorn left downwind (right next to klax) Addons: xEnviro, US West and prefab airports. So besides xenviro, this is what xplane looks with just freeware addons! I would say prd3 even with OrbX Norcal doesnt even come close to this level of visual fidelity

More than that, I think the answer is "simply" that it cost a LOT to have a development team spend 3 years developing state of the art software for a what is arguably limited "niche" market. So i think its more a question of recovering cost and getting a decent return on investment, rather than they just thinking they can price for "super profit"

I agree, xp11 is not that different from xp 10,51 in my opinion. The main difference for me is the lighting and european autogen, which are all nice upgrades but no dramatic improvement. I was an xp lover with 10,51, and continue to be so with xp11

Nice shots Simheaven orthos?

A few screenshots from my Ixeg 737 take off from Sion airport in the French alps. All default scenery and with XEnviro1.05. jpg images

I am seeing lights through the clouds with xenviro, which is unrealistic. Anyone else seeing this or has a remedy?

Couldnt resist it anymore and took the plunge and bought exnviro yesterday. After 3 hours of use I am satisifed so far. XP10 weather never looked better to me. Nice variey of cloudscapes, more varied than SM 3 which I have been using up till this point. Even with SM and their weather connector I experienced abrupt weather changes, which is a huge immersion killer. Performance is great, even with solid overcast and at max settings, which of course have something to do with the fact that only 2d clouds are present. I imagine with 3d clouds performance would be much worse. For me, the 2d cloudscapes create a very belieable 3d effect most of the times. Immersion level in airlines flying has gone up significantly thanks to xenviro. I think 40 USD would have been a more justifiable price though, and l speculate that revenue potential would be higher for the developers, as now a lot of potential purchasers are turned off by the price. Even still, they got me to cough up 70 USD, and I am happy so far.

Thanks for the compilation. Awesome that there are so many amazing freeware scenery addons available for xp10!

I tried 4x DSR and it did give me better visuals, all though not as good as 4xSGSS. Thanks for the tip FLyice! However I think it has introduced some stutters. Others experienced this? This is just one of the things I hate with P3D. While I get XP10 to fly super smooth and nearly stutter free at very complex settings, this is far from the case with P3D.

Upgraded my graphics card on my 4790K (4,4ghz) and 1440p monitor system, and wanted to share my quick thoughts on the experience so far. Quality and performance in XP10 has gone up significantly. Most important is the ability to have 4x to 8x AA, which makes the graphics looks way better. Good AA is very important to me! In addition I can fly in heavy clouds with much less performance impact. What was a bit dissapointing though is performance in P3D in cloudy conditions. In clear weather I can do 4x sparse grid super sampling, and the graphics looks so much better. But in heavy clouds, performance suffers significantly. XP10 performs much better under this scenario, and seems to take better advantage of the graphics power. I am sensing less stutters, and hope its not a "placebo" effect Set me back 650 USD (Norway), and I think it has been worth the investment

I am currently using OpusFSX in P3D 3.3 and it seems to be working very nicely. I am only using the camera portion though. As a opus camera user would there be any noticable benefits in upgrading to Opus FSI?

And another example: 29Palms sceneries are awesome, like their latest Samos which offers a very challenging approach in super nice scenery setting. The scope of the scenery looks comperable to ORBX Dubrovnik, but 29Palms value for money seems much more appealing. Dont get me wrong, ORBX are free to price as they like, and I am a big ORBX fan owning all their regions and some of their airports. And some will tell me that 40 USD is what they spend for a few drinks, and hence is nothing...But I dont enjoy paying "full game" price for an airport.

I wish ORBX would price their airports more in the 20 USD range, like many of the Aerosoft sceneries. Ok, you can argue that ORBX in general has the best quality, but at least for me 20 USD is the optimal price point for a airport. Its only a very few airports I like to use all the time. The other ones are lesser frequent destinations.

Tried it yesterday. Awesome textures. Much more realistic than what I had from Active Sky Cloud Art.

Each to their own but I couldnt care less about whats going on inside the terminals. For me its a complete waste of resources, both computerwise and developerwise. What I care about is smooth and stutterfree flight. The poll seem to indicate that the majority think like this. In fact I wish there would be more developers focusing on creating larger areas with scenery and airports. Instead of a development team spending all their time on getting every single detail on a specific airport correct, I wish more would focus on creating plausible or reasonably realistic renditions of airports and scenery areas (similar to the ORBX regions but perhaps in a smaller scale). Spend a third of the time on each airport and instead give me 3 airports for the price of one, so to speak.

Thanks a lot to pe11e for this amazing addon! Downloaded it yesterday and was amazed by the transformation!