Afterburner

Thank you for bringing up this information, Ray, so that we can all remember the darkest day for Concorde that happened today 25 years ago. I remember being on summer vacation at a warm place on that day when my mother walked into the room and told me "Father has called. He said that the Concorde has crashed." What followed was utter disbelief on my end at a time when I was developing a huge interest for that airplane (and FS2000 did its big share, as it was the first Microsoft flight simulator that allowed us to fly this plane by default, and it showed it on its cover on the CD box). RIP to the passengers and the hotel guests who were killed, and to the plane that will forever be unique.

Given that it's been more than a year since LM released an update for v6 (it has never been that long in the past), it all looks like P3D is in a dormant state at best - and that applies to the participation of the developers in the official forum (where I rarely see them replying to threads these days). It does not mean that we cannot enjoy using the current versions v5 and v6. I for one still love flying with Majestic Dash Q400 in v5. In combination with Active Sky, ORBX scenery and good add-on airports, the graphics can still look very good from cruise altitude. One of the few aspects where P3D still shines to me is its ease of use and how much life the dense car- and AI traffic can inject into airports and scenery with the help of AI plane packages. @Ray ProudfootI am observing your discussion in the FSL Concorde forum. What a shame that you got no response to your legitimate inquiry about the HP200LX computer and its lack of cooperation with the runways at Boston airport. I bought the plane on the day it was released, but I frankly never flew on it. This is a dream to any add-on developer: A customer buys their product and never uses it. I do not becry the money I spent, but I expected in full faith that the product would receive more care and more frequent updates. The overreliance on the HP200LX and how it can "strike" the process of flight planning is a big turnoff to me. I wanted something like Concorde-X where you can decide on your own how many passengers you want to take and if the fuel load or runway length are sufficient without anyone changing the number of passengers and telling you that you can't take off. I have been waiting for a more flexible version, but I have lowered my expectations and fly other planes in the meantime. I use P3Dv5 and MSFS2024 side by side, the latter primarily for low-altitude VFR flights. I highly recommend that you purchase the simulator for that purpose. If you have both, why not treat yourself to a nice sightseeing trip after a speedy flight from London to Barbados? That way, you can use Concorde in P3D and then fly the sightseeing trip in MSFS2024. The good thing about that simulator is that it occupies relatively little storage space, while it offers the whole world in best graphics. The predecessor MSFS2020 took a whopping 140+ GB, which was too much for me for some occasional VFR flights. The new sim only occupies 23 GB, and it runs well on my computer. It should do well on your.

I use Youtube premium, which allows me to watch videos commercial-free (without the need to use any tools), download them on my smartphone and listen to the audio while the screen is turned off. That service costs money, but if it's worth to you, I would give it a consideration.

What about ORBX New Zealand South region? It comes with detailed scenery and airports, although I can't remember how detailed the NZCH airport is compared to the one discussed here. I have occasionally flown Concorde-X from Sydney to Christchurch on FSX many years ago.

And some people claim that MSFS' own live weather is good enough and that there is no need for 3rd party weather add-ons live Active Sky. There is still a lot of potential for improvement. Just sayin'...

The second screenshot ("AS2016 + ASCA Armageddon") looks to me like it was taken with a black & white photo camera. In other words, I have never seen a sky in the real world that was so devoid of blue color. I have yet to find a sky texture package that provides a bunch of realistic sky colors at all times. Yes, some individual sets might look quite realistic from a certain view angle, but no longer as soon as you look in the other direction (e.g. a sunset sky having no color gradient over the entire 360 degree panorama) or as soon as you reach a high altitude (where the upper sky is either too dark or too bright). Other sets might generate some nice sky colors during sunset, but the transition to night is awful (e.g. the sky looking like mud). My only hope rests on the upcoming REX product, for which the developers announced that they would further optimize the sky color transition between daytimes. I wish a serious texture developer would take some real-world pictures of skies on different days and different times and properly convert them into sky texture files for FSX/P3D instead of manipulating the colors with Photoshop.

The stutters are caused by Windows 10 and not by using LVLD 767 in P3D itself. I use Windows 7 and have no stutters. If you visit the official LVLD forum, you will notice other users who experience stuttering in Windows 10.

Where do you need help specifically?

I have the same problem with the Pilot edition: If HDR is activated and I switch views, the virtual cockpit becomes darker, and it appears as if the HDR function is deactivated. I will try pressing the F9 button, but I would appreciate if this issue could be looked into.

I am glad that you are happy with the results! As you can see, P3D may not deliver the extreme, initial performance of FSX when no heavy add-ons are used and/or the eye candy is turned off, but as soon as you add these elements, P3D has a better capacity to withstand the intensive load when it comes to performance. I am sure that if you compare the FPS between FSX:SE and P3D using PMDG 737 on approach (especially with the eye candy activated), you will find an even greater difference in performance between FSX:SE and P3D in favor of the latter. Give it a try! Personally, I prefer having a more consistent performance at all flight stages over experiencing a jump between two extremes.

Here is what I can tell you from my experience: Let's suppose that you run identical settings and that you initially have all shadows deactivated in both sims. If you monitor the FPS immediately after loading the simulator, FSX:SE will display a considerably higher frame rate than P3D. However, if you switch views and start moving the view angle from the spot view, the FPS in FSX will drop and move closer to P3D (though it will be still higher). On my system, as soon as I approach a more complex airport, the FPS in FSX drop even more compared to the initial loadup (sometimes by over 50%), while P3D maintains a more consistent frame rate during that stage. So I don't think that your expectation that P3D's FPS will drop by half during approach will turn out to be true. Now here is where you gain from P3D: As soon as you start enabling all kinds of shadows (aircraft, VC, autogen, scenery objects, etc.) and water effects, the FPS in FSX will drop dramatically, because these features are very CPU-heavy (even under DX10), while your GPU is bored to death. This gets even worse with CPU-intensive airplanes (PMDG). In P3D, it's your GPU that is taxed, which will give your CPU still enough breathing room and leave you with more FPS despite better visual quality. So in a nutshell: If you keep the eye candy deactivated, you are able to achieve higher FPS in FSX than in P3D. However, these FPS are not very consistent, since they can drop heavily during an approach. As soon as you activate shadows and water effects, P3D will win big over FSX in terms of FPS.

That is true. I would start with deactivating Vector completely and gradually activating desirable features while keeping an eye on the VAS consumption. The impact by Vector on VAS obviously depends on the location. For example, if you fly over Siberia, you will hardly experience any VAS impact as opposed to the Washington D.C. or New York area.

Deactivating ORBX Vector and setting the LOD radius to High (2 steps below max) should give you a considerable VAS relief (over 500 MB in some critical regions from my experience). Try that out!

All shadows off and bloom off. Both features are massive FPS eaters, at least if you use DX9. If you run FSX in DX10, activating bloom doesn't affect the FPS visibly.

Oh sorry, I referred to ColeThePilot's settings... Should have mentioned that.

Can you post your actual P3D settings?

No regrets buying P3D v3.2 and putting FSX-SE aside (I only use the latter for testing purposes). Here is my personal pro & con list for P3D vs. FSX: Pro P3D / Contra FSX: - No autogen popping, while the autogen density is constantly high over the entire rendering radius. - Beautiful cockpit shadows (even better looking IMO than with DX10 in FSX) - Improved VAS management - Cloud shadows, in conjunction with Realism Shader Pack realistic rendering of the atmosphere - HDR settings allow me to adjust the lighting during day and night in a realistic fashion, while FSX (where nights are too bright) does not offer this option. - More consistent FPS during the entire flight regime, fewer microstutters. Pro FSX / Contra P3D: - Stellar cloud performance - Higher initial FPS (but lower FPS on approach, and it is even worse in DX10 on my system) - Possible to adjust graphics and scenery library settings before starting a flight.

A drop in FPS from internally limiting the maximum frame rate may seem odd, but it is normal because with the limiter activated, the sim dedicates more CPU cycles to the loadup of scenery and terrain during a flight compared to having the maximum FPS set at unlimited. This is why you have fewer FPS. In a default FSX/P3D configuration, one in three CPU cycles is dedicated to the said task. That ratio can be changed by altering the Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction-value (refer to the P3D learning center or google the term for more information). The default value is 0.33. By lowering this value, you can reduce your FPS hit. I have read somewhere that if you set it to 0.01, the FPS will be the same as with having the limiter turned off (provided that they aren't above the specified maximum value). The catch? You might encounter more blurries. (On my system, I hardly see more blurries when FPS is set is to unlimited as compared to limiting them to 20). I would go ahead and try. Here is the quote from the P3D learning center:

I want to revert (or start with after a reinstall) to the pre-unified mode because I know that back then, everything worked 100% without any strange texture tiles or blurries, whereas now, after many user reports, I am concerned that I might encounter the said anomalies on my flights. Consider it a risk management issue. Of course, I would only use the older version until the issues will be fixed. With that statement, I am not opposing the idea of a unified lclookup.

What annoys me is that there seems to be no way whatsoever to install an earlier version of either FTX Central or Orbxlibs. If I install FTX Global from the scratch, it automatically downloads the newest FTX Central. If I then download the libraries, it automatically starts the migration process upon opening FTX Central without my consent. Right now I am not even installing Orbxlibs for this reason. Why would it be so hard to offer a previous Orbxlibs version for those who want to defer migrating to the new lclookup? It's a shame that their timing on this is so bad. First the release of the new FTXC and the new libraries, then a shutdown of the forum, then the absence due to their trip to Fscon,and then it was announced that one of the developers would be on vacation until almost the end of June.

What option is there for someone who has not installed Orbxlibs yet? If I install the newest libraries, am I forced to initiate the migration process into the unified lclookup?

Yes, it really sucks that their forum is down at such critical time when users have a lot of questions to ask about the new unified lclookup. The other thing that I'm wondering about is how exactly does their migration process work? What files get changed/deleted? Some users have reported that their scenery got screwed up, so it would be good to know which files are affected. Instead we are left in the dark with no way to restore to the previous configuration (without doing a complete reinstall) and being at their mercy.

That's true, if my memory serves me right, Microsoft didn't even have an official support forum where the developers participated directly.

I made some more tests, and unfortunately, I have to retract my above statement; updating to ORBX Central V2.1 and initiating the migration process into a unified lclookup messed up the roads (they weren't depicted), which caused FPS to go up slightly in my yesterday's test. I noticed the issue with the roads today. After sorting out that issue and performing another test flight, there was no benefit in FPS over v3.2 on approach. Sorry for the confusion.

I noticed that modifying/updating the scenery library in v3.3 no longer causes AI traffic to double in numbers. In the older P3D versions including FSX, when you were using a traffic add-on such as MyTrafficX, making changes to your scenery library caused the amount of traffic to double, potentially hitting your FPS hard. This bug has been eliminated now. (In the changelog, it is mentioned "Fixed memory leak that could occur during scenery library reloads").