joby33y

Well, they managed to totally break Oculus VR in this release. Wonder what else is broken. Sorry but I'm rather stunned at their lack of software testing... rgds, JB

Fellow VR Flyers, I recommend not upgrading to the new Prepar3D ver 4.5. There is a bug we are still trying to track down that absolutely crashes the Sim when enabling Oculus. Something is broken...& will instantly cause a CTD. I can get PMDG737, Carenado, and the stock F-22, Commander 111 to work fine, but not Aerosoft Airbus. Have yet to try other aircraft including FSL (awaiting their patch). But some users are reporting they can't even get stock aircraft to work without CTD when enabling Oculus. Has anyone else done testing on this ? cheers, John

For those that fly in VR, the Aerosoft Bus will crash P3D4.5 upon enabling Oculus Rift. This might be off topic but thought I'd throw it out there.... VR works fine in 4.5 with stock aircraft, and with PMDG 737. But the Aerosoft bus will crash it every time.

Hi Oliver, Yes, you certainly can. However, I learned that one needs to know what one is doing, because if you mess up the command line, you can end up with problems. I am fairly adept with command line stuff - but being new to the concept of junction points and symbolic links in Windows, I decided on Junction Link because it's user friendly and nearly impossible to mess up. Then I use add-on organizer from a well known developer 😄 to further manage this lot. cheers

Jim, I am *very* intrigued by your post since I too am starting down the path of converting all or most of my scenery to XML. Once I do this, how do I ensure the old scenery.cfg file is clean, accurate and intact ? That is my primary goal - ending up with a scenery.cfg that is default scenery only. I will be converting a fair amount of airports so I thought I'd ask you since you posted. Any advice appreciated. thanks John

I just went through the same experience, having reached capacity limit on my P3DV4 SSD drive. Looking at the drive I realized that about half of what was taking up space was the ORBX directory. I have three other SSD's on my system that I want to use for scenery but WITHOUT having to delete, uninstall, or re-install P3D. After researching the many ways to approach the problem, I decided to use junction points. Use one of the freeware programs (I am using Junction Link Magic v 2.0.3.0, do a google search and you'll find it), and I have linked / moved both the entire ORBX directory as well as the XML based DreamTeam AddOn manager to my other SSD, and it works great. No deleting, no re-install headaches, and very simple to use. best of luck, John

I do indeed see a lot process windows open while resample executes, but on mine they seem to auto-close upon completion. Maybe it's a Windows process termination setting ? Or incorrect resample.exe setting ? Are you using py to start Ortho or his prebuilt binary ? in other words, I have not yet experienced them getting stuck or losing focus and I am using the binary. However, I limit the number of tiles at any one time to say 3 or 4. Even with the few number of tiles, resample.exe will spawn a boat load of process windows. For a few moments, I thought the machine was stuck in a loop.... Yes, I do have one separate drive / directory dedicated to tiles, but not sure about merging 'all .bgls' into a massive directory. I would rather keep it in smaller chunks for better manageability. I give each tile a meaningful name (Dublin, Munich, InnsBrck) so that I can determine where it should sit in library given that I have a lot of Orbx stuff (for now) that has to co-exist. If a given tile doesn't behave or look right, I will delete it and move on. There is a lot of experimenting going on, but I thing this is the start of great scenery building for the future. The tile +47-011, when paired with Orbx's LOWI airport, looks absolutely fantastic. The trains running around the 'real' tracks is a very, very cool thing. This weekend, I did indeed end up with P3d (4.3) getting stuck at the opening splash screen after I exited from a flight from within an Ortho area. Had to rebuild scenery.cfg and 'delete generated files' (you may know the drill if you use P3D v4) in order to regain control. Not a big deal and all of the Orbx stuff comes right back upon one "verify files" command at FTXCentral - nice touch. So, to answer your specific question, I have not yet built that much Ortho. I am up to about 10 tiles or so at varying ZL's to try and determine the optimum, acceptable visuals given the type of flying I want to do. I did ZL16 for an international airport, and ZL14 for the 'surrounding' 8 tiles in the area - and it looks just fine from 10,000 ft on approach- and much, much smaller datasets. But I don't trust the stability of the software (including P3D v4.3 in general) to really invest that much time and effort - things will eventually overload or crash and suddenly you're rebuilding again. Too easy to break stuff with a lot of install and de-installs. Terrain and or scenery .cfg will get screwed up. Then you need to know how to quickly rebuild and regain control, lest ye suffer from FSWS (Flight Sim Withdrawal Syndrome). cheers :-)

Working great now (after a few hours of hacking files ; see below) and THANKS ! this is fantastic. Been waiting for this capability for some time now....GREAT. Since I had already installed Oscar's 1.30 for XP11 and therefore Python 3.6.5, I didn't want to change the Python version nor go through the re-install. This ESP version didn't seem to like Py ver 3.6.5. on this (Win 10 x64) machine for some reason. So, I opted for your prebuilt .exe file. I did the edit to the .cfg (to indicate the proper path for the resample tool) but it didn't 'take hold'. In other words, the tile built successfully but not the bgl conversion process. Q: does the binary read the .cfg file before execution? {FIX: since I happen to have an "F:" drive on this machine, I simply created a directory there to match the one in your original .cfg and pasted resample there, with success. Works fine now } Also, each instance of execution I get the error "ERROR: Providers/O4_Custom_URL.py contains invalid code. The corresponding providers won't probably work" as reported by others, but that does not (yet) impede progress. Thanks for a great idea and great effort. JB

Adam Thanks for the great preset ! The pics on your site are simply stunning, so I thought I'd give 262_01 a go. So far, looking GREAT on my machine. Superb job. I'm running P3D 4.3 and ENVTEX + ASCA16. (Oh, and that pic of the DC-6 over the Hauraki Gulf just became my new wallpaper...! ) Thank you. JB

Great discussion ! Mike, I appreciate your comment about "banding" in the night sky in P3D. I am *still* trying to find a workaround, having somehow convinced myself that there is some magical combo of RexSkyFrce + EnvTex + a PTA preset that will once and for all render a decent nightsky with the Rift. But I am not sure yet whether I can make those hard 'sky bands' go away. Total buzzkill on niteflights. I agree with the other comments though....running it at 1.6 super with the tool is yielding 'good enough' resoluts and the fact that we can now zoom in VR with LM's native VR support is a definite step in the right direction. Here in NorCal the Vive Pro is on "sale" for $799. Hmmmmm I wonder if it is worth it. If anyone knows how to rid the nightsky in P3D of the colorbanding, I am all ears. cheers, JB

Thank you kind sirs ! Really appreciate the clarity ....saved me from a lot of poking around. best, John Bullock

The Navigraph data manager shows as 'updated' for my PMDG 737's, as well for the other aircraft and add-ons. Yet when I am pre-flighting the 737 lately, I'm getting "Nav data out of date" and it seems stuck on AIRAC 1805, the previous data cycle. Any advice appreciated.

I am running UTL with P3D v 4.2 and so far it runs fine. The message in the upper right on your 2nd screenshot is UTL's normal way of letting you know which Sim you have selected, and that changes you are making in the client will apply to that simulator. I run UTL with both P3D v3 and v4, and that indicator message changes depending on which sim you have selected.

I've never heard of this developer until now. The photos look so realistic and accurate (I live nearby & spent a fair amount of time there), and how about they go so far as to explain recommended settings for lighting, autogen, vector compatibility, etc etc. Awesome! (Although the "500Gb SSD" recommendation on the hardware kinda threw me) Thanks for the post ! I'm buying it now. rgds

Running P3D 4.2 with Pete's new FSUIPC 5.124 and so far, its working good here. No issues. rgds

....but only fixed in "Single Pass mode", correct ? In other words, I still see (in 4.2) a distorted / unfocused view of the ocean while in "stereo mode", but when I switch to "single pass" mode, the problem is corrected and the reflections / water features are correctly rendered and focused. Do you also see this ? thanks, joby

Appreciate the updates. I agree - it's really slow here as well (NorCal) ....please update the thread when the problem is identified ? thank you. Joby

Agree, same here. I am NOT normally one to post negative comments like the one above... but when I shell out $50 bucks for an add-on, and wait and wait for bugs like this and others (remember upon release , you could not even hide the yoke!) to get ironed out, it just gets a bit frustrating. Maybe I got spoiled with the level of quality we get from PMDG, Majestic, Carenado, FSDT etc.

The sounds are horrible and the Nav still does not work, and it hasn't from day one. It will not hold a course / follow a flight plan in the FMC.

Dave These are my experiences with VR in flight sims. I regularly use the Rift with P3D v4, and occasionally AeroFly FS2 and XPlane11. When I first tried the Rift (in FSX with Fly-Inside sometime in late 2016), I was instantly hooked. I am a RW private pilot and I fly Cessna 172s and Pipers, and for me the experience of using VR in flight simming changed everything. To be able to feel like you are "in" the cockpit, and the ability to look to the side while on base turning to final, to me is fantastic. Then there is the thrill of getting "in" the left seat of any Carenado plane, a Majestic Dash, an Airbus 320, a PMDG 7xx,,,, everything takes on a whole new level of challenge and awe. You look around the cockpit of the Dash8 and ....stunning. Look around your left shoulder at the prop hub and check for icing. Now, I know a lot of folks don't care for VR due to the lower resolution as compared with HD monitors, but that is something we live with for now. In other words, I am more than happy to give up screen resolution in exchange for the feel you get from VR. Both the Rift and the Vive are fine instruments. I personally prefer the Rift simply because I feel the headset itself is more comfortable, the Oculus home is a better design than Viveport, it is less expensive, the support is great, and the sensors are easier to use. Also, the Rift is designed so that you can peek out the bottom of the nose bridge, providing ventilation and a way to see peripherals without completely removing the headset. But, there are many happy Vive users out there, and when I had the Vive the experience in FS was very similar to the Rift. Best practices to consider : 1. You need a relatively powerful PC, min graphics I believe is a GTX 970 card to run VR itself and preferably your CPU is at 4GHZ or better. An underpowered machine leads to miserable VR results. 2. Have your joystick or Yoke, throttle, and mouse set up so you can use them without seeing them. Get in front of your setup, close your eyes and get used to 'feeling' where your controls are. Some VR implementations are suggesting the use of the Rift "touch" controllers or the Vive handhelds, but I dont buy it at all. You want to have things that you can easily reach....to control throttle, flaps, elev trim, gear, etc etc. Pic of my setup is below. 3. For the best framerates and smoothest experience, get Fly-Inside FSX. The software has superior VR processing and vastly improves the smoothness of the flight experience. It also has neat features such as adjustable resolution, binocular zoom (great for reading instruments / FMC's) , and other tools. They support P3D v4,x, X-Plane 11, FSX SE. Also, their support is excellent. NOTE: the 'native' VR in P3D v4.2 has been much improved with the last couple of releases. I run an 8700k at 4.8 GHz and a GTX1080 Ti, and am now getting decent frames / smoothness with single-pass stereo, a new feature that LM released this week. This was not the case in prior versions of P3D. This also allows you to 'switch' back and forth from VR and 2D (something you can't do with FlyInside) - nice on longer flights when the headset becomes tiring (about 20-30 mins in my case). Lately, my flow is like this: set up the flight and program the FMC in 2D (non VR). Start the pushback, then put the headset on, switch into VR, taxi, takeoff and climb to cruise. By that time, I'm ready to take the headset off so I switch off VR and rest. That is the nice part about P3D VR, that you can freely switch back & forth between VR and 2D. Let me know if you have further questions, hope this helps. cheers, Joby

Guys, I would have to give this my vote as well. Spot on Joe, you captured it correctly. The zoom feature in FI is the best thing for being able to read instruments, but I'm flying more and more with LM's native VR just for the ability to switch in and out of VR / 2D. Have CP maintain constant camera angles AND supporting a zoom feature would be fantastic. cheers,

Thanks for the post...I happen to be getting ready to re-install PMDG 737NGX on the new machine, and was wondering about 4.2 compatibility. I also flew the Majestic Q400 last night on 4.2 with no issues. cheers,

RESOLVED : The problem in my case was a PTA (latest, v2.61 for P3D v4.2) preset (ThoPat 2.x latest .ini) was using a Custom cloud tweak, and thanks to GSAldens post over at the PTA forum: "FYI : the custom Cloud directional tweaks do not work in P3Dv4.2 ; they make the 3D clouds disappear." That is why there was no weather (clouds) showing up in my case. FIX : Modify the PTA preset and uncheck Custom cloud tweaks, and reapply the preset. ASP4 working normal. THANKS GSAlden for the post ! I don't know how you figured that one out but it sure solved my issue. cheers

I am seeing the exact same behavior. Updated the client to 4.2, installed 6616 fine. ASP4 says “connected” but there is no weather. I have reported this to HiFi.

Hi all, nVidia driver 390.77 here and both Normal stereo and Single-Pass stereo mode are working fine on this end.