Rogen

LM have practically already said their new simulation toolkit will be the 64bit Unreal engine, wouldn't have been possible without the Unreal engine's move to 64 bit. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/lockheed-martin-engages-unreal-engine-for-aerospace-simulation-r-d How or it they integrate to P3D is unknown, or perhap their "new" new sim will be something entirely built around Unreal with no backwards compatibility. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2022/gaming-technology-the-future-of-training.html I would imagine P3D itself would live on for quite some time in some sort of compatable form as it is widely used outside of the consumer market and business hates big and potentially breaking changes foisted upon them. And Unreal does have it's followers, like BlacksharkAI for a ready built world platform plugin, just like MSFS except it's based on the Maxar’s satellite imagery instead of Microsoft's Bing imagery. https://blackshark.ai/blackshark-ai-launches-globe-plugin-for-unreal-engine-making-the-whole-world-available-in-3d-to-anyone/ Of course such services wouldn't be free and I'd expect subscription would be part and parcel, as it is for pretty much everything now. The above said for the immediate future I'm hoping for a well and truly "fixed" 5.3 as 6.0, something that doesn't choke on polyline 3D, maybe with dev tools updates for WYSIWYG type building without the need to constantly restart the sim, some form of streaming scenery plugin, or even a better and more accurrate scenery layout built upon open street maps and compatibilty tools like effects updaters, that sort of thing. Of course until released speculation is all there is 🙂 Cheers

Heh, that ends with their MSFS releases... Given they only distribute via the Microsoft store there's encryption applied which means no community mods or fixes like those seen for their previous ranges. Additionally I would say a large number of new MSFS users are quite the picky bunch (having been raised on FPS & RPG games of very high quaity) and will punish a developer with poor QA and features in the various forums etc. Plus MSFS's ongoing development at a.. shall we call it a Microsoft Sales department mandated rate means bugs, bugs and more bugs and devs needing to go back to their codebase to fix or workaround, lest their shiny release no longer be in a sellable condition. This is something all devs now have to come to grips with, because FSX was a static release, and P3D was in an almost static state where the P3D devs tried hard to not break existing software. And so the devs grew complacent and somewhat entitled where some would even refuse to update or fix bugs in their releases. And that attitude ends for them... 😉 Cheers

Speculation - maybe not too far fetched though 🤐

Hi @bigsky10, I know they do work fine in P3D v4.5 even with the GTN 750 mod I've installed. And I fired up P3D v5.3 with the same aircraft and same GTN 750 mod and yes the lights worked and displayed the same as per v4.5. Perhaps if you enable P3D's content logging it will capture some clues as to what is going on. Cheers Night - no cabin light. Night - with cabin light. And daytime.

Great additional comment to expand the thread reference. I couldn't really say loading time increasing was really noticable to any degree myself, but I suppose if I timed it. And yeah the CPU is doing lots of work but does feel pretty good loading overall. Cheers

Hi @bigsky10, I've personally found Carenado support practically useless. My first taste of Carenado support was when I purchased the Steam Gauge version of the Caravan C208 and noticed there were no cockpit switch click sounds. So I raised a ticket and they said reinstall as it should have sounds, and after much back and forth and myself fully reviewing what was actually installed and contained within the installer - there were no sounds, even though at the end of it Carenado support were still insisting there were. So I built my own. and that got me started on finding and adding mods to the Carenado range. But back to lighting, the lights are typically built into the model and what you can do is overlay them with defaults chosen from the range included with the std. P3D aircraft. e.g. the F16 or C130, or whatever lights suit. I also use the Shockwave lights that I had in FSX. You'll find the fully loaded mod package for the PC12 has been configured using lights overlayed, which you can change to whatever you'd prefer. Mostly the time consuming part is lighting placements but since that's already done the lights can be whatever you'd prefer. There is likely a better model based method, however I've found messing with the models tends to break things that means a ton of work to find and fix. Best to look for things outside of the model if at all possible. Cheers

Hi @ggerolamo, Yes it is and as @newtie says, It's everything I could find rolled up into one, the thread below has all the info. Cheers

And in v4.5.14 too by the looks of it (the final version release of v4.5). Cheers

If you're interested in the "Fully Loaded Mod package" the process is to PM me 🙂 Cheers

It's a pro vs. con thing and there were more cons to v5 and more pros to v4. I do have it installed though for various testing, and I do like some of the lighting improvements but not much else and I've found it's more trouble than it's worth with what it breaks. I'm hoping v6 is a significant advance on v5, wait and see I guess. Cheers

I wish they were that price in Australia... $2849~$3839 https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/graphics-cards/geforcertx4090?page=1 Cheers

So I've seen this [TERRAIN] section option TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 for some time and have read the setting will improve the LOD radius (via increasing the ground texture resolution x4) for everything apart from PhotoReal according to LM on their forum. I did give it a go back when I had a lowly 1070 Ti GFX card, however with only 8 GB or ram the card would run out of available memory and thus the frame rate would died a sudden death, nor was the card's internal mem transfer rate high enough to transfer around such large textures, so I put it aside in my mind and left it at that. First a few snips of info from the LM website to better understand the function and how it works, please refrence the links for the full threads as there is quite a bit of further relevant info for reading. http://www.prepared3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=172350&sid=58c7154c59fea6ee8f4ce3013d3d9bf7#p172350 Beau Hollis » Mon Dec 18, 2017 2:15 pm If High Resolution Terrain Textures is not checked: (default) Each terrain tile has a 256x256 texture generated. The texture exponent is 8 and cannot be changed. If "High Resolution Terrain Textures" is checked: Each terrain tile has a 512x512 texture generated. The texture exponent is 9 and can be set to 10 using a cfg tweak) This requires 4x the terrain texture memory and loading work as the default resolution setting. If TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and "High Resolution Terrain Textures" is checked: Each terrain tile has a 1024x1024 texture generated. This requires 16x the terrain texture memory and loading work. The load time and GPU memory requirements at this level are extreme and only a very small subset of GPUs can handle it today. We opted not to make available via the UI. We left the exponent tweak in so that power users could override the exponent used for "High Resolution" mode, while still being able to disable it via the UI. https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=166316&sid=a3a231e10c898e4019e88048d2ff680b#p166316 Beau Hollis » Thu Sep 07, 2017 11:54 am There is a known limitation of this setting currently, which is that photo-real (PR) textures are not improved because the PR source textures are at a fixed resolution and are already assigned to a specific LOD when they are build into the scenery. The snip above about the Photo-Real not being improved kind of put myself off using it as it felt like a half measure and in anycase not having enough memory meant I couldn't perform any valid testing anyway. Enter the new series 3000 GFX cards with their larger installed memory bases and huge internal mem transfer rates means such use may now be a viable option, and now that I do actually have a 3080Ti with 12 GB of memory I though would give it a trial again. So does setting TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP to 10 make a difference ? Indeed it does, where for starters graphics card mem use typicaly doubles in any given situation and I've been able to fly in situations where practically all of my 12 GB of ram has been utilised. As for sharpness, yes that too is improved, and there is a lot less terrain texture popping, as in a lot less of those blurry triangles of ground textures that don't pop into sharpness until you're practically over top of them. Although I didn't notice much difference to general ground textures themselves where non-photo-real was in use, photo-real did benefit greatly which I was surprised about given LM's statement. For myself it's a thumbs up, I get improved ground textures and more use out of my GFX card, and do note a restart of P3D is required when changing the setting. I wouldn't try it if I didn't have a 3080Ti at least, additionally I'm running P3D v4.5 with DX11, so v5.3 users may have a different experience with v5's DX12 implementation. My conclusion is using the setting of 10 was entirely impractical prior to the release of these advanced GFX cards, unless you had a Titan or something else very high end, but has certainly proved a useful setting now that these advaced GFX cards are more mainstream. Cheers Pic of very high memory utilisation: Pic of TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 Pic of TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, check the background mountain details. The comparision was created by taking the first pic at 9 and saving the scenario, shutting the sim down and swapping to 10, restarting and loading the same scenario point. General flying using PR with the 10 setting.

Hi @ggerolamo, So you know the process... Cheers

Hi @gperticara @whamil77 hasn't visited AVSIM since July 12, 2022. When he did pop in it was only for a few posts, from what was mentioned health probs were the issue, really don't know anything more unfortunately. But if you take alook at the post/thread below 🙂 Cheers

I believe you've already PM'd me 🙂 Cheers

If you're looking for performance with the most FSX compatibility regarding running FSX addons, then P3D v3 would likely be your best bet. P3D v3 is 32 bit and will by virtue therefore run the majority of FSX 32 bit addons. There is the issue of getting addons installed in P3D given most FSX apps are looking for FSX named folders, but you can typically work around that by pointing the FSX registry key paths to P3D paths and also drop a copy of the FSX.exe into the root of P3D as there are the occasional addons looking for not only the path, but also confirming the executable exists. You could also use junction point/s to map the FSX path to the P3D path. e.g mklink /J "FSX root path\FSX" "P3D root path\Prepar3D v3" Personally I did run both FSX-SE and P3Dv3 for a time, however then moved to P3D v4.5 as the majority of planes I owned started arriving with 64 bit counterparts. Additionally v4.5 being 64 bit has no out of memory issues like that of the 32 bit FSX-SE and P3D v3 and I certainly don't miss the OOMs and the planning and effort to workaround. The few planes I could not migrate due to no x64 version being available, well... such is life and although a con, having no OOMs is a huge pro. Cheers

If you're looking for performance with the most FSX compatibility regarding running FSX addons, then P3D v3 would likely be your best bet. P3D v3 is 32 bit and will by virtue therefore run the majority of FSX 32 bit addons. There is the issue of getting addons installed in P3D given most FSX apps are looking for FSX named folders, but you can typically work around that by pointing the FSX registry key paths to P3D paths and also drop a copy of the FSX.exe into the root of P3D as there are the occasional addons looking for not only the path, but also confirming the executable exists. You could also use junction point/s to map the FSX path to the P3D path. e.g mklink /J "FSX root path\FSX" "P3D root path\Prepar3D v3" Personally I did run both FSX-SE and P3Dv3 for a time, however then moved to P3D v4.5 as the majority of planes I owned started arriving with 64 bit counterparts. Additionally v4.5 being 64 bit has no out of memory issues like that of the 32 bit FSX-SE and P3D v3 and I certainly don't miss the OOMs and the planning and effort to workaround. The few planes I could not migrate due to no x64 version being available, well... such is life and although a con, having no OOMs is a huge pro. Cheers

Hey @newtie , Have you not downloaded the fully loaded pack ? It does include everything and more including 4 different preconfigured panel.cfgs and a panel.cfg.Readme.txt describing them and how to edit. Cheers

Commenting out the panel.cfg lines is all it takes. For instance: For the Avidyne Popup gauge lines are assigned to keyboard number buttons where "Window00" refers to key number 1. [Window Titles] Window00=EX500 When reading down the panel.cfg we come across the "[Window00]" entry lines where you would basically comment out the gauge lines with // The lines are enabled in the below sample. //-------------------------------------------------------- // EX500 [Window00] Background_color = 1,1,0 size_mm = 851,571 //position = 8 visible = 0 ident = 0 no_luminous = 1 window_size = 0.369, 0.440 window_pos = 0.000, 0.450 gauge00=EX500_PC12!EX500_config, 0,0, 1, 1 gauge01=EX500_PC12!EX500, 0,0,851,571 gauge02=PC12CAR!ToggleCARG500, 100,0,760, 60 //-------------------------------------------------------- That takes care of the popup where if you then search the remaining panel.cfg text for "EX500_PC12" you'll find the rest of the lines. //-------------------------------------------------------- [Vcockpit04] Background_color=0,0,0 size_mm=513,512 visible=0 pixel_size=513,512 texture=$Panel_4 //gauge00=EX500_PC12!EX500_config, 0, 0, 1, 1 //gauge01=EX500_PC12!EX500_3D, 0, 0, 513,409 //gauge02=EX500_PC12!EX500_Update, 0, 0, 1, 1 //gauge03=PC12CAR!ToggleCARG500, 0, 0, 513, 32 // Embed the Roland Weather Radar fully into the EX500 GPS bezel. Also note the Roland Weather Radar requires Active Sky Next (ASN). // As the Roland Weather Radar is embedded there are click spots within the display mouse scroll wheel functionality to control On/Off. Tilt, Range and Gain. // The spots are left of the centerline. // Note the EX500 is still available as a popup. gauge00=PC12CAR!ToggleCARG500, 0, 0, 513, 32 gauge01=RolASNRadar!ORadGauge, 71, 57, 372,262, sweep|beam|icing|nogps|starton //-------------------------------------------------------- In this instance they are commented out as the Roland Weather Radar is used instead, although if the popup [Window00] lines are left uncommented the Avidyne would still be available as a popup. When looking at the gauge lines the "EX500_PC12" part is refering to the cab or directory of the gauge, the next part "EX500_config" refers to the actual xml gauge itself within the cab or directory. gauge00=EX500_PC12!EX500_config Once edited and saved you'll need to reload the plane to see changes, I have a key combo assigned to perform the reload. Hope the above helps. Cheers

Hi @Daniel Baker You could try enabling P3D logging and then check the log post freeze and see if it holds any clues. Or the windwos event log might have some info. P3D logging will be located in \Documents\Prepar3D v[version number] Files\ ContentErrors.txt is the one I concentrate on as as most issues tend to be related to some form of content. Also as a first step to any troubleshooting I delete the scenery index files and compiled shader files. Both will be automatically regenerated on P3D restart. Shader files can build up to many thousands and I've found a clean slate goes a long way to clearing up any latent issues. Cheers

Hi @brucewtb How do the look of these clouds compare ? Cheers

Hi @Choman, Not seeing such limitation here, both on the ground and in the air the rudder deflection is to the limit of the elevator cutouts. P3D v4.5 here and the ATR42 is v1.4. YD off, minimal deadzone in rudder axis, I'd check rudder axis and sensitivity as a first step. Pic taken today showing rudder max travel.

Hey @Lorby_SI, I gotta say thanks for this update. It makes using the tool sooo... very much nicer 🙂 Just one thing though. The Window doesn't seem to follow any of the standard Windows snap options. e.g. Draging the window to the left or right screen edge and top or bottom corner snaps do nothing. Nore do the snap key combos work. e.g. Windows key + left arrow/right + top/bottom arrow Cheers

Working buttons and knob in the VC Cheers

Screen DPI settings perhaps, are they set to more than 100% ? If so try setting lower (in Windows Display settings). Cheers