Rogen

Coming from software development myself, the first interation can take the longest time, but once the process has been worked out and debugged new releases would flow through much quicker. Ideally they would have concurrent work going on, e.g. models and animations being developed while their accu-sim coding stuff is going on, that way they can hit the ground running once ready. Cheers

Thanks ! Makes for the fun part in my hobby 🙂 Cheers

Heh, yes A2A are also some of my most fav aircraft, but it'll be years before they release their catalogue in anything else and I'd rather enjoy what they have released. Cheers

Do you mean embeding into the virtual cockpit of a particular plane ? RXP do run a sub forum here. https://www.avsim.com/forums/forum/823-rxp-gtn-750650-touch/ Cheers

Well... If I was a company with a reasonably large back catalogue where the company was wanting to divest itself of said back catalogue, I'd look at offering to sell off (source, models, code, docs etc.). LM springs to mind where such a back catalogue would be an opportunity, but really who knows, Milviz are not talking and nether are LM. Cheers

Hey Folks, Just sharing a couple of "Opps" pics where things didn't quite go to plan... Opps #1 So I'm flying along in my C182 - when I start to lower the flaps for landing and there was a bang. Just managed to put it down without crashing, although it was quite the struggle with a broken flap on one side. Lesson... must not misstreat the flaps and also do more inspections heh 🙂 Opps #2 Had been flying my modded 690B Commander, also a great plane to fly, quite fast but fortunately easy to slow down. I'd been flight testing a new auto cabin pressurisation gauge function I'd written, along with having added an RXP GTN 750 with bezel control mapping and Roland's WX Radar as an embeded unit in the Avidyne bezel for integration with the Active Sky weather API. I'd landed, parked and shutdown the aircraft, reviewed my test flight logs and notes and decided to take it up again. But in my haste I neglected to follow the checklist... resulting in an engine fire - opps ! Lesson... don't skimp on the checklist... some aircraft are just not that forgiving 🙂 That's all folks. Cheers

Hi @Ralvarez232, It's intent is P3D v4.5 upwards, sorry... there is both XML and x64 dll based gauges and the models are build with the P3D 4.5 SDK tools. So yeah you'd have to fork out for P3D, at least v4.5 and have the suitable hardware to run it. Cheers

Hey Folks, If anyone is interested I've pulled together a pre-config of fixes which I've versioned as 6.2 It's basically @whamil77 's 6.1 release with fixes as I could do. PM me if you're interested. Cheers Details in the spoiler.

They were not the greatest for support anyway. Once a product was released they tended to mark it as finalised even if additional bugs were then identified. Case in point their big rant about having to do v5 installers for their existing products, really such actions are classified as maintanence, I mean people cannot buy a product if they cannot install it. Anyway I think they're getting their just deserts with the constant changes in MSFS forcing them to revist their code with each MSFS update, lest their product become unusable. And I see they are having gauge issues as well - quote snip from their website. "However, with the highly dynamic and ever-improving environment that Microsoft Flight Simulator has become, we've found that it is out of our wheelhouse for us to ship our products with full support for 3rd party avionics products. Most, if not all, of these, are highly susceptible to compatibility issues that have little to nothing to do with our products. And yet, we're EXPECTED to provide support and fixes for these products. These issues cost us valuable development time, as the sim continues to evolve from month to month and update to update. This, in turn, prevents us from working on new and exciting products that we would like to share with our customers. It's hard enough dealing with our own fixes, let alone having to deal with problems with other devs products..." Good luck to them... heh Cheers

I do have the Beaver radial and turbine, do you mean the turbine ? I run the F1 GTN in them and have been flying the radial of late, but in that I use the GTN more as a map and hand fly for the most part. Cheers

It's not as though we're talking new developement here, their P3D range was already developed and hasn't changed for some time, plus they even advised they'll sell but not be offering support. Looks like they've removed their P3D product line from every sales platform, I see some still listed in Orbx Central, but when linking to Orbx Direct it's a 404. I always thought they were a questionable bunch with their wierd video rants and the way they did business overall. At least I had the chance to buy at their flash sale they had a while back, their products themselves are resaonable, although there were a number of obvious bugs I ended up resolving myself. Cheers

Hi @ols500 There's no magic tweek unfortunately. Typically the tweeks that can be applied are more about improving the quality of the output. The best options are to run the SIM internally unlimited and use a 30 Hz vsync if you've a monitor that supports 30 Hz, otherwise limit the frame rate externally to 30 fps (RivaTuner Statistics Server, Nvidia driver, etc.). If the system supports it disable core threading as it typically allows a higher level of overclocking, or use an affinity mask to set P3D to just use the cores and not cores and threads. Monitor the CPU and GPU use especially GPU as when it maxs out the frame rate drops significantly, use the monitoring as a guide to what overloads the system and reduce, for example Traffic uses quite a bit and 3D objects tend to choke the frame rate. Example quaility tweeks. Cheers

It's actually been out for for a while, however the link they provided was messed up, and has just very recently been fixed. It's available for download on their PC6 support forum. Cheers MV_PC6_v1.3.4_210820 Corrected some issues with MVAMS and CTD. WXR is still not working, there will be no update for that.

That's where FFTF Dynamic comes into play. Cheers

Very nice ! I've pro 4.5 myself. Cheers

Yes, another fact is many dev crews supporting our niche hobby are quite small where they can only effectively support one sim, so they go for where they'll get the most bang for buck. Anyway back to what we do have. I used to get the blurries when using FSX, quite painful it was too. I was so happy to go to v4 and x64 because no more OOM or needing to plan a flight's scenery to avoid OOM, still used to get blurries but much less, then found FFTF Dynamic which did help with reducing the blurries. But the most help has been a 30 Hz screen mode which keeps the CPU and GPU use under control and allows hardware headroom that can be dedicated to running the sim, plus this year a new CPU and GPU have made the sim so enjoyable to fly, no stutters, no blurries, of course it is possible to introduce those options if I over do things, but with the right tune there it's no drama and the sim is a dream to fly. As to EA, tried it, and dismissed it as being too immature where the implementation appears to demonstrate a lack of experience in the chosen technologies. As to v6, I remember reading a quote from Adam Breed at a flight sim show where he spoke of a new sim arriving for v6, so who knows what v6 will hold, the development time has been quite extended, maybe it'll be a fixed v5, or maybe LM are setting the stage within P3D for the unreal engine to take over. Either way LM do need to achieve something with a much higher level of graphical detail, as, although their main market is less tied to such fidelity, they do need to develop opportunities for the pool of dev crews to be able to make money, else of course those devs will move to where they can. Cheers

Hi @Gabe777, I'm running P3D v4.5 the final release and is the version those pics were taken in. I do have v5.3 however use 4.5, it's more a pro vs. con type of thing and for myself 4.5 has more pros and 5.3 has more cons. I do plan to give v6 a trial when it releases, we'll see what comes of it then. As to Rex textures inop in v5, I don't think that would be the case, I mean Orbx textures are fine. Probably more a statement with the meaning REX would not update to support v5's features and changes. An unfortunate fact of life is once the income drys up so too does the time that can be allocated to products that no longer make said income (MSFS saw to that). I do work for a software development company and we develop and sell software that includes an ASM yearly payable component which keeps the income flowing and allows further development, a subscription you might say, but it is 20% of the original purchase as an ongoing yearly payment, which is perfectly normal in the corporate world. I use Active Sky latest release with a custom cloud shader where the cloud textures are a combo of custom and REX, one of the pros of running v4.5. Here's some pics. Cheers

Sorry , don't know about Envtex. I actually don't find reshade hammering fps at all, usually at most it's 3 to 6% higher GPU use than without, and I have a key assigned to disable reshade entirely but it's never really been the problem in itself. What I do find that hammers GPU use the most is vegetation shadows cast, SSAA above x4 where there are max overcast conditions, and clouds where the clouds issue is a bit of a mix between having too high a min/max cloud draw distance, casting of cloud shadows and the simconnect bandwidth being saturated by Active Sky. To combat I've 4 x user configs, one standard set as high as can be for a bright sunny day, the standard duplicated with vegetation shadows cast disabled, the standard duplicated with cloud cast shadows disabled and the standard with SSAA set to x2 instead of x4. I always run with the standard initialy then select another if the flight needs to incorporate changed settings. The reality is every bit adds to the overall load of either CPU or GPU and the trick is to monitor those loads in flight and adjust settings to keep from maxing out which will certainly kill a frame rate stone cold dead. Some pics showing various GPU~CPU use where in all cases ReShade is in use including the banding filter. Here the max use is the memory, although the fps is still a steady 30 Hz vsync (botton LHS). Here GPU use has maxed itself to 99% where typically 98%+ begins to cause frame rate fall and has the display dropping out of vsync. This one shows neither CPU nor GPU are really being hammered but are both working to levels for a smooth 30Hz vsync'd frame rate while providing almost fully maxed out settings in the sliders, plus additional non-slider exposed cfg enhancements set to ramp up GFX futher. Highest level draw distances with enhanced cloud shaders where the cloud shaders use approx 25~30% more GPU than the P3D defaults and still a steady 30Hz vsync'd frame rate. Cheers

The types of xml addon path configs in P3D are "Discovery" and "Package". Where Package is your application's add-on.xml And the Discovery path is where you drop in your application and its add-on.xml Where the add-on.xml file is "discovered", read and the addon subsequently added to the P3D library. You can create your own "Discovery" paths (this is what an Orbx library is), for example I have 29 discovery paths where I install various types of xml addons. There are the Orbx paths broken down into 5 separate paths (Libraries, Cities, Airports, Regions, Global) with the remainder mainly based around aircraft (Carenado for example as I have a lot of Carenado's planes) although I do have separate for Utilities and AI. Note that adding via the xml method does have drawbacks, mostly because of an assumption of previous behaviour of installing directly to sim. e.g. a developer in FSX days would install all effects in to the sim/Effects folder where the effects are available to all of their sceneries with no further effort required from themselves and they may not include said fx files in their next scenery which isn't a problem if installed to the sim but will show as a problem if installed to an xml path, likewise if files are updated by later releases where they are overwritten in the sim but not in individual addon xml installs i.e. versioning issues where add-on A & B both use a particular file, but B is never updated. You can also end up with parts not intended to be displayed being displayed due to one addon xml having the displayed items, and another not having them. Order can also be an issue for sceneries when added via an add-on.xml, this is where the Lorby Addon Organiser is great for managing. For the most part such occurances are unintended by developers, the result is just somethng they didn't previously need to think about. Discovery path example clips: [DiscoveryPath.0] Path=H:\Addons_P3D\01.Aircraft\Orbx\p3dv4 Title=Orbx Aircraft Active=TRUE ~ [DiscoveryPath.10] Path=H:\Addons_P3D\01.Aircraft\Carenado Title=Carenado Active=TRUE ~ [DiscoveryPath.16] Path=H:\Addons_P3D\02.AI Title=A.I. Active=TRUE

This vid covering the Blackshark Unreal plugin for the entire world's scenery look like LM have made a good choice going with the Unreal engine, assuming they'll be incorporating the functionality that is. 😉 Cheers https://youtu.be/czjczrxElkU

Prepar3D has a Common Image Generator Interface (CIGI) option. I assume they could leaverage to plugin any image generation platform desired. In the end it's their code so they should know what they are capable of doing. https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/prepar3d/network/common_image_generator_interface/cigi_overview.html Cheers

Hi @doublebubble, I don't have a specific VC config for TomatoShade, that said you're welcom to trial the config I've built. It's in the spoiler. Cheers

Hey @Gabe777, It's a pros vs. cons type of thing, what would I gain vs. what would I loose. For example: I'm running Orbx through and through so any so called scenery improvements in v5 are irrelevent to myself. The move to linear lighting in v5 is a pro, but I have a very customised Tomatoshade and custom written shaders for dynamically lit clouds and rain which I prefer. I have Orbx coastal waves, which to move to v5 would require a degree of recoding, v5 has no coastal waves anymore. There are a fair number of airport issues in v5. Orbx vector is better in v4.5, Orbx does have a v5 version as LM didn't improve everything, however the Orbx v5 vector implementation is flawed in it's structural build and results in load/stutter issues. The so called advanced truesky clouds implementation is pretty terrible (IMHO), FSW (Flight Sim World) had better truesky cloud implementation. I have many textures and themes so to speak (REX software) for v4.5 that I would loose with no comparable replacements for v5 The aircraft in v5 always seem to be jaggy on the edges, AA issues. Dynamic lighting is improved in v5 but the day to dusk is more problematic. I'd loose the Milviz weather radar due to the bugs in LM's sdk implementation in v5. V5 does have more subjective perfomance but has less parking spaces at airports. Really I consider it a bit like Windows where the second release is the better one, like vista = dud, Win7 = success, Win8 = dud, Win10 a bit of a hit/miss given there were so many release versions of Win10, Win11 = it's looking a bit on the dud side. I do have v5.3 for testing, but I don't see it as that great overall. Anyway you could get both, they're cheap in the overall schema of things for the Academic version, or you could get the monthly sub to trial out. The above said if v6 looks like the LM clip which the article seems to imply, indeed there are potentially exciting times ahead 😁 My dynamically lit clouds I just don't want to give up.

Really ? I guess I must be in the 10% 🙂 in fact I run with around double the amount of Autogen that's available via the sliders. In P3D v5 you can more finely control the main thread and their helper threads towards which cores you want to run them on, which seems to be a quite successful strategy to managing thread loads. I mostly run P3D v4 and use an affinity mask to place the main thread on the fastest core (#3 in my instance), then use Process lasso to manage the cores being 2 to 8 leaving core 1 free for other processes, been running quite sucessfully this way for years. I found the best option for perfomance is to cap the maximum frame rate via vsync, where I use a 30Hz vsync'd screen mode at 2560x1440 to cap at 30 fps. The result is a very smooth running sim with enough underlaying power to ramp up the settings, certainly works for myself. Check out this vid (being aware of course P3D v4.5 is not going to look like MSFS and being honest, if you're used to the looks of MSFS which I'll readily agree is on a completely different level, you'll probably not be satisfied anyway) Cheers

Ok v1.1 full archive and update only archive are available for download. Cheers