Academic is what your after WH
If you go for professional you will have to pay double for a few addons as theyre targeted for flightschools or commerical use where club fees recover the costs
As an individual at home youre shooting yourself in the foot if you buy the commerical or flight school "professional" version as its not targeted at student/individual level
I did what Gordon did until the point it was just cheaper to buy the academic version, after that i go straight for it each time
However its a great tool to try the $10 per month dev lic to see how it runs, just like the free xplane demo
Otherwise you could be spending money on something you cant run or dislike
Im not sure about v5 yet as its only rumoured with no offical confirmation from LM and what requests on the p3d forums are easily included in 4v updates
The only rumoured v5 signifcant change is a completely new graphics engine which i cant see happing due to all the heartache with prexsiting developer partners
If you go for professional you will have to pay double for a few addons as theyre targeted for flightschools or commerical use where club fees recover the costs
As an individual at home youre shooting yourself in the foot if you buy the commerical or flight school "professional" version as its not targeted at student/individual level
I did what Gordon did until the point it was just cheaper to buy the academic version, after that i go straight for it each time
However its a great tool to try the $10 per month dev lic to see how it runs, just like the free xplane demo
Otherwise you could be spending money on something you cant run or dislike
Im not sure about v5 yet as its only rumoured with no offical confirmation from LM and what requests on the p3d forums are easily included in 4v updates
The only rumoured v5 signifcant change is a completely new graphics engine which i cant see happing due to all the heartache with prexsiting developer partners