". . . .In the eye of the beholder"

falcon409

falcon409

Moderator
Staff member
I'm making this observation after several years of reading the pros and cons of FSX vs P3D. I understand some of the reasons for sticking with FSX when you've spent what seems like a lifetime and more money than you spent on food for a year to get your Sim to look the way you wanted it. It is tough to look at that and just decide on a whim to dump it and go to another dimension in Simming. I understand those who simply can't afford the bucks necessary to run P3D in the way it should be to get the most out of it. There are real world considerations when you have a family, work full time, lots of bills and can't dedicate a whole lot of time to Simming.

Beyond that however, for sheer simming enjoyment and the ability of a Sim to provide an environment that was closer to "as real as it gets" than anything that came before it (FSX), it's my opinion that FSX was outdone with P3D_V2. That's when shadowing, lighting, tessellation effects, etc., really started to show themselves and at that point was followed with moving the work of processing textures to the GPU, freeing up the CPU for other functions. . .a huge step pushing it further away from the FSX experience. Version 3 and all of its iterations continued to build on this amazing platform as Orbx was covering the world where GEX and UTX used to be the blanket on which we flew.

FSX is a "good" sim and has continued to enjoy a large following and will for years to come. . .but it does not hold a candle to Prepar3D and has not for quite some time. That is not stated to take anything away from FSX or it's users who continue to flourish with new addons-both freeware and payware. . .it's simply a point of fact.
 
With P3D v4, X-Plane 11, FSW, and Aerofly out there now, I'm not sure how much longer developers will mess with FSX. In a year or two, it could end up left behind like FS2004. I've held off for years, but figured now was the time to switch. FSX isn't on my new system.
 
There does seam to be a trend in our community, to hold on to the familiar. I remember when FSX came out, many of the fellow simmers I respected decided they did not want to upgrade, they did not like the changes from FS2004 to FSX and were not going to move and were not going to upgrade there add-on's to the new platform. The result, FSX did not get the support it should have and was eventually dropped by Microsoft. Now we have Lockheed and Dovetail to pick up the pieces. Don't get me wrong, I wish dovetail all the success in the world, in there favor they have the a good marketing platform in steam and they have a great team that knows how to do train simulations. Against them is a team, many of which worked for Microsoft on FSX, who have continued to make continual but not necessarily revolutionary updates to the platform, and they are backed by a company in Lockheed Martin,, that knows a little bit about aviation, and after playing with P3D-V4 for a week I think the LM team has a great success in the new version.

Again I wish DTG great success, but they have a lot of catching up to do.
 
Well I will be staying with FSX for the foreseeable, there is no way I can afford the graphics card which P3D v4 needs. So when 1080;s come down to around $200 maybe. :banghead:
 
When developers say 'You have to buy xyz to make FSX look better - weeds that sway in the wind, etc - and 'Base Pack' is ONLY $59.99' - I say 'Keep your weeds and I'll wet my finger, and 'gauge' the wind direction - for FREE'. :redfire:
Chuck B
Napamule
 
Naismith said:
Well I will be staying with FSX for the foreseeable, there is no way I can afford the graphics card which P3D v4 needs. So when 1080;s come down to around $200 maybe. :banghead:
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I don't think you will need to update your graphics card for P3Dv4, from what I've found, if your system can handle FSX I think it will easily handle P3Dv4, it seems to be a lot less demanding on the system.


Ian
 
IanHenry said:
I don't think you will need to update your graphics card for P3Dv4, from what I've found, if your system can handle FSX I think it will easily handle P3Dv4, it seems to be a lot less demanding on the system.


Ian
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Indeed, my PCs is an i7 which is 6 years old, and I bought a slightly more recent GTX970 off eBay and Prepar3d seems just fine, great fps.

just because people say you need the newest cards doesn't mean you can't still have an FSX beating experience.
 
P3D, any version requires a graphics card that can handle DX11 and have at least 2GB of RAM as with P3D more work is being done by the graphics card than in the past with various versions of flight sim.
 
incremental costs is the key word

I get that many of us have literally thousands invested in add-on aircraft, scenery, AI traffic and weather engines. That is a lot. But also remember, that many developers provide free updates/installers, so if you move from FSX to P3D v3 or 4 or whatever. I would say even most do that. So it becomes an exercise in costing it out -- each of has to review the add-on products we have, and figure out which will charge for an upgrade and which won't. It some cases, it is the time investment that is more prohibitive than the actual money cost investment.

BTW I am staying put with P3D v3 for the time being, waiting for a few more products to come available for v4. And even then, I might just move over partially, to do my tube-liner flying in v4, where longer flights in study-level in-depth aircraft are damn near impossible without OOMs at the end. Plus less aircraft installed means lower load times, so I am considering this aspect now as well - GA aircraft stay in V3? Or separate it out by older planes vs new planes? Haven't quite worked all that out yet, honestly....

I will move at some point, however, just a function of time -- to allow things to get fully baked, and for to understand what the incremental costs will be in MY case, and then I'll figure out how much of what gets migrated, and what stays.
 
IanHenry said:
I don't think you will need to update your graphics card for P3Dv4, from what I've found, if your system can handle FSX I think it will easily handle P3Dv4, it seems to be a lot less demanding on the system.


Ian
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+1000000000000000
 
I am with Ed on this. I find V4 to be so pleasant, so smooth, so much more realistic that I have not gone back to V3 since V4 was installed. My system runs at 3.7GHz from the factory. I have tried to OC it to 4.2 but I won't boot, regardless to what I try. So, I use an after boot program to boost it to 4.2 GHz. It will run fine that way.

With V3 I had to boost it to run in heavy areas. With V4, I have yet to boost it to 4.2 GHz and I see FPS in the high teens to 30 FPS (where it is locked). 90% of the time it is in the high 20's.

I will keep V3 until the F-18 and TacPac are upgraded. Then it is V4 all the way.
 
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Dimus said:
My sentiments exactly! I wish this happens soon and we are able to enjoy also all the other amazing Tacpack planes
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I don't have TacPack but I did take a look at some posts concerning it's move to 64bit. It seems the VRS folks were not part of the LM Beta Team so they didn't have early access to the new Sim. Consequently they had to wait for it's release to even start looking into what would be needed to move tacpack forward. The consensus seemed to be. . ."Don't hold your breath", support won't happen anytime soon and basically the entire program will require a rewrite. It apparently will happen but it won't be "soon".
 
When I saw the specs that were required for P3D4 and FSW I figured it was time to upgrade my old machine, which had a Radeon 7970m video card with 2GB of memory so I ordered the new one but it took a week or it to arrive. During that time V4 was released and I installed it on the old machine. I was surprised how well it worked on the old hardware, it actually seamed smoother than V3.4, granted I was using only the default aircraft and scenery but it was still very impressive. I almost regretted ordering the new machine, but since it has arrived I have really been enjoying the 1080 with 8gb for both the old and new sims.

If you think your hardware is marginal I would still recommend giving it a try, they do have a 60 day refund policy, or you can get a one month developers license for 9.95 to give it a try.
 
It's absolutely not required to run a 1080 graphics card with v4, I'm still running on a GTX 770 with all ORBX scenery, Active Sky beta weather on a triple head to go 3 screen setup and it all runs smooth as butter.
 
falcon409 said:
I don't have TacPack but I did take a look at some posts concerning it's move to 64bit. It seems the VRS folks were not part of the LM Beta Team so they didn't have early access to the new Sim. Consequently they had to wait for it's release to even start looking into what would be needed to move tacpack forward. The consensus seemed to be. . ."Don't hold your breath", support won't happen anytime soon and basically the entire program will require a rewrite. It apparently will happen but it won't be "soon".
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The same thing happened with V3.4. I wonder if it is because the F-18 is made by Boeing? Or, maybe, they compete with LM on the combat abilities, i.e. TacPac?
 
I am in complete agreement with your opening statement Ed.

Also some of the comments regarding video cards raise an obvious consideration. It should be understood that a card that ran V3.4 well should translate to V4 with no negative results. Remember, V4 provides detail and performance at multiples from the settings we used in V3. Much lower settings will produce the same or better visuals than we saw in the 32 bit platform, so the need for a "Rock Crusher" card can be deferred for those who want to push the envelope as the sim and peripherals evolve from here.

The introduction, in V2 and V3 of shadowing, dynamic lighting, DX10+ compatibility were obvious improvements on FSX. The obvious next step was to build a new 64 bit framework to bring the simulation up to par with comparative "game" technology. I hate that term, game...it somehow does not apply to what I feel to be a legitimate flight training simulator.


An observation from my chair.
All of the previous aircraft and scenery available from early versions of the MS simulations can, and will be available for modification to 64 bit. It will only require a community of willing contributors to do the work. I believe that we are that kind of community.

I will use Mr. Shupe's vast library of models, many of which are finding their way into FSX Acceleration format, as an example. There is nothing about the fundamental modeling that cannot, with some work, be translated and updated to 64 bit. I'll use the F7F Tigercat project as an example. I conducted that entire project with the eventuality of 64 bit integration as a cornerstone of the work. The net result was an airplane that translated seamlessly into V4. My other projects including three airplanes, four major scenery packages and a massive vegetation library, all created with a consideration for 64 bit, made the migration without any negative behaviors
The same can be done with nearly every model that is currently available....pending, of course, the author's approval.

Prepar3D v4 is much more than shadows, light and efficiency. It is, indeed, an expansive canvas that has been crafted with third party development as a principal component. I recently viewed Russ White's video for his new project. Included in the package was a complete build out of the terminal interior, including food courts and passenger processing. This is the direction we are heading.

With the introduction of particle physics we can look forward to impressive uses of interior lighting and effects for aircraft and buildings. The tools available for rendering these effects have been made available through the SDK. I began working with specular lighting on ground polys when I created the CYSE Squamish project with ORBX. We had those tools available in V3, although they were not being explored, but now they are a focal point in V4. We can look forward to dynamic lighting and bump mapping on ground textures, animated foliage, virtual atmospherics, dynamic airport and runway lighting and more.

Particle lighting will allow fog rain and snow to behave in a realistic, real life representation in the simulator. Cloud shadowing inside and outside of the cockpit is already significantly more realistic in DX11.

The list of possibilities is virtually endless. What it will take to realize the ultimate rendering of our virtual world will be work. The canvas and tools are available for anyone and everyone willing to be involved in the process. There is a lot of discussion of the difficulties in transitioning to V4, both technical and economic. These are legitimate considerations.

That said, I think that the conversation Ed started is a direction towards a discussion of the possible.

What is possible when we concentrate on the positives with the talent and dedication we have amongst our community?
 
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I just don't understand why everyone looks at this like we are dumping FSX to go to P3Dv4.. For me this is going to be an incremental and long process of fully switching to P3D. I still do not have real time weather (waiting for REX Skyforce), and only a small fraction of planes have been converted over so far. F1 GTN is still a ways out, as well as some of the scenery add-ons I use. Personally flying FSX is not that bad. Granted I won't buy any new FSX add-ons, but certain planes I enjoy like PMDG's MD-11X and possible FSLabs Concorde aren't making the move. So for me FSX still has a future on my PC. It isn't as pretty or smooth as v4, but I still enjoy flying it none the less. Think for me the only limiting factor to the life of FSX on my machine is going to be if and when I am forced to upgrade Windows and it most likely will not work well after that.
 
I agree with the above that there are developers here willing to help make the move. And its a good future with 64 bit from many aspects; the almost predictable problem is technology has a bad habit of becoming obsolete. Software is only one form, hardware another. That's why I don't fly FS2004 or FSX anymore. For me, I only have time to invest in developing SimObject cockpits and flying others creations until I get smart enough to build these things myself from scratch. In the end its a personal choice when or even if to make the move to a new sim. For me its a technology and simulator fidelity issue; and also because I don't like any kind of micostutter, OOM, and the host of other things that can happen to FSX. For now I have have a big enough hangar with enough to fly for P3D V3 & 4. And I'm still learning...
 
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