Took the Plunge

[Howellerman]

Well, the voices in my head won out and I took the plunge.

Academic version, HOURS of download on my dirt-bag AT&T DSL line, and installed without issue.

First problem: my throttle control on my Logitech 3D Pro does not work/is not recognized. I can calibrate until I am blue in the face, but no go.

Took a short flight at the locked throttle settings and it seemed the default Mooney was flying just fine. F11 to look around and what the hell? The auto-gen behind the plane disappears as you move over the ground! That doesn't happen in FSX - I can look behind the plane and see for miles what I have already traversed. Why bother dismantling the auto-gen structures?

Speaking of structures, what is the default P3D airport? That is one ... unattractive ... place!

Speaking of structures again, there is at least one obvious difference in auto-gen between FSX and P3D: my go-to airport (KTTD, Portland Troutdale) sprouted a Qwiki-mart on the eastern road!

So, after fighting the Logitech issue to no success (not much on the web about it, either), and exploring the environmental settings I quit and fired up FSX. Whoa! "Wait while scenery indexes are being built". What? I did not *CHANGE* any scenery. That's a bit disconcerting. Took off, and immediately could tell something had changed. The Orbx auto-gen buildings looked "flattened". Bah!

It was late, I was tired (our new black lab puppy is kicking our butts with respect to sleep habits!), so I packed it in. Will have to revisit it another day.

First impression? Mixed, clearly.

JKH

 

[Lionheart]

Hey JKH,

Is this first going in without any settings for efficiency?

For instance, when we install FSX, we have to set up things so that it will run smoothly. Did you do this with P3D?

 

[AussieMan]

If you still have FSX on your computer then go to c:\users\your name\appdata\roaming\Microsoft\fsx. Open the Controls folder and copy the controls.xml up to the Lockheem Martin\Prepar3D\Controls folder. Then your controller should work.

 

[Howellerman]

If you still have FSX on your computer then go to c:\users\your name\appdata\roaming\Microsoft\fsx. Open the Controls folder and copy the controls.xml up to the Lockheem Martin\Prepar3D\Controls folder. Then your controller should work.

Excellent! I had some trepidation because there is already a controls.xmlX (must be special, eh?) but it worked just fine.

Thank you, AussieMan!

 

[Howellerman]

Hey JKH,

Is this first going in without any settings for efficiency?

For instance, when we install FSX, we have to set up things so that it will run smoothly. Did you do this with P3D?

Hi Bill,

Nope - no modifications whatsoever outside of slider settings, display, etc. This is the same way I started with FSX way back in November of 2012, so I thought I would give it a fair shake.

Will track down the CPU affinity setting, etc later, probably next week. It is graduation time, and my house is going to be infested with guests...

Thanks for the reply!

JKH

 

[Lionheart]

I had meant the sliders.

Sometimes installers will set sliders well above what our computers will run at. For instance, with FSX, I had to lower nearly everything to actually get FSX to run, otherwise it was at 5FPS, if that.

Doing the extra tunes like to the chip management, etc, will help.

 

[Howellerman]

I had meant the sliders.

Sometimes installers will set sliders well above what our computers will run at. For instance, with FSX, I had to lower nearly everything to actually get FSX to run, otherwise it was at 5FPS, if that.

Doing the extra tunes like to the chip management, etc, will help.

Ah. Fortunately, my hot-rod rig allows me to hammer almost everything full-on and still maintain close to the target 30fps. The high level of auto-gen works great with Orbx, but does tend to put too many buildings and trees on non-Orbx terrain, particularly around airport approaches!