Classic British Flight Sim

The future of Prepar3d?

An article in yesterday's paper about the global defence industry talked of budget cuts in defence in the US. There is talk of huge redundancies in the industry and the possibility of 10,000 jobs lost at Lockheed Martin.

In the Avsim interview with LM they stated that their main customer for Prepar3d is the defence industry. Their next focus, after establishing an efficient, stable platform, is weapons delivery simulation for the military.

So when the weapons simulation becomes a big part of Prepar3d there will obviously have to be a rethink about licences. Much as I'd enjoy loading my B52 with a mega bunker buster and simulate a delivery to an Iranian mountain, I doubt whether my academic license will allow it

It could go either way, I suppose. Either they close the doors or split the sim into military and civilian. Assuming that the P3D project survives the defence cuts.

This is all conjecture of course, I'm merely repeating a couple of things that I've read recently. I'm not speculating on anything, I'm just passing on stuff that I've read and you can take it however you wish. I'll continue enjoying the benefits of P3D v1.4 and hopefully v2.0 and keep FSX in reserve for an emergency!

Ian

But thinking about it another way, its widely thought that the Lockheed thing that we're getting for the carriers will be the last piloted (traditionally) fighter aircraft, and the move to simulation makes a lot of sense for LM. The door is still open for M$ to do something with Flight Simulator as they continue to retain the rights for non commercial use.

Yes, that's a good point. With drones and pilotless aircraft seemingly the future path then a decent simulator would put LM way ahead of the competition. And, as you say, Microsoft could have an agreement to take up the commercial side when LM have developed it.

Either way, the future of simming is more wide open now than we could have imagined a few months ago!

Ian

FS Recorder.

Unfortunately, this won't work in Prepar3d. So no formation flying or 'creative' videos. (Was that a sigh of relief I heard? ).

The developer would like to work with Prepar3d to make it compatible and indeed they approached him first. However, it's not so simple and they have higher priorities so it isn't imminent.

http://www.fs-recorder.net/forum/viewto ... ?f=2&t=740

Ian

A couple more things I've picked up on the forums concerning Prepar3d, which you may or may not know.

AES. Apparently AES will install into P3D using the Estonian migrator tool. But don't bother because the Vistamare software is incompatible. Read the discussion here

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/382766-aes/

I mentioned Out of Memory Errors earlier. Somebody else has brought it up and the discussion turned to the fact that, like FSX, P3D is a 32bit program and can only use 3Gb of your memory however much you've got. LM would like to rewrite the whole program in 64bit and hope to in the future. But due to the size of the project, it won't be happening soon.

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... pic&t=1653

Ian

speedbird591 wrote: I mentioned Out of Memory Errors earlier. Somebody else has brought it up and the discussion turned to the fact that, like FSX, P3D is a 32bit program and can only use 3Gb of your memory however much you've got. LM would like to rewrite the whole program in 64bit and hope to in the future. But due to the size of the project, it won't be happening soon.

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... pic&t=1653

Ian

Ah thats good news, even though it will take forever to undertake! Good job i have 16Gb of super fast ram!!!

The Out of Memory issue is still under discussion on Avsim and there does seem to be a consensus. The people who are reporting them are those with high-end systems with sliders at max and flying PMDG aircraft over detailed scenery. So basically, they're pushing the sim beyond it's capabilities. But this is what we do in everything. Push to the boundary and then back off a little to give reliability. So they've found the boundary in P3D which is set by the 32 bit program coupled with a possible memory mismanagement compounded by the lack of a start screen.

What they are backing off is : LOD to 5.5 instead of 6.5, AA reduced to 4x in Nvidia Inspector instead of 8 and a notch down on Autogen. This seems to be doing the trick. Also apparently the latest FSUIPC will give a warning chime if your memory is running low, which saves a CTD. Finally, there is also the Microsoft memory fix that I mentioned earlier.

Here's a link to the post again: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/384873-out-of-memory/

Ian

Now here's a really useful, time and memory saving tip!

Set up your favourite aircraft/airport scenarios in P3D and save them as normal. Next time you want to fly in P3D, go to the Prepar3d folder in My Documents, choose the flight file you want to start (.FLT suffix), right click and associate all .FLT files with Prepar3d.exe. Then whenever you want to go straight to a flight in P3D all you need do is double click the FLT file.

It bypasses all that default flight, changing aircraft and then changing airports stuff.

Ian

speedbird591 wrote:Now here's a really useful, time and memory saving tip!

Set up your favourite aircraft/airport scenarios in P3D and save them as normal. Next time you want to fly in P3D, go to the Prepar3d folder in My Documents, choose the flight file you want to start (.FLT suffix), right click and associate all .FLT files with Prepar3d.exe. Then whenever you want to go straight to a flight in P3D all you need do is double click the FLT file.

It bypasses all that default flight, changing aircraft and then changing airports stuff.

Ian

Now thats a useful tip.

You're getting better at this Ian