Prepar3d: settings and news

[speedbird591]

ORBX have updated all their older FTX scenery and airports with a choice of installers. All this year's releases already give you the choice of FSX or P3D so this affects releases prior to January 2012.

So far it is only for downloads bought from The FlightSim Store (their main outlet). Over the next couple of weeks FSS will update all the wrappers and you can log into your account to re-download and you will get a choice of P3D or FSX. There is no limit to how many times you can download a purchased file from your FSS account.

I've been putting all my FTX scenery into FSX and using the Migrator tool to link it to P3D. But when Prepar3d v2.0 is released, I'll re-download all my scenery with P3D installers and put it straight in. There are one or two minor annoyances with the UI by having it in FSX. Once I've done that I won't have any need for FSX; I only use it now to store these older FTX scenery files.

Ian

[DaveG]

HU for TrackIR users, NaturalPoint have some new beta drivers with P3d support (and windows 8 )

http://forum.naturalpoint.com/forum/ubb ... #Post53140

Not tried them myself yet.

[Scorpius]

Having a few problems with P3D at the moment. It seems to load scenery every time I make a change (different aircraft for example) and if I run it from the desktop it crashes whenever I select scenery library. It does not matter if the software is installed inside or outside of Program Files (x86) it still does it.

If you run it under Administrator rights it does not crash but reloads the full scenery every time.

Empty cache on exit is not ticked.

This seems to be a recurring theme from the LM forums. This is a new problem and there have been no additions to the P3D software library. All was fine initially. Complete reinstall also carried out.

Nev

[speedbird591]

I think that happens for everybody, Nev. It's the biggest source of complaint because without a start screen to set up a flight before clicking 'fly', you have to make each change from the default flight one at a time. So the sim then reloads everything for that one change and then you have to do it again to change aircraft, scenery, time, weather etc. So it can reload several times before you're ready to go. It's not only time-consuming, it appears to use up valuable memory resources, too. Hopefully v2.0 will give us a nice new GUI!

One way to cut through it is to save your favourite flights and then just double click the saved flight file to start P3D straight into it. First time you'll be asked if you want to associate all files of that type with a program so you choose prepar3d.exe.

As far as running P3D as Administrator, I always do. I know I'm teaching granny egg-sucking here but by right clicking the exe file and choosing properties, compatibility and privilege level, I've ticked the box for 'Run this program as administrator'.

Ian

[Scorpius]

Hi Ian,

It would seem that the scenery.cfg files (there are 3) have some duff lines in them. More here: http://janvaane.org/prepar3d/?p=677

Did what it said and now it behaves itself, so I splashed out on Accu-feel from A2A and am really enjoying VFR flight now. Strongly recommended addon.

Nev

[speedbird591]

Strongly recommended addon.

Recommendation accepted. Accu-feel downloaded and installed I like it and for less than a tenner - I like it a lot! I've just embarked on a VFR tour of my FTX sceneries from Oregon up to Alaska criss-crossing from the coast to the mountains in my Carenado Cessna so I'll have plenty of time to try it out

I'd seen that post about the scenery config file on the P3D forum and checked it a while ago but mine was OK. I don't know why some are and some aren't

Anyway, Nev, thanks for posting the tip as it's worth folks checking if they haven't already.

Ian

[speedbird591]

Hey, Nev. I see on the P3D forum that Lockheed Martin have finally commented on the start-up scenery rebuilding issue. They agree that it is a bug in v1.4 and will fix it at some stage.

Hey All - sorry we haven't commented on this one in awhile. You all are onto something We'll get it fixed for the next release, apologies for any inconvenience it's causing you. If we find a workaround we'll post an update.

WBard
Software Manager - Prepar3D® Team

[Scorpius]

Cheers Ian!

[Paul K]

Ian, I've been playing around with the CFG settings again and I think I just about have it perfect for my system now. Once again I got a new cfg from Bojot'e Tweaking site, but this time left the vsync option unchecked. The new cfg already included the first of Kosta's four tweaks you recommended, i.e.

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=84



But... I didn't apply any of remaining three tweaks i.e.



[GRAPHICS]
ForceFullScreenVSync=1

[MAIN]
FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.25

[BUFFERPOOLS]
Usepools=0


This has led to a much more stable performance, with none of the CTDs I was coming across before. I have a slight flickering occasionally when looking down on hills, and that might be an Nvidia Inspector setting that needs to be adjusted. It is intermittent however and not really a major problem. What I have now seems to suit my GTX-285 very nicely, and I'll go through the process again when I upgrade the video card in the new year. Still experimenting with the internal and external framerate limiters, and I think you might be right in that things are smoother with the internal one. Anyway, I have arrived at the light at the end of the tweaking tunnel for now.

By the way, have you got the Aerosoft Catalina ? Its a perfect aircraft for the area you are flying in. Takes off at 80 knots, cruises at 80 knots, lands at 80 knots. One of the best add-on aircraft you can have, IMO.

[speedbird591]

Cheers for that, Paul. I decided to try the simple solution first and as Kosta gave that very effective Nvidia Inspector guide, I thought I'd stick entirely with his approach. Also read a post by John Venema, CEO of ORBX, who has a completely vanilla config file and reckons that works best. I might try the Bojote config one day but I'm very content at the mo.

I thought I'd check my paging file size the other day as I'd never done that on the new machine. Windows wasn't running one on my FS drive so I've now added that and it seems to have fixed my occasional CTDs. I spent a couple of hours flying around Seattle in the heavies with the display settings high and thunderstorms raging and not even a stutter!

I'm not sure about the Catalina. I'm not sure that it's really me but thanks for the suggestion. Oh and don't bother suggesting a Fairey Rotodyne, either

Ian