Prepar3d

[DaveG]

Hi all, I've just purchased Prepar3d, and thought I'd use this thread to record my experiences with it to assist anyone else who may be thinking of taking the plunge

For those that don't know, Prepar3d is produced by Lockheed Martin, based on Microsofts ESP, which in itself was a "professional" version of FSX.
LM has tweaked and modified various things and P3D is now at version 1.3, with more updates to come.

P3d comes in 3 different license packages bepending on intended useage, see their website for details: http://www.prepar3d.com/prepar3d-store/

The download comes in 3 parts, at around 3.8gb, 4.1gb & 2gb each so a decent internet connection is needed! I downloaded part 1 at home, and the other 2 at work Parts 1 & 3 download fine, but part 2 took a couple of attempts. Not sure if the problem was their end or mine, but I got it eventualy.

After reading the download & installation instructions, I unzipped the files & proceeded with the installation. No real suprises here, pretty standard stuff, just make sure you read the instructions & follow the parts about "running as admin" or errors could occour.

Once installed, I fired it up for a quick test flight.

P3d launches straight into the default flight, so after a minute I was sat in the Mooney cockpit looking out at the runway.

Initial impressions were good, but it obviously needs a bit of tweaking to bring out the best in it. Frame rates were locked at 20, and that's where it sat. I don't have the most powerful PC around, a Q6600 o/c'd to 3.0Ghz, 6gb of ram & a nVidia GTX 460 1gb video card, which gives me adequate performance in FSX, with most sliders fairly high. AI traffic does tend to hurt framerates if turned up too high.

After turning on anti-aliasing, a quick flight showed it to be very smooth, and cranking up the autogen & scenery complexity to max didn't result in too much of a frame drop.

I'm going to compare settings between P3d & FSX, so I can get them looking about the same and see how it performs.

More later...

[TSR2]

Hi Dave,

I got my downloads pretty quick thanks to VM 50Mb broadband. I'm just backing up the full FS PC before I try anything as I'll have to uninstall some stuff on the second SSD to make room.

Have you been able to install Prepar3d on the same system as FSX?

[DaveG]

Hi Ben,

I put P3d on the same "D" drive as FSX. They should co-exist fine

[TSR2]

I'm incredibly impressed with this. Its very fluid, the mesh is superb, as is the autogen. So far I've ported over my AI ships which sail as before on a much more realistic sea. I've taken over DM's VC10 and Trident and also DG's Beaufighter. All of which work as expected.

The throttle calibration needs to be done manually as out of the box, there is a massive dead zone which makes you think its not working. The view from within the 2D cockpit on the VC10 is much more of a "fish eye" which I'm not sure if I like or not. It gives the impression that you are travelling at silly speeds when your not. Also some funnies with the VC in the Trident, possibly down to the way the textures are held in the DMFS shared files folders, but the sounds work as expected, so maybe its something else. The sound on FS9 models seems to have been sorted. The annoying breakup and change of engine sounds doesn't seem to happen on the VC10 or trident, so thats a plus. Early days, but it is looking as thoughI'll me moving to Prepar3d for good.

It should be noted that at this stage, I have not added any scenery or cloud / sea / weather enhancements....

[Paul K]

Keep the info coming, chaps. I'm thinking about getting P3D, but holding off till the 'knowledge base' expands. I'm particularly interested in what effect the proposed DX11 version will have on my current FSX add-ons.

By the way, how much disc space does the stock P3D take up ?

[robcarrich]

Ben There is an option to turn off “Wide View” in the in Graphics Settings, as for the throttle, using my old Sidewinder FFB the aircraft engines would not return to idle without pressing the F1 key but by changing to the Saitek yoke and throttle it works to perfection.
Size on disk is about the same as FSX, something over 20gbts.
The only worry I have is over the licence agreement, the options being, Student, Developer or Professional, hard to see where the majority of flight simmers fit into this picture.
I suppose the agreement between Lockheed Martin and Microsoft dictates that while the later is still earning money from FSX the new version will have restrictions on use.
But they don't ask your age when they take your money!

Rob

[DaveG]

Didn't get much time after my last post to play, but I should get more time this evening.

I've looked though the prepar3d.cfg & compared it to my fsx.cfg. changed a few entries here and there and added in path entries to my fsx simobjects (only my add-ons, not the default stuff).
Will add in some scenery tonight and see how things go.

[TSR2]

Hi guys, re the licensing it does say that the academic version does state for home use. Its the Microsoft Sidewinder stick I have Rob, and your right about the throttle, but its working fine now
I suspect any DX11 version will only work properly with new models built using that SDK?

[Rick Piper]

Hi Guys

Which version are you buying ?
Academic ?

I was signed up as a dev for a few months but nothing moved with the software so i stopped paying monthly as there where a lot of bugs (Self shadowing) mostly.

Regards
Rick

[TSR2]

Hi Rick,

DG and I have bought the Academic one for now. I guess if it looks like its growing I might think about a different version, but that would be much further down the line.