Classic British Flight Sim

Found some discussion in the 'Gallery' on the Lockheed Martin P3D [Prepar3d].. I understand that most that have done so are purchasing the 'Acedemic' licence..
I'm really tempted, but wonder if I might need a new system; this is what I am currently flying with:

http://www3.telus.net/reeds-homepage/Cl ... 20info.jpg

Also, would like some advice on addons.. Understand that [some] FSX addons work with P3D but you neeed a software program (orbx?).. Any help advice appreciated..

Glenn

That should be fine, basically if you could run FSX then you should be able to run P3d potentially smoother to boot.

Hey a Canuck-fest!

If your PC is currently running FSX then it will run P3D at about the same performance/settings. However, a majority of users find that Prepar3d is smoother and can run less fps for a satisfying result. P3D is very much a work in progress and isn't very developed - for instance there is no launch screen like in FSX and it takes a bit of patience to get it running. Unless you are an experienced 'tweaker' you'll find it very frustrating. It still has a lot of bugs.

Virtually all FSX add-ons will work but it's getting them loaded that's the hard bit. Many FSX add-on installers will find the FSX registry entry and only install through that. There is a commercially available tool that fools installers by pointing them to a 'virtual' FSX folder but it's quite a learning curve to get your head round it!

Unless you are very confident, you might be better sticking with FSX for the time being until P3D version 2.0 comes out next year with the hope that it might be more user-friendly. When it does come out it will require another full purchase - it won't be an upgrade from v1.4. But if you are confident and still decide to buy the academic version 1.4 then I'm sure we can help you out with answers to your questions. Why not check out the official Prepar3d forum to get an idea of how people are getting on with it? http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/

Ian

Ian, I must say I am rather surprised at what you have written there. FS Estonia's Migration Tool has a steep learning curve ?? Its the simplest thing imaginable - all you need to know is when to have it active and inactive, and if you are only ever installing to P3D, you can activate and forget about it. Orbx provides its own migration tool too, so no problems there either.

I am certainly not an experienced tweaker at all, I just do what I am told and sometimes barely understand what the benefits are. But with the two or three main 'guru' sites that we know about ( not to mention yourself of course), getting better performance out of P3D is easy. Nor have I found any major bugs with P3D, at least no more than FSX had.

My advice for what its worth would be if you are experienced with FSX, both flying it and managing it, the transition to P3D is quite painless. The only caveat concerning add-ons would be that in my experience, wiping my simming HD clean and starting again with fresh install of FSX, FS Estonia migration tool and P3D has made things very simple and straight forward.

Yoda...is the Force deserting you ??

Paul K wrote:Ian, I must say I am rather surprised at what you have written there. FS Estonia's Migration Tool has a steep learning curve ?? Its the simplest thing imaginable ...

And where were you while I was experiencing all the trauma of the early editions? Hiding in a hole in Iwo Jima, if I remember correctly, quoting 'real world' pressures I spent hours trying to sort out installation problems when the tool had deleted the FSX registry entry or had greyed out FSX.exe and had random shortcomings when enabling or disabling the virtual folder. And while I was installing there was a lot of experimenting with what would work where I wanted it to and what had to be uninstalled and re-installed somewhere else. So the bugs with the tool just aggravated that and I spent time scouring for solutions. One of the things that gave me a problem was that after disabling the virtual folder for a quick install into FSX, I had left the tool running ready to re-enable the folder again. So it was a learning curve to realise that the tool must be closed after each enable/disable for it to work correctly.

After a couple of updates and hot fixes and bug fixes, the Estonian tool does now seem to be reliable but people are still finding problems caused by the earlier editions. The ORBX migration tool hasn't always worked 100% either and I've had to do a couple of scenery re-installs into FSX to get it right.

Anyway, young man, didn't you leave me to struggle through all this early pioneering on my own? And when I'd finally got it running smoothly, didn't I send you a comprehensive list of what worked and what didn't? And now you tell me it was easy!

Although my P3D is now running reliably (apart from CTDs caused by running too high display settings) I am still reading in the P3D and Avsim forums of bugs in v1.4 that are causing problems. Glenn stated in another thread that he'd only just got FSX so I was suggesting that if he hasn't yet had the experience of trying to get that running smoothly he might not be ready to tackle what P3D throws at him. Not to mention the extra cost of v2.0 at some time next year. So most of my comments were specifically for Glenn.

You were a bit lucky in that our simming interests are very similar and I had many of the same add-ons. And as I installed first it saved you some of the grief I suffered initially. I'm obviously damaged and traumatised now and still expect disaster and failure every time I switch it on. It should have been you, you cad!

Anyway, Paul, you're still my best friend for pointing me towards P3D and ORBX as the two together give me the most fun I've ever had in my 25 years of flight simming. I'm currently doing a leisurely sightseeing tour in my Cessna of my vast estates in the Pacific North West and buying up attractive properties as I go. I'm not sure I'll have time to do England until next year

Ian

I have to agree with Ian on this, P3D has some very good improvements over FSX, but in many ways its a lot less friendly. Don't get me wrong, I like it a lot, when I'm flying native FSX models such a DG's Hunter or Beaufighter. The lack of a start-up screen which allows you to create a flight is probably the biggest thing that stops me using it, closely followed by the awful shadowing on FS9 models since version 1.4. The ORBX scenery looks wonderful in Ian's screenies, but remember that same scenery is available for FSX too. Your machine spec looks similar to mine. I'm running with an i5 3.3GHz, 8GB RAM and a NVidia 560Ti. While P3D is "smoother" on my system its not a huge difference, and the faffing about to get a flight created that I want to fly in P3D versus the more user friendly start-up in FSX means that FSX is still my sim of choice. On a reasonable spec system (such as yours) I think the overall simming experience would be slightly better in FSX. The question really is, what do you fly and how do you fly. If its propliners / airliners (FS9 port overs) there's little to be gained from the P3D. If your flying in the areas covered by the ORBX sceneries, there's merit in getting their scenery as its superb, but at altitude / speed my personal preference is VFR scenery. If you like the low and slow stuff, my FSX never really has a problem with slow anyway. If your taking screenies I have yet to see a "still" screenshot from P3D that can't be created the same in FSX.

I tend to agree with Ben on this. I have P3d installed, but I think I've only loaded it up once or twice since v1.4 came out.
There is an improvement in smoothness & general stability, although it's not perfect. For me, I think there are a few too many issues still to make it replace FSX yet, especially as my 'X installation is running very smooth now.

TSR2 wrote:The question really is, what do you fly and how do you fly.

That's it! Nail. Head. Hit.

I'm a more casual simmer than Ben and Dave, with simple tastes and not enough time to spend. My simming is in one or two hour blocks and I just want to fire up and have a satisfying bit of fun without much setting up. I only want to run one sim and a small handful of aircraft that do work well in it. I've chosen P3D as my sim over FSX because I'm positioning myself for the future - taking a gamble that v2.0 will be the way forward. It means restricting and limiting myself to what does work well in P3D and also putting up with some annoyances. Whilst what I've got is excellent, Classic British civil aircraft are quite thin on the ground so I have to use more American equipment than is healthy

Ian

speedbird591 wrote:

Paul K wrote:Ian, I must say I am rather surprised at what you have written there. FS Estonia's Migration Tool has a steep learning curve ?? Its the simplest thing imaginable ...

And where were you while I was experiencing all the trauma of the early editions? Hiding in a hole in Iwo Jima, if I remember correctly, quoting 'real world' pressures I spent hours trying to sort out installation problems when the tool had deleted the FSX registry entry or had greyed out FSX.exe and had random shortcomings when enabling or disabling the virtual folder. And while I was installing there was a lot of experimenting with what would work where I wanted it to and what had to be uninstalled and re-installed somewhere else. So the bugs with the tool just aggravated that and I spent time scouring for solutions. One of the things that gave me a problem was that after disabling the virtual folder for a quick install into FSX, I had left the tool running ready to re-enable the folder again. So it was a learning curve to realise that the tool must be closed after each enable/disable for it to work correctly.

After a couple of updates and hot fixes and bug fixes, the Estonian tool does now seem to be reliable but people are still finding problems caused by the earlier editions. The ORBX migration tool hasn't always worked 100% either and I've had to do a couple of scenery re-installs into FSX to get it right.

Anyway, young man, didn't you leave me to struggle through all this early pioneering on my own? And when I'd finally got it running smoothly, didn't I send you a comprehensive list of what worked and what didn't? And now you tell me it was easy!

Although my P3D is now running reliably (apart from CTDs caused by running too high display settings) I am still reading in the P3D and Avsim forums of bugs in v1.4 that are causing problems. Glenn stated in another thread that he'd only just got FSX so I was suggesting that if he hasn't yet had the experience of trying to get that running smoothly he might not be ready to tackle what P3D throws at him. Not to mention the extra cost of v2.0 at some time next year. So most of my comments were specifically for Glenn.

You were a bit lucky in that our simming interests are very similar and I had many of the same add-ons. And as I installed first it saved you some of the grief I suffered initially. I'm obviously damaged and traumatised now and still expect disaster and failure every time I switch it on. It should have been you, you cad!

Anyway, Paul, you're still my best friend for pointing me towards P3D and ORBX as the two together give me the most fun I've ever had in my 25 years of flight simming. I'm currently doing a leisurely sightseeing tour in my Cessna of my vast estates in the Pacific North West and buying up attractive properties as I go. I'm not sure I'll have time to do England until next year

Ian

Well I'll admit to lagging behind, and leaving you as point-man. But you were in my thoughts constantly, I promise.

Its hugely interesting to read these P3D threads; P3D really has become quite a talking point, hasn't it. Personally I'm going to stick with P3D rather than FSX, because I got better performance out of it with default settings and .cfg than I did with default FSX, and so I feel I am working with a better sim to start with. Not only that, but as mentioned above, I wiped everything clean and I'm using FSX purely as a repository for Orbx scenery. I can't get a P3D installer for FTX Australia as I have the CD version, so I think I will keep things neat and tidy and put all FTX scenery there. I've applied tweaks to the P3D.cfg and have started getting some CTDs, so I need to roll it back a little - I think the major problem is that I have a rather dated GTX-285 gpu and my .cfg edits might be making too many demands on it. However, I have more 'faith' ( for want of a better expression) in P3D than FSX, and am more inclined to spend time on it.

Anyway Ian, when you get the chance, can you see if the PMDG MD-11 works in P3D ? Must dash - I can feel some real world pressure building.