Good News on Prepar3D

[cowpatz]

What graphic card are you running with that?

[Kelvinr]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Mar 27 2012,7:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What graphic card are you running with that?

It's a secret....


:-P nah joking, oops, I must have forgotten to add it. How remiss of me. It is a GTX 570 1.2GB

[Adamski]

People need to follow up on posts around the FS community (particularly ORBX) about this $49 "home" license.

The impression I get is that it was to get around Microsoft licensing, but they (intentionally???) left definitions very vague - and there are no checks at any time, either at sale point or activation.

I wonder how long they'll be allowed to get away with it before MS calls "foul" ... as I expect it's certainly taking away prospective customers for "Flight".

Kelvin - you're best placed to answer this - but the impression I also get is that *at the moment* P3D isn't significantly better than a relatively well equipped (and well-configured) FSX <?> ... but this will likely change in future as more developers take on P3D ... and P3D features themselves get improved (where FSX's never will).

I think there's a significant part of the FS community that's prepared (sic) to try "anything new" ... and P3D has probably been deluged with enquiries, pushing them down into a consumer market as well as the original professional one.

As Lockheed Martin is a huge company with massive spending power, I can't believe they really need the income from this. I suspect it's more of a PR thing - aiming to expose the Lockheed Martin brand outside the traditional defence circles.

With so many existing FSX add-ons working "out of the box" with P3D, it's almost tempting to throw $49 at it and give it a whirl ... except that (for once!) I have a perfectly stable and fully-featured FSX.

Is anyone compiling an FSX/P3D add-on compatibility chart?

[NZ255]

+1

[Kelvinr]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 27 2012,3:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

People need to follow up on posts around the FS community (particularly ORBX) about this $49 "home" license.

The impression I get is that it was to get around Microsoft licensing, but they (intentionally???) left definitions very vague - and there are no checks at any time, either at sale point or activation.

I wonder how long they'll be allowed to get away with it before MS calls "foul" ... as I expect it's certainly taking away prospective customers for "Flight".

Kelvin - you're best placed to answer this - but the impression I also get is that *at the moment* P3D isn't significantly better than a relatively well equipped (and well-configured) FSX <?> ... but this will likely change in future as more developers take on P3D ... and P3D features themselves get improved (where FSX's never will).

I think there's a significant part of the FS community that's prepared (sic) to try "anything new" ... and P3D has probably been deluged with enquiries, pushing them down into a consumer market as well as the original professional one.

As Lockheed Martin is a huge company with massive spending power, I can't believe they really need the income from this. I suspect it's more of a PR thing - aiming to expose the Lockheed Martin brand outside the traditional defence circles.

With so many existing FSX add-ons working "out of the box" with P3D, it's almost tempting to throw $49 at it and give it a whirl ... except that (for once!) I have a perfectly stable and fully-featured FSX.

Is anyone compiling an FSX/P3D add-on compatibility chart?

Hey Adam,

Nicely said. If it interests you enough you could pop over to my place at some point for you to have a look first hand at Prepar3d. This way you can get a better idea about what the differences are, then make your mind up about buying it.

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Kelvinr @ Mar 27 2012,8:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nicely said. If it interests you enough you could pop over to my place at some point for you to have a look first hand at Prepar3d. This way you can get a better idea about what the differences are, then make your mind up about buying it.

After seeing that pic you just posted of your gear, I'm staying WELL AWAY!!!

I'm sure I'll give in and come and gawp (thanks) ... though I seem to remember my wallet taking a bit of a bashing after my last visit!

It'd be great to see P3D "in action" ... and get some sensible feedback ... straight from the horse's mouth.

[Kelvinr]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 27 2012,8:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

After seeing that pic you just posted of your gear, I'm staying WELL AWAY!!!

I'm sure I'll give in and come and gawp (thanks) ... though I seem to remember my wallet taking a bit of a bashing after my last visit!

It'd be great to see P3D "in action" ... and get some sensible feedback ... straight from the horse's mouth.

No worries Adam, you're welcome any time. Don't worry I don't have anything i'm selling so unless you want to buy some old tea towels and a broken sushi maker then I think your wallet will be safe

[Ian Warren]

OH No another contagious flight sim carrier spreading the disease , i've infected many in Christchurch , now Kelvin is taken the North Island out ..... and the world is worried about radiation sickness .. CRIPES! ..... JUST BUY IT

[AdrianPetford]

I've been flying PREPAR3D for a couple of months now and would definitely recommend anyone to give it a try. On my system it's a huge improvement over FSX even at version 1.3.

Framerates are higher (a solid 40-60 as opposed to 30-35 for me in FSX) and, most importantly P3D is much smoother regardless of framerate. The stutters are gone and it performs well even if the actual framerate is low. There are no black graphical spikes over dense vegetation even with settings maxed. Autogen textures have been redone and are much improved. In fact the texture maximum size can now be set to 4096x4096, so no having to repeatedly reset that in the config file. Remember that amazing water you thought looked lovely in FSX but only tried once because it reduced your machine to a crawl? Well, it's the default in P3D and runs fast and smooth. The new P3D 1.3 adds two additional LOD levels as well (up to 6.5) and these result in a great visual improvement without much hit on performance. The interface in P3D is much nicer and more professional looking.

There aren't many downsides as I see it. As with FSX, you'll have to spend some time tweaking P3D for your set up as out of the box it didn't impress. I found I got a massive improvement in performance by disabling bathymetry. P3D always loads straight into a flight which can be very annoying (apparently a full GUI is coming) although I think this can be changed to whatever you prefer. Some of the default aircraft from FSX were not licenced to Lockheed Martin and so are missing by default, although I believe everything can be ported in. When flying the Bronco (the only official P3D addon I have so far) any switching to external views reduced the sim to a slide show. The current upgrade procedure involves a total uninstall and reinstall which could cause major problems if you have a lot of addons installed. The download is about 9Gb across three files so getting it will use a lot of your quota if you are capped.

I took the month's free trial (with Computer Pilot) and then a monthly developer subscription, as I was waiting for v2.0 before buying outright. On the strength of P3D even as it stands now, I would have happily paid the $500 US for it so at $49 US the new academic licence is an absolute steal. I'm about to move over to it myself. At present I am not flying P3D with any addons installed as I am waiting for official support but can well see myself based exclusively on this platform in a year or so. It really is very exciting for the future.

Test rig:

Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66GHz (overclocked to 4.00 GHz) 64-bit CPU
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Intel X58 PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair XMS3 6Gb (3x2Gb) PC3-12800C9 DDR3 RAM
Enermax Galaxy DXX 1000W PSU
MSI GeForce N580GTX OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Lockheed Martin PREPAR3D 1.2/1.3

Hope that helps,


Ade

[MichaelBasler]

Adrian,

I've got the same licensing history as you, will probably switch to academic after 2.0 appears. Main advantage over all alternatives is I can re-use most add-ons I spent many 100s of $ for during the years. In detail, you still need a bit of rework to get some scenery working, but I got Aerosoft's Germany running (which does not have a special P3D installer - yet) and some others, too. ORBX NZSI has a special SBS license, so there's no problem at all. Did not try VLZ, but I'd guess it works in a way, too. There was an announcement of a migration tool for ORBX recently

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/434...-migrator-tool/

which should help a lot for ORBX fans.

I am going to build a new PC System from scratch, and I am really thinking if I should install Prepar3D standalone without FSX, saving me the hassle of maintaining two systems in parallel.

I never made friends with X-Plane (tried it trice over the years) and did not even look upon Flight.

Regards, Michael

[metalnwood]

ORBX also announced today that the SBS licensing is no more and that it will be free to use ORBX you purchased for FSX in prepar3d.

[Adamski]

Any ideas on ETA for 2.0? I may hold off till then.

[Kelvinr]

QUOTE (metalnwood @ Mar 31 2012,10:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ORBX also announced today that the SBS licensing is no more and that it will be free to use ORBX you purchased for FSX in prepar3d.

Yeah, and I didn't even notice this news until now. This is going to make it so much easier, porting ORBX is quite the pain because it modifies the scenery.cfg file which I have had trouble with before, made my ORBX scenery look like mars. So the migrator tool will be great, one more thing to convince me to uninstall FSX. Still have the NGX to worry about now as the activation does not work with prepar3d itself so needs to be activated in FSX first before porting over. Come on PMDG, join the game.

[AdrianPetford]

QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 31 2012,10:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Any ideas on ETA for 2.0? I may hold off till then.

I remember seeing late 2012/early 2013 posted on a forum somewhere, but I'm not sure about how reliable that is. John Nicol of LM has said it's "some way off".

The way I'm looking at it now, if I keep the developer subscription, I'll probably end up paying more in the end than if I get the $49 US academic licence but I'm still not fully decided what to do yet.


Ade

[MichaelBasler]

QUOTE (AdrianPetford @ Mar 31 2012,12:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The way I'm looking at it now, if I keep the developer subscription, I'll probably end up paying more in the end than if I get the $49 US academic licence but I'm still not fully decided what to do yet.

Ade

Adrian, did you find any way to simply switch over from the developer licence to, e.g., the academic one? Of course you could (I think) cancel the developer licence and buy the adademic one - but is there any more clever way? Of course you still have to re-download all the three packages, as they are (very slightly, I suppose) different.

Regards, Michael

[AdrianPetford]

QUOTE (MichaelBasler @ Mar 31 2012,4:07 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Adrian, did you find any way to simply switch over from the developer licence to, e.g., the academic one? Of course you could (I think) cancel the developer licence and buy the adademic one - but is there any more clever way? Of course you still have to re-download all the three packages, as they are (very slightly, I suppose) different.

Hi Michael,

I haven't changed over yet. I was intending to today, but my billing invoice for next month has just arrived from LM so wasn't quite fast enough! However, looking at it you should go to Downloads - Purchased Downloads and then click License Information on prepar3d.com. One of the links listed on this page should be clickable (for me it's "Registered Developer Monthly Subscription"). If you click this it'll take you to Customer Service - Payment Plan Subscription Details where you can click a Cancel Subscription button. I don't think there's a way to switch over but it looks quick and easy to end the subscription and then buy the Academic licence.

I'd be surprised if there was a need to download the files again. Like you I've already changed my licence type once (from one month non-recurring on the free trial to monthly recurring for the subscription) and was able to use the same copy I already had installed. I've also reinstalled P3D itself and didn't have to enter my licence number again. As I understand it, if you have a subscription P3D checks the licence number on each launch to ensure it is still valid. An outright licence (such as Academic or Single User) doesn't have this activation check.

Hope that helps - thanks for your advice higher up the thread.


Ade

[MichaelBasler]

Hi again Adrian,

QUOTE (AdrianPetford @ Mar 31 2012,7:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

at it you should go to Downloads - Purchased Downloads and then click License Information on prepar3d.com. One of the links listed on this page should be clickable (for me it's "Registered Developer Monthly Subscription"). If you click this it'll take you to Customer Service - Payment Plan Subscription Details where you

This is what I expected. However, I have two entries, the expired one and the active "Registered Developer (6 Months Prepaid)", which is not clickable, though. However, it's not that big deal, either I contact them via the given mail or I just wait until it's expired and change later.

QUOTE (AdrianPetford @ Mar 31 2012,7:53 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'd be surprised if there was a need to download the files again. Like you I've already changed my licence type once (from one month non-recurring on the free trial

As far as I read, the academic version has a small watermark in the menu bar (if activated, not in full-screen), so there should be a difference. I think I read somewhere, this is indeed the case, but I might be wrong.

Regards, Michael

[AdrianPetford]

QUOTE (AdrianPetford @ Mar 31 2012,9:58 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When flying the Bronco (the only official P3D addon I have so far) any switching to external views reduced the sim to a slide show.

Bucking BRONCO

Correction to my previous post. Using Aerosoft's supplied Bronco startup flight I'm now getting 50+ FPS on the Bronco in PREPAR3D!

Not a problem I get in FSX but perhaps it has something to do with P3D always launching directly into a preconfigured flight.

It would be really useful if sometimes I was less eager to jump into the cockpit and actually took the time to read the manual first!


Ade

[Ian Warren]

I think i will get myself another HD and have a look at this shortly , the Bronco is great one to check the views and do a recon off the area .

[AdrianPetford]

Hi Michael,

QUOTE (MichaelBasler @ Mar 31 2012,7:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This is what I expected. However, I have two entries, the expired one and the active "Registered Developer (6 Months Prepaid)", which is not clickable, though. However, it's not that big deal, either I contact them via the given mail or I just wait until it's expired and change later.

I think maybe mine is clickable because I can cancel at any time as it's a rolling monthly payment. Your expiry date is set as you've already paid upfront for the full period. It is probably best to just wait until it expires.

QUOTE (MichaelBasler @ Mar 31 2012,7:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As far as I read, the academic version has a small watermark in the menu bar (if activated, not in full-screen), so there should be a difference. I think I read somewhere, this is indeed the case, but I might be wrong.

Ah. I suppose this could be flagged on/off by the type of licence used as but we won't have a definitive answer until someone changes from developer to academic. In my case, that'll probably be this time next month now.

I was interested to read your experience of porting addons into P3D. I agree it's great that all the investment we've made in addons can still be used in P3D, and LM have pledged to maintain this compatibility. Apparently most installers can be fooled by making a copy of prepar3d.exe and renaming it fsx.exe. I haven't gone there yet though as with a heavily customised FSX and 350+ Gb of addons a full migration would take several months. I also still run FS9 (41Gb) and already find maintaining two sims a burden. It would definitely be sensible to concentrate solely on P3D once you build your new PC. I think we all spend much more time on tweaking than we actually do flying! I was originally planning to wait until P3D 2.0, then drop FS9 and run an FSX-P3D side by side licence type setup. With the arrival of the academic licence, it increasingly looks as though I'll also be able to move entirely to P3D in the not too distant future. Good times.

Regards,


Ade