P3Dv5 - seriously impressed - NOT!

[Adamski]

Introduction:
Sadly, I don't have the HD space (or spare SATA slots) to have both P3Dv4.5 and 5.0 on the same system ... so .. it was sh*t or bust! After having read so many glowing reports about how you actually *gain* performance, I thought "what have I got to lose?". Apparently ... everything.

My system:
A bit like me - verging on the old and decrepit:
Intel i7 2600K @ 3.40-4.69GHz | 16GB DDR3 | nVidia GTX970 4GB | Win10x64 Ultimate

My thoughts:
Obviously, my new v5 is missing REX, PTA and what-have-you, but I think there are many core visual problems that none of those will totally cure:

1) The dreaded blobby clouds. They could have "fixed" these by now - Shirley???
2) Water: disgusting as ever - and the dreaded "oily black water" remains. Again - hardly rocket science <?>.
3) The palette: just plain mud. Too contrasty and totally unbalanced.
4) Lighting: even with bloom disabled, you get bleaching out when viewing near the horizon - or overly dark anywhere near looking down - with or without the new "beta" atmospheric option.
5) No terrain shadowing. Terrain can cast shadows - but not receive them, so hilly landscape looks flat and featureless. Not sure whether this feature/tickbox was present in 4.5, but the landscape lighting was full of relief.
6) Performance: I've re-installed only around half of my addon aircraft and scenery, yet each time I go into *any* P3D menu, the sim takes over a minute to bring up the option - no matter what it is - not just the aircraft list panel (which always took a while in my P3D).
7)VRAM: v5 seems to eat it up, so the only way I can run the sim is to knock back my settings (across the board) a lot - well below what I could easily run in 4.5. Apparently even 8GB on your GPU isn't enough (what planet are these people on?). So ... my only affordable option (a 6GB GTX1660) may fare hardly better than my trusty old GTX970.

Here's NZWR - with over-done cloud shadows and no terrain shadowing to soeak of:


Slightly better - but the overall qulaity is way below even FSX standards, IMHO:


Can you honestly say this is an *improvement*?


Your thoughts?

Adam.

[Bugdani]

Reflection of relief and/or clouds on ocean's waters doesn't exist.

[hasegawa]

Never change a running system... to fast. I can´t see that the V5 is a so far step forward that it is at the moment from interest for me. Have so much to update. As more VFR-oriented I want to opt for FS 2020 when available. And with this think, all those Mesh-Addons and VFR-Stuff and Landclass is more or less no longer needed. Same is with weather-Addons. Microsoft has meanwhile given us the hint, what hardware is needed and this seemed for me realistic and not top high-End that y must kill my Piggy bank....

From my point of view there is no reasonable reason for Lockheed-Martin P3DV5. Let them sell more F-35s. . . But that's up to each of us to decide for ourselves, and that's just me.

[Adamski]

Reflection of relief and/or clouds on ocean's waters doesn't exist.

True :-((( ... I could get around this in P3Dv4.5 with PTA (and Tomatoshade) by emphasising terrain shadowing plus some water tweaks, but even then it wasn't a total fix.

It's the "new" camera lighting model that I really hate though. Bleached out when the camera is horizontal - very dark when pointing down. Even moving the camera back and forth on the same axis changes the lighting. It's ghastly!

Never change a running system... to fast. I can´t see that the V5 is a so far step forward that it is at the moment from interest for me. Have so much to update. As more VFR-oriented I want to opt for FS 2020 when available. And with this think, all those Mesh-Addons and VFR-Stuff and Landclass is more or less no longer needed. Same is with weather-Addons. Microsoft has meanwhile given us the hint, what hardware is needed and this seemed for me realistic and not top high-End that y must kill my Piggy bank....

From my point of view there is no reasonable reason for Lockheed-Martin P3DV5. Let them sell more F-35s. . . But that's up to each of us to decide for ourselves, and that's just me.

I agree with you 100%, Andreas. I should have stuck with 4.5 for a while longer - particularly because I'd just given it a very rigorous pre-removal clean up!!!!

I must admit I've never understood LM's stance on P3D. Most flight schools and airlines would be using dedicated simulators - not [home] Windows PCs. P3D always was a thinly disguised hobbyist sim. Yes - I agree .. they should stick to making F35s!!!

Adam.

[toprob]

At the moment I'm still using v3, v4 an v5 - I have far too many simulators installed, I think! Each has a monthly subscription, but I pick and choose which months I renew each for. V3 is set up for development only, really, as some of the tools I use don't work well with later versions.

Adam, I think you are right on all counts, I have a GTX980, so I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. By the way, I did report that my v5 was crashing for a while, I think that was because of the beta atmospherics, so I've turned that off, I don't really know what difference it makes to appearance, though. The muddiness is my main issue with v5, the tonal range is rubbish.

In the past I've posted screenshots here showing my current Windows background image, which normally related to whatever scenery I'm working on. At the moment my backgrounds are a bit different, and I certainly can't post them here, I wouldn't even be able to have them showing if I wasn't stuck in lockdown on my own:) Currently I'm showing a simulator screenshot which looks like a photograph. This isn't a one-off, though, just about every flight on this simulator ends with a photo opportunity which would blow people away. So I've already made my choice for the future, and it won't be Prepar3d.

[toprob]

Ah, well, all I'm trying to do is to make Real NZ NZCH work as it should (and does in v3 and v4.)

[Adamski]

Join the club!!!!

How much RAM has your GPU got?

I think I've found a bit of a workaround - which I'll post soon. It just about gets you by: fairly decent visuals, cr*p frame rate but stops just short of the VRAM brick wall.

In only have a 4GB card (effectively 3.5 as nVidia lied).

Adam.

EDIT: Here's my post on ORBX ...
https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/191947-p3dv5-i-think-ive-tamed-the-beast-well-sort-of/

[NZ255]

Have you got the ‘new’ clouds on?

[toprob]

Adam, I have a GTX 980, with 4GB.
Increasing the mesh resolution to see if it helps with some flatten issues at NZCH triggered the error.

EDIT: just read your Orbx post, Adam, lots of info there which I'll give a go. Yes, I like my sim to look better even if it means lower FPS, so I'm a definite candidate for your help!

You mention the 'no-flagged content' shadows, this really goes back to the difference between how FSX and Prepar3d shows shadows on transparent objects. Say you have a wire fence, which is basically just a single plane with a pic of some wire on it, with most of it invisible via an alpha channel. In FSX, if you didn't flag it 'no-shadow', the shadow would be of the entire plane, whereas in Prepar3d it takes into account the alpha transparency. Same with trees, which is why trees don't normally have shadows in FSX, otherwise the shadow would be rectangular.

So if you have a lot of older scenery, it might look better with 'no-flagged content' selected, as you'll likely see shadows on objects which weren't able to display them in FSX.

[Adamski]

Thanks, Rob - you've cleared up a little mystery that's been bugging me for *years*!!!!

Adam.

[hasegawa]

Complaints from addon manufacturers are increasing

[Aharon]

Maybe you want to move back to FSX???

[Adamski]

[Moved the topic]

No ... but to find I need to spend nearly $800 NZD to get back to a sim that may not even perform as well as my existing 4.5 is painful to say the least.

[jpreou]

I assume you could, if you really wanted, re-install 4.5?

[Adamski]

I assume you could, if you really wanted, re-install 4.5?

Absolutely - yes - especially as I did a thorough clean up before I removed it. A reinstall would be nice and [c]lean and would probably run like greased lightning .. until I cr*p it all up again with 3,000 freeware addons .

Believe me ...I had my finger hovering over the keyboard on that one!

However - my old GTX970 is really getting old now and past experience shows that just tend to give up the ghost after a certain period of time. I've never overclocked it, but I do feel I'm on borrowed time now - so I "bit the bullet" and ordered an 8GB RTX2060 Super. I'd have loved to have been able to afford an 11GB card, but I don't think my Super would stretch quite that far!

[jpreou]

Nice. Let's hope it makes a difference. All us lot on the fence will expect a report back here post upgrade...

[chopper_nut]

When v4 came out I got it thinking that going 64bit might save that platform. In the end it just infuriated me as to how archaic the view controls are, the fact that the helicopter model is STILL broken, the scenery library thing is from Satan himself and I just didn't like the way it looked. V5 hasn't fixed anything and I see that you guys aren't the only ones who are not fans of V5 either... I'm sure most of you have seen Tristan's (novawing24) video on it. It looks like a dogs breakfast. XP is it for me, I'll not be going backwards.

[cowpatz]

There are issues with the initial release no doubt and they should have easily been picked up during Beta testing. What were the testers doing?
I would wait for the hotfix to come out before doing anything. There are just as many saying I will never go back as there are saying I'm going back.
Give it time.

[NZ255]

I’m impressed with some shots in this video.

https://youtu.be/bzQBB4uc9KU

The day time sky looked amazing

[Adamski]

I bit the bullet - and got the RTX2060 (Super) ... OUCH!!

It appears nearly all my earlier criticisms of P3Dv5 must have been down to poor implementation of DX12 by my venerable old GTX970.

Colouring is perfect - and there's none of that extra dark VC stuff. All in all it does look like a different sim after all (!!!). I'm not even sure that it needs PTA (gasp!!!).

It's still pretty well vanilla P3D with respect to clouds, textures and/or shaders - but I have to admit that it does look w-a-y better than default P3Dv4.5.

I seem to be able to run with the beta atmospherics thing enabled. I do get some odd fringing around objects when looking into the sun (it's still beta), but it really does look good.

VRAM useage seems to teeter up to4GB (max) out of my available 6.5GB (8GB on-board).

I now understand why the reaction to v5 is so split. It really seems that older cards (especially with less VRAM) just don't seem to display the sim properly at all - even when persuaded to run without crashing. Newer cards are able to show the new DX12 GFX rendering functions well - and those people are full of praise. Sadly, I'm not sure that there's an "in-between" ... you really are forced into an expensive upgrade if you want to run P3Dv5 at all well.

If you can't afford to upgrade your hardware then you really need to stick with 4.5, IMHO.

I'll post some pics (in Screenshots) soon ...

Adam.