Comparison of Prepar3d v1.4 vs Prepar3d v2 (P3D)

Wicked with all this talk of flight sims, I gunna have to drag the old joyrider out of the shed and dust her off and finally put some motors on it. She's been sitting for 4 years while I have flogged my racing rig daily, poor girl.
Graphics are just beautiful.

Hi fellows,
With just a couple hours using v2, I'm finding it to be a great improvement over v1.4 - with NO tweaks - out of the box.....for me, I'm going to upgrade from a NVidia 570 Classified OC to the 780 - so I can
really get the most out of it.....just great for flight simmers who have had to "tweak to death" FSX, and some tweaking with v1.4.
Let's all enjoy.
Tom

Ok so I saw this post....been 3 years since I had flown FSX and only for a couple of weeks ( wasn't too impressed). So went out and purchased the prepaid $10 dev licence for prepar3d, great way to try it for a month. Quite impressed with the look and feel of Prepar3d particularly with the Orbx Au pack installed for Australia. Only one slight problem....I cant seem to find the SimTools plugin......ok...where have you guys hidden it?????

Cool

Can you let us know the name of the exe (Ctrl-Alt-Del → tab Details → exact spelling of the process)?
T.

The name of the process is imperative for the plugin. I will let Gary fiddle with the code anyway – I don't own Prepar3D

This is how I see it regarding Prepar3D (p3d). Lockheed Martin took over FSX to save themselves a lot of time and money in developing a simulator to train real F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) pilots. Lockheed Martin have taken a bit of a gamble with their reputation taking on a dog of a simulator like FSX and saying they will improve it. With p3d I think LM's gamble is starting to pay off. It looks a much better improved sim, compared to FSX. With Lockheed Martin at the helm of developing p3d I think it has a good future. LM must have done a good hard analysis of FSX and thought a decent flight simulator was in there, somewhere. It just needed a lot of resource thrown at it. As a military contractor LM do have lots of money and resource to spend on p3d. It is clear to me that it was the more cost effective way of using a commodity flight simulator where the USAF can train pilots in such things as navigation and emergency procedures. This is exactly why LM took on FSX, improved it and luckily for flight simulator fans have made it publicly available. After all it is the US taxpayer paying for it.

I did have a p3d v1 license for a while and tried p3d a few times and was impressed with it. It was clear, to me, it is much better than FSX. I think FSX is so bad I won't bother with it. With p3d v2 I am going to renew my developer license or buy a one time licenses, hopefully, next week. When I get p3d v2 up and running I will report back what I think of v2.

I speak from a little knowledge re the JSF. My brother-in-laws, brother-in-law is a Major in the USAF and is on the JSF project. When JSF was passed by Congress it was with the understanding that it would be the most cost effective, bang for buck, fighter aircraft that the US ever developed. The JSF and F-22 are probably going to be the last manned fighters and it doesn't make sense throwing millions of dollars at manned fighter technology. Every aspect of the JSF project is cost driven and for LM to take on FSX, make it better, for less cost than writing their own simulator, makes a lot of sense. In twenty or thirty years time the USAF won't be training manned combat aircraft pilots anymore. Once the JSF and and the F-22 Raptor come to the end of life they will be replaced by UAVs.

For me I am hoping p3d will be good enough to fly and I will enjoy flying a GA sim again.. FSX was a complete disaster. Thanks Microsoft for making such a mess of a genre I love

When I am up and running with p3d v2 I will let you chaps know what I think of it.

~S~

Hypo

Hi folks,
I've now had several hours on P3d v2 - A great improvement over v1 - There are some known issues with the new v2, as expected, but LM is feverishly working on them.
I wouldn't go back to v1.4, and probably NEVER on FSX.....P3d is just that much better.
Tom

Got my p3d V2 license today. Looking forward to trying it out later. A bit knackered at the moment after helping a friend chop up and clear a beech tree that was blown down during our recent windy weather here in the UK

I will get some R&R and install p3d later. Good to here LM are working on outstanding issues. Tom, what issues are these, just so I am aware what they are?

I agree, never go back to FSX or try X-Plane 10. X-Plane 10 has a great physics model, but the graphics engine, IMHO, is absolutely rubbish

Check out www.f35.com. There is some great info about the JSF. Watching it do a vertical landing is brilliant.

~S~

Hypo

Hypo,
Some issues are CTD - from AppHangs - Some flight setups not being saved - Loading a flight and it has errors - Water fidelity fix coming -
AND many folks not properly porting over their add-on's correctly.
I fell you'll find it a very welcome breath of fresh air, even with some burps being worked out.
Go to these two forums and you can get the latest updates on version 2.
http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/
http://forum.avsim.net/forum/436-the-prepar3d-general-forum/
Stay in touch,
Tom

I'll take everyone's word that v2 is better overall. From the posted video above I can definitely see improvements in the shading model on the airplane and in the transition from earth to sky. And I can see improvements in the water rendering. However, v2 also looks somewhat washed out in color compared the old version. Maybe that due to the new shading and maybe its a more accurate rendering overall. But in the past I have always had a preference for vivid colors.

I have installed p3d v2 and I like it, so far. I installed it on my Mac Pro, booted into Windows 7 64bit. The Mac Pro currently has an AMD 5870 GPU installed. Not the most powerful GPU, however p3d runs extremely smoothly and without any tweaks. I was impressed.

I've only spent an hour flying from my home airfield, North Weald, UK. Flying east to the Essex coast line, near Clacton, then south to the Thames estuary. Although the scenery is generic it all locked nice and there were no glitches with the graphics engine struggling to render scenery when looking around. I hated those rendering problems when this happened in FSX.

For the first time, in nearly 30 years, I can see myself doing something I've always wanted to do with a flight simulator; a Grand Tour of North America. I've always wanted to fly from the east coast to the west coast and fly over some of the stunning scenery the US has to offer. I believe p3d has pretty accurate scenery for North America, out of the box, and with the addition of the USGS scenery it should be very nice.

Ever since my first flight simulator on the Atari ST I've wanted to fly from one small airfield to the next, slowly moving west. With real world flight planning tools like; http://www.rocketroute.com/flight-planning-apps I can do exactly that.

The only thing that let's p3d down are the cockpits. I have been spoilt by the beautifully rendered cockpits in DCS, CoD and IL-2. The cockpits aren't terrible and the instruments are rendered much more smoothly than they ever were in FSX. They are functional and do there job (Note to self; must finish building flight simulator down the shed)
On the whole I give Prepar3D and Lockheed Martin a big thumbs up. Well done Lockheed Martin

There is now a decent GA flight simulator back in town $200 may seem a bit expensive for a license, but p3d is worth every penny. And there is always the option of the monthly developer license.

In the next few days I will change my 5870 GPU over to a GeForce GTX670. That will greatly improve my Macs graphics performance and I can tweak p3d to run really smoothly. I believe p3d will really come alive then.

For the first time, in many years, I am looking forward to flying a GA simulator again.

I hope this brief review helps.

~S~

Hypo

I have the $9.95 dev licence, but I don't think there is any difference from the Pro licence at $200 to the academic licence at $59.95. For most users, except for terms of use, from what I can see and have read they are essentially the same. If you are aware of any differences please let the community know so they can make a good choice. If they are casual users the Academic license is definitely the one to get. For a try before you spend bigger bucks, the prepaid $9.95 dev licence is the way to go. A little birdie told me that a plug in is very close

As far as cockpits go it is dependent on the 3rd party manufacturer....I have tried the Just flight F111 and the Razbam A6 and they are very good compared to the stock f22 basic cockpit. The Just Flight cockpit is almost DCS quality. All razbam and carenado AC are on special at 50%-70% off at the moment at FSPilotShop.com

Most folks go with the Academic License - small, transparent logo, top right on screen stating "Academic", is virtually invisible. ALL versions are the same as far as program and features.
The one thing I have realized - IF one is used to the autogen settings in FSX and P3d v1.4 - DON'T do the same settings in V2 - in a lot of cases a V2 setting to medium is like maximum in FSX & V1.4...
and it will reduce your FPS drastically.
Good simming fellows.
Tom

The reason I purchased a full licence is because I am not in full time employment and if I can avoid paying monthly bills I will. I am hoping I will be flying p3d for the next few years and then the initial outlay of $200 will work out cheaper than paying for a developer license. As a software developer and an individual user I felt honour bound to buy a full licence. As far as I know there is no difference in p3d regardless of what licence is purchased. If people feel comfortable buying an academic licence then go for it

It's very early days, for me, flying p3d. If I really do get into it I would like to import a warbird such as a Spitfire or P-51. Does anyone know if A2ASimulations products can be imported into p3d? A2As products look great, but being new to p3d I am not sure if their aircraft models can be imported.

Macka, who is developing the p3d v2 plugin? I would like to contribute to the XSimulator community and would be happy to look at developing a plugin for p3d, but I do not want to duplicate someone else's efforts

Hi Hypo, was chatting to value1 and he did a quick change of the fsx.exe to prepar3d.exe, as mentioned above, on the FSX plugin to see if it worked.....and it seems to worked fine, but so far only tested on the scn actuators. So I am not sure the concept of developing a new plugin really applies here, just a conversion/upgrade of existing plugin. Will need some further testing on other systems to make sure is ok.
He also mentioned that you might be looking into it closer with the new sdk in mind. So I'm not sure it would be a duplication of effort if a refined dedicated plugin came from your investigations.

I imagine the P51 from A2A would work as it was FSX designed. I have imported several aircraft designed for FSX with no probs using the "FSX to Prepar3D Migration Tool" which basically sets up FSX symbolic links to P3D and fools the installer into a faux FSX install. Or go here for tips on setting up structure http://forum.avsim.net/topic/428424-installation-of-fsx-addons-some-general-tips/

Apparently V2 still uses SimConnect. And it needs to to be backwards compatible so 3rd party programs will still work with it.