The Official Prepar3D 2.0 Thread

[shadow_boxer]

Installed it last night and my first impressions are pretty good. Certainly feels much smooth and shadows look good. Not had a chance to fiddle with all the settings but even with my cpu at stock it feels much smoother than fsx when overclocked! REX looks great with it and really improves the clouds and water textures. Going to be installing ORBX Global tonight. Will try to put up some pics tonight and maybe a quick video of performance if I get a chance.

 

[thingemajib]

Bought ORBX global on a whim last night! Bank balance isn't happy with me...

FSDreamTeam have announced a Black Friday sale - 30% off FSDT products and 70% off Cloud9 Products. Theres also a 15% discount off every subsequent product if you buy two or more in the same purchase, if you do make sure you add the cheaper one to the cart first!

Also FSDT have now updated all their installers to support P3D 2.0, not sure if that includes the cloud9 stuff as well though.

 

[cuffylad]

Bought ORBX global on a whim last night! Bank balance isn't happy with me...

FSDreamTeam have announced a Black Friday sale - 30% off FSDT products and 70% off Cloud9 Products. Theres also a 15% discount off every subsequent product if you buy two or more in the same purchase, if you do make sure you add the cheaper one to the cart first!

Also FSDT have now updated all their installers to support P3D 2.0, not sure if that includes the cloud9 stuff as well though.

oh very nice, I still need to make my first purchase of a add on, now what to buy is the question

 

[thingemajib]

oh very nice, I still need to make my first purchase of a add on, now what to buy is the question

All FSDT and Flightbeam installers are free to download and the full scenery will function for the first 10 mins without activation if you want to try before you buy. I have KFJK and KORD which are two older sceneries and may not be as fancy, but still impressive. Heres a couple of comparison shots of KORD:

Spoiler

Interestingly the FPS seems to be unaffected or negligible at best. Similar story at JFK. Sadly it wouldn't play ball with getting constantly activated/deactivated in the scenery library so I dont have a direct comparison here but its as close as I could get it:

Spoiler

 

[cuffylad]

nice shots mate, I will give the demo's a try tonight

How you finding ORBX? Worth the cash?

 

[shadow_boxer]

Nice shots there. Great to hear that there isn't too much of a fps hit.

 

[thingemajib]

How you finding ORBX? Worth the cash?

So far, pretty meh. But then again it wasnt really designed to be run just by itself as all it really is is default texture and autogen replacement. I'm waiting on FTX vector to supplement it tbh (like i said, bought it on a whim!). Ive dabbled with UTX + GEX in the past which are basically the same thing and they do work together well. However as its 'regionalised', its much more expensive if you want global coverage, there are more files/patches to install/manage/tweak and the developers (flight1) are currently flat out refusing to support P3D. Also from what I've seen so far FTX vector does look better than UTX in terms of road textures etc.

In Favor of FTX global, the textures themselves are quite well done and in most cases the autogen arranges itself quite nicely on said textures, compared to the scattered feel of the stock placement. Jsut need a decent landclass system to make the textures themselves look a litte less scattered.

In other news Flightbeam have also announced their Black Friday sale - 35% off any product. I have KPHX HD by them and this one really is stunning. Well worth the 12 or so quid it comes to. Still waiting on the v2.0 installers to emerge though (should be sometime today)

 

[shadow_boxer]

Just a couple of quick shots. FTX/Orbx Global, UTX Europe and REX. Completely unedited. FXAA enabled with HDR. Still playing around with shadows but can't wait for proper tweaking guide. Going to have to spend a long time trying to find the right settings but currently performance seems good. Amazingly I'm seeing 99% GPU utilisation with a stock 780 and VRAM at 2.8GB!

 

[Vuvuzela]

very nice!!

 

[colinmcr]

Are you flying at RAF Kinloss there? Looks very familiar to me.

I gotta get this bought when I get home.

 

[shadow_boxer]

very nice!!

Thanks.

Are you flying at RAF Kinloss there? Looks very familiar to me.

I gotta get this bought when I get home.

Indeed it is RAF Kinloss. For some reason it's my default, go to runway for testing. Nice long runway and nice mix of textures and terrain.

 

[colinmcr]

I live just up the road from the base which is now called Kinloss Barracks after the army moved in. Apparently Richard Branson wants to launch space tourist flights from there one day.

 

[TNA]

My major pet peeve with FSX is autogen popins. Has this been eliminated, or just slightly improved on?

Was really hoping this would be a huge step up from FSX, but it seems it maybe worth holding out for a while.

Also I assume you guys are all buying the academic licence, is there any special requirements to qualify for this version?

 

[thingemajib]

FSUIPC v4.923 now supports P3D2 natively.

I've been experimenting with installing some UK addons, mainly to see how the performance coped, for the most of it the FPS stayed surprisingly stable (still only around 15 though, some more setting fiddling required!). I was going to demo a short london city > heathrow hop but aerosofts london x install thought it was a good idea to overwrite my default tree textures with car textures. I'll try again tomorrow with some notes about how the various installs went (I personally don't think the migration tool should be payware and such, don't want to pay for it!).

As I had to repair the install and then reinstall FTX global, I took the opportunity to make a quick comparison shot of the default textures vs FTX global textures to back up what I said yesterday. Both shots are with autogen on 'very dense' (one off from max)

Spoiler

Default. Note how everything seems to be scattered around:

FTX global. Note how whilst the ground textures are still quite scattered, they are of much better quality and the autogen lines up much better. The road textures are from REX:

My major pet peeve with FSX is autogen popins. Has this been eliminated, or just slightly improved on?

Was really hoping this would be a huge step up from FSX, but it seems it maybe worth holding out for a while.

When it is managing the workload it fades the autogen in/out on the edges on the render distance. Its a very subtle effect thats only noticable if you look for it, especially with larger render distances. In most cases it keeps up with this very well, much better than FSX. However once it gets bogged down there is a bit of popping here and then. In particular I've noticed it a bit more with the UK photosceneries+Treescapes. I reckon more vram/a better GPU will sort that though. Using GPUz I can see it uses 1800mb of my 2gb and theres a report on avsim somewhere claiming it made mincemeat of a 3gb gtx780!

Also I assume you guys are all buying the academic licence, is there any special requirements to qualify for this version?

Use the software to learn how to fly. Do not have fun with it. Simples.

On a slightly more serious note, there aren't any restrictions to purchasing it, no need for special emails, proof of student identity or whatever, just waltz up to the p3d website with credit card in hand!

 

[TNA]

When it is managing the workload it fades the autogen in/out on the edges on the render distance. Its a very subtle effect thats only noticable if you look for it, especially with larger render distances. In most cases it keeps up with this very well, much better than FSX. However once it gets bogged down there is a bit of popping here and then. In particular I've noticed it a bit more with the UK photosceneries+Treescapes. I reckon more vram/a better GPU will sort that though. Using GPUz I can see it uses 1800mb of my 2gb and theres a report on avsim somewhere claiming it made mincemeat of a 3gb gtx780!



Use the software to learn how to fly. Do not have fun with it. Simples.

On a slightly more serious note, there aren't any restrictions to purchasing it, no need for special emails, proof of student identity or whatever, just waltz up to the p3d website with credit card in hand!

Thanks for that info. Much appreciated. I think I will likely buy when I get my next graphics card when the new generation of graphics cards come out in the summer. I am assuming that this now works just as well on ATI cards? As you really did need an nvidia card for FSX.

At the moment I will just enjoy FSX a while longer, by the summer they will have ironed out some bugs and maybe added some things to V2.

 

[Capt Doufos]

I've never felt the need to swap GPU's with FSX, I use a HD7950 across 3 x 24" panels with Orbx scenery and REX and never had any problems with it not being smooth enough.

 

[picnic]

Using Horizon's VFR scenery in Prepar3d - the official statement

http://forum.flightstore.co.uk/post/horizon-simulations-volumes-1-10-and-prepar3d-6646467

Not good news and I'm surprised more people aren't taking this stance.

 

[redline]

Using Horizon's VFR scenery in Prepar3d - the official statement

http://forum.flightstore.co.uk/post/horizon-simulations-volumes-1-10-and-prepar3d-6646467

Not good news and I'm surprised more people aren't taking this stance.

I believe Paul works with clients/contracts, other than the home/FSX market, so I guess it puts him a a difficult position.

I did try Vol8 in v2 and found it suffered from very bad blurries, so I'm not sure it likes photoscenery anyway. Landclass terrain updates fine, even at high speed.

I'm not sure I can live with P3Dv2 any more, and may get a refund.. there are just too many things I don't like, and I do want to use my Horizon scenery, so that is another nail in the coffin.

One of the worst things is the terrain shadow system, which barely works, giving ugly shadows where they do appear, or flat lifeless, unlit terrain everywhere else... it looks great on buildings and trees, but that is it.

 

[ghutchison14078]

Patience lads...Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

[thingemajib]

After spending faaaar too much time I've finally got most my UK addons to play ball with P3D. Heres a few install notes as a heads up to anyone that has these addons:

Carenado Seneca II - Main Installer found P3D by itself and installed without a hitch. Patch installers defaulted to a non exsistant FSX directory.

REX - Installed to its own Directory. Requires a one off $5 fee to unlock P3D Compatability. Otherwise worked without a hitch.

UK2000 Xtreme airports - Installers found the P3d main directory themselves but didn't pick up on senery.cfg directory. They can be pointed towards the scenery.cfg through the advanced setup or just ignored and manually added to the scenery library after the install. Note, a couple of the installers crash if you select 'no' to the add scenery dialogue. Just click 'yes' regardless of how you're installing.

UK2000 VFR Airfields - Installers found the P3d main directory themselves but didn't pick up on senery.cfg directory. They cannot be changed like the Xtreme installers, you have to manually add to the scenery library. Note - If you activate certain airfields from Vol1 (both version 1 and 2), they will corrupt autogen tree textures. I gave up trying to pinpoint the exact culprits but I think I narrowed it down to 4-5 of them. Ended up disabling Vol1 out of frustration. Edit - seems to be a P3D lack of VRAM issue: http://www.uk2000scenery.org/forum/index.php?topic=7604.msg52565#new

Aerosoft VFR London X - Wouldn't install without seeing an FSX.exe (doesnt matter what is actually is as long as its named FSX). I would reccomend putting the exe in its own directory - putting it in the P3D directory caused it to install into the GenX folders for some strange reason...

Horizon GenX - Installed to its own directory. Didn't pick up on scenery.cfg directory. V3 patch installers complained about lack of FSX but installed regardless. Has to be manually added to scenery library. All 45 enteries (yay...). Given that Horizon have announced they arent supporting P3D I'll upload a bat file I use for automatically installing freeware later.

Earth Simulations Treescapes - Installed into GenX directory without a hitch.

FSX Power Project - Doesn't come with installer. Manual install worked without a hitch.

UK ANO/Mills/Refineries - Doesn't come with installer. Manual install worked without a hitch.

I also made a 15 min video of a hop from London City to Heathrow. Whilst it isn't buttery 60FPS smooth I am surprised to see it hold fairly steady at 15FPS and even get into the 20s on approach to Heathrow. It does struggle a bit with blurry photoscenery in places so I might try and move it to my SSD and try again at some point. In FSX I would be lucky to get above 5FPS anywhere along that route. However I want to try a similar thing with the Airbus X once Aerosoft fix it - the Seneca was the most complex aircraft I had that worked without too much hassle. Also I still havent got round to fiddling with the AI yet which will probably make an impact:

Note - the video is more to demonstrate the stable FPS more than all the pretty sights, hence some fairly rapid and jerky panning. Also I'm still battling FSUPIC to get the controls and axis set up properly, hence the borderline hyperactive Y-axis! Final excuse - My internets rubbish so theres a hefty bit of compression in there as well...