I picked up on a discussion elsewhere about MS abandoning Simmers etc and where to now and guess what?

Lockheed Martin (Yes the aircraft manufacturer) has taken over and I think now owns the rights to FSX. The program is now called PREPAR3D and is fully compatible with FSX which it replaces having by the look of it upgraded lots of bits including the internal menus look and feel.

So there is life after FSX and it will continue but in completely different ways and ones that will focus in my humble opinion on aviation as opposed to being merely a game and a software sideshow where it ended up at MS.

The news gets better , you can add in or add on all FSX SP2 compatible models, scenery and other sort  of addons, and they feature the Captain Sim C130 on their web pages as an example of a a high quality model being used in PREPAR3D. Also in partnership with Lockheed are ORBX, FTX and REX who make all the good stuff for scenery and weather etc. It seems the ACES team is not dead either and are now working in partnership with Lockheed.

It seems they have a number of nifty tools to let you add in a lot of stuff, scenery add ons, place objects etc and have upgraded the whole thing to let you do stuff and make what was FSX a lot more flexible and user friendly. They also claim to have upgraded the world scenery to current standards and improved many other things that were left hanging by MS when they shut it down.  

This is the most exciting news for flight simmers not only because it finally frees us up from MS clutches but alas it is only offered to Windows OS and will not be ported across to Linux or Mac systems. The offer full access to SDK's and developer tools to allow us to do the sort of stuff that simmers have always done make a diverse and rich environment.

Go check it out at: http://www.prepar3d.com

I will get my copy at the end of the week and starting adding in all my favourite CAPT SIM stuff plus lots of other bits and pieces. As I see it the future for simming is assured and can only get better now.

MarkOz - What are your thoughts and experience of P3D?

On first inspection it appears they have tidied up a lot of stuff and look like they are encouraging addons and development but their primary focus at the moment is the aerospace training industry which is understandable given it is after all Lockheed Martin.

Given that MS has now effectively bowed out of the Flight Sim business (Lots of people have trouble even getting recent purchases activated and are told by MS for instance it is no longer supported - buzz off) we are reliant on P3D for the future. For other simmers  I guess I should explain what I mean.

First, FSX is pretty good and WIN 7 is good for at least another few years and P3D (FSX) can only getter better with software and hardware development over time but and it is always in the back of my mind, the way MS have a habit of resdesigning their operating system virtually tri-annually it is not going to be long before FSX as it currently stands became non compatible with the latest operating system from MS (Seen it happen with dozens of really good programs now quaintly refered to as legacy programs - Remember Lotus?) So if they don't support the current FSX after only a few short years we are all in strife in a few years time. I guess my thinking is with Lockheed using the commercial training and aviation world as a primary market base then providing it is profitable and taken up (which it will be as my experience in the industry was that simulation and computerised aircraft and systems was where it is all going from here -hence no real general aviation industry any more). I did military flight training as a pre-retirement gig and we used MS 2004 plus other computer training systems extensively (plus real time flying) and even more was planned for the future. This was where SubLogic originally was aiming so the wheel has turned full circle.

I think the big barrier for recreational simmers, like myself, its fun and a hobby now, is the price tag for licenses which at the moment are calculated per month. I have written to them to see if a recreational license for the simmers out there is to be offered or could be offered and we shall see what they have to say.

I noted they offered a work around program to help you install FSX stuff that required the FSX directory structure and was built into the automated install script programs and the access to development tools etc is refreshing from a large congolmerate business.

Anyway as I see it is P3D or nothing from here on, just need to get them to offer it at a reasonable price and on a CD/DVD for folks like me who have internet and download limit issues.

£The next major update of prepar3d has already happened, we are on v1.4, some independent tests showed it was "up to" 85% faster than fsx ( Please remember performance is down to the hardware you have so i would expect less on older machines ) , I run all the CS aircraft i own on p3d 1.4 now.

Im over the moon with the performance i get from p3d at the moment, both ground texture and fps performance are great

For the fist time i can sit at Ants YBBN with Orbx AUS scenery with me CS737-200 on external view watching the AI do its thing with a very nice locked 30fps

Click the image to make it bigger

gandy wrote on Aug 30^th, 2012 at 8:02am:
I Didn't even know that 1.4 was out yet. Thanks for that.
I downloaded it last night and have just finished installing it this afternoon and so I'm doing a flight in the Mooney Bravo out of Norfolk Intl. Looks like a nice improvement over v1.3 so far. That new Mooney Acclaim looks very nice too.

MarkOZ interesting coincidence, I was inbound to Norfolk Island and then went on to Auckland in the 737-200 last night (in FSX of course).

Hi, Mark

I have no idea what is P3D function  . How do you obtain and how to install it?

What doest it do?

Ahmet

Here's a fps comparison video from an Avsim guy. Perhaps watch it bigger on YT to really see the fps counter. It pretty much sums up of what I saw in P3D so far, but maybe there's more about it.  

Quote:


Quote:

Got a link for that? If that's the case, it would be nice of course. But why doesn't the video show it for example?


The T-6/A Texan II they've included in P3D is freeware for FSX.

You can leave FSX as it is, Ahmet. You may need to install some stuff again in P3D, other things can be copied over. The folks running it can surely help with that step.

I'd keep FSX as a backup, even if you like P3D. Some stuff doesn't run in P3D and most copy over thingies aren't supported. So whenever there is something not working, you have to ask yourself if the product is faulty or if the other sim causes the problem. With running FSX, you can test that.

Be aware that some payware devs don't support P3D, so support threads with that sim may not last that long or just won't receive an answer. Some seem to get very upset on licensing issues.

Let us know how P3D works out for you. I wasn't impressed so far and reinstalling things or the sim itself (with every update) is not what I'm looking for. If it had turned out to be much faster, that statement would look different of course.
If version 1.4 generally unlocked it, let us know. The video above doesn't look like it did with the same settings. But maybe there's a trick somewhere.