What I learned in class today.

Prepar3D - Lockheed Martin has taken the FSX platform into a new level aimed at the professional.

Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Dec 21, 2014 12:32 pm

The Nvidia cards are said to be MUCH better than the AMD video cards, and I do believe that in many cases that's true. Except for the clouds.

And that's one of the interesting things about the AMD Radeon R9 280X. No matter what my cloud settings are, they make no difference in the FPS.

This is what I normally have for "cloud" settings.

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Turning off the settings above, and turning off all clouds have made no FPS changes.

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Even when P3d V2.3 came out, and everyone was talking about the heavy hit that FPS were taking, I saw only a slight FPS hit.


You fully answered my question

That was purely accidental. :lol:

I think that I'm using "standard" FSX/P3D clouds, but I don't think that those clouds look the same anymore.
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby davido53 » Sun Feb 01, 2015 12:45 pm

I took the float Beaver out of FSX and into P3D and it looks awesome, everything looks great.

I had to update my graphics card to a DX11 compatible card and P3D makes the planes look absolutely stunning. The shadows and light playing against the cockpit panel really adds a great deal to the immersion.

P3D, for me, leaves a lot of stuff from FSX out, which is a shame, but I'm enjoying P3D quite a bit.
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby Daube » Tue Feb 03, 2015 8:13 am

For the users of NVidia cards, regarding the FS hit caused by clouds and smoke (for example the smoke emitted by the tires when you taxi on a wet surface), you might want to try the following actions:
- choose cloud (cumulus) textures with 512x512 resolution
- in the NVidia Control Panel (or in NVidia Inspector), set the texture filtering to "Performance"
- ensure that any settings about "transparency AntiAliasing" is disabled
- limit the cloud draw distance to half (80 miles).

These gave pretty good results for me, with P3D v2.4.
Also, I recently changed my video card, an old GTX 480, to a newer model: the GTX 970. Despite the additional power, the elements listed above still apply.
The good thing is that I can now activate most of the "shadow" options, especially the vegetation cast+receive. This changes a lot the rendering of trees in the sim. In a "green" region like OrbX PNW, it is really pleasant :)
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sat Feb 07, 2015 3:10 pm

. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .First of all.

Image


SECOND - DO NOT download a backup of Prepared V2.4 until I have finished downloading mine.

There's no need to cause panic now, is there.



By that time, that you should have read THIS posting on the Prepar3d Forum through a time or two, watched all of the videos of the "new" Prepar3d V2.5, and I should have archived my backup copy.

THEN! if you don't have a copy safely tucked away, you can download a backup copy too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_NMheaJ1g[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88iLRHs1_fk[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6JtF-OdzEI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tDr0CgHFkg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyJnaFgM2Lw[/youtube]
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sat Feb 07, 2015 4:09 pm

Just a comment about downloading P3d from the LM site.

I have no idea how many millions of people will be trying to download V2.5 at the same time, but it often seems to cause problems.

And not just because the transfers are getting bogged down.


People will download the files. Your computer will think that the file is complete. You'll spend hours trying to install P3d, and it'll keep on crashing.

In frustration, you'll spend even more hours downloading & trying to install the software.

You'll start banging on your keyboard and shouting four letter words at the LM Prepar3d team.

You'll go to bed exhausted. Hoping that they'll fix their problem in the next day or two.



Want a better solution?

Well, I can't make it download faster. OR make the software any better.

But I might be able to show you how to determine if your download is any good.


Download HashTab


When you go to the LM download site you'll see this, it's called a "hash tag".
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HashTab will add a tab to the properties box (what you get when you right click on a file of any kind).

Compare this hash tag with the hash tag on the LM site. If they don't match up, then the download is no good.

Image


Hope that it'll save you some frustration. :D
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Get the most out of your controls - SPAD.neXt

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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sat Mar 28, 2015 8:32 pm

FUN with Contact Cleaner! :D

Or to put it another way -

NO FUN if you don't have contact cleaner. :cry:


What it is -Well, it does pretty much what it sound like it does, it cleans contacts. Electrical contacts, in this case.

Why you need it -Well... YOU may not need it, but I do. Or I should say that I did.

As some may know, I bought a GPS from DesktopAviator.

Image

It used to work extremely well. Until last November, that is.

I'd tried cleaning it with a contact cleaner back then, but no go.


I decided to try cleaning it one more time, but with a different cleaner.

YAY! :dance:

This time it worked!

All of the buttons are working perfectly and the dual encoder is up to 80%.

That 80% makes it useable though. It just misses a couple of clicks when I turn it, then it picks up and works fine.

I'll keep trying to get a little more contact cleaner in there to get that last 20%.


The cleaner that worked was CRC 05101 QD Electronic Cleaner.

I bought mine in an auto parts section of WalMart.

Another place to use it would be on earphone jacks that are "scratchy". The same goes for radio knobs that causes bad noises when you turn them.

Basically in any sensitive electrical connector, or as I found it in the auto parts section - use it any where two thingies plug together.
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Get the most out of your controls - SPAD.neXt

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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby gregj » Sat Mar 28, 2015 10:57 pm

Man - you sure type in CAPS a lot and emphasize in red too as if that will get your point across....I hate to say it to you in this way; but, you are tending to rant. Moreover, you are backing a dead horse...FSX is dead....your complaints, some of which may have merit are being sorted out by the hardworking good folks over at Lockheed Martin, and ORBX as well as many other developers. The good folks over at MS? Well they pulled down their pants and pooped on the backing of their FSX product.... so keep on riding that dead horse - see where it gets you. P3D is the future, because it has a huge support base - very talented developers and incorporation of features never thought of by MS. The people/object flow is a great feature of this...b/c in the real world. grass moves on the sides of runways, deer occasionally cross, people move around...the static features are so, well ....from the eighties.....
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Mar 29, 2015 12:59 am

gregj wrote:Man - you sure type in CAPS a lot and emphasize in red too as if that will get your point across....I hate to say it to you in this way; but, you are tending to rant. Moreover, you are backing a dead horse...FSX is dead....your complaints, some of which may have merit are being sorted out by the hardworking good folks over at Lockheed Martin, and ORBX as well as many other developers. The good folks over at MS? Well they pulled down their pants and pooped on the backing of their FSX product.... so keep on riding that dead horse - see where it gets you. P3D is the future, because it has a huge support base - very talented developers and incorporation of features never thought of by MS. The people/object flow is a great feature of this...b/c in the real world. grass moves on the sides of runways, deer occasionally cross, people move around...the static features are so, well ....from the eighties.....

"Man - you sure type in CAPS a lot and emphasize in red too as if that will get your point across...."
Caps, color, excessive line spaces. Just a way to make my posts look a bit different.

This is an electronic medium. There's no need for monolithic blocks of text as if we needed to conserve paper.



"I hate to say it to you in this way; but, you are tending to rant."

You've pretty much nailed that one. "What I learned in class today" was never intended to be a concise, single issue post.

It's a collection of posts about what I learn, or what pops into my mind regarding Prepar3d, and sometimes the relationships between, P3d & FSX.

At times all I do is post a comment about something that I, personally, find interesting.

At other times I try to offer up bits and pieces that may be of interest to those who are somewhat interested in Prepar3d, but haven't made up their minds about it yet.



"Moreover, you are backing a dead horse...FSX is dead....your complaints, some of which may have merit are being sorted out by the hardworking good folks over at Lockheed Martin, and ORBX as well as many other developers." ???

UMmmm.....

You did notice that "What I learned in class today" is posted in the Prepar3d section, didn't you?

You must have missed the fact that, overall, "What I learned in class today" is promoting Prepar3d?



" Moreover, you are backing a dead horse.... The good folks over at MS? Well they pulled down their pants and pooped on the backing of their FSX product.... so keep on riding that dead horse - see where it gets you. P3D is the future, ...."

Almost a year ago, on April 9th, 2014, in this post, I said:
OldAirmail wrote:What did I learn in class today???

That the newest version is a winner.

I will keep FSX on the computer "just in case". But clearly, Prepar3d V2.2, has enough improvements in it to make it MY flight simulator of choice.

....




Don't feel too bad about it. Most people never read all of the posts in a long thread anyway, so this type of misunderstanding is pretty common.
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby gregj » Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:19 am

I won't start a post war with you if you feel all your points are valid....I will say that in my own opinion it was pretty clear from the start who the winner was going to be. I only have fsx on for acceleration.... keep doing your research.
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:28 am

I'm glad that there'll be no post war, it would have to be one sided, because I agree with you.

If in doubt, look at my signature.

I simply have no idea where in the world you could have gotten the wrong impression. But your free to do so.
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Get the most out of your controls - SPAD.neXt

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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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Re: What I learned in class today.

Postby OldAirmail » Sat Aug 22, 2015 8:58 am

Here's an interesting post by Beau Hollis of Lockheed Martin.

Re: Multi-Channel (one channel per display)

For each Prepar3D window, the application determines which monitor the window is on and which GPU that monitor is driven by. The resource copies and rendering commands needed for that view are only sent to that GPU. You can actually drive more than one monitor per GPU if need be. We have some customers driving 10+ displays from a single computer.


Amazing! :D

I knew that my multi-monitor/multiple video card setup was working better in Prepar3d than in FSX. Now I know why.
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. . . . . .Any time, any plane, any weather.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Prepar3d V4
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