What I learned in class today.

[Daube]

By default, the FPS in P3D 2.3 is not so much higher than in P3D 2.2.
The real differences appear once you start activating some effects, or some serious weather.
In P3D 2.2, if I activate the cloud shadows, the FPS impact is quite important.
In P3D 2.3, the cloud shadows have almost no impact. I could activate it with 20 or 30 kms visibility distance (I never remember), and the FPS hit is not noticable. Even when I choose "heavy storm" theme. That's quite nice. In the 2.2, I had deactivated that option because the performance hit was too high. In 2.3 I can finally fully enjoy it.
Same goes for some other shadows, if I understood correctly.

Concerning the FSX users, I see the situation is more or less the same as when we transited from FS9 to FSX.
The difference here is that P3D is much more stable than FSX, while FSX was much less stable than FS9.
As a consequence, the transition from FSX to P3D is much easier than what it was from FS9 to FSX. And not just for the stability, but for the performance as well.

[Fozzer]

It took me AGES to convert from FS 2002 to FS 2004.... ...

...and AGES to convert from FS 2004 to FSX... ...

...and I suspect it will take me AGES to convert from FSX to P3D.... ...!

"Conversion" is a very slow process for me!... ... ...!

Paul... ...!

...'Want' versus 'Need'.... ... ....!

[Daube]

Of course Fozzer.
However, from the hardware point of view, the transition from FSX to P3D will be way easier than what it was from FS9 to P3D.
I mean, when FSX appeared, most FS9 users had computer that could run FS9 wmoothly... and these computers could not run FSX smoothly at all.
With P3D 2.x, the situation is almost inverted: the computers that are running FSX ok, are running P3D even better, provided they have a serious video card (not low-end).

My brother has just transited from FS9 to P3D directly. He has been using FS9 with a lot of addons (including paywares) for a long time, but then he stopped simming for several years. Recently, he felt the need for real simulation again, so he was thinking about FSX. In the recent past he could test FSX on my computer, with addons like the Accusim planes or the excellent photosceneries with autogen, or OrbX sceneries.... so going back to FS9 was totally excluded. He was thinking about buying FSX but I told him to avoid it and choose P3D instead. Since the past weekend, he is now enjoying his smooth flights and he is downloading tons of new addons (he's starting with freeware for the moment), just to get comfortable with the new quality standards. Then, depending on his needs, I will recommend him some payware addons.

Now, since he uses P3D, he didn't have any problems of stability or performance. Sure, his FPS are not so high, because his video card is a bit low end (NVidia GTX650). But the sim is smooth anyways. I'm glad we didn't have to go through all the potential FSX problems, because these would have discouraged him quite fast.

[Fozzer]

..well... ...as for SMOOTHNESS.... ....

I'm as happy as a Pig in Pig-Poo, with my gaming machine running FSX, locked at 25 FPS, with all my sliders slid flat-out!..... ...
..so no problems on that score!.... ...!

.....and the reason why I haven't found it necessary/essential to consider swapping over to P3D at the moment.... ...!

Everything seems to work fine in my FSX, I've got used to it, and as it hasn't broken so far, I cant find a good enough reason to fix it with P3D... ... ...!

Paul...sometimes an old stick-in-the-mud!... ...!

[OldAirmail]

OOOOPPPPSS

Last week I downloaded & installed the FTXG Vector 1.20 update.

I was updating a bunch of stuff anyway. This was just one of many.


But it wasn't until tonight that I realized, FTXG Vector 1.20 was just put out the day that I had downloaded it, last Thursday the 28.

OOPS.

Well, now you know too.

Any big improvements? None that I can detect in the areas that I fly.



My opinion (for what it's worth) goes like this;

FTXG Vector 1.0 - Skip it. It made more problems than it was worth. I ended up deleting it for a couple of months.

FTXG Vector 1.10 - VERY VERY good. More than worth the money.

FTXG Vector 1.15 - Ho-hum I did notice a few small improvements, but in all it was skippable.

FTXG Vector 1.20 - So far I've seen no difference in my travels.



So. Should you get FTXG Vector 1.20 ABSOLUTLY. If you takeoff & land, if you fly along the coasts, or over lakes and rivers, or if you ever fly at an altitude below 35,000 feet then you'll really like it.

It's much better than what you'll think it is, just by looking at the pictures.

If you already have FTXG Vector 1.1 or 1.15, the 1.20 version can wait. But, sooner or later, you will need some version above 1.20.

[OldAirmail]

Prepar3d V2.4 has been working so well that there's been nothing to post here.

Or so I thought.


Remember some time back I was complaining that P3d was too dark?

Some said that that the HDR Lighting was great. I unchecked it. Much better IMHO.


Well, today I reinstalled FSX to check on something, and guess what?

Even with the HDR switched off, FSX is not only brighter BUT CLEARER!

When I noticed that I started trying to increase the quality/clarity of P3d - No luck.


So here are the EXACT same aircraft instruments, in the exact same aircraft.


I'll let the picture speak for itself.

[CHUCK79]

I noticed this straight away....FSX is much crisper. I believe it has something to do with P3D not allowing Nvidea inspector to override it's AA settings.

[Daube]

There are several things in fact.
The most important one is the FXAA. That thing will blur your picture quite a lot. I have deactivated it a while ago, and kept only the MSAA.

Did you try to use the DSR technique to improve your AntiAliasing ? It makes the image crisper too.

Finally, there has been some discussions here and there about some image postprocessing that is done both in FSX and P3D. There is a kind of blur that is applied in our sims, and this was done to improve the smoothness of the picture on old monitors with low resolutions. Nowadays, this postprocessing is totally useless. Somebody has altered some shader files and uploaded them, with the official permission of Lockheed Martin. The image in the sim is more crisp after the shaders are regenerated. I'll try to post a link to that.

[CHUCK79]

There are several things in fact.
The most important one is the FXAA. That thing will blur your picture quite a lot. I have deactivated it a while ago, and kept only the MSAA.

Did you try to use the DSR technique to improve your AntiAliasing ? It makes the image crisper too.

Finally, there has been some discussions here and there about some image postprocessing that is done both in FSX and P3D. There is a kind of blur that is applied in our sims, and this was done to improve the smoothness of the picture on old monitors with low resolutions. Nowadays, this postprocessing is totally useless. Somebody has altered some shader files and uploaded them, with the official permission of Lockheed Martin. The image in the sim is more crisp after the shaders are regenerated. I'll try to post a link to that.

Thanks, Stephane! I've gotten my P3D to look acceptable to me by disabling the FXAA and using SweetFX to help out, but I am always lookin' to improve! I'll give the DSR method a shot also and see what I get.

[OldAirmail]

Thanks, Daube.

I'll check it out this weekend.

I normally have two 9 inch monitors set up for instruments.

Those onscreen in the cockpit are too hard for me to read from where I sit.

So this was the first time that I ever tried to read the cockpit instruments.

Also, I get very fixed on the actual flight and don't really notice some of the things that bother others.

On the other hand, some of the things that I like, such as heavy cloud cover or flying at night, would drive others mad.

[OldAirmail]

Prepar3D v2.4 cloud problems.

While some have a problem with the clouds doing odd things, such the clouds being too dark or going vertical, I've had none of the many problems that you read about on the P3d sites.

So LM has come out with a "fix". I use the quotation marks because LM is saying things like "It should resolve the..."


If you want to give it a try you can get it here - FIX FOR CLOUD ISSUES IN 2.4.


Anyway, here are the Before & After pictures. Personally, I prefer the darker (new) clouds.

BEFORE


AFTER


You may want to drag & drop the two pictures to your desktop and flip between the two.

And if you save the old Cloud.fx file the you can switch back if you need to.

[OldAirmail]

Looking at these two pictures again I can see that it would be hard to tell the difference between one and the other.

So here is a split picture. Left is the new half, and right is the old half.

[Daube]

Thanks for that comparison picture

One question, a bit off-topic: are you still using the default clouds ?

[OldAirmail]

That's a bit hard to tell.

That cloud "patch" has move the "standard" up a very small notch. But it will probably become standard in the next P3d version.


Depending on what, and where, I'm flying I have several options that I'll choose from.

In a new location I'll usually choose the "standard" puff ball clouds, or even "no clouds".

Often I'll choose "winter", rain, or snow for a change of pace.

For a fuller emersion, I'll use OpusFSI to plug in real time weather.



Although OpusFSX & OpusFSI don't provide cloud textures (it uses whatever you have in your flight sim) it has upped the weather in two ways.

1) OpusFSI (but not OpusFSX) will make interpretations based on the airport METAR reports in, and around, your location.

So if your location has type A & B weather conditions, and A+B conditions are usually associated with type X conditions, then type X will be injected into your simulation.

2) Using it's interpretations of the weather it'll, usually put clouds at multiple heights providing a layered effect. So far I haven't seen this carried too far, so they must be doing something right.

The end result is a cloudy day that'll look pretty much that way that the real sky looks if you go out side and look up.

So the short answer to your question is that the "standard" clouds are being used, but they aren't going to look the same



It used to be said that REX had the best cloud textures around.

But with the improvements between the latest version of P3d & OpusFSI I'm no longer using REX.



To further muddy things up, the pictures in the post used these settings -



(And who knows what Orbx Weather 5 uses for clouds.)




As opposed to the "standard" FSX/P3d "Gray and Rainy".



(And don't forget that THIS picture is AFTER I've applied the P3d patch.)




As I said in the beginning - "That's a bit hard to tell."

[Daube]

You fully answered my question
I was asking if you were still using the default cloud textures.
The default textures (FSX or P3D, they are the same) are not looking so good, no matter what weather program/theme you use. And they are usually quite heavy on the FPS.
I found that alternative textures, like the HDEv2 pack, in lower resolution (512x512 cumulus), look much better and are lighter on the FPS.
You might want to give that a go, just for the cumulus textures (DO NOT INSTALL THE SKY TEXTURES, they are incompatible). Just make a backup copy of the original ones, just in case.