P3D

[jp1]

I'm thinking about moving from FSX to P3D to see if it's any better.
I would be grateful if anyone knows if FSX addons will work in P3D version 3.5 and .if there would be an improvement in performance.
I have searched around regarding this, but so far found nothing relevant to my dilemma
Very grateful if someone has this information.
jp1 

[Psybear]

LM just came out with P3Dv4.5 today. When was the last release of FSX? You can't expect all software written for a program that is 12 years old to work, though some will.
If you move (which you should) why would you think of 3.5? Most everything being done now is for version 4+.
You won't regret it...assuming your hardware/OS is up to snuff, which you can determine from the P3D website. You won't have to rebuy FSDT airports as the license is good for both.

Cheers,
C

[jp1]

Thanks for your reply, Psybear.
My main consideration is if I installed P3D v3 would the sim performance be improved?
My system is 64bit (win 10). i.e. even if P3D v3 was provided for a 32bit system, would it stop the out-of-memory
that FSX suffers from? (Yes I know about the remedies to reduce this, but I need better performance with the
max number of  FSX addons).
I wonder if anyone has experience of this, including you, Psybear
and it would be great if I could see epecifics on this. Anyways, much obliged for your help.
jp1

[bradl]

Thanks for your reply, Psybear.
My main consideration is if I installed P3D v3 would the sim performance be improved?
My system is 64bit (win 10). i.e. even if P3D v3 was provided for a 32bit system, would it stop the out-of-memory
that FSX suffers from? (Yes I know about the remedies to reduce this, but I need better performance with the
max number of  FSX addons).
I wonder if anyone has experience of this, including you, Psybear
and it would be great if I could see epecifics on this. Anyways, much obliged for your help.
jp1

To answer your main question, yes it will stop some of the OOM issues that FSX has, but it won't stop FSX itself from having those issues. To my knowledge, FSX is still a 32bit application, so it will still be susceptible to OOM issues once FSX itself reaches that limit. P3D, and especially P3D v4.4 and newer won't have that issue because they are native 64bit applications. Also, You will find out the hard way that a lot of the newer sceneries, especially from FSDT, are targeted for P3D v4 and newer, so even with jumping to P3D v3, you won't get past the installer because it will tell you that that version of P3D is incompatible.

So the question becomes: are your particular addons 64bit capable? If so, I would work on migrating those to 64bit and make the jump to P3D v4.5 while keeping FSX on your machine. You can easily have both, but to keep thigns separate, I would not point both sims at the same Addon folders. Keep them separate.

BL.

[jp1]

thanks. bradl,
My thinking was that my 64 bit addons would work well in P3D 3 or P3D 4.
There are probably more addons available for version 3 than version 4 due to addon development
taking more time than P3D updates.
I hope that makes sense. Maybe someone who has moved from 3 to 4 could explain how it affected their
number of  compatable addons reducing or staying the same after moving. Then I could purchase one or the other
with more confidence.
Grateful for all replies.
jp1

[bradl]

thanks. bradl,
My thinking was that my 64 bit addons would work well in P3D 3 or P3D 4.
There are probably more addons available for version 3 than version 4 due to addon development
taking more time than P3D updates.
I hope that makes sense. Maybe someone who has moved from 3 to 4 could explain how it affected their
number of  compatable addons reducing or staying the same after moving. Then I could purchase one or the other
with more confidence.
Grateful for all replies.
jp1

I can't really speak for any other developers, but I do know (because I fell victim to it) that the more recent FSDT sceneries do a version check for what version of P3D you are using. For example, the version of KLAS I had would install with P3Dv3, and that worked fine. However, CYVR IIRC requires P3Dv4, so I bit the bullet and grabbed that.

Now with that said, I hadn't made any real changes to the setup I had, which was on P3Dv4.1. In that time, a lot of changes happened at KLAS (new terminal, new ATC tower, runways and taxiways renumbered), so an update came out for that. In grabbing that, I saw that none of the terminals showed up. That was because for the additional functionality, GSX Level 2 was needed, and that required P3Dv4.4. That thankfully is a free update to those who purchased P3Dv4, so I simply upgraded to that, re-ran the installers for those sceneries, imported in the registration keys, and all was good. I'll have to do the same again, now that v4.5 is out.

the FSDT sceneries are backwards compatible so you shouldn't have any problem with that, regardless of 32 or 64bit sceneries. As long as the sim is 64bit, you'll be fine.

BL.

[jp1]

Thanks, bradl.
Just one more question.
What about aircraft addons (mainly freeware - some bought)?
Did you have the same issues with these?
Hopefully I'll soon be able to make up my mind!
Sorry to bother you again, but many thanks.
jp1

[bradl]

Thanks, bradl.
Just one more question.
What about aircraft addons (mainly freeware - some bought)?
Did you have the same issues with these?
Hopefully I'll soon be able to make up my mind!
Sorry to bother you again, but many thanks.
jp1

No problems that I have, but those are also outside the scope of anything FSDT does. However, if using P3Dv4, the developers of those addons should be more than aware that the sim is purely 64bit. But again, the memory issue was a limit of the sim, not the sceneries added onto the sim. I use a lot of freeware ones as well and they work okay for me, depending on the ones you use, YMMV, but they shouldn't have a problem.

And seeing that FSX is basically DOA, your best bet is to go to P3Dv4.5 or switch everything over to X-Plane. But if you're heavily and monetarily invested in any MSFS-type sceneries, P3Dv4.5 is your best option.

BL.

[w6kd]

My thinking was that my 64 bit addons would work well in P3D 3 or P3D 4.
There are probably more addons available for version 3 than version 4 due to addon development
taking more time than P3D updates.
I hope that makes sense. Maybe someone who has moved from 3 to 4 could explain how it affected their
number of  compatable addons reducing or staying the same after moving. Then I could purchase one or the other
with more confidence.

If you don't already have a bunch of p3D v3-specific add-ons, I'd strongly recommend moving straight from FSX to v4.  

P3Dv3 is a 32-bit program that, like FSX, is constrained to run in a practically restrictive 4GB virtual address space.  It is marginally less susceptible to OOM errors than FSX because it uses DirectX11, which eliminates the memory load associated with the user-area video data required by DX9 applications like FSX.  P3Dv4 is a 64-bit program that is not constrained by any currently practical limit on VAS (theoretical limit is 16 exabytes, and current OS implementations use 48 of the possible 64 bits for a max of 128TB).  Because of this, the OOM , and all the programming gyrations and constraints needed to limit memory usage to make the sim and its add-ons fit into 4GB of VAS are history in P3Dv4.

Not sure I understand what you refer to as your "64-bit" add-ons.  Sceneries, unless they have active program elements, are just data, and not "32-bit" or "64-bit" per se.  Most FSX scenery that has issues in P3D is due to changes in the format of the data, and that is not a 32 or 64-bit platform issue.  Most of the FSX sceneries that I've gotten got to work in v3 also work in v4.  Some needed modification, and there are many that were updated for free or a small upgrade fee from the FSX version.  Most aircraft need a specifically-compiled version to work in one version of P3D or the other...it makes no sense to me to pay now to upgrade or repurchase an aircraft for the discontinued 32-bit platform.

Moving to v3 may preserve a very few add-ons already on-hand, but at the expense of foregoing use of many of the add-ons being developed now and going forward.  The 32-bit platforms (FSX and v3) are largely being abandoned now, with more and more new add-ons being developed only for v4.x.  

Regards

Bob Scott

[virtuali]

I second the suggestion of staying away from P3D V3, and go directly to V4. V3 still being a 32 bit program, but with more features like dynamic shadows, realtime reflection, the Avatar mode, will be at risk from OOM even more than FSX ever was.

Yes, with P3D V3 you might still be able to install some older aircraft dependent on 32 .DLL gauges, but there are less and less of these out there, and most of the developers have 64 bit versions of their products. If you really have something you like that doesn't have any chance to be updated to 64 bit, like the old PMDG MD-11 for example, it would be way more sensible to keep FSX installed ONLY to run those legacy products, and go to P3D4 for everything else.

[jp1]

Thanks for your input, guys.
Some of that technical stuff is way above my head, but you have made my mind up
and I will go for P3D 4.5
Many thanks for your help.
jp1