Author Topic: Flight simulators.  (Read 2025 times)

bcm652

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Flight simulators.
« on: November 28, 2019, 04:25:23 am »
Is P3D4 a flight simulator that is equivalent to FSX. I checked their website and it seemed sort of vague to me. I'm a MFS  fan and have been using it for years. I need some free advice on this one...

virtuali

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Re: Flight simulators.
« Reply #1 on: November 28, 2019, 02:35:20 pm »
P3D4 is a simulator that is derived from FSX, but it has progressed a lot in the meantime. Some of the most important advancements over FSX are:

- It's a 64 bit simulator, so it will use all the memory you PC has. FSX it's a 32 bit application so, regardless how much memory you have, it will never use more than 4GB of RAM and, being a DirectX 9 application, the real number is even less, because in DirectX 9, some of the Video card memory is mapped in the 32 bit address space of the application using it, stealing away precious memory from the already small amount available to the sim. This makes FSX way more unstable and at risk of crashes due to Out Of Memory errors, especially when combining many add-ons, like complex airplanes, detailed airports, detailed surroundings, better textures, etc.

- The graphic engine now supports PBR ( Physical Based Rendering ) which allows more realistic objects, like airplanes and airports, to be made in a way their materials will look more real in the way they reflect the changing light conditions

- The graphic runs on DirectX 11, which means it will work better with newer Graphic Cards, which are way more optimized for DirectX 11 than DirectX 9, which is considered to be obsolete by now.

- The 3d engine supports more detailed objects. In FSX, a single part ( like a propeller, or a gear ) couldn't have more than 64K triangles or vertexes, so you had to break up objects in parts, which was time consuming and bad for performances. There's no such limit anymore in P3D4, so objects can be more detailed.

- The SDK is way more powerful, and allows developers to do more things with less effort, and sometimes even with better performances, since a proper P3D4 product won't use legacy rendering methods which dated back to FS8. Things which were hard to do in FSX, like conditional-based scenery ( seasonal objects, weather effect on scenery, etc. ), are now supported by attaching LUA scripts to scenery object.

- There's a new API for developers, the PDK, which runs at a lower level than Simconnect, and allows developers to do more, with less impact on performances. We used these features to do custom Mouse Handling, and Render To Textures, which allows a much easier customization of repaints in GSX, which can be added very easily in GSX now, while is FSX was ( and still is ) fairly difficult.

- There's an Avatar mode, which lets users explore the scenery on foot, in 1st or 3rd person view. This also means the human animation system is more advanced, and supports better animated characters.

- The overall scenery is sharper, since Landclass and Photoreal resolution is higher than FSX.

- P3D4 supports Virtual Reality out of the box.

There are many other smaller things, but these are the main ones.

bcm652

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Re: Flight simulators.
« Reply #2 on: November 28, 2019, 06:05:15 pm »
Thank you for the great information.
My next question is, P3D offers three licenses, Professional, Academic, Pro Plus. Which one of these would be best suited for the average week end warrior like me.
Thank you.

commpilot

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Re: Flight simulators.
« Reply #3 on: November 28, 2019, 07:49:29 pm »
Academic

Beat578

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Re: Flight simulators.
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2019, 12:28:44 pm »
If you waited for so long to switch, I could be good thing to wait a few month further with Flightsimulator 2020 in the pipeline, many addon developpers are on hold to see what is coming. You could heavily invest onto the wrong horse when starting to invest in a new plattform now...
Beat578