P3D V3 Out VERY Soon

[NZ255]

Hey Rob, do you have to have a dev licence to develop for it?

No, you don't need a license, but it does give you the SDK. You could use the FSX SDK which his 98% compatible with Prepar3D 2.x.

No, anyone can get the SDK for free http://www.prepar3d.com/support/sdk/
That's why I'm confused with the dev licence.

[toprob]

You are right about that. Just a couple of things which differentiate the developer license:

You can install on two machines with a single license;
You don't need to pay US$200 + GST upfront:)

[NZ255]

You can install on two machines with a single license;
You don't need to pay US$200 + GST upfront:)

True

This looks like a very windy day. Apparently (I'm not sure if it's from a beta tester or not), SpeedTrees replace all trees...? I assume they have LOD to revert to the billboard style at great distances. I would have thought they'd only be placed around the airport. We'll have to wait and see. Really helps on a windy day to see the trees moving though. We don't really have anything to gauge wind speed on at the moment (apart from the wind sock). CP - can you hear wind when in the cockpit?

Watch on youtube.com

edit:

From the Orbx forum..(JV)

There is no new Speedtree autogen in V3, the release adds support for the Speedtree SDK to allow developers to introduce new trees and grasses into scenery. It's far too early days at this stage for us to comment on how this will be implemented until we spend more time with the SDK.

If you're expecting trees and grasses swaying in the breeze worldwide, that isn't going to be the case.

LM has finally implemented Speedtree at my recommendation to them about two and a half years ago, it's something we've been wanting in a sim platform for a long time so we're pleased the support for is there now.

As to how we tackle any eventual upgrade to all our products to add Speedtree, that is a whole other story. You will likely see it introduced in newer projects, much like we introduced NatureFlow moving trees and grass from 1WA6 Fall City onwards, and then only selectively.

Finally, expect a FPS hit with Speedtree - you don't get millions of animated polygons in your FOV for free, that's dreaming

That's what I would have thought.

[Splitpin]

If i wanted to get into this P3D .... where do i start ? Do i have to get V3 , or is there a base model ?
and what sort of licence will i need ?

[NZ255]

If i wanted to get into this P3D .... where do i start ? Do i have to get V3 , or is there a base model ?
and what sort of licence will i need ?

V3 is the latest and greatest - it will be released 6am our time tomorrow.

I'd say you'd want to get v3 but perhaps hold off a few weeks as developers update installers to support v3.

There are 2, well 3 licences you can get.
Basically, if you're a student you can get the academic licence. Otherwise the professional licence. All fully refundable within (60?) days.
http://www.prepar3d.com/product-overvie ... omparison/

[toprob]

Marty, currently you can buy both 1.4 and 2.5 on the LM site, and I suspect that from tomorrow you'll be able to buy all three versions. Don't buy 1.4, for goodness sake!

However these are all very different, so you will need to choose one, and your best bet would be 2.5 or 3.0, depending on your hardware -- it seems that 3.0's requirements might be slightly heavier than 2.5, but I'd wait and see what this actually means.

Ideally, you'd want 3.0, as this is the only version being actively supported, so it might have the same sort of update schedule as 2.x has had in the past.

License-wise, this is tricky, I've managed to side-step the issue by getting the developer version, and I'll continue to do so. With 2.x, most users bought the academic version, but it may be that LM are tightening up on this now. I know that I pay GST on the developer version, so I assume that all the licenses are subject to GST, so that's a real big up-front cost for the 'proper' license -- US$200 + GST = approx NZ$360 -- ouch!!! That is waaaay outside the realms of possibility for me.

I'm not entirely sure that LM are going to worry about those with academic licenses, so I'm sure that a lot of people are going to stick with that.

Personally, I'm happy to try 3.0 for a month using the developer's license, alongside 2.5, with no moral or legal worries -- after all, I am a developer. But I would certainly recommend that for anyone who has yet to decide which way to go, a one-month developer's license is the ideal solution -- you just have to develop something in that month, or plan to develop something, or think about developing something, or just read the SDK and decide if developing is really for you. There is no exam, and nobody will come calling to ask you how you are getting on with your addon.

[cowpatz]

.............or how your study is going........

[Splitpin]

.............or how your study is going........

Slowly ... but Im sticking with it

[Splitpin]

Thanks for the input gents ..... i will reread it in the morning .

[Fozzer]

Well, I don't know.... ....

...as I read all the users daily posts of alarm and despondency regarding P3D in general, on other Forums...

Like many others, I have no problems whatsoever with my copy of FSX with all its bits and bobs.

It runs a treat, does all I want it to do, so I'm in no hurry to drop FSX and fork out more money for something else, and inherit a load of hassle to boot!

Me?.....I'm sticking with FSX...its the animal I know!.... ...!

I even run my trusty copy of FS 2004 and FS Navigator now and again.... ...!

Paul.... ...!

[Ian Warren]

Marty, like me you will need a new computer, be the easy answer ... no point spending money ... course you then have the issue off installing all you addons.

[Charl]

The lament of the flightsimmer, eh?
Ooh my computer won't run the latest edition of xxx I'll have to upgrade my yyy...

I believe P3D will emerge with a 64 bit offering quite soon, and that would be the first time I might be tempted to spend money on a powerhouse computer to run a flightsim, in a decade.

For now, it is all just Bandaid on Elastoplast, and all you students are being asked to pay for it???

[toprob]

Maybe you are right, Charl, but really in a lot of cases -- including here -- we get people making judgements which are not based on any real experience or actual facts. Sorting through these is a bit daunting, and sometimes I wish that there was a forum where that didn't happen:)

Of course members can say what they like, but it would help if they pointed out the basis for their post -- such as "I've never used Prepar3D, but I am an expert in all things sim, so I have the right to judge."

I'd forgotten the hilarity which ensues when a new sim comes out -- Avsim has become my favourite comedy site at the moment. Actually, I don't think I forgot, I think I just blanked it out of my memory...

Looking forward to a report from someone who has actually tried 3.0. I'd be downloading it now, but I'm getting by on a 40GB plan at the moment.

[cowpatz]

What's that saying?...only fools rush in
Unless wanting to go down the trial/refund option then just hang fire for a while until the dust settles until some quality objective reviews are available.
I am tempted with the developer option however to use the developer license, and to not be a developer, probably violates the license in a similar manner as to a non student using the academic version.

[AdrianPetford]

Looking forward to a report from someone who has actually tried 3.0. I'd be downloading it now, but I'm getting by on a 40GB plan at the moment.

I've only done two very brief test flights so far but my early impressions are:

Improved performance over 2.5. Hardly any microstutters even when flying the F-22 at top speed on my ancient 1.5Gb GPU and very smooth generally.

Different looking lighting, weather and water. Personally, I think it looks more realistic.

Much more professional looking interface, some logical reorganisation and extra settings added.

I can now run cloud shadows, which I had to disable before. No apparent performance hit even on my old card.

There are now external configuration files for autogen, gauges, texture and sound following on from fonts, effects and simobjects which were introduced in P3D 2.5. This now means you can install all of your third party content externally from the sim engine. I've been setting this up over the last few months and it takes time to do but is well worth it in the long run as you can install a P3D update and get back up and running with all your addons available simply by copying the .cfg files with the external paths back in. There is also a built in mechanism for updating the P3D client.

I haven't done much with settings yet (still testing under my old P3D 2.5 settings) and no addons installed, but I'm pleased on first impression.

[toprob]

Cheers, Ade, thanks for that.
What is your GPU?

[NZ255]

It's been 5.5 hours.... I'm going for it

Benefits of being a student (academic pricing) with some savings

[cowpatz]

Thanks for the initial heads up Ade.
Could the performance gains you describe be partly due to a new install with few, if any, add ons installed?
The folder structure does sound like a big improvement when it comes to installing newer P3D revisions. That is always painful.
Did you keep 2.5 as well?

[AdrianPetford]

Cheers, Ade, thanks for that.
What is your GPU?

It's only a GTX 580 (MSI TwinFrozr II) with 1.5Gb VRAM so not as good as your current card as I remember. Only just above the recommended minimum for P3D but it coped surprisingly well with 2.x and seems improved further with 3.0. I'll be upgrading to a 970 as soon as I can afford it.

[cowpatz]

I'm certainly buoyed by this post on AVSIM:

Quote//: I updated my 2.5 installation to the 3.0 installation (installed on a different computer, set up the required environment, replaced .exe and .dlls) successfully and everything except ASN which needs an update is working flawlessly as it did with 2.5.

My results are what i was expecting from a producer like LM:

- Much improved framerate, probably because of the shader optimization. It's even smoother than 2.5 and i get 60fps easily (with unlimited framerate and vsync + triple buffering) even with PMDG's T7 @ FlyTampa YSSY.
- The moving trees are stunning. I hope developers start using them, it's a whole new level of immersion where you can see them (not available everywhere).
- Where i used to start with 700-ish MB of free VAS i can now start with as much as 1.5 - 1.6GB. It's that much better. I can go out of the cockpit, in again, pan around like crazy and it will maintain 1.5GB.

I still have to find out more, i have a ton of airports to fly to the next few weeks.

It's a whole new sim. //End quote