Planning to Migrate to P3D. I need your help.

[Lukemeister 6]

Hi everyone

I was playing FSX the other day and an hour into my flight it CTD'd. Annoying, anyway I have decided to bite the bullet and migrate over to P3D, understanding it is going to cost me quite a bit to do so. My plan is to save up an amount of money and buy most things in one go, so I can have a fully furnished game ready to go. I need your help with recommendations so I know how much I need to save.

 

I fly 99% low cost airline operations from Britain to Europe, so I was looking at the flightsimlabs A320X. Looking at the website it doesn't look to be 100% compatible. Would I be better going for the PMDG 737NGX?

 

My base will be Manchester, which is better in your opinion, Manchester X or Uk2000 Manchester Xtreme? Do you have any other recommendations for great European airport sceneries?

I am planning on upgrading my AS2016 from FSX to P3D. So that answers the weather question. What about traffic?

 

Thanks guys, it's a very broad subject but eventually I want a complete list of what I need to save up for (i'm not one to buy one thing at once, I enjoy my eye candy) so if you have ANY recommendations, hit me with them!

 

Thanks everybody.

[mutley 4,497]

Hi Luke,

 

I'm not a tube or VA pilot so probably not the best to comment, however I think the choice of aircraft depends on your allegiance(if any) to the manufacturer (Beoing v Airbus) etc. As far as the FSL320 goes it has been released for P3D so for the latest views take a look at their forums.

 

Regarding the Manchester  scenery, from what I have read the Aerosoft version is very buggy and the UK2000 version looks and performs better.There's been a few Mediterranean airports released recently and most are available by Aerosoft but Googling or going to the Prepar3D site here should give you some good links.

 

Joe

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Just wondering if you are using FSX "out of the box" SP2,Acceleration...or are you using FSXSteam?

I have heard some report that the Steam version has better performance and less crashes...and could be a cheep temp fix for the crashes till your Kitty catches up to buying the pieces for P3D, or make it unnecessary for a while.

I bought it during a sale for 5 bucks, haven't switched to it yet, but suspect I will have to soon when I upgrade my system now that the Box Version isn't supported anymore.

[Lukemeister 6]

Thank you Joe & Matt, sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you.

 

I never knew FSX:SE was optimised better than the original FSX, you've given me more faith in my existing set up. The thing that put me off was when I was doing a Manchester - Berlin flight and FSX suddenly CTD'd half way there, it's never done that before.

 

I dived in head first and bought the new Schiphol scenery and am running it at around 20FPS with no OOM issues as of yet. I guess you just saved me a few bucks on a brand new sim. Is P3D really that much better at performance than FSX:SE?

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

Great, hope that helps!

I suspect we are in a similar Machine/System Boat, I am on the cusp of upgrading, my  FSX runs "at it's best" with all my ORBx scenery at around 20FPS, so far I am not getting CTDs, but I do get the occasional pinging from my machine warning of imminent VAS Low Fuel Quantity on approach to some of the larger airfields ...(I duck head below the dash to reduce CPU load, pause for a while, refill my beer and let the scenery catch up so that I can land.).

 

Cheers and happy flying.

[Holdit 106]

I've just upgraded my hardware and moved to FSX:Steam while I was at it, and it seems to do the job fine. I'm still waiting to here what the killer feature is in P3D that makes all the extra expense worth it. I'd be looking for something more than just cockpit shadows, as far as I can see the important things that are missing from FSX are still missing from P3D. It's prettier, though, but not enough to justify the hassle and price tag, IMO of course.

[Captain Coffee 2,030]

I don't have prepared, so I can't comment fully on it's features, however if it's cockpit shadows you want you can get those with Steve's FSX Dx10 fixer. It's a reasonably priced addon that makes the textures work with the dx10 preview checked. One thing that prepared has that FSX does not is cloud shadows on the ground, and those look amazing, but not quite willing myself to jump over just for those.

Edited January 26, 2017 by Captain Coffee

[Andrew Godden 943]

On 27/01/2017 at 00:15, Lukemeister said:

Thank you Joe & Matt, sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you.

 

I never knew FSX:SE was optimised better than the original FSX, you've given me more faith in my existing set up. The thing that put me off was when I was doing a Manchester - Berlin flight and FSX suddenly CTD'd half way there, it's never done that before.

 

I dived in head first and bought the new Schiphol scenery and am running it at around 20FPS with no OOM issues as of yet. I guess you just saved me a few bucks on a brand new sim. Is P3D really that much better at performance than FSX:SE?

 

Having heavily invested in FSX over the years in both scenery and aircraft, other add-ons, and VA flying, I was also reluctant to migrate, to P3D, often questioning whether it offered sufficient differentiation and a quantum improvement. I had tried Steve's DX10 Fixer, but only got marginal improvements, and certainly nothing which prevented the typical FSX crashes.

 

The final straw for me was when I started to get regular Fatal Error crashes with FSX, not to mention OOM errors. No amount of rebuilding config files was sufficient to stabilise my system. When faced with undertaking a complete, fresh install of FSX and all my add-ons or starting afresh and venturing down the P3D route, I finally succumbed to P3D. I originally intended to redo my FSX install as well, thinking I would still do the majority of my flying in FSX. However, here I am six months later and I haven't even looked at FSX, let alone thought about it. The experience and performance of P3D has been great, far superior to FSX (and that has nothing to do with cloud shadows or shadows in the cockpit, though some seem to be fixated with it as a reason to migrate). I also do regular, lengthy flights, four hours plus, and have not had P3D crash yet.

 

As for my system (see the specs below), it is now six years old and the only thing which has been upgraded is the graphics card. This had to be replaced two years ago after the original finally failed from constant 10 hour a day use.

[Lukemeister 6]

Thanks everyone, some nice contrasts in opinion. For the moment I will stick with FSX:SE. However I would like to thank everyone for taking the time out to explain the details to me.