CaptHill 0 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 Guys, I have been reading around this Prepar3D and i'm a little confused.........well what is it? A standalone sim? An add on? Thanks in advance Rich Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 Lockheed Martin licensed FSX and the source code for it to enhance, customize and market to commercial and government customers, specialized simulation solutions. They've added underwater terrain and it can be used on land, sea and in the air to simulate most any kind of vehicle or situation. There are some mostly unpublished stipulations in the contract between LM and MS that limits what they can do to it and how they can advertise and sell it. It's pretty expensive at this point. LM has made a lot of enhancements, including the capability to use the resources of the host computer much more effectively than FSX does and they are close to releasing their new version 1.2. This thing is a credible contender in the horse race for "the next great flight simulator". It may be the most credible and the most likely "winner" at this point. Our FS club is trying to get a Lockheed Martin/Prepar3D rep to come to a meeting and give us a presentation, but we haven't succeeded in getting a response yet. Will know a lot more if we can make that happen. John Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 I think the buzz is concerning V2, which will have DX11 compatibility as well as other advances? Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 I apparently miscued on the version numbers. Please explain what ESP is - not familiar with that term. John Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 ESP is the core library that FSX and P3D is built on probably better explained here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526948.aspx you will probably recognise the SDK's if you use use FSX. Link to post Share on other sites
aeromax 10 Posted January 29, 2012 Report Share Posted January 29, 2012 Good news...but have been little to do with, because I only use fs9/fs2004 so now wait until i see what happens Link to post Share on other sites
britfrog 180 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 whilst I am watching prepar3d with interest I find from the videos that i have seen that it is still about 3 years behind our current fsx setups. If and it is a big IF M.S. give LM a free hand licence wise with preper3d then we might have something worth chasing next year. However As fsim was M.S. largest selling "game" (how I hate that title) in view of the current broohaha aganst m.s. for flight , it may well turn out that m.s may relight the candle of fsim version 11 as they never intended "flight "to replace the flight simulator title. It just may turn out that flight is just a stepping stone or light version, to get the team up to speed, that leads onto fsim11. Time will tell Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Hi britfrog, welcome to the forums by the way! Don't forget to put your pin in our members map It is easy to think that P3D is behind what FSX was 3 years ago but that's purely eye-candy, add in the same mesh, scenery and aircraft and its difficult to see the difference. When it come to performance, it is already on a par with FSX SP2 and then some! Personally, I will be seeing what performance enhancements will be seen in their version 2 release and if it really leaves my FSX performance standing then I may slowly migrate. For the time being I am happy with FSX. Cheers, Joe Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 If P3D or MS can open up the machine in a way that allows the flight simulation application to make full use of multiple cores and many GBs of memory, that would open the doors for a monumental improvement in FS fidelity and performance. The add-on publishers would quickly jump in and produce things to take advantage of that. The hardware-software pendulum has swung far to the hardware side at the moment. Most people's boxes have become more capable than the (FS) software can make use of. The next obvious thing is for someone to re-make the software in a way that taps the hardware capability that's there. Unfortunately, that might require letting go of some backward capability to pull it off, but there's no such thing as a free lunch. There are other things in FS that could stand improvement as well, but I see taking advantage of the latent power of the machine as the most pressing improvement that's needed. FS can only use about 25% of my four-year old quad core XP machine today - if the software was optimized, I'd have up to a 300% increase in available machine resources and thus, much better performance. The improvement in hardware horsepower that could be brought to bear in a Win7 i7 PC with 8 GB or more of RAM would be many times that and FSX or something like it would no longer have to be handled with kid gloves in terms of options, slider settings, etc. Someone's going to do it, someday. Right now, only MS and P3D have the existing code. Having that and being able to see and understand how the original FS does what it does gives them a huge leg up, even if the basic structure needs to be re-built from the bottom up. Not having to re-invent the algorithms for all the aerodynmaics, atmospherics and other technical things would be a great advantage over anyone faced with starting with a blank slate. I believe if anyone does it, it will be one of them, but you can't rule out someone else just biting the bullet and doing it the hard way. John Link to post Share on other sites
britfrog 180 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Hi britfrog, welcome to the forums by the way! Don't forget to put your pin in our members map It is easy to think that P3D is behind what FSX was 3 years ago but that's purely eye-candy, add in the same mesh, scenery and aircraft and its difficult to see the difference. When it come to performance, it is already on a par with FSX SP2 and then some! Personally, I will be seeing what performance enhancements will be seen in their version 2 release and if it really leaves my FSX performance standing then I may slowly migrate. For the time being I am happy with FSX. Cheers, Joe I have an open mind on prepar3d i am prepered to give it a try however i am lead to believe vers 2 is not a certainty as it requires a new agreement with M.S. to allow casual and game use not just pro's and in view of the recent announcement of flight and the amount of disgruntled simmers around who have been very cutting in their criticism of flight you may welll see m.s. refuse a different eula with LM or perhaps even keep the flight team together to make a proper sim? now where is that members map? Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 Here you go http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/index.php/membermap/ It's great to hear your opinions britfrog, if you don't mind me asking, what's your first name? Were all on first name terms here Cheers, Joe Link to post Share on other sites
britfrog 180 Posted February 9, 2012 Report Share Posted February 9, 2012 Here you go http://forum.mutleys....php/membermap/ It's great to hear your opinions britfrog, if you don't mind me asking, what's your first name? Were all on first name terms here Cheers, Joe Hi Joe, my name is Nigel just been looking at the pmdg site and while I like their products i dont particularly like their attitude to their customers, however that being said their chief poster has said 2 days ago that, In I presume, is his opinion, "The primary issue is that Prepar3d is not a consumer platform. It will never be a consumer platform. This being the case- its adoption by the mass market is highly unlikely- and that means that it is not the platform PMDG will base our development future upon." Now perhaps he is party to something we are not? and what does he know that orbyx/ftx dont? or vice versa As I have said before LM are using the developers area to give access to the sim for a sensible sum of money and of course getting feedback from it, i can easily see that door being closed by them or M.S. for a whole host of reasons. Perhaps once LM get the thing really running well they wont need our feedback, or perhaps M.S. seeing their top seller being hijacked will insist that the eula include developers except those on the LM payroll Time will tell I am so glad we have fsx Link to post Share on other sites
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