philip75 0 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 hello i am a new comer in the forum, i used FSX for years with many add ons to enhance it and heard a lot ; why should i change to Prepar ? what are the main basic advantages over FSX ( definition , frame rate,multi core better use, or ?) besides cosmetic changes in parameters and under the sea simulation ? could a Prepar user having a good FSX former expertise could advise me? thanks p r Link to post Share on other sites
hurricanemk1c 195 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 Hi Philip and welcome to the forums! I'm sure there are more techincal reasons why you should switch, but I think the fact that Lockheed-Martin are commiting themselves to it, updating it etc. and with a slight re-write of the FSX software to use more of a modern machine's resources, makes FPS better Kieran Link to post Share on other sites
britfrog 180 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 IMHO it is not the time to make the jump at the moment, perhaps others will say otherwise, but again IMHO it is still at least 2 years behind what you get from FSX with all the latest add ons etc, However that is not to say that it doesnt show great promise! Just that at the moment I dont see any great advantage to paying the extra fee, time will tell if MS allow prepa3d to go main stream (after all M.S hold the master key), I tend to think that following the failure (predicted by all) of flight, M.S. will have some pretty good programmers going begging and it has not come to our notice that they have been thrown on the unemployment junkpile (like the aces team) So I would like to think they will be employed more profitably, making what is after all M.S. best selling "game" FS11,,,,, again time will tell! Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 It may play out that way - stranger things have happened. Keep in mind, however, that the unit of Microsoft that is responsible for all their gaming activities, including X-Box and its titles, their on-line gaming activies, FSX, the late not-so-great Flight and anything else they do that's of a "recreational" nature, only books about 3.5% of MS revenue. FSX is a flyspeck in all of that. Still, I wouldn't rule it out. Nonetheless, P3D IS actively working on their product and is improving it - no speculation or reading of the tea leaves required - it's a known quantity. The head count of FSX add-ons that work with P3D is looking pretty promising too - to date, most do and many that don't "right out of the box", only require a small tweak by the user to fix things. That was/is the biggest hurdle that P3D faces, working with existing and future FSX add-ons. So far, so good on that. It might be prudent at this point to pick up P3D for $49 under the currently available Academic License, getting one's foot in the door while that particular offer is still current. I would not be too surprised to see that option withdrawn at some point, possibly because MS may consider that a breach of the alleged contract clause that prohibits L-M from "mass marketing". By the way, the Academic Version is the full-blown P3D, not limited in any way, and owners are entitled to upgrades as they are published. This whole thing is going to be very interesting to see play out. MS remains the 800 lb. gorilla in any room in which flight simulation products are discussed and they can't be ignored. They may or may not choose to play, but they retain the capability and the option to do that if they deem it to be in their best interests, or if they deem the efforts of others to be against their best interests. They may choose to just play spoiler at some point, simply to prevent someone else from getting too big a footprint in the FS genre. One part of me wonders if there wasn't some of that behind MSF. John Link to post Share on other sites
philip75 0 Posted September 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 thanks to all i scratch my head as it seems that going to Prepar is more a faith and hope choice rather than a rational choice based on facts no clear technical advantage was given by anyone ! is it true that s all planes in FSX including add ons, can be easily loaded in Prepar by a simple "copy and paste" from FSX to the correponding sim object plane Prepar file ? what s about scenerys ? i have many loaded in my FSX starting from ( U T ,G Env) and many orbyx and others such as VFR? i will may be buy the "academic" license Prepar to see ! good flight to all p r Link to post Share on other sites
gpbarth 2 Posted November 14, 2012 Report Share Posted November 14, 2012 I recently went in sarch of the same answers in other forums (forae?) and here's what I found: for all intents and purposes, MS is not in the flight sim business any longer. I doubt you will see another version of Flight Sim coming from the MS boys. The "engine" that drives FSX, however, was purchased by Lockheed, and it is LM who will continue to improve and manage it. So if you want to keep flying a Flight Sim application, Prepar3D is the next step. I love FSX, but it has its foibles. I want to keep flying the latest and greatest in that style, and Prepar3D is that direction. I have friends who are still flying FS 9, and loving it! Me, I love the latest A2A aircraft, whch will not work in the Accu-Sim mode in anything less than FSX (and now, apparently P3D). If you are happy with FSX, and will probably not want to ever update it with the latest and greatest stuff, then P3D is over-kill. But if you want to stay on the cutting edge, so to speak, P3D is the answer. I recently swallowed hard and re-built my XP Pro machine with Win 7 64-bit, because I have a quad-core processor and wanted all it could deliver. Found out that FSX will not use the quad-core technology, and I'm stuck with 3 Gb of RAM and not much else. P3D WILL use that quad-core, and you can O/D your box with 16 Gb of RAM, all useable. Sometimes we have to go outside the box and take a risk. I thought I was happy with FSX, but now that people have explained P3D, I'm gojng to give it a shot. I've been told that the Academic version, for $50, will give you all you need to run the sim. The $200 tag shocked me at first, but if you're not a programmer playing around with the code, that isn't needed. And you can install P3D and FSX separately, so you can set up the P3D, play with it, learn how to import the FSX stuff into it, and dump it if you're not happy. Matter of fact, I was told that you can buy the full version of P3D for a month at $9.95...can't get any better than that! Personally, I'm gojng to give it a try. Just the fact that it doesn't crash like FSX does is enough to give it a go. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted November 14, 2012 Report Share Posted November 14, 2012 All that is essentially correct but there are a few caveats to be aware of... 1) L-M did not purchase the FS code, they leased it and the lease agreement has terms and conditions that limit how they may use it. The details of those conditions are not publicly known but it's thought that the lease agreement specificly prohibits L-M from mass-market retail sales of their product. 2) L-M's core business and business model does not include mass-marketed "consumer products". They set out to adapt the MS product and market it to other businesses and military entities who had a need for easily custimized simulation software. That lines up well with their traditional customer base. The release of the Academic Version and their lax attitude about who may purchase it might indicate that they would like to make it available to the masses, but it may also just mean that they'd like students and academics to have it available as a simulation tool for research, modeling, etc. 3) PMDG and possibly some others have specifically said that they will not adapt their FS products for use with P3D, citing liabiltiy concerns if their aircraft somehow come to be used for real-world training within P3D by one of L-M's customers. They've gone so far as to change the software license wording to essentially prohibit users from doing that. So far, however, most of the traditional software developers for FS add-ons have not followed PMDG's lead and appear to be happy to port their products over to P3D. It remains to be seen if the corporate lawyers will have their way as they did at PMDG, but for now it does look like most of the add-on products we enjoy with FSX can be used directly in P3D or will at some point be adapted by the developers to allow that. As it happens, I agree with you - if the Flight Sim genre is going to move forward, P3D is the most likely path for that to happen. I wish them every success and hope it works out that way. John Link to post Share on other sites
petermcleland 48 Posted November 16, 2012 Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 P3D is only 32 bit still and therefore will only look at 3 GBs of memory...even of you have a 64 bit OS like Windows 7. The software would need to be re-written for proper 64 bit operation. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted November 16, 2012 Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 I'm not entirely conversant on such things, but can't a 64 bit OS like Win7 allow P3D to use separate processors, spawing subordinate routines to other "virtual machines" for parallel processing? To the extent that P3D can offload some chores to be done "off-line", i.e. ouside the processor that's running P3D itself, isn't it possible to use more of the machine's memory? I'm way out of my depth here but thought that was possible. FSX will only use one processor and only makes very poor use of the graphics processor. I thought I read that P3D was attacking that limitation and were going to make it able to use more than one processor, and perhaps to better use the resources on the graphics card. That is probably an easier nut to crack than re-writing the code to 64 bit. If implemented, it seems as if that alone would vastly improve capability and performance. John Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted November 17, 2012 Report Share Posted November 17, 2012 It sounds as if we're all in violent agreement.... P3D is looking like the best game in town for the moment. John Link to post Share on other sites
Steve KOCF 0 Posted November 20, 2012 Report Share Posted November 20, 2012 I have a friend that has been talking about getting P3D and I'm really getting impatient for him to get it and find out more about it. I may just have to go buy my own if he doesn't make a move pretty soon. Patiently waiting... Steve Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted November 20, 2012 Report Share Posted November 20, 2012 I guess that would be me... John Link to post Share on other sites
GHAO 0 Posted January 5, 2013 Report Share Posted January 5, 2013 Acceleration uses all 6 cores on my machine, and RAM only really means you can run multiple things with ease - FSX may take up 2GB, REX might take up 1GB, so everyone should be fine there. Anyway, the only reason I'm replying in such a late fashion is a comment you made, John, about MS's gaming sector. If the entire thing is 3.5%, that means FSX is more lik 0.001%. Why could they not just write that diddly bit out of their books and make a good job of it? Surely 0.001% less profit but a better reputation founded on listening to consumer concerns, pushing the flight simulator envelope forward with graphics ahead of the competition, a real-life-aspect like XPLane... actually come to think of it, if they did a good enough job on FS11, they'd get back their 0.001% profit because all the militaries of the world would be interested. And they'd secure a marketing base for the next few years. Flight in 2015 would have been better if FS11 came before it. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted January 5, 2013 Report Share Posted January 5, 2013 Actually, MS has recently announced that they will "no longer support" FSX. They haven't turned off the validation servers yet, but they've pretty much washed their hands of it. John Link to post Share on other sites
britfrog 180 Posted February 11, 2013 Report Share Posted February 11, 2013 Ok you have had a few months to get into p3d i would like to ask the peanut gallery a few questions about it: Are there definite performance improvements over fsx and how do they make themselves evident. What are the CURRENT advantages of p3d over fsx? Do you use p3d more than fsx now? and why? is there any part of P3D that isnt as good as fsx, what would you have changed? Thanks Link to post Share on other sites
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