Tweaks

[=Hollywood=]

Just installed Prepar3d today and am now embarking on the process to tweak it to get the best performance and visuals.

Word at the Prepar3d forums is that most FSX.cfg settings should also work in Prepar3d.cfg. The cfg is left mostly empty as everything is on default.

Will be tweaking the CFG file in the coming week and will post any results/findings here on how to improve the experience on Prepar3d.

[Reco]

Do you noticed any improvements compare to SFX? (Default configuration).

Reco

[=Hollywood=]

From a shader point of view I see a marked improvement in coloring and the test I ran last night the best image quality occured when I set antistropic filtering to on.

I can say it's definitely not a program for a General FS user however as there's no real world weather, no gamespy, no setting up your flight through a menu screen etc.

The collimated and multichannel support looks very good, especially for part-task trainers and home cockpit builders, as well as for commercial and military applications.

[Timmo]

Care to post some images of the new shader model compared to the FSX version?

[=Hollywood=]

Here's a quick comparison, I'd need to do different hours of the day as I noticed sunset lasted a lot longer in P3D than FSX, where FSX was still showing blue sky, I saw nice orange hues in P3D. Didn't get to do a direct comparison on that.

Here's one from a late sunset shot. You'll notice the fog table is much better in P3D, the mountains fade off into the distance nicely. (Note all settings were matched between the two shots, same flight was saved and loaded into both).

One thing I've noticed is there's a shift towards 3200 degrees kelvin on P3D which does make some of my snow areas on the aerial imagery turn a bit pinkish but I should be able to correct for that in my render process.

Also after having done some night tests at Las Vegas with 1/4 mile visibility the whole scene looked a whole lot more realistic.

Frame rates under P3D seem to be much improved too due to the shader changes. With the exact same scenery and setup I consistently get better performance in P3D than FSX SP2. Again it goes back to shader optimization.

The one thing that makes P3D stand out for me over FSX is that blue toilet water effect on photoscenery is gone, in P3D the water effects are there but are neutral density (i.e. transparent with no color shift) which makes the water mapping stand out a whole lot nicer.

If anyone is a serious simmer and wants to build a system that goes beyond the scope of the FSX home user gaming license, then Prepar3d is definitely worth the $499 buy in, especially for home cockpit simulator builders. Definitely worth the investment.

Attached is the comparison shot, it's not the best sample but you'll notice some subtle things that make P3D stand out. I'll share more distinctive images once I have more time on my hands...

Note: Left shot is FSX, Right shot is P3D, notice the deeper red hue, the mountains in the distance fade away, and the shadows are richer in the blacks.

[whitav8]

I am particularly interested in multichannel support. I would define this as the ability to assign a CPU core and a video card (or at least a port) to an independent view of the same database AND not have the performance be affected in the main channel by more than 10% or less. Is there any indication of that - which would have taken a major rewrite of FSX/ESP rendering?
Secondly, did you purchase the developer's license? Do you actually get two copies of the whole product and can begin SDK development with Visual Studio C++ 2008 or whatever?
I have experienced significant problems with ESP in using some of the most recent addon scenery packages like ORBX or fsdreamteam because they fully expect and require FSX to be loaded and executed. In other words, you can't simply do an ADD SCENERY AREA. Are you interested/concerned about that issue with P3D?
Thanks for sharing whatever experiences you can with this new product. Many of us who work with part task trainer design need this product!

Dave

[=Hollywood=]

Hi Dave,

There definitely is multi channel support not too sure about the videocard aspect but the CPU definitely, I would guess that that multichannel support also includes the videocards. I remember reading something that the overall frame rate is set by the slowest system in a multi channel array.

I did get the developers license but am wanting to buy a full seat for my own home cockpit that I'm planning to start building because P3D is so much more than FSX is. You do get two copies of the product and while I don't develop in Visual Studio C++ as I work on terrain databases that are FSX/ESP/P3D SDK compliant it's all basically the same.

As for Orbx and other scenery areas that use their own proprietary lockdown code that is outside of the SDK, I'm not concerned as either A) those developers will release versions that are P3D compatible or B) it's always been an issue between different versions of FS over the years and I figure why should that be any different with FSX->ESP->P3D.

FSX 3rd party products are licensed for use for FSX and entertainment purposes only. Some developers have commercial licences for their products as well. So that is really up to each individual developer.

I know I'm excited about the DRM aspect of P3D that is coming up :-) Should circumvent those problems in future.

P3D however is not for entertainment purposes so I would not expect every add-on to work out of the box, especially those that don't comply with the FSX SDK's. Same thing will happen when Microsoft Flight is released... Those that are FSX SDK compliant could possibly be run through converter tools for MS Flight but those that break away from the FSX SDK's won't be able to convert.