To P3D or not to P3D

[Terblanche 118]

And so I bought P3D3 a while ago and it is not cheap, not cheap at all ... and yes it runs smoother than FSX, yes the shadows in the cockpit is awesome, yes its VAS usage is much more effective than FSX and so I could name a few other things as well ― BUT ― here is the HOWEVER that makes it s DUD for me (at the moment) ...

1. Over the years I've invested a lot, as in really a lot of money into buying airports for FSX. As a matter of fact I think I must have almost every single payware airport for in and around Europe. The P3D3 compatible airports are not even 10% of what I have in my library with no sign at all from developers to make their scenery available for P3D3.
2. Of the few airports that I do have that comes with P3D3 installers only a few of them have movable jetways of which almost all of them either go to low, to short or right through your aircraft, and as we all know AES is not P3D compatible and therefore the hundreds of credits purchased for AES have no value in P3D which makes airports as sterile as my dentist's waiting room.
3. Not to mention the fact that not only do I have to buy my PMDG aircraft again but I actually have to pay MORE than what I've paid for it in FSX and I don't 'buy' (pun) the feeble excuse that they had to redesign, recode, reprogram, reinvent the whole caboodle from scratch. Same apply for A2A and some Flight1 products like my GTN750. Thank goodness for Aerosoft's approach to this by giving us their Airbus series with no extra cost. I salute you! Also a great thanks to Carenado and Alabeo in this regard.

My question is: What did the rest of you P3D simmers do ...? Did you just move on and except the fact that you say goodbuy (deliberate misspelled) to all your FSX scenery and live with the very clinical airports with nothing but AI traffic?

I'm sure in a few years from now most of the FSX airports will have been replaced with new, better looking ones in P3D but I think we are a long, long way from having the same library in P3D than what we have at the moment in FSX.

Will be nice to hear your thoughts on this.

Regards

Terblanche

[Emi 5161]

6 minutes ago, Terblanche said:

My question is: What did the rest of you P3D simmers do ...?

 

I did accept the "issues" I will have when using old sceneries in P3D (like missing night lighting, etc.) and then just continued using those sceneries in P3D.

I would not in my dreams think of just quitting using the scenery, I just arrange with the issues and use them accordingly.
Like only flying to those airports with broken night lighting during daytime (I can still land at the working airports on night flights), etc.

 

As I'm an online simmer AI traffic was never an issue to me, but if you still want some there are AI traffic addons compatible with P3D by now.

[Terblanche 118]

4 minutes ago, Emanuel Hagen said:

 

I did accept the "issues" I will have when using old sceneries in P3D (like missing night lighting, etc.) and then just continued using those sceneries in P3D.

I would not in my dreams think of just quitting using the scenery, I just arrange with the issues and use them accordingly.
Like only flying to those airports with broken night lighting during daytime (I can still land at the working airports on night flights), etc.

 

As I'm an online simmer AI traffic was never an issue to me, but if you still want some there are AI traffic addons compatible with P3D by now.

 

MyTraffic Professional is working 100% in P3D it is my AES that I miss  because parking an Aircraft without the bells and whistles of a jetway just feels spoiled after FSX.

I've tried a few airports to manually select the P3D folder to try and 'force' an installation with devastating effects that first it wants to uninstall the scenery from FSX and/or install it to P3D but either mesh is screwed or buildings are missing because obviously P3D handles the scenery different or how do you install the FSX scenery into P3D or is it by trial and error ...?

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

24 minutes ago, Terblanche said:

Thank goodness for Aerosoft's approach to this by giving us their Airbus series with no extra cost. I salute you! Also a great thanks to Carenado and Alabeo in this regard.

 

Well we do that for all our products, not just the aircraft. 

 

If you feel a 'collection' of scenery is important you should stick with FSX, but in our experience people only use a limited number of airports. And I believe that all the major airports are covered for P3d. I got more airports installed then I will be able to visit.

[Emi 5161]

8 minutes ago, Terblanche said:

 

MyTraffic Professional is working 100% in P3D it is my AES that I miss  because parking an Aircraft without the bells and whistles of a jetway just feels spoiled after FSX.

I've tried a few airports to manually select the P3D folder to try and 'force' an installation with devastating effects that first it wants to uninstall the scenery from FSX and/or install it to P3D but either mesh is screwed or buildings are missing because obviously P3D handles the scenery different or how do you install the FSX scenery into P3D or is it by trial and error ...?

 

I am using the Flight Sim Estonia FSX to P3D migrationtool. Payware, but 15€ is something I'd happily invest.

 

Please note that it will only enable you to install the addons in P3D, it will not fix possible issues your scenery might have.
Those are of course officially not supported by the developers or us!

Many members of the community are more than happy to help though!

[Terblanche 118]

33 minutes ago, Mathijs Kok said:

Well we do that for all our products, not just the aircraft. 

 

@Mathijs Kok - and I sincerely thank you for that.

I do however struggle with P3Dv3 to install aiports like EHAM, EBBR, LFPO, LFPG, LEBL, EDDM and the list goes on. EGLL Xtreme also has no P3Dv3 installer or did I miss the update?

I am hesitant to use the migrationtool (again) because it seems to change some registry files that cause FSX not to load afterwards even if you divert back to FSX in the migrationtool, or that was my experience anyway. It seems I will stay with FSX for my airline flights and use P3Dv3 for my ORBX terrain flights in smaller aircraft. The new EDDF is just a beast in FSX and that was what tempted me to give P3D a shot and I installed the Airbus and slowly but surely will add scenery as it becomes available for P3D.

Once again, a very big thank you to Aerosoft, not only for the vast amount of scenery but also for your continued support and help on your forums.

Danke Schön!

[sydney1962 35]

Matthijs,

 

I think that most of european

larger airports are not supported

by p3d v3 like helsinki, oslo,dublin,amsterdam, paris cdg,madrid, orly, barcelona ,milan

lisbon, dusseldorf,stuttgart,hamburg etc, so there is a long way to go.

 

 

[musefan 363]

15 minutes ago, sydney1962 said:

Matthijs,

 

I think that most of european

larger airports are not supported

by p3d v3 like helsinki, oslo,dublin,amsterdam, paris cdg,madrid, orly, barcelona ,milan

lisbon, dusseldorf,stuttgart,hamburg etc, so there is a long way to go.

 

 

I can't speak for most of these, but Dublin, Oslo and Helsinki are all available for P3D.

 

EDIT: Sorry I just noticed you mean version 3, you are correct they are not compatible.

[Terblanche 118]

@nealmac - you are right ... a long, long way indeed for P3D to catchup on the scenery and I don't think the developers are going to invest time and money into P3D simply because it is an expensive sim and at the rate that LHM brings out updates you will just be finish with one airport for V3 and then V4 will be here and so on and so on <sigh> ... I'll stick to my single and twin prop aircraft with ORBX terrain scenery and practice some VFR flying in P3Dv3  - it is actually great fun.

[sydney1962 35]

I think that it is not correct that developers are not intrested in P3D, because developers like ORBX,Flytampa, UK2000, Taxi2gate

FSDG , latinvfr ,drzewieicki  have all their products upgraded with p3d V3 installers.

only developers that works for aerosoft exclusively seems not to be interested to work on updates.

 

when we look to the upgrade list for P3D V3  80% of the products are none exclusive aerosoft products.

 

 

 

[PatrickZ 300]

But those developers only got a relatively small range of products so it's easier for them to upgrade. Aerosoft has got a much wider range of products. Besides, sometimes it's not just the installer that needs to be upgraded. Sometimes there are incompatibilities in the scenery itself that need to be fixed. This is often the case with older products that date back to the days before we even heard of P3D. That's the reason there is no P3D installer for these products and there won't be any.

 

All relatively new products are available for P3D v3, but the older the product the less chance of a P3D installer. Some of the products mentioned before are not even FSX native products, they're FS2004 products working in FSX. Can't expect them to work in P3D v3.

 

PS The statement that those other developers have upgraded their products with P3D v3 installers is also not entirely correct. Mostly there is a P3D installer, but keep in mind that P3D is not the same as P3D v3. Mostly this is P3D v1 or if you're lucky v2. One of the developers mentioned above is FSDG. If I look at FSDG Djerba for example, it comes with an FS2004/FSX/P3D installer. P3D, but not P3D v3. That's the difference. The same thing applies to Aerosoft.

[HardrockCafe 93]

Djerba does have a P3D v3 installer (updated the whole scenery). 

 

http://fsdg-online.com/sceneries/31-djerba.html

 

A LOT of sceneries are P3D v3 compatible right now. So go for it and give it a try. You can try P3D v3 for your self. If you don't like it, you can get a refund within 60 days. 

[Emi 5161]

In many of those "compatible" sceneries we can see lots of issues (or missing features) that weren't there in the FSX version though... but I'll not expand on this here since that is not what this thread is about.

[sydney1962 35]

1 hour ago, PatrickZ said:

But those developers only got a relatively small range of products so it's easier for them to upgrade. Aerosoft has got a much wider range of products. Besides, sometimes it's not just the installer that needs to be upgraded. Sometimes there are incompatibilities in the scenery itself that need to be fixed. This is often the case with older products that date back to the days before we even heard of P3D. That's the reason there is no P3D installer for these products and there won't be any.

 

All relatively new products are available for P3D v3, but the older the product the less chance of a P3D installer. Some of the products mentioned before are not even FSX native products, they're FS2004 products working in FSX. Can't expect them to work in P3D v3.

 

PS The statement that those other developers have upgraded their products with P3D v3 installers is also not entirely correct. Mostly there is a P3D installer, but keep in mind that P3D is not the same as P3D v3. Mostly this is P3D v1 or if you're lucky v2. One of the developers mentioned above is FSDG. If I look at FSDG Djerba for example, it comes with an FS2004/FSX/P3D installer. P3D, but not P3D v3. That's the difference. The same thing applies to Aerosoft.

 

 Patrick ,

 I know that a lot of this airports are released before the time that PD3 was there.  and I can also respect if aerosoft

 says we don't upgrade this product. but be fair to your customers, and tell them , not to wait for it.

 I also know that every single airport can be installed via migration tool, when using the FSX installer, but aerosoft give no support

 on them, have here many box versions , that I can only use via migration tool, but I am unsure if they will be ever ported

 to P3D V3, and see that there sometimes are issues that are not pleasant when taking off or landing there.

 when I look for example t airport Stockholm Arlanda , that has a perfect remake by orbx , or Munchen that has been

remaked by taxi2gate to latest standards,  don't think developers will spend time and effort for new installers, because

airport stays outdated only with new installer.

 

I am a big fan of larger  european airports and also know that aerosoft has a monopoly of most of these

airports, so have no option to swith to other scenery makers with a few exceptions like Athens, Stockholm , munchen, Vienna and copenhagen  for the time being.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Also keep in mind that ALL of our new products since 20 months have been delivered with a P3D installer. Of all publishers we have by far the biggest amount of products for this platform and saying Aerosoft is not supporting P3D enough is clearly not correct.

 

Working backwards and making old products compatible is complex and expensive because it hardly brings in new sales (or you have to ask money again for a P3d version which we believe is not correct to customers). When you consider updating all older FSX product would mean around 150 products it would mean we would have to stop new productions for about 6 months. Just not going to happen. Besides, just slapping an P3d installer on a product does not make it a full P3D product as Emi said. 

 

Very soon we'll be dedelivering our P3d products according to the new standards of Lockheed, so the add-ons are separated from the sim. Again this shows our commitment to this platform.

[Terblanche 118]

@sydney1962 - you are right with the above mentioned names of developers that do support P3Dv3 but from my library of 162 European airports ranging from Moscow to Edinburgh, from Stockholm to Istanbul there are only 22 airports with P3Dv3 installers ... or that is at least from my last count and will have to go back to all the different publishers from where I bought all the scenery and see if there are any updates later than P3Dv2. I believe FlyTampa is working on a new EHAM and maybe soon EGLL will have v3 installers.

As already mentioned, the migrationtool turned out to be disastrous on my machine because I'm still using FSX for all airline flights and the 'switch on and off' function in the migrationtool completely screwed my FSX.

I am however hopeful that Aerosoft will eventually have P3Dv3 (or v4 or v5 or 6) installers because it's hard to keep up with LHM   

[Gregory 25]

I don't use FSX anymore. Some of my add-on airports work with P3D. Those that don't are being updated like Frankfurt. It cost me some money to go with P3D but I think it's worth it. Except my Airbus that was P3D ready! Thank you Aerosoft!!