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Prepar3d, is it good?


Walter Almaraz

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Can't say for NGX as I dont own/not interested in it though people on the Avsim fora have it working. Airbus X I haven't tried yet that along with Huey X I will have a go at this weekend.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

If you want/need any help getting Aerosoft scenery and or planes into P3D give me a shout.

I was very surprised to learn yesterday that all issues with the Carenado planes are solved when setting 'water reflections detail' to 'none'!

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/372886-how-to-all-carenado-aircraft-working-and-fully-functional/

I thought it worth mentioning here.

I hope either Carenado or LM can fix this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

As stated before DX11 will break all compatibility with your addons so why will the developers do that, it's because they can sell us the same airport twice, something they were suppose to do with Flight.

IMHO the bottleneck problem we have on a today's high end PC with FSX is the PCI-e 2.0, compare a 2 lane highway with a speed limit at 75 MPH against a 3 lane highway with the same speed limit, FPS wise they are the same (75 MPH) but you can move a lot more cars (data) on a 3 lane highway, from where the stutterings problems we are experiencing with FSX on a PCI-e 2.0 PC with very demanding addons.

If, as I suspect, the answer to the FSX stuttering problem (popping autogen should also get better) is the PCI-e 3.0 you will not need Prepar3D, give the mobo manuf. and GPU manuf. (GTX 685 or better) another six month to mature their hardware (including better driver from Nvidia for the GTX 685 series) and I think we will be very please with FSX on a IB....lets see.

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

If, as I suspect, the answer to the FSX stuttering problem (popping autogen should also get better) is the PCI-e 3.0 you will not need Prepar3D, give the mobo manuf. and GPU manuf. (GTX 685 or better) another six month to mature their hardware (including better driver from Nvidia for the GTX 685 series) and I think we will be very please with FSX on a IB....lets see.

Even if your assumptions prove to be 100% correct, I rather spend $50 on a (supported) P3D than buy new hardware again. ;)

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Even if your assumptions prove to be 100% correct, I rather spend $50 on a (supported) P3D than buy new hardware again. ;)

To each is own.

As for me, I have so much money invested in addons for FSX that if I had to choose between a new PC or replacing all my addons because of incompatibility with DX11...hummm...it will be a lot cheaper for me to buy a new PC and stay up to date with new hardware.

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  • Aerosoft

As stated before DX11 will break all compatibility with your addons so why will the developers do that, it's because they can sell us the same airport twice, something they were suppose to do with Flight.

If the implementation is done cleanly there is no reason what so every to expect incompatibilities. Direct X is written exactly to prevent that from happening. The only problem that you can have is that the application does not talk cleanly to Direct X, as is the case with FSX and it's DX10 Preview Mode.

In fact I have already seen Direct X 11 calls being made in FSX during some experiments and it never was an issue.

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Mathijs, I may have not made myself clear enough, stuff like that is confusing, lets start fresh, addons made for FSX are compatible with DX9 for sure, it is up to the developers to also make them compatible with DX10 in FSX, as you already know some addons that are NOT DX10 compatible for FSX will give you some problems in DX10 mode, white skin plane, flickering building and other problems.

The same principal apply for Prerpar3D as of today, all you addons will work with Prepar3D if they implement DX11 for their sim and keep DX9 and DX10 BUT you will not get the benifit of DX11 for your addons unless 1: you get a patch from the developers making your addons compatible with DX11 = $$$ or you buy brand new addons already DX11 compatible.

The same did happen with Crysis 2, that game was not DX11 compatible so they released a patch making the game compatible with DX11.

So one of two things will happen here, the developers wanting to have all their already on the market addons compatible with Prepar3D DX11 will issue a patch for each one of them (the question is "Will it be a free patch") or they will sell new addons DX11 compatible, the bottom line is that all the addons will already have will work with Prepard3D DX11 but we will not see any of the DX11 benefits unless we get a patch or buy the same addons again DX11 compatible.

So, been a developers yourself, what is the best way for you to make money with Prepar3D DX11? :big_boss_s:

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  • Aerosoft

Alain, while part makes sense, you sketch a very bleak picture. See while a game might not be compatible, in FSX or P3D it is not the add-on but the game that has to guarantee the compatibility.

If we draw a cube with textures on it and compile that to a MDL it is the MDL that is send to FS. Not a bit of Direct X related code in there. It's FS that reads the cube and has to translate that to bits that the Direct X interface can read and send to the graphics pipeline. Now in DX11 drawing a single cube is about as fast as in DX9, but it is still handled differently and if the game engine knows about DX11 it can start using some of the features of DX11. The cube remains in MDL format and does not change. Now for sure, if the engine that reads the MDL changes it might be needed to change code. And to take full advance of DX11 it might be needed to change the MDLs. But if you work in modern tools and use professional standards (that is not very common for FSX development btw) that's all pretty standard. For most of our developers it would simply be a matter of exporting things different because we already have a lot of stuff in the 3D files that FSX/P3D can't show. It's needed for the professional versions of the software. But if LM does a good job all that runs now in P3D will run in a new release. That really is not so hard. And that's more of less what they told me.

The best way for Aerosoft to make money on a P3D DX11 version would simply be as we have always done. Updates are free unless a lot of the code has changed. And then we link the amount that's changed to the update price. That's why people can buy the Airbus Extended for half price if the have the older version. we changed half and we'll never ask you to pay twice for the same bit of code. That's just not fair.

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Mathijs, I think we are saying the same thing using different words, by the way, my intention was not to sketch a bleak picture of anything, sorry if I came across like that.

To whom is reading this and is not sure of what the whole thing is ...here is a good example using a GTS 250 graphic card to illustrate the compatibility between DX.

Full DX11 support is actually a combination of software (API) and hardware features of the graphics card. DX11 is still backwards compatible with DX9 and DX10, but to be able to use all the advanced features of DX11 such as tessellation and shader model 5, the hardware must be capable of those features.

The GTS 250 lacks those advanced features (no tessellation unit and only shader model 4) and therefore will run only with DX10 features since DX11 will automatically detect the capabilities of the graphics card used. For Nvidia cards, full DX11 features are only available starting with the 400-series cards, and the HD 5000-series cards for AMD/ATI.

Edit: Mathijs, I may also have come across as a jerk talking about $$$ for a patched addons and for that I am sorry, I've never for one minute thought that your pricing were not fair, as a business man myself I was just explaining the possibility a company is facing when an upgrade is needed for their products.

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Mathijs, I think we are saying the same thing using different words, by the way, my intention was not to sketch a bleak picture of anything, sorry if I came across like that.

To whom is reading this and is not sure of what the whole thing is ...here is a good example using a GTS 250 graphic card to illustrate the compatibility between DX.

Full DX11 support is actually a combination of software (API) and hardware features of the graphics card. DX11 is still backwards compatible with DX9 and DX10, but to be able to use all the advanced features of DX11 such as tessellation and shader model 5, the hardware must be capable of those features.

The GTS 250 lacks those advanced features (no tessellation unit and only shader model 4) and therefore will run only with DX10 features since DX11 will automatically detect the capabilities of the graphics card used. For Nvidia cards, full DX11 features are only available starting with the 400-series cards, and the HD 5000-series cards for AMD/ATI.

Edit: Mathijs, I may also have come across as a jerk talking about $$$ for a patched addons and for that I am sorry, I've never for one minute thought that your pricing were not fair, as a business man myself I was just explaining the possibility a company is facing when an upgrade is needed for their products.

If P3D comes with DX11 option (to switch between DX9 and DX11 in settings menu) then big and serious companies should concider to make all new sceneries with both 9 and 11 compability. Old sceneries should get a patch.

Most of simmers who will go for P3D surely have DX11 videocard and CPU close to SB but there must be a choise anyway.

The question is how DX11 going to change P3D. If it's going to hit perfomance without cool DX11 futures as new shaders and so on, then there is no point to switch to it...

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If you get DX11 you will not get the ability to switch back to DX9 or ten come to think of it. As for making sceneries compatibly with DX9 and 11 I very much doubt that will happen, theres too many big differences between the two.

How will DX11 change P3D, well it will most likely remove all backwards compatibilty. Will it hit performace, well yes for those who dont have high end hardware it probably will.

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If you get DX11 you will not get the ability to switch back to DX9 or ten come to think of it. As for making sceneries compatibly with DX9 and 11 I very much doubt that will happen, theres too many big differences between the two.

How will DX11 change P3D, well it will most likely remove all backwards compatibilty. Will it hit performace, well yes for those who dont have high end hardware it probably will.

Metro 2033 has DX9,10,11 setting. It's possible to have all of them.

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As of totay the one not able to use DX10 or 11 are the one on XP system assuming you have all your hardware DX10 and DX11 compatible.

This question should be ask on Prepar3D forum, "Will Prepar3D be a full DX11 compliant platform?"

There is no way around it, if Prepar3D become DX11 and you want to use DX11 all new addons will have to be DX11 compatible and the old one will have to be patched.

Crysis 2 is the best example (I have the game), Crysis 2 was not DX11 at released but some time after two patches were released, one was Crysis_2_DX11_pack, the other one was Crysis_2_HiRes_Texture_Pack.

Here...that's DX11 fully used... [media=]

Do you think Prepar3D will come up with something remotely looking like that with the old FSX's engine....if they do...good for them.... I'm not holding my breath.

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Metro 2033 has DX9,10,11 setting. It's possible to have all of them.

Whats Metro 2033? :lol: You cant really compare any game to the likes of a flight simulator which models not only the whole world but flight dynamics too. Imagine how big FSX is (which is really only DX9). Now Imagine how much bigger and more complicated it would become making it both DX9 and DX10 compatible. As it turns out it was too complicated, hence the abrotion that is DX10 preview :lol: Now try adding DX11, you get the idea. Personally I hope LM ditch the old technology (DX versions) and make V2 pure DX11. After all its the old technology and backwards compatibility with FS9 that dragged FSX down.

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