As you say the Kodiak does install cleanly into P3D V3 - something I didn’t know. The version 2.6 installer is the latest. Also be aware that there’s a higher resolution dash download available from the Lionheart site (as Kludger mentioned).
High Resolution (EXTREME) Panel Textures for FSX
This will upgrade your instrument panel resolution for the FSX Edition
of the Quest Kodiak, making them double size.
When a new version of P3D is released typically you don’t have to do a full reinstall - you can install just the components upgraded. It may be that older installers cause problems but it does seem to work and saves a mountain of work. The catch is waiting for updates from third party vendors (eg Active Sky) anytime there’s a patch.
Counter intuitively the tessellation setting will likely give you better frames the higher it is set.
There’s a new patch available at the Majestic site with P3D V3.4 compatibility for the Q400.
If you’re trialing AS16 and have ASN, you cannot have both ASConnect modules installed at once. It’s one or the other and you’ll need to install the one that matches the version you’re running. Fortunately it prompts you as needed.
If you’ve got a decent video card, you should definitely look at enabling sparse-grid-supersampling (SGSS) via Nvidia Inspector. It really cleans up the cockpit panels and external textures/aliasing, but at the cost of some frame rate - lots if you’re in massive cloud layers. But, I cannot live without it.
These days there’s little call to mess around with the config file or with things like the affinity settings. Just don’t.
Just like FSX, controller axis sensitivity ‘full right’ is the best - eliminating the artificial delay on the control inputs.
The Aerosoft Twin Otter installs and runs great in P3D V3. Make sure you reboot after the install to get the font to register.
If you have ORBX Vector it pays to run the Airport Elevation Correction once, and after you add scenery.
Is ORBX really worth 100 bucks? I was looking at the addons for P3D and I am sticker shocked. I shop at PC Aviator.com. I will have 200 usd in it before I put in any planes. Is this right?
Personally for me the best bang for the buck has been the ORBX regions like PNW, N.Cal, S.Cal etc, which for ~$43 include detailed landclass, textures and mesh for that whole region, as well as all airports upgraded with basic objects like buildings, static aircraft and grass.
If you only fly in areas of the world that they haven’t done a region for then FTX Global is supposed to be a great improvement over the default textures and landclass, I haven’t needed that so far.
I agree with all of that. I’ve bought all of the ORBX regions that cover the west coast of the U.S. from S. California all the way up to Alaska… The are an overall great value. I’m not sure if FTX Global is required for them though…
I will have to install Fraps again, been using Nvidia shadowplay for the last year or two, but it doesn’t seem to record P3D in the right resolution, the recording comes out super lowres.
I hit that Alabeo well more than a few times too during this sale… how are you liking the Chieftain? The glass panel seems to have a framerate hit for me, wish they provided changeable glass/steam gauges with it like they did for the PA44 which has become my favorite plane from that sale.
I think some flight sim stores are on to me - they are the same thing as Kohl’s is to my wife. Here…have a $5 coupon to buy something you really shouldn’t buy. Go ahead. Just between friends…
Just installed P3D v3 installed finally. I have been playing with the settings. Both in VR and on the flat screen it looks beautiful. Wow oh WOW! The stock clouds are great. The performance is better than FSX or P3D v2.
I do have one problem. When the sim begins, I cant get to the bindings menu. I cant bind any keys to the Flyinside UI… Lucky for me, I am distracted with other things on the sim. However, its a crawling phase for me.
I’ve got ORBX Global and Vector. I’m curious on NA LC. Think it’s worth it?
Since I’ve not reinstalled DCS onto the new computer, I’ve added all of my modules to P3D.
Accu-Feel is a must, but couldnt get it to run. Until I found this:
Wow…just shows how I can’t keep up with things. FTX Global open LC North America - didn’t even know about that. Heck…I dunno how many add-ons that would make that would cover (some) of the same areas:
FTX Global
FTX Vector
FTX Global open LC North America
FTX Terrain Regions
North American Airports
North America completed! We have now completed the FTX openLC North America pack after starting off with the northern half - Arctic, Alaska and Canada. openLC North America now covers an area over 24 million square kilometres with FTX Global custom textures and new textures unique to openLC. FTXG openLC as the name suggests, replaces the default landclass layer with higher detailed and a better variety of land types. This in turn creates a more varied and accurate terrain with FSX or P3D. It has been specifically designed to work with both FTX Global Base and FTX Global Vector as part of the total simulator overhaul. With FTX Global and openLC North America you can now begin to explore the vast and beautiful area of North and Central America, Greenland as well as the Caribbean islands and Hawaii. Make sure to check the photoreal volcanoes of Popocatépetl, Iztaccihauatl, Colima, San Cristobal-Casita, Telica & Momotombo as well in your travels.
I’d be interested in it if it more fully fleshes out the areas outside of the FTX Terrain Regions I have (I have all of the ones that cover the western U.S.). I’m not sure I understand how or if it would accentuate those regions or if the FTX Terrain Regions would trump the FTX openLC. But for areas that aren’t covered by FTX Terrain Regions (like my home states of North and South Carolina), this might be a good option.
How does openLC fit with FTX Global BASE?
If you are new to FTX Global and have purchased openLC you’ll probably want to know what the FTX Global BASE product does within FSX/P3D. This was released back in July 2013 and upgrades the entire simulator’s TEXTURES worldwide, more specifically:
* Replaces all the default landclass textures located in \Scenery\World\Texture with custom Orbx FTX textures
Installs FTX Central and other supporting apps into the \ORBX folder. FTX Central and these other apps help manage all Orbx addons including FTXG, FTX Regions and FTX Airports Adds 3D lights to all vector main roads all over the world. These can be turned on and off using FTX Central
Makes corrections to the base landclass for some parts of the world, particularly in SE Asia and the USA SW area
* Adds zero-FPS hit 3D lights to all textures all over the world. So what openLC does is enhance the new textures with much better landclass representation, telling the simulator what type of textures to place in a certain area.
I don’t believe it does anything for the full-fat regions as they have their own updated textures and landclass.
Man…just spent around three hours testing P3D and my Rift trying to find a happy medium. What I’m basically trying to determine is whether it is worth me running my Air Hauler 2 campaign in Papua New Guinea while using the Rift or not. So I started looking at P3D settings, FlyInside settings, and an odd and frustrating thing happened.
I was using the Woitape area of scenery to test. My FPS was a stuttering mess and I turned everything down until I just had mesh and overlay type graphics and my FPS was doing great (90 FPS). I can turn a bunch of other stuff up, but the very second I move the Scenery Complexity slider to NORMAL, my FPS tanks to 20-35 and becomes a jittery mess.
It is really odd because just moving that slider one notch up makes ALL of the 3D ground objects appear. But this is the weird part, which took me foreeeeeever to figure out. I can load another airport in that region (like Kokoda) and the slider at NORMAL gives me all the 3D scenery and 90 FPS. To test it further, I started bumping up the rest of the sliders and they had almost no reduction in FPS. But that one airport (Woitapi) must have some scenery object that is causing a problem with my FPS.
So I’ll have to figure out that area…but the testing outside of that area makes me think flying it in VR is going to be awesome. The valleys and ORBX scenery is just incredible. The Oculus Rift depth perception really makes you feel like you are getting yourself into trouble when you go into some of the box canyons and you wonder if you can make the turn to get out… Very immersive stuff (when running at 45/90 FPS in FlyInside…not so much at 25/35…)
Thanks for doing some of the footwork @BeachAV8R. I’ve spent two lost days trying to get the F1 GTN750 to work, but fortunately, I am not alone in that quest. Hopefully, enough folks are complaining that F1 are on a bug hunt.
Not sure if it relates directly to P3D, but in X-Plane the two things that affect FPS that are readily evident are tree density, and shadows. In fact they might as well call the shadow setting an FPS slider. I’m running tree hugger and minimal shadows (the lowest visible), which keep FPS high. For screen shots you could crank up the shadows.
Well, I must say that im glad Im not the only one turning stuff down. VR has made me do several things. One is become more interested in OCing my hardware. I don’t go to extremes. However there is a bit to be gained from running my Proc a little overclocked. I am now concentrating on the GPU. Second is I have to optimize my cooling. Third, make sure my PC is running really well. CC cleaner and cutting programs I am not using out has gone a long way to get my pc clean.
As chipwich pointed out, the shadows are a killer. I have them low (P3D) and they still look good in the pit. Things like special effects are all the way to the left (LOW). These things help with performance. On the Nvidia control panel I changed from High Quality to Quality. Might even try Performance to see if it gets better.
I think so. Im a relative nub w P3D. I will say, whatever it does, I don’t miss it. I still see contrails coming from my wings. The clouds are still beautiful and the scenery… well, my scenery is still stock. I am concentrating on getting some performance out of this sim before I can turn on any eye candy. Once I find a good baseline in VR then I will play around with it.
The Special effects detail feature manages effects like smoke, fountains, and fireworks that are created using units called sprites. The more sprites displayed, the better the effect looks, but higher settings may decrease performance on some computers.
Found this nice little nugget to get Traffic360 working with P3D v3.x (original post HERE) (this did work for me!):
Very enjoyable product and of course working with p3d v3.4.First you have to navigate the installer to Prepar3d v3.4.Then edit in Local Disk (C:)/ProgramData/Lockheed Martin/Prepar3D v3/simobjects (using the next Entry number available)
_Then go to Scenery/World/scenery/locate TrafficAircraft._bgl rename this to TrafficAircraft.bgl.off/locate ai-traffic.bgl in same directory rename this to TrafficAircraft.bgl
In Traffic 360 open Traffic Control Center click on Traffic Movements and compile the file.
