P3D Info thread

Is there any consensus on how to install P3D v3 scenery into v4 if the installer hasn’t yet been updated? I purchased the iBlue Yonder Nantucket Island scenery today (I used to fly into there regularly in a previous job) (it was on sale and I had a $5 off coupon) but it only has installers up to v3.




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Ah…found this from the developer:

“Work is progressing on the conversion to P3D4. We had to put a hold on things to prepare for FlightSimCon 2017, but once this weekend is over, it’s back to work. If it were just a matter of updating the installer it would have been done by now, but there’s another layer of complexity in that we’re converting the viva.dll functionality to use SODE for the seasonal and conditional display, and that’s taking a little longer. It should be done soon.”

I finally found some time to dabble with my “Lighting” tab and sliders…bumping down the saturation and reducing the bloom had a very nice result…got rid of the “Barbara Walters glow” and hit the right balance with colors… Here is ORBX England around the Lake District… Running Active Sky for P3D v4…

And one Norway ORBX…

Very nice beach. Will need to try those settings. ORBX England is a must-have if flying in the area. Otherwise it tends to look like Napa.

So, tonight a friend stopped by who has 2500+ hours in the Twin Otter. I set him up on P3DV4 flying around San Diego, doing pattern work at KSAN in the Aerosoft DH-6. I wanted to get his opinion on the flight model. Unfortunately, he was having trouble adjusting to TrackIR and was so distracted, that he couldn’t begin to evaluate the aircraft. I disabled TrackIR, but when that experience was a little less than immersive, I put him under the Oculus “hood”. We joked about it, because many moons ago he was my CFI and had me do a bunch of hood time in route to my Private check ride. Now I was putting him under the hood.

Anyway, he quickly came to grips with the VR environment and was really blown away by the experience. He was also very complementary of the Aerosoft FM and systems, saying that the sounds and response of the turbines was spot on. He enjoyed it so much, I had a hard time getting him out of the chair.

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I’ve just been doing it the old fashioned way, dropping the folders in Addon Scenery and then adding it to the scenery library in game. So far so good. Makes sense that LM would make an attempt to support all of the add-on scenery. But unsure if this is a good strategy.

Edit: discussion here…

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/511794-how-to-manually-add-sceneryaddons-into-p3d-v4-the-right-way/

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Yeah…I read that thread…and got thoroughly confused by all the XML talk. :laughing:

That’s really cool. I don’t have the Aerosoft Otter, so I don’t have any thoughts on it, but if they nailed the turboprop modeling, that is a good thing. Traditionally, most turboprops in FSX/P3D have been modeled as good as they can with output numbers, but they are all almost universally sort of laggy on power response. I recently reviewed the Carenado Conquest and it was a marvelous beast and had numbers that very closely matched the book (with regards to fuel flow, power, speed)…but those Garrett TPE331s they modeled suffered from the slight lag. It is just a hurdle that most developers settle on living with…

Speaking of VR…several of the pilots in my pilot group were asking if I was going to bring back my computer to one of the staff meetings…they really enjoyed it…

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My too. I think that the take-away in that article is that we have some reading to do :slight_smile: One person suggested

(on my system) C:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\Learning Center.chm and going to SDK> ADD-ons>Add-on Packages. But there is also good info in World>Scenery Library.

The seemed laggy to me, so I deferred to an expert. He might have been so blown away by the VR experience that his memory was clouded, but I’m taking his word :slight_smile: It was really fun to hear him to all of the checks, “Gear down and welded.”

Edit: he said that 40 torque / 76 rpm were good general purpose numbers.

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So as a bit of a test bed, I’m installing that free Heron’s Nest scenery that has an installer for FSX/SE/P3D v2/3 and just pointed the installer manually to the v4 directory. After doing the install, it wants to install SODE(SimObjects Display Engine) and after doing some rooting around, I see that there is a P3D v4 compatible version that has recently been released. So I cancelled the Heron’s Nest portion of the install that wanted to install the old SODE, and instead launched the new version:

1.5.2 version…

Caution - I don’t know if this is a good idea or not…so I’m not endorsing this as a good thing… :wink:

I’m fixing to test the install and see how it went. One thing I am a bit confused about is whether I need to install any version of SimConnect or if it was already installed by P3D v4…(?)

And for those unfamiliar of what exactly SODE does…this is what their FAQ says (I didn’t know what it was, but knew it was used for some complex sceneries):

Key Features:

Jetway Control System
Conditional display and animation, including separation planes
Triggerable display and animation
Controllable animation
Variable-driven rotation

Implementation ideas:

Seasonal display of objects
Windsocks
User triggered opening of hangar doors (no more frequency dialing!)
PAPI
Runway Lighting with advanced logic (low visibility, daytime)
Custom Jetways
etc…

Well…so none of that worked…the scenery did not appear correctly…so so much for that experiment… :thinking:

SOLVED…! It was indeed a SimConnect issue - I went into the Prepar3D/redist/Interface folder and installed the ESPv1 and FSX-SP2-XPACK SimConnect versions and all appears as normal…!

Does anyone else wish that P3D would remember your last current setup flight to be the “default” and just reset to that one when you crash your plane? (Not that I’d ever crash my plane…)






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So I’m slowly adding in some aircraft and scenery that don’t have dedicated P3D v4 installers - thus far, I’ve been having good results. While I’m hesitant to clutter up my new install with “legacy” stuff (that might lead to instability or CTDs)…so far I haven’t experienced that.

One of my personal favorites is the Iris C-27J…definitely a “lite” modeled aircraft, and the external textures aren’t anything to write home about, but something about it has always appealed to me. I just pointed the P3D v2 installer to the v4 directory and it looks like all is fine. As a matter of fact, it looks better to me in v4, with a brighter cockpit, but that is probably because I’ve adjusted the bloom and saturation in v4, whereas I didn’t much mess with those settings in v3…

@chipwich - Have you had any success with Carenado planes in v4?

Went back and read that…just wondering if you’d cracked that nut yet…

Anyone remember how to solve the flashing green textures problem? This is the Laborie A400M…and I solved this once before in the past, but darned if I can remember how I did it…

@BeachAV8R Have you installed the patch for it? There was a small update IIRC, which was something to do with flashing green and the HUD.

Hmm…I’ll have to dig around and see if I have that. Time to dig through my e-mails… :smiley: