Lockheed Martin is proud to announce that the next generation of simulation and training will start on May 30, 2017 with the public release of Prepar3D v4. The release culminates over eight years of Lockheed Martin development and welcomes major enhancements and new capabilities.
Prepar3D v4
Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D v4 – available May 30, 2017
Prepar3D v4 completely changes the simulation landscape with a comprehensive baseline update to a 64-bit architecture. Higher resolution visuals, more objects, increased data precision, larger scenarios, and improved performance are now all possible at levels never seen before in the product’s history. The sky’s not the limit!
Additionally, the release brings dynamic lighting, rain/snow particles, global 3D trees, a fully reworked software development kit (SDK), new default vehicles, and countless improvements.
More details will be released over the next week with Prepar3D v4 being directly available from Prepar3D.com on May 30, 2017 at 2:00pm EST.
EDIT: I think their website is 32-bit, so copied the entire text from the PR above if we’ve overloaded Lockheed’s server capacity.
Right now I only fly P3D because it has all the good Navy jets. DCS is getting set to steal that from them, and I’ll bet VRS is going to charge for a new set of licenses regardless. I much prefer XP for general feeling of flight anyhow. I’ve utterly no motivation to repurchase a game I have repurchased twice in as many years.
Amen brother. It must be excruciatingly painful to start from scratch. Case in point, how long it has taken for DCS to unify. While I applaud the move to 64 (many out of memory errors CTDs this week alone), the fact that FSUIPC won’t work, and may never work, gives me pause not to jump right in.
Here is my short list of prerequisite add-ons that would compel me to invest the time and money in P3V4:
Good vid of V4beta here, still seems to chug a bit on extreme eyecandy settings:
I’m game for V4 upgrade for the better stability if they make it work with all the payware I have and use in V3… but if not, then there’s really no reason for me to upgrade now that XP11 is such a good alternative, so I will wait and see for now.
I forgot to mention that the timing of FSW and P3DV4 being “released” in the same week is - well it begs some consideration. But I’ll leave the speculative analysis to those more knowledgeable.
Edit: I hope that it’s less reminiscent of the GoPro Karma vs DJI Mavic Pro debacle.
I don’t let knowledge get in the way of my speculation
Hmm. I guess it could be one of (or all):
They both sort of started at the same time, so it takes similar amounts of time to go through that 14 year old code base looking for size_t’s and LPDIRECT3D9 d3d = NULL to go change.
They shared knowledge and tech, or got shared knowledge from a 3rd party. (This seems unlikely).
Marketing Team B saw that Marketing Team A declare they were ready to release, so Marketing Team B ignored what the pale devs were saying and just decided to release anyway, (The Happy Feet / Surf’s Up dichotomy of code quality). This seems likeliest.
It’s never a good time to release, so might as well do it now before too many people buy FSW.
I’m on the fence for V4. I bought 1, skipped 2, bought 3. In retrospect, I wish I had skipped 1, bought 2, skipped 3, and bought 4.
I just don’t know if I see enough there to justify the time and hassle of moving stuff over. I definitely won’t be an early adopter of this one unless I see more compelling reasons to buy it.
Oh cmon @fearlessfrog! where is the last one - the wildly speculative conspiracy theory that Microsoft is still working on it after all these years and is only fronting Dovetail and Lockheed to keep the negative press off and close down the games division for tax reasons!
LOL @ the “does a Maul really need 120 kts to rotate?” video that @Kludger linked. When he was showing speed trees, I was thinking to myself, yes, they are nicer trees, but in sum, the scenery looks utter barbaric compared to DCS Normandy. It reminded me of a couple of weeks ago, when I was trying to locate in P3D the cold war bases in Suffolk, RAF Bentwaters Woodbridge, where I lived as a child. Not only did the roads and waterways not match anything on Google Maps, but the scenery looked very much like Sonoma wine country. Nevermind rural England. Orbx to the rescue, but the decommissioned bases were not there, even though they exist IRL. Anyway, glad to have Orbx more or less functional with P3DV4, but when I think at the future investment to get it all back again, I know it’s going to hurt, one way or another.
Yeah - that is an important point. The video mentions that ORBX mostly installs with no problem (maybe some objects and moving stuff might not always work), but if 99% of my aircraft and scenery that works in P3D v3 will port over (without having to buy it again), it will be something I would consider (maybe). I wonder if there is a way to somehow make v4 see the v3 folders (some sort of symbolic link deal) so that I wouldn’t have to re-install everything into v4 if I do eventually get it. The long install process of a dozen or more ORBX sceneries is 80% of the pain of going to a new version of anything.
I think it’s clear the MS guys actually formed Orbx, and are subsidzing the development of multiple MSFS variants to double the sales of their scenery packs.
Actually, upon further thought, much like our recent presidential election, I think I understand what’s going on here. After reading @Gunnyhighway’s thread, the Russians decided to act. On behalf of Eagle Dynamics, the FSB infiltrated both the LocMart and DTG studios at the highest level, compelling both to go public just ahead of the Normandy release. Stampeding back to WW2 combat sims we go!
It’s actually quite surprising that someone hasn’t taken the alpilotx HD mesh data and converted it, a simple ortho tile downloader (a la Ortho4xp) and some autogen OSM based W2XP thing and wrapped it up for FSX/P3D in an easy to use package (not actual scenery, just some open source tools that do it). Technically that’s actually not that difficult and would spoil Orbx’s day completely in being about 70% as good but then $0 (putting the grey area of using 3rd party Google/Bing map providers for local downloads aside for one moment).
I’d do it, but suspect I’d get a Liam Neeson-like phone call almost immediately. Hmm
