FSX vs PD3 V4

I'm in the same situation Bill and I am wondering the same thing.

Mike

I'm in the same situation Bill and I am wondering the same thing.

Mike

I didn't research it to death exactly, but - like Ben, I tried an earlier version of P3d - I think even v1. My primary game system, aka flight deck, is a multi-monitor setup (3 screens to be exact). The earlier version of P3d brought my framerates to a crawl much worse than FSX. At the time I was using FSX with the Direct-X 10 beta mode and all the necessary fixes to make it actually worth using. With that, I had reasonable framerates and a very nice system but for the usual crashes and issues that FSX always is/was plagued with.

When P3d v4 - the first true 64-bit version was released - and others gave it promising reviews, I decided to give it another try. I was very happy to see that the improved performance not only allowed it to work with my 3 monitors, but with greatly increased graphics settings within the simulator, and without all the performance tweaks that kept the heart of the moribund FSX beating long past its prime. Additionally, I've found it to be more stable than FSX in that I have no more - or perhaps only once that I can recall, unexpected crash to desktop of P3d, and that includes trying to use the various FSX planes that were not "officially approved" as P3dv4 compatible. Also including all my adventure pack scenery developed for FSX that has not caused any problems as far as I've been able to detect.

So...that's my anecdotal review of P3dv4 compared to an earlier version and FSX.

John

Ben,

Most flight simmers use the Academic License version for $59.95 (one time payment). The only issue is that it has the "Academic Version" message in the upper right corner of the screen, but you get used to it and don't even recall seeing it after a while unless you look for it specifically.

As for payment, yes - that could be an issue for non-credit card people, but I haven't had a need to look at other possible options.

I ended up buying a second Academic License for my development computer, as I didn't want the ridiculous continual costs for the developer model. Add to that the outrageous cost for the development tool, I gave up on development for P3d other than my little scenery additions for the Adventure Packs and the Econ-2018 module. These I still use the FSX tools for, then test them on both FSX and P3d with default and FTX Global addon to verify compatibility. Eventually the 3rd-party developers will come up with some free tools, like they did for FSX so that the rest of us can add to the available addons for P3dv4 just as we could for FSX (I hope).