P3D V4.5 and CityScene products - It's here !

[akriesman]

As most of you here already know, P3D V4.5 was released today.     This new version addresses the load time "bug" that we located several months ago.

 

For those that do not know, this "bug" has been present ever since the original FSX release back in 2006.    It is became more noticeable as terrain scenery products, like CityScene, provided tens or hundreds of thousands of custom scenery objects (non-autogen).

 

Facts that we learned about the load time "Bug":

 

• The more complex the scenery product, the longer the load time.
• The more 3rd Party scenery products installed on the user's system, the longer the load time.
• When you combine the two above, load times seem to increase almost exponentially.
• When you have long load times when starting a flight within a scenery area (i.e Barcelona, Orlando, Gold Coast), these long load times will also impact visual performance when approaching the scenery area during flight.   This can result in building textures that repaint slowly, blurry terrain, etc.  The faster the aircraft, the more the long load times impact your terrain visuals.    Once the scenery is fully loaded however, the performance issues go away on any supported sim platform.

 

P3D V4.5 should make your CityScene product experience, in particular, much more enjoyable.    The long delays at the 6%  loading mark should be dramatically decreased.    As a result, the loading of CityScene areas when approaching from well outside should go much, much smoother.

 

Other comments related to the V4.5 release:

• For Orlando users, I would now recommend using the custom residential building option over residential autogen objects with V4.5.
• It is no longer necessary to worry about the load time impact that the Orbx libraries have on scenery products, especially CityScene products.  We will need to update the internal product documentation to reflect this.
• As far as I know, V4.5 changes should not impact "photoscenery" or autogen load times.  The fix specifically addresses non-autogen scenery objects that are extremely abundant in an  area.
• I would not expect the load time anomaly to ever be fixed in FSX or FSX-SE, as these products do not appear to be supported anymore when it comes to sim engine enhancements.   

 

I want to thank all the devs at LM for making this issue a priority when we brought it to their attention several months ago.    As a scenery developer, addressing this issue is a real game changer and we will all benefit from it.

 

I also want to thank our customers for their patience, while waiting for us to come up with a solution in Orlando.    This is related to both the P3D V4.5 fix and also Orlando V1.1.

 

Remember, the P3D V4.5 fix ONLY applies when the simulator is stuck for a long time at the 6% mark while loading scenery (10-20 seconds is normal).    If you are having load time issues prior to or after the 6% mark, that is another topic and should be addressed elsewhere.

 

Cheers all,

Allen Kriesman

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PhugoidEffect]

You talk about when starting a flight. What about when you're already flying? Today I noticed something that never happened to me with v4.4 (I'm still with v4.4), I flew from Portugal to Denmark and thus overflew Netherlands and Amsterdam, there were lots of blurries at several Netherlands locations as I flew above in my MD--88. Groundspeed wasn't even impressively high. That sounded very strange to me since v4.4 came to solve a lack of sharpness in scenery textures so nicely.

Anyway I hope v4.5 can solve these kind of things even more.

[KVSandleben]

I can't say that I'm seeing an improvement with 4.5. Especially with your Netherlands when the sheds, and greenhouses are not switched off in the control panel the load bar still get's stuck on the 6% mark for ages.

[akriesman]

The P3D V4.5 load time fix strictly applies to products that have a lot of custom models.  Because CityScene products are made up of nothing but custom object models, those products were most affected by the load time "bug".    All CityScene products should see a big benefit in both load times at startup within an area and also in flight when approaching a CityScene area.    

 

I can't speak for non-CityScene products with V4.5 because I am not familiar with the internals.   The Netherlands uses some CityScene logic.  So, it should benefit from V4.5 in theory.  All I know is that more custom models (non autogen buildings), the more you will see an improvement in V4.5.   CityScene users here are reporting big improvements with V4.5.

 

As far as the Netherlands goes, I am not familiar with all the ways it is constructed internally.   I will touch base with the rest of the team and see how V4.5 is impacting non-Cityscene products.

 

 

[akriesman]

There is one other thing that I want to mention.  This information came directly from the LM devs when testing V4.5.

 

Make sure that your Orbx Libraries are above any Orbx products that use them.  This will cut down on search times during loading with V4.5 (I don't know about other sim versions that are pre-V4.5).

 

It is probably good practice to make sure that the Orbx library layer is at the very top of your scenery library.    

[Stewart Hobson]

Except the moment one runs FTX Central, the OrbxLibs are returned to their "normal' location.  Many folks will find that a pain in the neck.

[Ziggy]

11 minutes ago, Stewart Hobson said:

Except the moment one runs FTX Central, the OrbxLibs are returned to their "normal' location.  Many folks will find that a pain in the neck.

I believe the FTXAA_ORBXLIBS is always on top of all other ORBX entries by design, nobody should have to move anything, I could be mistaken though. 

[Triplane]

39 minutes ago, Stewart Hobson said:

Except the moment one runs FTX Central, the OrbxLibs are returned to their "normal' location.  Many folks will find that a pain in the neck.

 

This whole thing is beginning to be a pain in the neck.....and other places.................................

[HiFlyer]

Guess I will have to switch to the new version too, and see what happens 

[Cyclone1]

Guess I will sit this one out until everything gets in order. My version 4.4 crashed about 2 months ago and I have not reinstalled it in the hopes V.5 will be better? Man, this forum is great because you can always get a pulse on what is happening in the Flight Sim World! Not all lost at this point though thanks to X-Plane 11, DCS World, and AERO Fly. My hope is that the TE products will have better load times so that I can use them again and purchase new ones as they come out.

[Triplane]

Some folks are finding it much better with load times and some folks (like me) don't see much change. Something's going on that isn't quite clear yet. That said, the only way you're going to know whether you're in the former category or the latter is to install 4.5. You simply can't base a decision on what other folks are experiencing. You need to try it on your own system. The performance certainly won't be worse that 4.4 and you may be pleasantly surprised..........Doug

[Stewart Hobson]

15 hours ago, Ziggy said:

I believe the FTXAA_ORBXLIBS is always on top of all other ORBX entries by design, nobody should have to move anything, I could be mistaken though. 

That's correct.  I apparently misread his original statement to mean "above all entries".  Of course the OrbxLibs are placed automatically above all Orbx entries.  It was an unnecessary caution in that case.

[Cyclone1]

I agree Triplane load it up and try it, and so I did against my better judgment! The only word that comes to mind is, "Underwhelmed"! You hit the nail on the head when you said this is becoming a pain...I spend more time working on the sim than I do flying in it! I would rather be flying! At this time I will activate my 80%-20% rule. 80% on other platforms 20% on P3D, tired of beating my head on this one. With new VR stuff coming out I am building up my other flight simulators in preparation, I use DCS, AeroFly, and X-Plane 11 as a good fall back. Yes, these have pluses and minuses as well but for the most part, are less of a pain in the.....lol. Don't get me wrong P3D is still in the running, just taking a break from it for awhile while I ponder the situation. Maybe someday I will read a headline on ORBX announcing ORBX,s new flight simulator that smokes all of them, somehow I think those guys could do it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rubster]

This load time thing is not working for me. ORBX true earth NL is unplayable and cost about 20 min to load in, in combi with flytampa amsterdam. Deleting True Earth and then loading times within 5 mins.

[porsche]

On 4/11/2019 at 7:25 PM, Cyclone1 said:

I agree Triplane load it up and try it, and so I did against my better judgment! The only word that comes to mind is, "Underwhelmed"! You hit the nail on the head when you said this is becoming a pain...I spend more time working on the sim than I do flying in it! I would rather be flying! At this time I will activate my 80%-20% rule. 80% on other platforms 20% on P3D, tired of beating my head on this one. With new VR stuff coming out I am building up my other flight simulators in preparation, I use DCS, AeroFly, and X-Plane 11 as a good fall back. Yes, these have pluses and minuses as well but for the most part, are less of a pain in the.....lol. Don't get me wrong P3D is still in the running, just taking a break from it for awhile while I ponder the situation. Maybe someday I will read a headline on ORBX announcing ORBX,s new flight simulator that smokes all of them, somehow I think those guys could do it!

------------------------------------------------------

 

I agree 100% with your comment of spending more time working on the sim than flying it (P3D). I've just got a new machine and am waiting for the fix for 4.5 before installing everything from scratch. It sounds like LM is correcting more than a few things with this fix so here's hoping. I find I'm spending more time on DCS and Aerofly in the last year. I haven't got into Xplane but may get it as a backup. I thoroughly enjoy ORBX products which accounts for a good part of my interest in P3d.

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cyclone1]

Hey Dave, sounds like I'm not alone when it comes to using other flightsim platforms. Since I posted my last comment and went ahead and did a major upgrade to my system, I basically built a new one! So the benefit of P3D under going surgery gave me the opportunity to overhaul my 5 year old system. Funny how this P3D fix was rumored to be fixed in a couple of weeks and is still being repaired, think they may have found some deeper issues to their current version. Give X-Plane a try it has some really cool stuff. I waited a long to try it and I am glad I took the plunge, their 737 is absolutely amazing! You won't find all the scenery you find in Prepared but what is there is very good. For me it started as a backup for P3D but may end up being the primary sim for me. Either way the whole platform does not cost anymore than some airplanes! Having more than 1 sim turns out to be a good thing!

[porsche]

6 hours ago, Cyclone1 said:

Hey Dave, sounds like I'm not alone when it comes to using other flightsim platforms. Since I posted my last comment and went ahead and did a major upgrade to my system, I basically built a new one! So the benefit of P3D under going surgery gave me the opportunity to overhaul my 5 year old system. Funny how this P3D fix was rumored to be fixed in a couple of weeks and is still being repaired, think they may have found some deeper issues to their current version. Give X-Plane a try it has some really cool stuff. I waited a long to try it and I am glad I took the plunge, their 737 is absolutely amazing! You won't find all the scenery you find in Prepared but what is there is very good. For me it started as a backup for P3D but may end up being the primary sim for me. Either way the whole platform does not cost anymore than some airplanes! Having more than 1 sim turns out to be a good thing!

 

If LM takes longer to fix things and gets it right the wait will be more than worth it. My new machine is a 9900k, 2080, m.2 970 eco plus drives etc. Down the road I’d like to get into VR. I’ve been thinking about the latest version of xplane as it seems to have evolved into something good. I had a version quite a few years ago and it didn’t appeal to me then.  Struggled to get it set up right.  As to scenery ORBX and others are now producing scenery and that plus some add on aircraft for it are available and they look almost study level. There’s apparently a pretty good Saab 340 for Xplane and a couple decades ago I flew one for a few years (B & B+ versions). I really enjoyed the Saab so it’d possibly be my first add-on aircraft for it. I think it’s time to add xplane.......

[Cyclone1]

I am waiting for it also Dave. Just got my computer finished tonight and I am loving this thing! Case is View 71 by Thermaltake, i9-9900k, ASUS Hero XI, ASUS RTX 2080TI, Corsair 115i, 4 sticks of Corsair Platinum Ram 32 GB. Have not done any overclocking yet still downloading drivers and updates. For X-Plane the aircraft right out of the box are very, very good! X-Plane does lag behind on scenery compared to Prepared but what is there is very nice. I to want to give VR a try again and I think X-Plane may be one of the platforms I will use. VR is good in DCS and Areofly as well. Its amazing I have built a computer in the time frame Lockheed is still trying to fix P3D, oh well! Pacific Northwest looks super good for X-plane and I will be jumping on it. Wish they would hurry up so I can load Las Vegas, (Fly Tampa) into Prepared, it looks good. Yes, that SAAB 340 is sweet! Now that I have X-Plane would not want to be without it.

[Aussieflyer38]

I guess I'm  on the same bus as you guys, nothing has changed on the improvement side for me, in fact YBCG Gold Coast is worse, taking over two minutes to load now, YSSY Sydney is slightly better, but not enough for me to do a happy jig about.  On the down side, towards the end a lot of my flights P3D crashes, never had that before I updated to v4.5. Apart from the cost, X-Plane is looking better everyday

 

Don 

[porsche]

On 5/7/2019 at 4:37 AM, Cyclone1 said:

I am waiting for it also Dave. Just got my computer finished tonight and I am loving this thing! Case is View 71 by Thermaltake, i9-9900k, ASUS Hero XI, ASUS RTX 2080TI, Corsair 115i, 4 sticks of Corsair Platinum Ram 32 GB. Have not done any overclocking yet still downloading drivers and updates. For X-Plane the aircraft right out of the box are very, very good! X-Plane does lag behind on scenery compared to Prepared but what is there is very nice. I to want to give VR a try again and I think X-Plane may be one of the platforms I will use. VR is good in DCS and Areofly as well. Its amazing I have built a computer in the time frame Lockheed is still trying to fix P3D, oh well! Pacific Northwest looks super good for X-plane and I will be jumping on it. Wish they would hurry up so I can load Las Vegas, (Fly Tampa) into Prepared, it looks good. Yes, that SAAB 340 is sweet! Now that I have X-Plane would not want to be without it.

 

I did get X-plane 11.33 (while waiting for the 4.5 fix) and am really surprised how good a sim it has evolved into. The only add-ons I have got so far are the ORBX GB True Earth North and Sumburgh plus for an aircraft I have bought the ToLiss A319 which is excellent. I will probably add the south and middle GB. I wish with the south ORBX had included the Guernsey/Jersey islands.The pacific Northwest will be a welcome add-on for X-plane as well. Hope at some point the Norway/Swede airports are made available for X-plane.

 

I see now that the hotfix has become available for 4.5 but I think I'll give it a couple weeks to see if there are any problems there. I miss flying P3d in the area from old Hong Kong up through China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan etc and the add-ons there are really good for P3d. I have a lot invested in P3d so I will rebuild it again but this entry into X-plane has really opened my eyes to an alternative.

 

Dave

[Cyclone1]

Congratulation on X-Plane Porsche, it took me forever to get it due to my own hesitation. Forum after forum kept telling me, "I need to purchase this"! My major decision to take the plunge was X-Plane appears to be more advanced in VR than P3D. As of yet I do not know which is the better platform as I have not tried X-Plane in VR, that said I did try P3D in VR and did not like what I was seeing! Another clue I used in deciding to make the X-Plane purchase is the ongoing forum battles over which one is best, I knew at that point X-Plane was giving Prepared a ride! All in all I like both platforms each for different reasons. I would highly recommend X-PLANE for anyone that is thinking about it: Just Do It, you won't be disappointed and in the very worse case scenario you will have 2 great simulators! Finally when you read forums where P3d vs X-Plane gets into a, mine is better feud, you can but in and speak with first hand knowledge because you have both! And last but least if 1 simulator goes down for updates you will always a fallback, it works out great!  Now I just have to be very patent and see which VR headset will be best for Flight Simulation! 

[Cyclone1]

AussieFlyer38 take the plunge sir, and enjoy X-Plane as well, then you will have 2 Flight Simulators to explore and enjoy, it was the long overdue best thing I did in Flight Sim. In fact I also enjoy DCS, and once in a great while I will fire up Aerofly. I you dive in you will have the 2 best platforms for flying! 

[Aussieflyer38]

5 hours ago, Cyclone1 said:

AussieFlyer38 take the plunge sir, and enjoy X-Plane as well, then you will have 2 Flight Simulators to explore and enjoy, it was the long overdue best thing I did in Flight Sim. In fact I also enjoy DCS, and once in a great while I will fire up Aerofly. I you dive in you will have the 2 best platforms for flying! 

 

Thanks mate, I most probably will now, seeing as I'm having problems with P3D v4.5, nothing to lose but a few bucks

 

Don

[Cyclone1]

Just to let everyone know,  I just downloaded the Hot Fix for Prepar3D, so far so good! Don't let what I just said stop you from X-Plane, X-Plane is very, very good in its own right! 

[neilfly]

Thanks for this topic. I was reluctant to go to 4.5 but now there seems to be good reason. The new Melbourne Cityscape I'm getting black blotches on some of the roof tops and a few buildings blacked out. I figured it was struggling to load (never got this with Gold Coast though). Anyways will update to 4.5 now and see if this improves the wonderful new Melbourne

scenery.

[Cyclone1]

Neilfly, you might want to look at your settings and pull them back a bit it can make a big difference.

[porsche]

On 5/13/2019 at 4:45 PM, Cyclone1 said:

Congratulation on X-Plane Porsche, it took me forever to get it due to my own hesitation. Forum after forum kept telling me, "I need to purchase this"! My major decision to take the plunge was X-Plane appears to be more advanced in VR than P3D. As of yet I do not know which is the better platform as I have not tried X-Plane in VR, that said I did try P3D in VR and did not like what I was seeing! Another clue I used in deciding to make the X-Plane purchase is the ongoing forum battles over which one is best, I knew at that point X-Plane was giving Prepared a ride! All in all I like both platforms each for different reasons. I would highly recommend X-PLANE for anyone that is thinking about it: Just Do It, you won't be disappointed and in the very worse case scenario you will have 2 great simulators! Finally when you read forums where P3d vs X-Plane gets into a, mine is better feud, you can but in and speak with first hand knowledge because you have both! And last but least if 1 simulator goes down for updates you will always a fallback, it works out great!  Now I just have to be very patent and see which VR headset will be best for Flight Simulation! 

 

 

The better part of a couple months into X-Plane (now 11.34) and i am so impressed by it. I have yet to rebuild my p3dv4 though over the years i have sunk so much money into it I will get to it. I've got all of the X-P  ORBX TE for great Briton and am looking forward to PNW plus some ORBX airports. I've been into MSFS and P3d for decades and it was just this last 4.5 hotfix issue that led me to try X-P in the interim while waiting.

 

I recommend checking out this version of X-P. P3d now has a legitimate competitor that is on par with it.

Dave

[Cyclone1]

I am with you on this one for sure Dave, X-Plane has some really nice things about it especially flight dynamics. Pacific Northwest is gonna be nice for sure.

 

Doug C

[John Heaton]

The houses appear to be perfectly planted on this shot - from roughly the same place as yours

I have PD3 4.5h1 and the Australia V2 was totally installed by Central - I did nothing - nor removed anything 

from the previous V1 - Global - vector set up - and windows 10 64bit

[Cyclone1]

I am not sure where your going with this John, did you mean to post that here? lol