My FSX/P3D experience

[rhysb]

Ok guys, as most of you know I switched to xp10 some time ago and love it. Anyhow as I much prefer to use Prosim rather than suffering with PM I decided to give FSX another go. Also as good as XP10 is I missed the online flying, vast airport sceneries plus the fact that xp10 could bring my system to its knees without even trying!

Anyway I went back to FSX and the constant crashes etc but within this time decided to give the ORBX stuff a try and really thought highly of it. Plus I could go back to Prosim which I'm my view is still the best 737 suite. (Not starting a debate just my view)

So FSX... After a month or so I got to the point where I could no longer finish a solitary flight without it freezing or crashing to the desktop! FSX had to go! Now I looked at P3D as I know you could port over all your fsx stuff over and it is supposed to be windows 7 friendly. I have also heard though that the increased texture sizes etc make it less frame friendly.

Anyway I took the plunge and so far have installed P3D on my existing system and installed all the ORBX areas I have plus some aerosoft airports etc. also REX.

My findings:

FPS are no different. Performance is much smoother as well.
Colours and lighting is much more realistic!
Load times from the desktop are better
Water textures and animations (linked to REX) are incredible and way better than FSX with REX
Jetstream model and prosim work flawlessly
So far (and I'm praying) no crashes or freezes! Runs for hours no problem!

I'm not starting a debate I'm just giving you the facts of my experience

[Nat Crea]

Ive rolled back to FSX too for now for Avionics sake.
( I miss XPs lighting badly though)
I found P3D a step back in a multi computer environment,
on a single computer setup I believe its better than FSX.

Nat

[ETomlin]

I've recently been using FSX a bit more for some desktop flying/testing as the sim is down since Christmas due to moving it from one building to another. I appreciate the on-going trials that you are all doing. I am not a fan of XP, but I am willing to try it one day beyond the occasional demo jaunt I take every 2-3 years.

[FredK]

Regarding FSX crashing......I just want to come to it's defense within a multi-computer system using WideView.

I am running FSX on WideView (4 FSX computers....a server and three visual projectors).  I can very honestly say that in this configuration I have never experienced an FSX crash....I can't even remember even one in the three years I have been using my current hardware!   I find FSX rock solid in that regard. Each computer is identical......nearly three-year old I7 Quad Cores.   Sliders are for the most part maxed on the visual generators except for clouds and AI traffic. Sliders are all at minimum on the server. No FSX "tweaking" anywhere. Frame rate well in excess of 25 even in environments like New York JFK/LGA/EWR where I fly very frequently using airport and photorealistic scenery add-ons .

The key factor of course is that the FSX server is not overtaxed given that everything is set at minimum on the server. There is no way you would be able to achieve that performance for FSX using a single computer with or even without TripleHead2Go.

Fred

[rhysb]

Ive rolled back to FSX too for now for Avionics sake.
( I miss XPs lighting badly though)
I found P3D a step back in a multi computer environment,
on a single computer setup I believe its better than FSX.

Nat

Nat,

Yes that was my reason for going back was the avionics side of things. Orbx with the night lighting on is still damn good but nowhere near the xp experience.

Sorry missed this out from my original post but I'm using wideview with P3D on 3 machines so those with wideview setups everything will continue to work with p3d

[Nat Crea]

Rhys,

I found P3D with WideView pretty good..BUT  I saw constant micro stutters.
Did you?
Minor but enough to go back to FSX for now.

Nat

[rhysb]

Rhys,

I found P3D with WideView pretty good..BUT  I saw constant micro stutters.
Did you?
Minor but enough to go back to FSX for now.

Nat

Nat,

I ran FSX earlier on a machine next to a P3D one at the same airport and same scenery and I couldn't see any noticeable difference. Il keep an eye on it though

Rhys b

[Nat Crea]

GDay Rhys

What was running as the Sever at the time you compared, FSX or P3D?

I compared all FSX vs all P3D and FSX Server with P3D clients.
It may have been a quirk in my network. The stutter was small but enough to bug me 

Nat

[rhysb]

Nat,

I had it the other way around. P3D on the server and fsx on the left client and p3d on the right client.

If anything I find p3d slightly smoother as the frames remain pretty steady moving up or down by only 1 or 2 FPS. FSX I found would jump a bit more so 30 one minute then 18 then back up to 30 if that makes sense? I have them all limited to 30.

Rhys b

[MistyBlue]

I know this is an old topic but didn't make sense to start a new one as I wanted to find out your thoughts/experiences as of today on this same topic with the newer incarnations of P3D/FSX-Steam/X-Plane.  What are you all finding is working best for you these days?

I am currently running a 3 server setup with Left, Center (server), and Right using WideView/WideTraffic and P3D 2.5 on i7 4790k's with a GTX 970 in each across a GB network.  Generally it's pretty smooth with unlimited frames and VSync/Triple Buffering turned on, but I'm getting some significant stutter issues when in a hard turns around a complex airport (e.g. FSDT KFDW) and not sure if it's because the center server is getting overloaded (perhaps I should try a fourth server acting as master?), or if it's an anomaly with P3D/Wideview.  Tried with lower airport complexity settings and it's smoother, so maybe it's more of a network issue versus something with P3D.

So I've been debating trying my setup on FSX-SE to see if it's better, and have even thought about trying XPlane (though I'm not convinced I like it enough to buy several copies).  I've even thought so far as adding multiple drives in each PC with a drive switch so I can install each one on my setup without affecting the others. 

Lol.  We're a crazy lot aren't we?

[JustinWheat]

I am curious to try a triple PC setup in X Plane 10 with Sim Avionics. Has anyone been doing this? Wonder what people's thoughts are on the best platform? I have a Jetmax 737 btw.

Justin