Five months since HF2. Will there be 5.4?

[Ray Proudfoot]

This is posted more in hope than expectation. It’s been five months since the last update to v5. It would be helpful to know if LM are planning to release a further update to v5 or whether a line has been drawn on that version and work on v6 has commenced.

This is not a support question, just a polite enquiry about your plans for the future. There are still plenty of us enjoying a stable sim but time stands still for no man (or woman). 😁

If there is to be a v6 my hope is that third party developers will make their products compatible with it. Many have deserted P3D for MSFS.

I hope someone from LM can enlighten us.

[PilotRaider14]

I too am waiting for a new update. My sim experience hasn't been great with V5.3 HF2.

[alanmetcalf]

An update would be great.

[JorgenSA]

Ray,

The reason that so many third-party developers have abandoned P3D for MSFS is very simple - that's where the money is.

As an example, Drzewiecki Design once told me that only 4% of their sales come from P3D products, almost nothing from FSX products and the rest is from MSFS products. Painful as it may be for us, a developer, who wants to make sort of a living, cannot ignore those figures.

And if you go to UK2000's website, I think there is a statement on their forums to the same effect.

Jorgen

[Ray Proudfoot]

Jorgen, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. Discussion on AvSim about P3D has dropped significantly.

MSFS has just one advantage over P3D. Scenery. That’s it. I know LM has the resources to introduce the same quality of scenery as MSFS. It’s just a case of whether Microsoft would allow it under the T&C of the ESP licence.

Speaking personally unless v6 is a significant improvement over v5 I’m unlikely to buy it.

[JorgenSA]

As I understand it, the reason that the scenery of MSFS is as it is, is that it is downloaded as you fly along.

For me, no go. But that is a personal opinion, of course, along with others.

Jorgen

[Ray Proudfoot]

Jorgen, that’s correct and I feel the same. But if a half-way house could be achieved that was better than the current scenery but could be stored that might work.

MSFS works best for VFR. IFR flights higher up don’t need such detail. But it’s all down to LM.

[jetpilot1980]

Ray,

The reason that so many third-party developers have abandoned P3D for MSFS is very simple - that's where the money is.

As an example, Drzewiecki Design once told me that only 4% of their sales come from P3D products, almost nothing from FSX products and the rest is from MSFS products. Painful as it may be for us, a developer, who wants to make sort of a living, cannot ignore those figures.

And if you go to UK2000's website, I think there is a statement on their forums to the same effect.

Jorgen

What Jorgen is saying is correct; speaking to India Foxtrot Echo regarding a V5 issue with some of their formerly payware fighter aircraft the other day they told me "the F-35 sold almost 10 times more in MSFS in 4 months than in P3D in 5 years." The flip side of the coin is that while MSFS does have pretty graphics, in terms of what it can simulate and available variables, it is a much less capable simulator than P3d and in many ways is less capable than FSX even. Also, MS has the DRM very locked down making porting of addons hard if not impossible between the two sims and the SDK for MSFS is very limited. So for those reasons a lot of Devs are just picking the more profitable sim and sticking with it. That being stated for those of us who use Tacpack and or Superbug from VRS it would appear that because of those issues VRS is sticking with P3d and not going to MSFS... So if you want or need weapons capabilities or military simulation P3d will be the place to stay...

[PilotRaider14]

P3D is still my long term preferred sim in all honesty. I've invested a lot into it.

Not everyone has the money to invest new resources into MSFS either.

[kand]

Yes an update from the LM team about P3d v5 and beyond would be welcome, irrespective of the battle of the sims, one area where Microsoft have clearly improved and won is communicating with their customer base. There are still plenty of us who have thousands invested in hardware (home cockpits) which is mostly locked to P3d at this stage.

Whilst v5 has undoubtedly brought engine improvement, it has at least for me been retrograde in visuals so I would like to know whether the v5 truesky implementation will be improved upon and finished off, there are plenty of requests around this subject which have mainly gone unanswered.

Kind regards

[Ray Proudfoot]

Two days on and no one from LM can reply. Why? It’s not a state secret is it? If there’s a point update coming just say so.

I’m not even going to ask what it fixes / improves. I’d just like some indication of your plans.

I know you’re reading this because the support people say you read everything.

[eburt]

Hello Everyone,

My comments as a cockpit builder and probably a minority in theP3D user group.

I am in agreement, and I hope to see more improvements coming down the line. My experience to date is a very stable sim that has moved a lot of the load from the CPU over to the GPU. Stability is so important. What is also very important to cockpit builders such as myself are multiple display screens/tvs etc. for the outside views which still tax the CPU to the limits and make the CPU the bottleneck. The current offerings of Video Cards have pretty much caught up to P3D but we still find ourselves having to overclock our CPU's as much as possible.

Personally, over improved graphics I would like to see improved performance in the area of the CPU performance. So many of us now have extra PC's we can use, it would be nice to be able to harness some of that computing power from resources not being used on other PC's in the LAN. My cockpit currently consists of 3 PC's and the Main Flightsim PC is doing all the CPU related calculations. Don't even know if what I am asking is even possible, but it sure would be nice to share the load between CPU's in the LAN such as a torrent download shares the download as an example(maybe a poor one). I know there is multi channel, but this isn't what I mean, I am referring to P3D sharing CPU workload with other CPU's in the LAN. As I said, I'm not even sure if this is possible. At any rate I am finding my GPUs are nowhere near topping out at 100% use so maybe even more CPU resources could be delegated to the GPUs?

I envision a P3D using Google Maps someday to top up the graphic end of things but without the performance it wont be very helpful to cockpit builders with multiple views. For the desktop flyer it would be great.

Just my 2 cents worth here.

[737SimGuy]

Overwhelming response from LM in this forum! (yes, sarcasm LOL)

Me thinks maybe they are very happy that 99% of the non-military customers have been offloaded back to Microsoft and they don't have to bother anymore ;-)

Oh well, I will continue to fly 5.3 and enjoy it. And if a new version of P3D does actually get released and available to the general public I will certainly buy it. Love it.

Over and out!

[JorgenSA]

The way that Corporate America works in the software industry (where I actually worked), is that updates and new versions never are announced until they actually are available.

As support employees we were specifically instructed/ordered NOT to mention anything about updates, fixes and new versions, the only response we could give is that we would forward anything to the developers.

Have you for example seen nVidia announce beforehand what they would fix in the next driver update?

Jorgen

[Mike Sierra]

I know that LM would not give out informations about a possible new release.
But I'd like to add my vote in lodging my interest in a further development of P3D as a member of the P3D family. May this family shrink, but never give up!
Michael S.