Firebird wrote: ↑29 Jun 2023, 14:46
Thanks for your thoughts.
You're welcome!
I've been doing a bit of research into what was said at the Flight Sim Expo, and the (paid) LM Q&A definitely has given the impression that LM are looking to leave the leisure market behind. There are significant changes to P3D under the hood, and although it will remain backward-compatible for now to some extent, we've already seen LM break compatibility as they've made developments in the past. The difference has been that we've had tools to update stuff even from FS9 to P3Dv4 or later, but the authors of many of these tools are either no longer with us or have left the field. Will Arno make MCX work for v6? He might, as he does this for fun, but there aren't going to be that many users of the facility.
I will almost certainly buy v6 if an Academic version is released, as I'll want to satisfy my curiosity about it! But I have doubts that it'll achieve much traction in our niche.
So the question now is, am I paying another $59 USD for v6?
License Type Update
Beginning with Prepar3D v6, the Academic license will be replaced with a Personal license. A Personal license will expand the user group beyond K-12 academic institutions by allowing use within a licensee’s personal residence. The Personal license will require users to maintain internet connectivity during use. Business, militaries and college/universities will continue to require a Professional or Professional Plus license. Complete details will be provided in the End User License Agreement (EULA) at the time of Prepar3D v6 release.
License Price Update
Prepar3D v6 Personal will remain the same price as the previous Prepar3D Academic versions at $59.95. Prepar3D v6 Professional will cost $350 to purchase while Prepar3D v6 Professional Plus will be $2,750. Developer licenses for Prepar3D v6 Professional and Professional Plus will be $9.99 a month and $50 a month, respectively.
Upon release of Prepar3D v6, all previous versions of Prepar3D will modify their price to match the prices of Prepar3D v6. All Prepar3D v6 Professional Plus developer subscribers will continue paying their current price while their subscription remain active.
Well, we won’t have long till we find out! I can’t see that the installed aircraft were mentioned anywhere, but previous experience suggests that they will be carried over from v5, possibly with some textural updates. The screenshots and videos don’t show anything new, IIRC.
The change in licence conditions is significant; up to now we’ve all been in violation of the EULA which expressly forbids use for entertainment. The new ‘Personal’ licence removes that restriction which, given LM’s obvious and more overt emphasis on the training market seems slightly dissonant. Perhaps they’re trying to decriminalise all the existing Academic users!
The one thing I find weird about the new personal license is that: "The Personal license will require users to maintain internet connectivity during use." Seems like they going to monitoring us / our usage... Also what if my internet goes down, am I locked out of P3d for the duration of the outage...?
Side note here is an interesting article from an author claiming to have been at FSExpo to hear LM introduce the new P3d... Seems to answer one question in that it is still the same ESP engine...
The backward compatibility always implied that it was still ESP. The updates are really all eye-candy. I would love it to be more than that, but hey-ho.
As the author says, in the entertainment field (which obviously is peripheral to the product) they are going to struggle against DCS if the weapons aspects are brought into the Personal product. For a start, DCS is free. It has a very slick multiplayer mode, and some of the (paid) aircraft are little short of exact simulations. I’m pretty sure that versions of that program are being integrated into military training products. LM certainly does not have the field to itself!
True... But the one thing I don't like about DCS is that is a "nickel and dime you to death" type of deal... There are only one or two free geographic areas; and only a hand full of free aircraft.... Everything else is around $50 per addon... Versus P3d the whole globe is free and full of default airports (go anywhere out of the gate) and plenty of free addon scenery is out there and or payware if you want it but not mandatory... Also way more default and free aircraft for P3d versus DCS... So even though P3d is a buy up front, pound for pound it is much cheaper than DCS...
All agreed, and it will be interesting to see what LM brings in with respect to weaponry. I'd be surprised if they get anywhere near DCS's playability at a game level, or its accuracy as an aircraft and weapons simulator (where the cost is incidental). I reckon my investment in P3D totals something over £1000 over the years, and I've only bought one addon for DCS (the A-10). That provides me with excellent fun/£ value. There are plenty of free addons for it too. But it would be fun to see if LM have managed to integrate AI with the weaponry - imagine MAIW being able to offer AI air warfare campaigns! Mind you, Arma 3 managed that some years ago...
Honestly I don't think LM plans to bring weaponry to the Personal and Pro licenses based on their latest post... As you can see weaponry is only mentioned under Pro-Plus... So even if the AI is capable of carrying and or using it... You will probably need to pay them the $2,750 to see it... Which means odds are VRS and Tacpack will remain the only game in town to those of us with a lower level license... (I know SSW had their VACMI weapons system out for a while, but they have gotten out of the P3d game and are no longer supporting it.) But again I would rather pay the MX fees for VRS or if necessary the ~$110 that VRS is charging for a new Bug/Tacpack bundle at the moment versus paying the Pro-plus license fee... That being stated I know there were programs in development such as FSCAI and FSX@War that were designed allow aggressive AI behaviors and AI weapons... Not to mention and don't know the status of this project but VRS did at one point mention "bob" in their forums who was their own "AI madman" that would go around shooting down other aircraft... While I realize DCS does have free addons there are not nearly as many for DCS as there are for FSX / P3d and I have not found any free scenery areas / maps...
It would appear I am unable to post my review. I get a '403 - Forbidden' when I try. I have no idea if there are certain words or initials that I may not use (I described the system I'm using), but I can't post it!
Last edited by TimC340 on 05 Jul 2023, 17:17, edited 1 time in total.
First impressions - it's very difficult to see the differences. The lighting is better (and there's more control over it). The clouds aren't. The installed aircraft appear to be exactly the same as v5. The default ground textures are an improvement, especially on airfields, but the default scenery is much as it's been in P3D since v4. There is a little more 'built environment' density than there was for the same settings in v5. That makes cities look more fleshed-out, but the countryside appears more full of random buildings than even FSX on 'Very Dense'!
The MAIW Matrix (P3Dv4) sceneries seem to work, but - as was true with v5 - it looks like it's going to be necessary to compile excludes for the default buildings. Whether those I've already modified for v5 will work straight away I don't yet know. Nor do I know whether ADE v5 output will work properly for v6.
Frame rates at the default settings with no addons were around 18fps. That's on the following system: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 64Gb RAM, AMD Radeon 5700XT GPU (8Gb VRAM). That GPU is probably too weak for this sim; it's using 4-5Gb VRAM with the default scenery and no traffic. There has apparently been an improvement in multicore use, but I didn't notice it.
At this very early stage, I can see no compelling argument for the 'upgrade'. It does seem to be very largely compatible with much of what's gone before, but unless the performance improvements prove to be significant when there's lots of AI traffic in use, I think I'd save my money for FS24! (I can generate hundreds of aircraft with the addons I have - certainly enough to bring v5.4 to a halt on my other computer (AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 32Gb RAM, AMD Radeon 6750XT 12Gb GPU).
Last edited by TimC340 on 05 Jul 2023, 17:16, edited 1 time in total.
I don't regard it as a waste of money, as I was intending to buy another v5 licence anyway so that I could have it on both of my computers. I'll treat this as effectively v5.5, and do all my compiling for v4 or v5.
P3D v6.1 is available for download. There are changes to PBR material specs, I believe, DLSS/FSR2 is now supported along with several other graphical improvements to AA, SSR, CAS. LOD support for autogen, new tree models - with rotor wash and precipitation effects.
