„Is Prepar3D the future?“ – this questions currently divides the fs-community. Our flusinews.de poll shows it is impossible to say there exists a clear trend towards a particular answer. But what are the views of designers who are the thriving force of pushing our hobby forward? We interviewed many well known persons including Winfried Diekmann and Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft, as well as John Venema from Orbx and Oleksiy Frolov from Majestic Software. Find out what they say about Prepar3D and the future of flight simulation – we are drawing the picture clearer!
Is Prepar3D the future?
Prepar3D is being worked on with a lot of aviation know-how and the required capacities for a further development of FSX.
In addition, there are important requirements of professional flight simulation, e.g. having at least 60 fps in any situation and the necessity of variable hardware connections which are – in fact – a great accomodation for the community. However, we see two possible disadvantages of Prepar3D.
At first, Prepar3D is available via Lockheed Martin’s website only and thus is unknown to a large number of users who buy products merely in retail stores or exclusive online-shops. In the long term, this kind of distribution will diminish the community and also makes it hard for newcomers to find into our community.
On the other hand, selling a „hobby flightsimulator“ isn’t the goal of Lockheed. In our opinion, Prepar3D is more like a courtesy of Lockheed to the community which also brings some cash to their company. Therefore we need to reckon that they may stop distributing Prepar3D for no noticeable reason, probably because the product does not fit into their new concept or business image.
Hence we see Prepar3D as a potential, but insecure future. Before 2011, we decided to invest more time and money into X-Plane since this simulator will be developed further on the long-run. We think Laminar Research got on the right path with Version 10 and will come closer to the goal of a modern flightsimulation software with the release of v11.
Aerosoft is – as many of our developers are – anxious to make all our products P3D compatible. Currently, the problem with airport animations is being worked on so airports will be fully compatible in the future. In addition, we stay in touch with the relevant Lockheed department to be informed about updates and other news very early.
Nevertheless, we expect a lot of incompatibilities if a 64 Bit version is being released in the future. It will take some time to fix the occuring errors, as it will when other serious improvements are added. There will always be some minor or major issues concerning compatibility and thus every user needs to expect possible delays until every add-on will work properly again. We from Aerosoft will – as long as Lockheed provides Prepar3D – develop our products for this simulator as well.
Winfried Diekmann, Aerosoft
No, as long as LM does not release the simulator with proper marketing for the consumer-market, it can’t and won’t be a worthy successor of FSX in my opinion. In terms of the techniques used – probably yes. But not in the perception of the masses. Prepar3D is so much an „insider simulator“ that selling add-ons solely for P3D will never be profitable. Because of their immense power in distribution, Microsoft raised the bar quite high concerning making a simulator popular. Other publishers of simulators need to compare their products with the popularity of FSX and at this moment, I can’t see anybody who would be able to publish a product even a quarter as comprehensive as MS did in the past. Furthermore, I can’t see anybody who I feel is capable of doing this.
Sascha Normann, LimeSim
Yes, I think Prepar3D is the future of the FSX platform. It has a full team that are constantly updating the game engine. They have come out with breakthrough shading and shadows functionalities. They have introduced newer, more modern, up to date Developer kits for the latest versions of 3DS Max which helps us a great deal (massively) in developing planes for the Prepar3D and Flight Simuator X platforms. They also improved the code work on the SDK Exporters for nearly unlimited model file sizes.
What makes Prepar3D a better platform from FSX is that FSX runs much smoother with improved engine code, runs with the new DirectX 11 which has more capailities then DX9 and DX10, and the environment created by the newest shaders and shading technology (HDR Lighting Mode) enables the sim to be a brilliant screenshot studio for aircraft with unique, beautiful interior shading.
Here is a neat little feature that has been introduced into the newest P3D Build. As you fly along in sophisticated scenery, the scenery which is managed in the graphics card, which steadily builds up, is now dumped when it is no longer needed. What this means is that if you are flying along, and coming into new scenery tiles, the older tiles are being dumped to make room for new tiles. In FSX, some people flying in sophisticated scenery will usually only last 9 to 11 minutes before they have a sim crash. (This is on high settings rigs with very high resolution scenery textures). The sim will crash because it overloads. With the newest P3D, you have continuous used-memory dumping occurring which enables you to fly long periods of time without crashes.
P3D is an exotic version of FSX. I stand behind P3D. Without them, we would have to use Gmax to build our planes. We couldnt use 3DS Max 9 because it isnt available any more and it could only export very small models. The newest P3D SDK can export MASSIVE sized (polygon count) models in the blink of an eye. Its an amazing SDK. They have done well and taken care of the Developers as well as the sim customers.
It is interesting what Dovetail are doing with FSX. It would be nice to see FSX SE enhanced, if they are allowed to modify the code and improve it for modern day computers and graphics cards.
There is much life left in FSX, but I think Prepar3D have taken it to the next level and I think they have done very well.
Bill Ortis, Lionheart Creations
The quick answer is „no“. The question should rather be, ‚what is the future of flight simulation?‘. I think over the next decade we are going to see new technologies and FS engines emerge from multiple vendors that fully take advantage of new hardware, operating systems, GPUs and rendering layers like DX12 etc. Of course LM will continue to enhance and develop Prepar3D to add new features and systems, but I don’t think the future of FS can be tied to a single platform at all.
We’ve put enormous effort and money into porting to P3D2 at no cost to our customers, so clearly we are huge supporters of P3D and it continues to be the platform where our ‚art‘ shines best right now, particularly with the lighting and shadow systems.
John Venema, Orbx
I hope it is the future. The only alternative is Xplane and I dont like XPlane from a develops point, I find its quirky none standard interface annoying and time consuming, it may be a accurate flightsim for users, but its very difficult for developers. So I prefer to keep to the FSX/Prepar3D format in which there are plenty of user friendly development tools and easy movement within the FS environment (slewing around).
Gary Summons, UK2000
Prepar3D is most certainly one part of the future. Lockheed Martin has done some amazing things with our favorite simulator but they will be limited by the fact the simply can’t do marketing to consumers. We feel that we are looking at three strong simulators in 24 months time: X-Plane, FSX (SP2 or Steam Edition) and a new platform from Dovetails without one being the absolute winner. And that’s an exciting future, it was close to decade ago since we we had so much choice.
Mathijs Kok, Aerosoft
At this point in time, we foresee big things for P3D. Especially if they do a 64 bit version.
Colin Pearson, Milviz
P3D certainly looks to be the most viable option as regards to further development. But due to the licensing restrictions I am not sure if it is THE future. Therefore I am involved with Dovetail as well. Difficult for developers indeed.
Francois Dumas, FSAddon
I am a bit hesitant to say it is the future. FSX is still thriving quite well. It may be that another simulator might soon arise different from the big 3 (P3D, FS, X-Plane) that might take over. But its a bit tough to see the future for sure.
Jonathan Bleeker, Milviz
It is possibly not the future as such, but a successful continuation of the FSX line which makes it useful with new hardware and provides improved graphics. Of course one can’t extend the existing framework forever, at some point the sim will need to be re-written from scratch.
Oleksiy Frolov, Majestic Software
I definitely think P3D is the future. If P3D are being converted to 64-bit version, I think we’ll have a new scenery design era, with fare more detailed and realistic sceneries.
Tore Stranden, Orbx
I don’t think P3D is the future of flight simulation but rather another option to FSX and FSX Steam Edition for the moment. P3D is a legacy platform and I’d prefer a brand new, made from scratch platform that takes advantage of current software and hardware advances, it also, P3D carries the stigma of not being able to be distributed as an entertainment software, therefore, it makes 3rd party developers hard to be willing to venture into it due to license issues.
Jose Valdez, Razbam
P3D is not the future of FS by my own opinion, for 3 reasons :
- this is at present an unofficial version of FSX bases on ESP 2.0 and not a flight sim software
- LM do not care of the community concerning what we really need, but develops only regarding to their internal use, it’s easy to understand
- FSX engine needs to be entirely rewritten to a new kernel and 64bits architecture to be efficient for next years, and basic patchs and extensions cannot let us hope a futureso fsx can stay as it for next 2/3 years but this is the maximum ! we need a new professional and open FS project technically advanced enough to break actual compatibility and restart with a real future.
Laurent Dupouney, France VFR
Everything points that the answer is yes due to several factors such as: the backward compatibility with FSX which protects all the investment people have done; so far LM is the only company which has made serious improvements in the engine without breaking it; and people tend to stay on what they are familiar with. On this case, LM is offering all of these slowly but steady.
Fernando Herrera, Carenado
In my opinion hobbies aren’t like career choices or setting up pension plans meaning what counts is the „here and now“ not „the future“. Currently, people can choose between a number of static but stable platforms as well as several that are evolving but less predictable and compatible. Having those kinds of options is a good thing and my hope for the future is that something similar will persist.
Holger Sandmann, Orbx
I don’t see it as the future, but as a very useful extension of the life time of FSX. I doubt Lockheed Martin can invest the resources to really fix some of the limitations in the engine. But it’s good that improvements are made to the simulation engine.
Arno Gerretsen, FS Developer
It is hard to say, but are at least two facts that may lead to a positive answer, in my opinion. The first is the backward compatibility with FSX – moving from FSX to P3DV2 for a developer is a breeze and it is very easy to add some of the new features to your plane (for example working mirrors, IR cameras and ground radar). Second is that Lockheed Martin seems seriously committed in developing the platform – such a large company may have the resources needed for a continuous improvement of the simulator.
Dino Cattaneo, Freeware Entwickler
I do think indeed that Prepar3D is definitely the future. Whilst FSX has been given another life through its release on Steam by Dovetail, which is brilliant, I just think that nothing can surpass the stunning visuals and development possibilities that P3D offers over FSX. Just it’s capability to use the GPU over the CPU is worth the switch, not to mention the new shadowing system, constant bug fixes with each update, and the team’s willingness to implement suggestions made by the FS development community. Already we are seeing a very large amount of our customers using P3Dv2, and that number will only rise.
Misha Cajic, Orbx
Many thanks to every single developer for answering our question!
Translation: Frank Kuhn // Pictures: „Filou“
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