Prepar3d 2.2 is out

[Alan_A]

The Prepar3d 2.2 update (and full installer) are now available. Go to the downloads page on the P3D website.

No reports from the field yet (the update was posted about a half-hour ago) but I'm sure they'll be coming in shortly.

I won't be able to get to it for a couple of hours so if you get there before me, please post impressions/results.

Enjoy!

[Geomitrak]

Just downloaded it, but not installed yet. I'm going to watch the various fora for the next few hours and see if there are any problems. Beer time !

[Clutch Cargo]

Just doing my first spin. Clouds scattered out of San Diego, beautiful Spring day. Went with the default settings for clouds. WoW! As you fly under 'em shadows casting upon the fuselage and from inside it gets darker and light. Can we say IMMERSION! Can't ask for better FPS.

[Chris Sykes]

Ill agree there too! Cloud shadows are cool! Even better is it works with FSX add-ons!

[AussieMan]

Downloading as I type this.

[AussieMan]

I posted this on the ORBX forums.

Anyone else notice some items go missing? Before I installed the update I had installed all the P3D V2 airports and had people and object flow at all the airports and the Virgin charter at YSCH. Since the instillation of V2.2 I have lost them all.

And this is the reply I got.

The ObjectFlow modules need to be updated to match the new code. We already have a working module ready to go and ObjectFlow has a built in updater feature so the update will be pushed shortly.

So I am happy to wait even though the airports are rather naked without them.

[Alan_A]

Still haven't had a chance to download. Tonight got away from me. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, am reading the early reports and trying to decide between the patch and a new full install (ugh...)

I understand that the Active Sky Next P3D beta needs to be updated to work with 2.2.

[roger-wilco-66]

Awesome stuff, thanks for the h/u!!

Cheers,
Mark

[Chris Sykes]

REX still works, even with cloud shadows!

[Chris Sykes]

I spoke too soon, is anyone one else getting issues with REX and poor FPS and major lagging and stuttering? I cannot use Prepar3d with REX, without REX its sweet!

[roger-wilco-66]

I also notice a poor performance, but that might be self inflicted due to a lot of configurations I made. All my addons (Accufeel, weather, FSUIPC, etc) work though.
I'll check the config and the inspector tonight!
I noticed that the flickering of horizontal alpha channeled surfaces (tree canopies for instance) is gone and the shadowing has improved.

Cheers,
Mark

[Montie]

Purchased and downloading now.

[Dimus]

HiFi released a new beta for ASN which is compatible to 2.2. Get it here: http://www.hifitechinc.com/Downloads

I am downloading this and installing 2.2. to see how the combination of ASN weather and cloud shadows will be.

[CG_1976]

I spoke too soon, is anyone one else getting issues with REX and poor FPS and major lagging and stuttering? I cannot use Prepar3d with REX, without REX its sweet!

Atm I am experiencing the same as you over the Arctic and Caribbean-Mexico-Texas Regions.

[Dimus]

The lates ASN works great in 2.2 and I did not have any FPS or stuttering issues. I just applied the patch over my install which already had REX4 textures and FTX Global and Vector. I kept the same settings and I must sy it feels smoother than 2.1. I only added settings on cloud shadows at medium in the sliders. The cloud shadows look great. In the following pics the plane is still outside the cloud shadow in the first one and under it in the second one:

[Montie]

So far I am getting great performance, although some stuttering occurs at times. I am still on max settings, so maybe the cause of the stuttering can be found there. A few screenshots:

[Alan_A]

Finally got it patched today. Only had time for brief testing but it's impressive. Still tuning the settings - cloud shadows look great on medium settings, for the rest I'm gravitating back toward my 2.1 settings. Was able to induce an OOM by moving the autogen sliders to very dense. Normal is a safe setting, and I'm hoping I can edge them toward dense, but I won't know for sure 'til after some longer flights.

All in all, the platform really seems to be coming into its own. I haven't been back to FSX for a couple of months and I'm feeling less and less need to revisit it. Might settle on P3D for the long haul.

[Chris Sykes]

I spent all last night in Prepar3d, didnt even touch FSX! Ive had a reply back regarding my REX issue.

Performance issues is not something we try to be engaged in as it's all relative to how your system is setup, settings in both the simulator and REX, as well as your driver software. In our user manual we try and give tips along the way, so I suggest try reading that first.

[orionll]

So far I am getting great performance, although some stuttering occurs at times. I am still on max settings, so maybe the cause of the stuttering can be found there.

Max settings as in everything full right / checked? What sort of hardware do you have? I get 6-12 FPS when I try running full max with an i7 2600K at 4.4GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and a GTX570. When I lower settings a bit, I can generally get around 17 FPS with lots of stutters.

[Alan_A]

Guys, there's no way you can get decent performance in P3D2 with max settings, no matter what your hardware. Autogen is much more dense for a given setting than FSX, and some of the new rendering options (shadows in general, terrain shadows in particular) are extremely demanding. The developers have explained over on the P3D forums that the settings are there to allow different kinds of users to tailor different kinds of scenarios, not to set everything to the right. In my case, running on a delidded, water-cooled 3770K overclocked to 4.8 GHz and a water-cooled 780ti, I run into trouble if I push autogen above normal (I'm experimenting with dense in 2.2 but no verdict yet) and I have to pick and choose among shadow options. I keep tessellation off as well, and I gained a lot by dropping my NVidia Inspector profiles and just running it in global default. It's an old saw but it applies here - if you're running into stutters, OOMs and other performance issues, try cheating some of your sliders back. Better still, tune performance by starting with sliders at full left, then increase them until you hit turbulence. I agree it's worth some tradeoffs for some of the new features, like the shadows and the HDR lighting - otherwise you've got something that looks like FSX, though much smoother - but caution will pay off. It's too bad, but them's still the breaks.

[Dimus]

I agree with dropping Nvidia inspector for P3D and using whatever is in the application. Much better after I've done that, and being conservative with the sliders.

[paiken]

After a little bit of fiddling around with settings, I think I've finally found the sweet spot for my system. After installing the REX textures I was initially horrified by the frame rate drop, but tweaking the shadow settings has allowed me to make a flight without stutters and still have the cloud shadows on the ground. Someone mentioned in an earlier post to dial back the autogen settings to normal. I did and noticed an immediate improvement. Getting a steady 20 fps with only the occasional hiccup. Now to start adding on some planes...

[dvj]

Just got P3D v2.2. soooo....... FPS hit big time with REX and FTX. 5 sometimes 8 fps. cutting back shadows and autogen, maybe 12 to 15. REX clouds do not look realistic, kind of pasted in visuals. Much more work to do. Right now my tweaked FSX with Steve's DX10 fixer I'm running FPS of 40 to 60 on regular basis.

[falcon409]

Just got P3D v2.2. soooo....... FPS hit big time with REX and FTX. 5 sometimes 8 fps. cutting back shadows and autogen, maybe 12 to 15. REX clouds do not look realistic, kind of pasted in visuals. Much more work to do. Right now my tweaked FSX with Steve's DX10 fixer I'm running FPS of 40 to 60 on regular basis.

Yep, it'll take some work to get things tweaked. REX is a known problem right now. . .I stopped mine from loading and just use the textures. Don't use FTX so I can't comment there, but I would guess that since that's more a texture replacement that's it's more likely that the big hit is coming from REX. . .and possibly your slider settings and whatever texture resolution you have it set at. The sliders in P3D don't correlate to the same settings from FSX so it took a bit of playing with them to get things set correctly. Shadows, if set too high will also drag the fps down. I actually moved everything to the left and then slowly started moving them until I found a sweet spot. I'm pleased with the look I have now and that includes "some" cloud shadowing and interior/exterior aircraft shadows.

[Alan_A]

I need to amend my earlier commentary on one point - I've had to go back to NVidia Inspector to tame the (extreme) shimmering of the ORBX FTX Global lights. I get good results and not too much of a performance hit if I set transparency supersampling to 4X SGSS in Inspector and leave all the other Inspector settings at default.

Re: overall performance - keep in mind that clouds (especially with volumetric fog selected) and shadows have the biggest impact on performance. I'm having an easier time running clouds and shadows with a 780ti than I did with a 680. I still need to keep vegetation shadows off, and set terrain shadows to receive only ("cast" is turned off). I can set cloud shadows to 20,000 meters with medium shadow quality. Also, I keep my texture resolutions set to medium (1024x1024) - if you're having trouble with REX clouds, you might want to check your texture resolution and see if a lower setting helps. Autogen settings don't seem to affect my frame rates much but they do cause stutters and OOMs if set too high.

Hope this helps.