Prepar3d V3 Release date Wednesday 30th September

[Poppet]

http://www.prepar3d.com/latest-news/


Release Notes

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv3/LearningC ... w_v30.html

[Poppet]

Please keep an eye on Prepar3D.com in the coming days for additional features. In the meantime, please check out some existing links of beta testing videos of Prepar3D v3:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gchzl3DlqQc


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c13xgWWnz_Q

[Paul K]

I daresay this will be a topic-de-jour at Cosford on Saturday. What's this avatar entry of aircraft thing ? Does that mean that once you've landed ( or prior to taking off ) you can move out of the aircraft and walk round the airfield ( without selecting a new 'vehicle' like Orbx's BOB ) ?

Anyway, DCS is about to receive a major update, so I think I will focus on that, and await the verdict on P3Dv3 from the community.

Thanks for the heads-up, Elaine.

[Molly - A2A]

I'm very curious to see what the new interface looks like. To me, that has been one of P3D's weakpoints. It was quite an eyesore. I would love to see screenshots of the new UI (scenario creation and ATC window.)

[Alan_A]

At the risk of touching off another religious war (not my intention)... I was on P3D 2.x for about a year and a half after release. A few months ago I installed FSX Steam just to check it out, and have been finding it an easy and congenial environment to live in, with many performance improvements over FSX Gold. I'll watch the reports of P3D 3.0 with a lot of interest, but this time I won't be one of the first ones in. Not sure if I'll get there at all, though I might. Good luck to all you early adopters, and let us know what you find.

[0Artur0]

Is A2A going to charge us yet again for v3 licenses?

[AKar]

There are a few things that get my attention here. First, this actually seems to be a smaller update than 2.x was, not much bigger than 2.4 and 2.5 were. The improved memory management is of course a welcome change, however, as of now, and judging solely by the changes listing, this kind of feels like paying for an interim solution. Which brings me to the second point. While I totally understand and approve paid upgrades to products (everyone's got to eat!), I've got a little issue how's it done here. It is quite clearly implied that v3 is continued development from the current version, however, no update path is provided. Paying $200 for changes that are, arguably, fixing the faults of the original product for a big part is somewhat steep, given that in most professional software a reasonable (25-50 % of the full retail price) update solution for major versions is usually provided. Given that most of the functionality I use in the simulator is done outside the box by Accu-Sim, and the world is already remade by Orbx, I'm bit hesitant to pay this kind of fee until I see the sim and addons in use.

In my 'business moral', when I start as a user of a given software, I expect an update path - this is not to say that I should get the major versions for free, or getting another product line for free (I'm referring to FSX to P3D argument: it is fair enough to pay a full initial price, but this kind of implies the upgrade path during continued development we're now lacking with the platform itself).

Anyways, it is my decision as a customer, and I will get the new version eventually, but before that I want to see the update fees from A2A and Orbx and the improvements in action. As they say, it is not stupid to ask a high price but to pay what's asked!

-Esa

[0Artur0]

ORBX is going to provide quad installers free of charge for their Global products and regions.

[AKar]

That's kind of them, it would have been fine by me to pay a reasonable update fee.

-Esa

[0Artur0]

Don't worry, you'll have your chance to pay reasonable and unreasonable fees at other developers.

[AKar]

Why the hostility? It had been stated that Orbx would start to charge update fees with next major releases of P3D, so I've been expecting them to. As this appears to be rather modest update however, they apparently didn't go that way yet - a nice thing to do really! However, I don't expect the developers to work for free, either, forever. Wouldn't it be unfair to do so?

Re. A2A, there have been no update fees this far whatsoever, so I wonder where your 'yet again' statement comes from. The same FSX purchase has been updated for Steam Edition while the P3D version has been updated through 2.x as well. We'll see if changes in version 3 will be significant enough to warrant a update fee. Anyways, if the LM thinks this is big enough update to charge the whole $200 again, in that sense I wouldn't be too upset to give a few dollars to the addon developers as well.

-Esa

[0Artur0]

Why the hostility? It had been stated that Orbx would start to charge update fees with next major releases of P3D, so I've been expecting them to. As this appears to be rather modest update however, they apparently didn't go that way yet - a nice thing to do really! However, I don't expect the developers to work for free, either, forever. Wouldn't it be unfair to do so?

Re. A2A, there have been no update fees this far whatsoever, so I wonder where your 'yet again' statement comes from. The same FSX purchase has been updated for Steam Edition while the P3D version has been updated through 2.x as well. We'll see if changes in version 3 will be significant enough to warrant a update fee. Anyways, if the LM thinks this is big enough update to charge the whole $200 again, in that sense I wouldn't be too upset to give a few dollars to the addon developers as well.

-Esa

Sorry for my tone. My point was that some developers charged for updating their installers full price of an addon and some didn't.
I completely agree with you.

[AKar]

I see. And as far as the update features go, in my opinion it doesn't warrant for the full price update of the platform either, that's why I think this is somewhat curious release of version 3. Anyways, some developers charged a full price for P3D versions regardless of FSX licenses already purchased - that decision I understand, because I think it as a kind of subscription to free updates to developing platform (like we've had to ensure compatibility with 2.x) and maybe modestly priced updates for new major versions. Because P3D products were known to require constant updating and work to keep them current, the separate original purchase was reasonable in my mind. However, I wouldn't agree any more with full purchase price for V3 addon compatibility than I do with full price for platform update.

-Esa

[BrettT]

Where did you see that ORBX wasn't going to charge a modest fee to go from 2.5 to 3.0 The latest I have seen is that it was still too early to tell and that 3.0 seemed more like 2.6 than 3.0

[0Artur0]

JV said it on their forums today.