The difference between FSX and P3Dv4 is considerable and well worth getting P3D now even if they come out with a new version in a year. Get the Academic version if you are price conscious and keep in mind that there is a liberal refund policy.Skycat wrote:Personally I'm holding off on P3D until version 5 so I don't have to buy P3D all over again to upgrade from version 4.
I just got P3Dv4, $200 plus another $100 to upgrade Active Sky (and get new cloud art) and Accu-Feel, and if version 5 came out in three months I wouldn't feel like I'd lost anything. I used version 2.5 for years, only upgrading to v4 when most of my existing aircraft would run in it. I wouldn't feel compelled to drop another $200 on another version any time soon.
The biggest problem for me was that I got a new and more powerful computer and setting the graphics higher caused out of memory errors. But I only had two aircraft that I flew a lot that I knew would work in version 4, which is 64 bit and doesn't get OOMs unless you don't have the RAM on your computer. A week after converting the one aircraft I flew the most to get rid of all the 32 bit code I got v4, and discovered that several other aircraft I flew had P3Dv4 versions... that I didn't have to pay extra for, which was a nice bonus.
I couldn't believe the difference between v2.5 and v4 in graphics and performance.
Upgrading your A2A aircraft will cost a bit, but with any luck a new P3Dv5 version won't be any extra, same as with v1-4 and the v4 versions add a lot. You could spread the expense over as much time as you wished but you shouldn't have to pay additional when v5 comes out. If you wait to do all this when you get P3Dv5, you'll need to buy the new versions anyway.
I'll repurchase the A2A Cub when it becomes available for v4 at whatever price they charge. I already have a P3D version of the Cherokee, bought as a bundle with the FSX version. I don't like the Cessna 172 enough to drop $80 for a new version, or even $50 for the Academic version. The Stratocruiser doesn't have a P3Dv4 version but appears to work in P3Dv2.5; at least it loads and doesn't complain, same with the FSX version of the Cub although I've flown the Cub quite a bit in the 2.5 version but not the Strat.
Several times I've looked at the store page and might have bought 3 or 4 aircraft, but every time I saw the price difference between Academic and Professional and it put me off any purchase. Since then I've learned that the major difference is the price, and I could buy either, but I'm less interested in getting any new aircraft at the moment.
LM doesn't offer any discounts for owning previous versions of P3D in any case.
Hook