A Short Review of Prepar3D

The other day, The Lioness heard about Lockheed Martin's Prepar3D. She asked me if I'd like to have it. I said, "Sure, I'll give it a try!"

So she subscribed to it for me and said she'd keep it going in perpetuity if I liked it. She feels that $9.95 per month is well worth it, and noted, as did someone in the Civil Aviation forum, that we spend more on Netflix and I spend a lot more time flying than watching movies.

Well, I got it installed today. And here's my review:

If you care about realism, buy it right friggin' NOW!

It looks better than FSX, and the flight models actually make me feel like I'm flying an airplane rather than playing with a toy.

I can no longer pull the arrogant crap I got in the habit of doing in FSX. It will punish you if you do outlandish things.

This is what FSX should have been. It's worth every penny.

And since I registered as a developer, and have been wanting to create aircraft for FSX, The Lioness says she's going to buy 3D Studio Max for me to develop freeware for the Prepar3D community instead. I told her the price, she said it didn't matter as she feels I need my hobbies and knows that I love aviation. Is it any wonder that I love the woman?

In the meantime, I'm already at work in GMAX, and GMAX aircraft work fine in Prepar3D.

The CBFS Beaufighter and Ant's Tiger Moth never felt better than they do in Prepar3D. My FSGenesis landclass scenery works fine, as do all the freeware scenery items I had installed in FSX.

This is a massive improvement in my opinion.

Sauron's take: If you like civil aviation, get it. And jump right in with the rest of us who are developing for it. It's what I've always wanted in a civil flight sim. Highly recommended.

Cheers!

Rick...

Wish my wife would buy me 3dsm... she just frowns at me when I bring things like that up and says, "Why would you buy something that expensive just to do free stuff..."

Without pictures, it didn't happen...

Wait for it Sauron... she's got her eye on a new bag/makeup kit/car. You're easily buttered up and distracted.

LOL Ice! That was my first thought as well.

Thanks for the review Sauron!

Nah, she knows she can have whatever she wants, she doesn't need to butter me up, LOL! I don't think I've said "no" to the woman in all the years we've been married. She's spoiled, and I'm proud of myself for doing it. The nice thing is she spoils back, and makes enough money to do it with style!

Pics? OK. I've got the FSX Hornet here, modified with a correct HUD display and with flight dynamics that put it a lot closer to the real thing, and wearing a VFA-143 Pukin' Dogs skin. It was nice in FSX, a great improvement over the default Hornet. It's mind-boggling in Prepar3D. I feel like I'm really there.

So here I am enjoying this beast at NAS Lemoore. These are completely unaltered Prepar3D screenshots, other than converting to .jpg in PSP 8.1 so I could upload them. The "Upload Image into Post" button won't take a .bmp file.









I'm loving this. Lockheed Martin has done a fine job already and they're just getting started. They'll be issuing continuing updates and the updates so far have this thing leaping ahead. I won't be bothering with FSX anymore. It just doesn't have the great, immersive feel of this one. This is good enough for me to suspend my disbelief and feel like I'm there.

Cheers!

Rick...

For those with an interest, here's a few more completely unedited screenshots. The only change was conversion from .bmp to .jpg for forum use.



Filling in for BeachAV8R on the St. Thomas trip.



KA350 in St. Thomas, USVI.



Lockheed L-188 Electra over the San Joaquin Valley in California.

Cheers!

Rick...

That Reeve Aleutian should be in Alaska, not California. I grew up watching them fly around up there, and they used to have an office at Merrill Field, just a few miles from my house, and had a DC-3 parked out there.

Any good reviews out there of the sim? - it has gone totally under my radar.

For $10 its worth a shot, they will even refund your money if you dont like it...
Wonder if I can let subscriptions lapse and resume as I cycle through my addictions.

Sauron, how big is the download? Think its 20GB 'on-disk'.
Have LM updated the FSX Hornet as a showpiece for their product or are those 3rd-party fixes?

Cheers
Keith

Crikeys, you don't see that everyday !

I kind of figured the Reeve Aleutian Electra belonged in Alaska, Ken. Unfortunately for them, I prefer the weather in California, and those nice big runways at Lemoore, LOL!



It's 10.37 GB in three .zip files. I have the world's worst Internet connection outside of dial-up and it took me about 12 hours to download the whole thing. Lockheed Martin, as one might expect, has very good servers so it goes quite fast, even through my rural satellite connection, and I used a download utility that allows me to start and stop the download at will, so it wasn't too uncomfortable.

Anyone with a better connection than me, that's pretty much anyone who isn't on dial-up, should have no trouble. My satellite connection is just horrible, slow, and tempermental.

LM did not include the Hornet at all with Prepar3D. I took it out of FSX myself and installed it. The version I fly has the following mods:

Enrico B's HUD glass mod (gray smoke choice in the zip), file name "fa_18_hud_mods.zip"
Jivko Rusev's HUD mod, file name "NEW_Realistic_HUD_for_the_FSX_Hornet.zip"
USNVT's Hornet Mods and VFA-143 skins, file name "USNVT_FA-18.zip"

I believe I got all of those files at Simviation. If not, a quick Google search should find them. They greatly improve the default Hornet.

Yes, you can let your subscriptions lapse and resume as you cycle through your addictions. But you may find this is good enough so you don't want to let it lapse.

Give it a try Keith, you'll like it. You can subscribe like I did and cancel at any time, or you can go month by month with a non-recurring license. Or you can pay non-recurring for six months or a year. You could also buy the disc outright, but that's $499 and will only take you to version 2, which is coming eventually, and then you'll be into it for another $499. I like modeling airplanes, so I signed on as a developer and subscribed for $9.95 per month with automatic billing and it takes me right on through version 2 and beyond. It's a subscription I intend to keep forever.

Cheers!

Rick...

I flew on that Reeve plane when I went from Anchorage to Shemya Island, now known as Eareckson AFB in 1973.

We were keeping an eye on Russian missiles for the Army Security Agency.

Lockheed needs to come to an agreement with MS to just release it retail. a good chunk of their new subscriptions have been people moving from FSX, and the more people that move and write reviews, even more people move, the amount of users transitioning to Prepar3d from FSX grows exponentially with every user that transitions and writes a review.

the $10/Month or $500 Perm. License is because its not meant to be a Public release, it was meant to be a Private Business Program.

Thanks Rick.

I suspect that if it was sold as a game then the commercial training organisations that are the real $500 targets would be harder to convince?
10 GB will take me a while...better get started!
BTW the default vehicles are
Maule Orion
Piper J3 Cub
Mooney Bravo
Robinson R22
Beechcraft Baron 58
Beechcraft King Air 350
P-38 Lightening
Lockheed Constellation
Neptune Submersible
Note the last doesn't fly, and Lockheed can't spell Lightning
There are some sponsored free Lockheed downloads too (including an Electra (need a Buffalo skin for Ice Pilots!))
Cheers
Keith

I did not know it came with the Just Flight Connie. I do repaints of that and just completed a whole cockpit repaint. Looks like I will have to invest in it. Can anyone give more information on flight models and visuals compared to FSX?

Is the King Air 350 included a decent King Air..or just a port over from FSX (which had a terrible cockpit..)?

My first thought Sauron is that I'm more impressed with your wife than the sim. My wife is every simmer's worst nightmare. She hates technology for the most part, and gaming as a hobby is a complete waste of time. She's analog, I'm digital. She's an 8 track tape deck, I'm a shiny 160gb mp3 player. It's been a war that has spanned our 26 years of being together, and battles have been won and lost.

Oh, nice pics BTW!

can i borrow your wife? so i can prove to other gamers that there are wives that support gaming/simming/hobbies.

Hang on a sec: better realism....but landing a Hornet with no flaps?!? I'm sure it can be done, say at a landing speed of maybe 200kts!!


Looks good Rick, nice to have a wife that appreciates you!

Yes, better realism. I'll never fly FSX again. Note the vapor coming off the wingtip. I'm not all the way down yet. I did use the flaps on short final into KNLC. I retracted the flaps and the speed brake for the pic on the ground after landing.

This sim doesn't bleed speed very quickly like FSX and punishes if you don't do things correctly. Aircraft I could handily VSTOL in FSX now eat lots of runway. In fact, the sim is now far less forgiving of sins in general.

The flight models and visuals are much better and they're just getting started. Of course, if you input a crap flight model, you'll get crap out, but if you tweak them up to something resembling correct, they fly much better in P3D than in FSX. The textures on scenery and aircraft are much crisper and clearer.

The KA350 is, in my opinion, somewhat nicer than FSX. The textures appear better, much crisper, and it flies better. But do bear in mind that I'm crazy and legally blind. Everything seems better to me in so many ways there isn't comparison. It's like graduating to a higher level of civil sim. And the 1.3 update is coming, they've fixed a bunch of stuff.

Here's my latest addition (this time I did edit the screenshot, adjusted fade, toned down saturation, etc.):



I could fly this sim all day and never get tired of it.

Cheers!

Rick...

where's the canopy glass.....

LOL! It's there. This is why I shouldn't mess with the screenshots. The Plane Captain just cleaned it and he did a really great job.

OK, here's some more unaltered shots that may help answer questions better than me trying to tell you.



















Jeez, I'm really pushing those R-1820's, eh?

Cheers!

Rick...

Interesting, but I am wondering about this "more realistic" claim. Not saying it isn't so, not in the least, just that I don't think I have heard this before.

Specifically, compare the A2A and Carenado planes as they are in Orbx scenery, would they feel more "realistic"? Does Orbx scenery look more realistic in Prepar3D?

Confused.

And can you do a proper stall and spin?

Let me understand Sauron.

prepar3d is a development evnironment. Not a game. That said if I, as you did, would port all of my FSX add-ons into it (sharing the same technology it sound kind of easy and/or straightforward) then I have the best of the two worlds.

Or I got something wrong?
Is there a World ATC as per FS9/FSX?

Can't speak about Carenado, A2A, or Orbx. Yet. I'll get there.

Stall and spin? Don't know, haven't tried it yet. But I will.

The flight modeling feels somewhat improved, though they haven't done a lot yet. But there is a different, and in my opinion somewhat better, more realistic feel. The aircraft feel more alive and affected by nature and more like real airplanes. I never liked the sterile, lifeless, gliding along feeling that FSX imparted. Things have loosened up somewhat. They've got a way to go, but Lockheed Martin is committed to continuing work and improvement on the project. The graphics are unquestionably better.

It is to some degree an environment. The individual aircraft you put into it are only going to be as good as the flight dynamics files they carry. I don't install aircraft without going over the flight dynamics files and tweaking to as close to the right numbers as I can get. But what you put in the flight dynamics files has to live in the environment. If the environment is wrong, all the correct aircraft numbers in the world won't do any good. This is an excellent environment to load up some good numbers.

Yes, there is worldwide ATC, though it's affected by some glitches. Those have been repaired with the 1.3 update.

Cheers!

Rick...

Sauron, have you tried Il-2 CoD?

I'd like to hear your opinion of the flight model in that one, compared to Prepar3d.

Just made a movie in it, see my sig...

That's on my "To Be Acquired" list. I'm still flying IL-2 1946 with the Team Daedelos patches up-to-date.

As for Prepar3D, one thing I hope they'll work on is the helicopter modeling. It's way, way too easy right now. The damn things are downright polite. That's not right.

I'll check out the movie!

Cheers!

Rick...

Anyone knows how the monthly fee is charged for us outlanders? VISA f.e.?

LM have said the FM is basically unchanged, maybe tweaked a bit...FSX helo's are way to easy, but there are ways of fixing that.

PCPilot havea trial subscription in this months mag, I'm downloading now :), but wont be able to run it until monday .
Certainly you can pay be credit card, and have a recurring subscription.

Have also downloaded the ORBX PNW demo for P3D.

Cheers
Keith

The tweaks are quite noticeable. I'm anxious to see what it will be like once they really get after it.

If you take their tweaks and then correct the inevitably errant flight dynamics for the aircraft you install, the results are very good.

I'm having very good luck with aircraft and scenery compatibility with FSX and most FS9 add-ons too.

Cheers!

Rick...