Introduction

Hello there everyone, my name isMrYorkiesWorld and it's been a while since I last posted any contentin terms of videos, reviews or anything like that either on my ownYouTube channel or on FlightSim.Com. I decided to make a comeback anddo a little review of Lockheed Martin's new P3D V5 (with Hotfix1).

I first heard about P3D V5 coming out towards the end of April 2020- until then I'd essentially been absent for quite a few monthssorting out a few things in my own life. Family and loved ones had totake priority, as did my job working for the NHS in such uncertaintimes with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, I decided to give P3D V5 a review, and I'm extremelygrateful to my friend Dom Smith from FlightSim.Com for contributingtowards the cost of P3D V5 - I'm extremely grateful for his support onmaking my return to YouTube and to my reviews here on the site.

As with all my reviews, I like to keep things short, to the pointand easy to understand - I don't believe in going too far in depth -it's always fun to find certain things out for yourself as well, justlike I have with this new version of the simulator.

Installation

Initially, the interface for P3D V5 is very similar to that ofprevious versions, albeit with a new logo and splash screen which, inmy opinion is a huge improvement on the old, tired-looking visuals ofprevious P3D versions such as P3D V4.

Within 24 hours of me initially installing P3D V5, Hotfix 1 cameout, and so I had to download everything again and update it manuallywhich was a bit of a pain, however I can certainly say it was allworth it to be able to check out this new version of P3D which, in myopinion is very exciting to review indeed.

The installation was self-explanatory - it was quick and easy on myparticular system, and I didn't really notice, apart from the visuals,much difference in the process at all compared to previousexperience. The time taken was around the same, and the whole processof choosing which directory to install to was pretty much the same aswell.

Interface

Seeing as this is a new version of P3D, I expected to see a new andimproved user interface within the simulator, and I haven't beendisappointed. The color scheme, I have to say suits the simulator alot better and helps to make it look a lot simpler. The start-upwindow itself looks to be a little smaller than before, and it mightbe confusing at first if you're used to previous versions of P3D,however you should quickly get used to the new layout, and it onlytook me a few minutes to feel right at home again.

One of the things that interested me is that the "Weather" sectionin the options menu now sits inside of the "World" section, which Ifound a little confusing at first, but later realised it made sensefor everything related to the world, atmosphere and weather to comeunder the same umbrella.

The settings screens also seem to have a few new features such asthe option to enable Variable Refresh Rate, Dynamic Texture Streamingand Enhanced Atmospherics (Beta). I did eventually decide to enablethe Enhanced Atmospherics (Beta), and was quite impressed howdifferent it made the clouds look in the sim. It takes away theability to manually customize some of the cloud options, but it seemsto work really well and add more detail and realism to thesimulator.

Visuals - Weather, Scenery, Etc.

On my first try with the simulator I decided to go "bare bones" interms of add-ons or scenery. I wanted to see what the simulator lookslike straight out of the box. The only add-on aircraft I had installedwas myA2A Simulations Cessna 172so that I could have a look around and see what things look like upclose in terms of the visuals.

I started off looking at some stock airports around the world suchas Dubrovnik (LDDU), Heathrow (EGLL) and Stockholm (ESSA) to see whatthings look like straight out of the box, and I was reallyimpressed.

Compared to P3D V4.5, V5 looks so much better. We've got the newatmospheric effects up and running, and it really helps to make thesimulator look realistic and eye-catching.

The scenery itself doesn't look massively different, but somehow itdoes still have some obvious changes. It looks a lot better in termsof resolution, and even sharper than usual - even with FXAA turned on,and I did notice things felt a lot more fluid and easy to work with,with very little in the way of stutter or lag - we'll get more ontoperformance in just a little bit.

The ground textures look a lot better in my opinion, although itmight just be my terrible memory (it's been a while since I did aflight at all really in the simulator). The textures look moredetailed on the buildings, the ground scenery, the grass and therunways - everything just looks better in my opinion, and I think youcan get away with turning up those in-sim sliders a little now withoutthe constant worry of major performance difficulties.

When I first started testing out V5, I made a P3D V5 settings videoon my channel. Since then I've decided to tweak things even more andchange some of the things I previously did in that video, and I'm soglad I enabled the atmospherics! I'll probably end up making a revisedsettings video similar to what I did when V4.5 was released.

The weather has changed quite a bit too. The clouds look a lotnicer in V5, and that's without the need to install any third-partycloud add-ons. They work great right out of the box and they bring anextra level of immersion that I don't think we've really seen in P3Dwith the old stock clouds. I'd say it's an update that has beenwell-overdue for some time.

I like how the sim now has more realistic time zones as well - Ipreviously had to use a third party tool to get the time zones to workproperly, but from what I can see - things are a lot better in V5.

I did notice how beautiful the sky textures look out of the box aswell, especially during the morning and evening time (see images). Iwas simply in awe at how amazing things look now in the simulator - ahuge improvement over previous sim versions!

Performance

So, finally on to the most important aspect for many people -performance. I'm happy to say I was extremely impressed with how wellthe simulator performed on my system straight out of the box. It feltvery smooth and fluid without the need to change anything in theconfig files or use any external tools like Nvidia Inspector forexample.

The only time I did notice some lag and stuttering was actuallywhen I enabled the Godrays. I suspect this is my GTX 1080TI telling meto tone things down a little (time for an upgrade soon I think!), butthe sim still looks and performs great when this option is turnedoff.

It's important to note that, at the time of this review, theadvanced options such as Godrays are still in Beta, so there's a goodchance improvements will be made in the future and performance issuesthat are brought on by this option may indeed disappear.

If you do have a newer GPU such as a 2080 or 2080TI, I would assumeit might be fine to have Godrays on without too much of an impact,although I'll leave that for the community to decide, should anyoneout there wish to point that out.

Again, when it comes to settings, my settings depend on what typeof flight I'm doing, and what time of the day that flight will be, socertain situations might be more demanding than others, and you mightfind even with a similar setup to mine that V5 works better for youthan it does for me or vice versa.

Issues / Bugs

Its important to bear in mind when considering this review that Ihave a fresh installation of P3D V5 with Hotfix 1 installed. A lot ofpeople have slated this hotfix and said that it brings about moreissues than good, however I somewhat disagree with this statement.

Having initially installed the base V5 and tested that for a whilebefore the hotfix was released, I have to say there have been someimprovements. For example on my own system I was suffering fromcrashes to desktop as soon as I entered the sim, problems with certainaircraft, issues that caused the sim to freeze or crash when changingthe time of day, etc. None of which have happened since the update toHotfix 1.

I was going to completely uninstall the entire simulator, formatthe SSD and do a fresh install with Hotfix 1, but I found upgradingeach component individually was actually OK and it worked great.

The majority of crashes that I've experienced since installingHotfix 1 have been caused when I've been using third party aircraft orscenery, and so in terms of blaming P3D I can't really get away withthat. A lot of people are publishing tutorials and guides on how toforce P3D V5 to work with add-ons that aren't natively compatible, andto those people who get it working - great, but for the majority ofpeople I would say the best bet is to simply wait until those add-onshave been made officially compatible with V5.

Most add-ons that are being updated to support V5, will work a lotbetter once they finally get released, because they won't be trying torun "in compatibility mode" (if you can even call it that). They willbe natively supported and will therefore run better.

On the other hand, some developers have said their products willwork fine in P3D V5 natively, but the majority will probably bereleasing updates, so my advice is to wait. Maybe go back to V4.5until V5 is fully supported like some people have done already.

Overall / Final Verdict

So as with all my reviews, I like to keep things quick and easy. Iwould say P3D V5 is definitely worth the purchase, simply because it'squite obvious a LOT of work has been done to make it better thanprevious versions. It performs better, looks better, feels better, andworks pretty well without much tinkering (at least for me).

No doubt there could be some more updates to V5 coming soon,especially with the atmospherics currently being in Beta, but we willhave to wait and see what Lockheed Martin has in store.

If you're looking for a great simulator to stick with, or even ifyou're just wanting something to tide you over until the new MicrosoftFlight Simulator comes out, I would say it is definitely worth thepurchase, and worth the wait for add-ons to become compatiblenatively.

Some people might have issues, especially if your GPU isn't up toscratch and you're wanting to use advanced atmospherics, but overallyou should be able to run the sim pretty well and get a goodexperience out of it on mid - high end computers.

Happy flying everyone!

MrYorkiesWorld

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