So a week later I am finished installing Prepar3D and all my add ons.

The installation og P3D was not without problems. I did a clean install of Win 7 and also formatted the SSD so Prepar3D would be installed on to a fresh hard drive. The actual installation of Win7 and Prepar3D went well. And I started re-downloading all my purchased add ons. I recon I have downloaded somewhere close to 100Gb of add ons.

The clean P3D worked just fine! And things looked very good. I tried placing the default aircraft on a small airstrip in the middle of nowhere (Somewhere in Russia) and adjusted my FPS lock to unlimited. The frame rate just rocketed! around 60 FPS on the runway – far more than FSX ever gave me. With the nose up in the blue sky I saw FPS reaching over 250! Nice done!

But when I started installing my add-ons Prepar3D stopped working. The opening screen was shown okay, but when loading the scenery P3D just want black and the CPU was using 100%. I thought I was safe because I only installed add-ons that were “Prepar3D v3”-ready. Apparently not… So I tried to reinstall Prepar3D. Still no luck. Next day I reinstalled both Windows and P3D. Still no luck. New P3D installation. No luck. New Win7+p3D installation. No luck. New P3D installation. Same result on the fifth day. Prepar3D still refused to load. Luckily a guy at the Prosim forum pointed at attention at an issue with the “Night Environment” sceneries in Prepar3D v3.1 Not a problem in v3.0 but in v3.1 Night Environment causes a memory leak. So do not install NE if you are on v3.1 Lockheed Martin has solved it and there is a fix on the way at this point (January 2016).

Most add-ons were fairly easy to install. I created an empty text file in the Prepar3D root (d:\Prepar3d) library and renamed it to fsx.exe. Furthermore I have a “Addon Scenery” filer on a separate hard drive (e:\addon scenery) and on that hard drive/in that folder I also placed a fsx.exe and a p3d.exe. Furthermore I added FSX to the Windows Registry key using this tutorial. In the file I edited the FSX path to be the “Addon Scenery” on my secondary hard drive (So outside P3D). Furthermore I had to recreate the scenery.cfg-file for FSX.

When install FSX add-ons I just pointed at fsx.exe on my secondary hard drive (e:\addon scenery). When finished installing I had to manually add the scenery to P3D. This can be done by copying the entry in the scenery.cfg file in FSX or done directly in Prepar3D. Just be sure what orders to add and in which order. So far no need for the Estonian Migration Tool. Just a bit of manual work.

5 days later I had almost all add-on sceneries installed except my Night Environment packages.

Next problem: SimConnect. The installer for SimConnect is includedwith the P3D installer, so it is just a matter of double clicking the FSX/SP2 installer. But the necessary config files are not installed. It took me a few evenings to figure out what to do. It appears that you must create the config files you self. So read how to create the simconnect.ini / simconnect.xml / simconnect.cfg

So there… 10 days after I downloaded Prepar3D I just have a few evenings ahead of me. Then I will be ready to move the computer back in to the cockpit.

Still on the to-do list:
* Install Norwegian sceneries
* Configure AI-traffic
* Installing AI-ships (A new thing to me)
* Edit graphics / P3D-settings

I case you are about to take the plunge to Prepar3D I hope these observations can save you a few evenings of frustration. 🙂

Blue skies!