Version for P3D v4.1

[alexmish]

Hi FSDT Team,

  I am currently running Prepar3D v4.1, do you happen to have a CYVR version (somewhere in the archives) that will work with 4.1?  I am not planning to upgrade to v4.4 or later at the moment, and have purchased a license for this scenery, but can't install.

Your assistance is much appreciated!

[virtuali]

I'm sorry but, all our products requires P3D 4.4 as minimum and, very shortly, we'll likely support only 4.5, exactly as in P3D V3, in which we only support the latest version ever released ( 3.4 ) and in P3D 2, in which we support only 2.5 and in FSX, in which we only support SP2 or Steam.

We don't have any plans to change this so, your only option is to update to at least 4.4, although I strongly suggest to update to 4.5 HF2.

There's no reason why you wouldn't want to update to 4.5, the list of changes, improvements and bug-fixes from 4.1 to 4.5 HF2 is several pages long.

[alexmish]

Hi Umberto, updating to latest P3D is a major undertaking, as I have a physical cockpit with dozen of various software packages - both sceneries and systems.  I also have ProSim737 and other physical hardware for which drivers are not current.  The system is also quite stable and performing.

I am surprised and upset you don't have an older version available, even for an offline install of files .  Any chance for me to request a refund?

[virtuali]

Hi Umberto, updating to latest P3D is a major undertaking, as I have a physical cockpit with dozen of various software packages - both sceneries and systems.  I also have ProSim737 and other physical hardware for which drivers are not current.  The system is also quite stable and performing.

What is really happening here, is that you are prevented from getting the most recent and bugfixed version of the sim because of OTHER products that are still not updated to support it.

You really shouldn't fault us because we are always on top of things, and always support the latest version of the sim as soon it comes out.

And, it's not as if we require the *very* latest version ( which is 4.5 HF2 ) We support all previous 4.5 releases and all previous 4.4 releases, and 4.4 was released in November 2018, that's 18 MONTHS AGO, there's really no excuse for a developer that already supported P3D 4.x to not support at least 4.4.

For physical drivers, I understand the biggest problem would have been the jump from 32 to 64 bit ( we still support 32 bit, of course ), but once you are on 64 bit, that is P3D 4.0, I can't see what the issue would be supporting 4.4.

I am surprised and upset you don't have an older version available, even for an offline install of files

We don't have such version and, even if we did, it will never work because you would need a version older than 2018, and you would also need a GSX version from that date ( CYVR won't work without it ) and in 2018 we still used Esellerate for purchase and activation, but Esellerate closed in July 2019, so we moved to MyCommerce, which uses a different ordering system with a different set of Activation keys, now provided by QLM/Soraco.

We were of course able to migrate all the existing old orders from Esellerate, because we uploaded all the old serial keys to the new activation system but, while the NEW version of the software supports BOTH the old Esellerate keys and the new QLM keys, the OLD version of the software ( which used to support P3D 4.1 ), will only accept old Esellerate keys which:

- You don't have, because you bought it after July 2019, so your key is surely of the new type

- You cannot get anymore, because Esellerate is closed, and you couldn't activate even if you got one, because there's no Esellerate server anymore.

Any chance for me to request a refund?

No, for many reasons:

- The 4.4 as a minimum requirement is indicated on our web page:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/products_cyvr.html

System Requirements:

FSX+SP2 minimum, or FSX+Acceleration Pack or FSX:Steam Edition, or Lockheed Martin Prepar3D ( the latest version of every supported major release, for example 3.4 in P3D4 or 4.4 in P3D4 ). Windows 8.1 is the minimum supported OS.

- All our products are available In TRIAL version. You are supposed to download, install them and try them and THEN purchase. The installer won't let you to install in any version lower than 4.4, so you could have noticed this before purchase.

- We USE features that comes with later SDK, as soon as they are available, like PBR ( not available before 4.4 ), Custom cameras ( not available before 4.5.0 )

- CYVR requires GSX, and GSX only works in PBR in P3D4, and PBR is only available from 4.4+

- We want you to consider updating the sim, because it's already very hard for us to support 6 different simulators ( FSX, P3D 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 ), and it would be impossible to also support every possible intermediate version in between.

- We want you to do some pressure to those developers that are not supporting at least 4.4, more than a year after its release, to fix their software and support the current version of the simulator.

Imagine  the shame and the revolt on THIS forum if we did something like that: NOT supporting anything higher than 4.1, users would rightly complain so why do you give those developers preventing you from updating that kind of slack ?

[alexmish]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, and while being a software product and engineering manager myself, I can certainly relate; that said we typically supported (and allowed customers to install) up to few prior versions of our product exactly for the reason that the product was part of broader ecosystem and not all parts of it moved with same upgrade/update cadence.

But I digress at this point.

[virtuali]

that said we typically supported (and allowed customers to install) up to few prior versions of our product exactly for the reason that the product was part of broader ecosystem and not all parts of it moved with same upgrade/update cadence.

That's exactly what we do. Only for V4, we are still supporting, going backwards:

Prepar3D 4.5 HF3 ( latest version as of today )
Prepar3D 4.5 HF2 ( Sept 2019 )
Prepar3D 4.5 HF1 ( May 2019 )
Prepar3D 4.5 RTM ( April 2019 )
Prepar3D 4.4 ( November 2019 )

That's 5 versions backward, and 18 months time. The main issue we cannot go beyond that, is PBR and the fact almost all our sceneries require GSX, and since PBR, we remade almost all GSX objects in PBR, and the whole product assumes that, in the 64 bit installation, PBR will be used, since the Legacy objects we still use for FSX and P3D V3 are way more inefficient, not just for the lack of PBR, but also because of the lack or Render To Texture, which is another feature that requires the 4.4 SDK to work reliably.