And the beat goes on and on and on and..... :(

I think Comma is right. Under the hood Flight has serious potential.

Excellent post Mike..It is surprising and almost shocking to find such basic lack of understanding on how business works whether brick and mortor wholesale and retail or software wholesale and retail.This appears to be most evident in the FS "community" which bashes the very providers of the platform and content they wish to enjoy.Having been to Seattle prior to FSX RTM we were priviliged to meet with some of the quality members of the now defunct ACES group.In that light it was shocking to see how they and others were treated in every FS public forum available upon FSX RTM.A quick look at "public response" over Flight news verifies once again that many conduct themselves as spoiled children throwing "hissy fits".Heres hoping that "blame game" type inquiries will subside quickly as more people are able to understand the underlying cause of MS decisions and 3rd Party Devs decisions. :(

Im usually on the side of the small dev, but not this time. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. FSX was a deeply flawed product when released in 2006. It took until 2011 (5 *years*, people) and sandy bridge hardware to get anything acceptable performance wise. In any other consumer category, this kind of lack of quality would be laughable. In software, it is too frequently common. Yes, maturity suffers on the internet, we get that, but nobody makes business decisions based on forum talk.Poor quality all those years ago is the fundamental reason for the death of MSFS today, and I can only assume that the dev team is the 'owner' of this failure (or it could be MS management, or both). I'm sure they are nice fine people, but they dropped that ball.Blaming the customer is myopic, and I might add, a poor business strategy.Regards,George

Edited January 9, 201214 yr by gmohr

I think Comma is right. Under the hood Flight has serious potential.

HelloThere is nothing left under the hood, it has all been stripped out and sold to Lockheed Martin

Actually I dont believe stuff from Flight is sold to LM.I spend whole day yesterday with the beta, only looking at the engine, not gettings coins or othe gameplay thing, and it is not bad at all.Currently it is seriously limited, but thats another thing.

Blaming the customer is myopic.

And blaming 3PDs is beyond the pale....MS has proved that they don't need a bashing, xxxxing, and moaning, "customer base" to make a buck.They can simply move to where the bucks are plentiful and that would be your teenagers and mine...

Currently it is seriously limited, but thats another thing.

HelloNo, being so limited is the main thing.Why would they strip out the Ai and ATC then put them back in the future, the answer is that they won't.This is an exercise to wring the last bit of value out of the code base, then MS are out of this genre.

Dont know, only the near future will tell.

And the beat goes on and on and on and..... :(

Ron you seem to enjoying this thread.If I can quote you here

It is surprising and almost shocking to find such basic lack of understanding on how business works whether brick and mortor wholesale and retail or software wholesale and retail.This appears to be most evident in the FS "community" which bashes the very providers of the platform and content they wish to enjoy

Can you please explain the below to me as I am confused.Why are Orbx planing to sell there addons to commercial customers at a cost of $112,000 if they want all 40? Thats to ONE customer.They say they are charging a higher price because the commercial customer will make money from the Orbx software.Is that not what Orbx has been doing off the back of MS FSX for the last 6 years? But they don't give anything back to MS.But Orbx want's money back from the commercial customers & is going to.But I have been told that Orbx don't have to give MS any money as that's not how business works & I am told about car venders & such.I will post more later short of time as always.

Who cares if the next superb 737 bird is made from another company, provided it is as good or better ?

If PMDG determine that it isn't financially viable to develop complex add on aircraft for MS Flight using the business model presented to them, what are the chances of anyone else doing it?

Ron you seem to enjoying this thread.If I can quote you hereCan you please explain the below to me as I am confused.Why are Orbx planing to sell there addons to commercial customers at a cost of $112,000 if they want all 40? Thats to ONE customer.They say they are charging a higher price because the commercial customer will make money from the Orbx software.Is that not what Orbx has been doing off the back of MS FSX for the last 6 years?But they don't give anything back to MS.But Orbx want's money back from the commercial customers & is going to.But I have been told that Orbx don't have to give MS any money as that's not how business works & I am told about car venders & such.I will post more later short of time as always.

I know a lot about MSFS and Lockheed Martin Prepare 3D. I confess that I know little, and care even less, about the public or private business decisons of other developers.On that basis I am not inclined to speak to the questions you raise. :(

If PMDG determine that it isn't financially viable to develop complex add on aircraft for MS Flight using the business model presented to them, what are the chances of anyone else doing it?

Slim to none... :(

I think Comma is right. Under the hood Flight has serious potential.

Yeah, only on it's engine. Other than that, let's say that in 6 months - 1 year we will have a second place other than Hawai. Great, then we will be able to fly an airliner in vatsim between those two places. Hooray!As for ms giving the SDK for Flight, yes maybe in 3-4 years. But by then i hope that something else would have evolved or maybe x-plane would have become the next Flight.

"If PMDG determine that it isn't financially viable to develop complex add on aircraft for MS Flight using the business model presented to them, what are the chances of anyone else doing it? "They did not say it is not viable, say they would not do it based on MS conditions. This is not the same thing. This is purely their own decision, this is not about viable or not. People make mistake you know, selling a product 100$ to 1,000 customers will throw less money than selling it 10$ to 100,000, even if they had to retrocommission 50% they would at the end make more money.Same bad reasoning. Don't forget MS Flight base is free, so ultimately the whole business model is shifted to addons. If MS execute right and if the store take off, be sure someone will fill the gap of qualtiy addons. Someone willing to pay a commission in exange of a great platforma and a high visibility store.What we are fasly discussing here since a few days is in fact not that Flight is to be an arcade game, it is that some developper, whereas they have great reputation doesn't matter, have decided that Flight will be an arcade game because they have decided not to provide addons for it. I think this is a questionnable assertion. By the way, the Flight SDK is on this way, "glups" !Today Flight is about collecting rings in a beta. Totally fine if this appeal to a wide audience, but there is no reason to believe they dumped the whole existing engine. I said it, FSX has also hovering stars, circles, medals and missions, you don't have to use them if you don't want to. What I see is by releasing only a small island leaves to them the whole world to cover, AT A PRICE. This is to my opinion brilliant for a business model.I have to totally agree with garsands, companies like Orbx overcharge commercial licence for their product, because other companies want to make money on top of them. This is logical, so I don't understand what goes on the guy's mind when he cries to the world the fee per addons paid to MS would be an outrage. I just don't get it because I really think his point of view is biased, he's wrong, or let Orbx sell their commercial licence at the very same price as personnel licence for a start. Shouldn't they ?

Edited January 9, 201214 yr by comma

@AttilaYou're missing something big : The Market.The Market don't care about who creates what. You just place too much on big names like PMDG or Orbx.If PMDG or Orbx don't create addons for FLIGHT, someone will, and as quality product will be needed, someone will create these quality product.Demand drive. Who cares if the next superb 737 bird is made from another company, provided it is as good or better ?Y'our stuck to current FSX market. Just project yourself in the future. Think about it.

I am not stuck on the FSX market.However, I know that if I had been making $X profit on each item I sold before and now I have to give say 50% away I have some thinking to do. That's what the 3PDs are doing.To make the same $X after giving 50% away, one needs to reduce production cost and in the FS world that means a reduction of simulation depth and overall quality.We already have many developers who are not Orbx nor PMDG, however, for some reason or another nobody mentions them, because the people in this forum know the difference.

No one will create high quality addons for Flight as there is no demand for them because Flight is intended to mainstream who really cant operate PMDG quality addons. We might see something like CLS products that are not too hard for mainstream to operate, but ones with working FMC and stuff? Never. Also still they need to invent ATC and add places to fly with those big jets.