Future Release Strategy

[lateagain 45]

To keep Stephens useful pinned topic free from debate as requested I've started this new thread to discuss the forthcoming plans part of that post.

 

Checking back on the ORBX forums on the future plans announcement I found a post by Bill Womack along the lines that "The boss wants us to concentrate on areas other than PNW"

 

I'm a bit surprised to see that for the US 5 out of the 7 proposed (? - this is just a leak?) are for the PNW!

 

No more for NRM and the PFJ ones so close to Tongass Fjords, which IMHO is a "no brainer" for anyone interested in the region, that it seems a rather random choice?

 

Looking at the UK the idea of dividing the Country into countries rather than regions as the photoreal sceneries have done seems weird enough but then to announce three fields all within 46 miles of one another along the South Coast seems bizarre? It's about 320 miles from Manston to St Just in Cornwall. The furthest East-West flight between English Mainland airfields. OK we all have our favourite fields but you'd have thought a winning sales strategy would be to space fields out in scenery areas so that you'd 1) create local interest 2) allow flights across most of the area you've created?

 

Even in PNW there's been a bizarre "bunching" of fields covered. The US Pacific coast has only the excellent freeware field so far. So far the PNW has way more fields than any other region.

 

The choices in Oz seem better spaced? but those who fly there might question that? There are a wealth of small town and station(ranch) strips inland from the East Coast that would hardly warrant the current price tag for strips elswhere but which could possibly be done as a pack of 6? The strips I have in mind have little actual infrastructure so it would be mainly a texture improvement. The "terminal" at one such strip at a small town I visited wasn't much bigger than a bus shelter!

 

I post this in the spirit of constructive discussion. Doubt it would be accepted on the official site and anyway some of you can't go there.

 

Whilst we're thinking about this I notice that a lot of feeder liners that were made for FS9 haven't been updated to full FSX standard. I mention this because ORBX has limited appeal to The Jet Jocks but it does lend itself well to some higher speed feeder liners? Some older 50's/60's feeders spring to mind? Post DC3, Pre Small regional jets.

 

Geoff

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Hey Geof,

 

Lots of interesting questions brought up here, some of which I thought about, but the majority of which did not dawn upon me. It will be interesting to read what others think!

 

Kind regards,

[1st fltsimguy 466]

OK I'll jump in.

 

I would think that there is still plenty of market for airports in the PNW, PFJ, CRM areas. Also when northern California comes out this will only add to the possibility of some payware airports.

 

However, it is possible that you can enhance airports on you own. Orbx has a strongly held copyright concern over using their objects and other features of scenery in any freeware sceneries. Fair enough we can all fully respect their concerns. This does not limit a person from using some of the scenery development tools and making your own enhancements that utilitize Orbx objects to compliment any personal use project. Unfortunately, it is against their copyright to provide a freeware scenery that calls upon or draws on Orbx materials.

 

I have personally made for my personal use many airport enhancements to a wide variety of GA airports that use a variety of freeware objects and include Orbx objects and flow technologies. I just can't share them. If you have any familiarity with the underlying architecture of FSX you can add all sorts of stuff to your personal sceneries that call upon freeware and payware materials. Unfortunately it does take time to make these sceneries come together.

 

So, what I am saying is it is possible to make up your own enhanced airports in these regions, give them some additional life. I have several that you would think are actual payware quality. You must commit some time to build them.

 

I do like having fields available on shot hops because most of my available flying time is limited. Its easy to find an hour for a flight but harder to find two hrs or more.

 

UK will be interesting. I don't have much of an opinion on which airports they choose, I likely will not make any investment in that area. Their business decision to move to Europe only makes sense. There are a few people living over there, ya know.

 

Oz, I love. Many small GA airports tons of short hop flights, very enjoyable flying experience.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

My thoughts on the selection of Orbx airports is that they do the ones they, or someone they know, have a wide access to. As in 'Joe lives next door to XCBM and has a camera', let's do that one. I can see the difficulty of making a ground plan then finding the person, the time, the permissions etc. etc. needed to carry out that plan. Especially when we eat up what they do do.

 

Beats me who they would know way up in Stewart though!

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Gees, I rolling on the floor laughing @ "Nobody" label Ron.

[Nyxx 6,993]

Gees, I rolling on the floor laughing @ "Nobody" label Ron.

Me also, a little gem Ron. :-)

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Gees, I rolling on the floor laughing @ "Nobody" label Ron.

 

LOLOL!!!! :LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO: Love it! :lol:

[lateagain 45]

My thoughts on the selection of Orbx airports is that they do the ones they, or someone they know, have a wide access to. As in 'Joe lives next door to XCBM and has a camera', let's do that one. I can see the difficulty of making a ground plan then finding the person, the time, the permissions etc. etc. needed to carry out that plan. Especially when we eat up what they do do.

 

Beats me who they would know way up in Stewart though!

:LMAO: Love the banner Ron! I take it you're married with a daughter too then? Seriously the banners are a good idea as sometimes you don't know who's posting and from what perspective?

 

I guess you've hit the nail on the head regarding the bunching of fields in PNW. Obviously creating custom scenery takes time and once you've created stuff that's prototypical for a region you're going to want to get maximum use out of it?

 

fltsimguy's post raises some interesting points. As yet I've not delved into the workings of FSX, but I'm a 10year + fan of MSTS and have done quite a bit of tweaking in that including paint jobs, scaling and some code hacks. As with FS the issue of copyright and it's implications on sharing work has been an issue. There have been far fewer commercial developers for MSTS although Railworks has gone down the route of DLC (Like Flight) but with many commercial add-ons, these a much higher proportion than freeware.

 

As with FS the later Railworks is capable of more complex models than MSTS and these take longer to create. Thus more payware and less freeware.

 

One really smart move came from the US MSTS commercial developer "Streamlines". They allowed a reskin policy that allowed reskins of their models to be uploaded to the TS sites as freeware BUT with one limitation. The "Shape file" could not be included in the upload so that anyone wanting to use the reskin had to buy the commercial pack with the relevant model in the first place. This is similar to reskins for payware aircraft. It's a "win win" idea because the reskinners get to use top models and the publisher gets more sales for their stock packs.

 

The problem is that as ORBX libraries are the freely available part of their output it's hard to see how this could be turned into a freely uploadable add-on without that competing directly with their core output? :Thinking: Obviously you can do this for your own use but if you're putting in the effort my feeling is it's rather wasted if you can't share it? That's always been a big part of Sims as a hobby after all?

 

My point about the inland strips in Oz was inspired by a trip I made a few years back. The Mail run from Cairns flew different routes each day of the week to various Stations, Mines and small outback townships. These were either dirt, grass or very sinple tarmac strips. There was little in the way of scenery, no other aircraft but they were subtly different. A pack of such strips based upon similar routes would be quicker to create and give an immediate incentive to buy Cairns? Queenslands Outback may be fairly unique in that vast swathes of it have (superficially) similar scenery and plants. A similar area in Europe would see a massive variation in every aspect.

 

I totally agree that time using the Sim is a consideration. Of course what you fly dictates how far you get in your hour, but of course is only flyable from and to suitable fields. An F18 flight from Walter Suttons would be a short one! :Hypnotized:

 

Obviously we can but see what's produced and decide if we want to spend our £€$'s on it. It's frustrating to have bought all the scenery areas and see such random creation of fields though?

 

Of course what we can discuss here that we can't discuss on the Official forum is what else is available.

 

For instance in the UK we have excellent models of White Waltham and Denham (where I learnt to fly), The Isles of Sciliy and the Channel Islands are also excellently modelled so already we'll have a good selection of GA/Regional airliner destinations when the FTX UK fields are released.

 

Anyone got any good quality (other publisher) recommendations for the FTX NA regions, Oz or NZ?

 

Geoff

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

:LMAO: Love the banner Ron! I take it you're married with a daughter too then? Seriously the banners are a good idea as sometimes you don't know who's posting and from what perspective?

 

I suppose you're right. A lot of people would find it difficult to glance across at the poster's avatar and see 'Administrators' or 'Forum Moderator'

 

Sorry administrators, but you're in danger of starting to look like South American Generals.

 

Apologies for OT

[lateagain 45]

Sorry administrators, but you're in danger of starting to look like South American Generals

 

Well at least they're not behaving like the Gestapo or KGB like they do on some forums we may have visited. You'll never get their names from me whatever you do......... AAAAAHHHHHRRRRGGGGHHHH. :Just Kidding:

 

I take your point about "Belt and braces" but then the stars under the avtar don't help with your South American General analogy?

 

BACK ON TOPIC.....

 

Doh!!!! What a dunce I am? :Hypnotized: I've just checked back at OzX and found that since my downloads from there they're now up to version 3.3 with Oz fields and strips. The list is now staggering for OZ and furthermore in view of "fltsimguys" idea they have a library of objects too. Not so much for Nth America but still it's a start.

 

Any other High Quality small field publishers for small fields in NA that anyone's aware of ?

 

Here in the UK Aerosoft and Earth Simulations have done some of the good stuff I mentioned earlier and of course Tongass, Plumb Island etc. are available via FSAddons.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Back to business. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but the upcoming 77S Creswell(Hobby) airport I had doubts about. My concern was that it is way out on a limb, 100 miles from Stark's. Well I just took a flight from there just to see what the default Orbx 77S is like so that I can compare.(pretty good actually) For I surely will buy it on release. I followed the I5 Pacific Highway down to KRBG Roseburg and not only is it very pretty country, making a pleasant change from majestic mountains, there are loads of little strips to keep me happy. So, a good 'release strategy' in this case I reckon.

[tttocs 301]

My concern was that it is way out on a limb, 100 miles from Stark's.

 

Interesting what each of us see as advantages/disadvantages.

 

The only thing potentially attractive to me about 77S is that it's NOT right on top of everything else, otherwise no matter how well done it is, it's still another small PNW strip and I've already got lots of those.

 

At the other end of the spectrum is Stewart, which I'm absolutely loving in large part because it's NOT where anything else is. Having detailed airports in new areas helps anchor territory to explore. Can't wait for KJAC for the same reason (already fly in/out of there a bunch, but will enjoy the extra detail), but am a bit disappointed that the next CRM airport will be West Yellowstone which is in the same general area (and in the real world, basically closed all winter).

 

Bottom line to me seems to be that no matter what "strategy" is used to plan and develop new airfields, someone will be disappointed. And any strategy will always depend on having developers who are interested (based on familiarity, access to materials or just plain and simple interest) in a given field.

 

Scott

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Bottom line to me seems to be that no matter what "strategy" is used to plan and develop new airfields, someone will be disappointed.

So very true.

[lateagain 45]

Got three notifications from the official forum today on a similar vein, roughly "When are we going to get any fields for X region?". Because they weren't wrapped up in "by you leave's... Pretty please.... or suffixed "My Leige" .....they were all deleted by the time I got there! The jist was in my e-mail notifications though.

 

They just keep sending folk over here don't they :Just Kidding: .

 

Geoff

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Geoff, trust me, they know what they're doing. They have a roadmap.