There are so many problems with the current situation, and particularly market penetration. The percentage of FS users that buy commercial add-ons must be very small. Even the penetration of freeware is probably not very high.

 

The great advantage of the GFWL Marketplace for commercial developers then is to be able to reach the entire market! All of it. If price points are sufficiently low, then the much greater volume should generate a very large income, much more than most developers currently earn.

 

In addition, the copyright protection might eliminate most of the casual theft that is so common in the games sector.

 

In my opinion, this situation has great advantages, and it is to be hoped that MGS will someday soon decide to open development to third parties. It would even encourage many (like me!) to offer products.

 

As Bill says, though, MGS has not yet gotten far in the development of the title, so we may have to wait for some time.

 

Best regards.

Luis

The structures, both the private residents and the commercial buildings are of a very strange design. They are very well detailed (lights, doors, mail drops, electrical junction boxes, cable connections (?) windows with curtains) but with a very distinct architectural flavor -- as if representative of some foreign country. They have an almost ethereal quality. I wonder about their origin!

There are so many problems with the current situation, and particularly market penetration. The percentage of FS users that buy commercial add-ons must be very small. Even the penetration of freeware is probably not very high.

I believe that big majority of people who still today use FSX or FS9 do have at least some freeware addons installed, and probably pretty big percentage has also some payware.

 

Most people who join FS want something more than what few poor quality default planes offer and discover freeware addons after few months at least, I can't imagine anybody using just default FSX/FS9 for years without getting tired.

 

So although probably majority of people who have bought FSX/FS9 when it was new and then abandoned it haven't used any addons, those who still use FSX/FS9 today probably most have them installed.

The #1 problem is reaching the few that still use and buy FSX add-on's. There may be tens of thousands of FSX pilots out there, but they are spread over the internet like sprinkles on a doughnut. Finding them and marketing to them is amazingly difficult!!! Thats why having an in-game add-on browser is like the holy grail for 3rd party makers. A holy grail that is sadly just out of reach till MS decides we can join in the fun. That is if Flight last's long enough to open it up to 3rd party's. We dont know how much money Flight needs to make in order to keep it funded, and we dont know how much the are earning if anything at all. Everything is shrouded is secrecy.

The structures, both the private residents and the commercial buildings are of a very strange design. They are very well detailed (lights, doors, mail drops, electrical junction boxes, cable connections (?) windows with curtains) but with a very distinct architectural flavor -- as if representative of some foreign country. They have an almost ethereal quality. I wonder about their origin!

 

Well one of the things noted in the interview was the available resolution. When you walk up to those buildings, it really hits you how far they are above anything in previous incarnations; you can clearly see right inside the office buildings. That being said, there is a distinct lack of human color, variety, and character, which accentuates the lack of life in the rest of the world.

 

Its a conundrum. The skies and clouds and sun of flight are warm and inviting and my pictures reflect that. The trees and shadows are great, the buildings are high resolution, and the countryside ground textures are sometimes excellent though the tile cutting can be poor. Where flight falls on its face repeatedly is in those horrible FSX textures under most of the urban areas (there are some that are quite nice, which makes it even odder) It continues to knock me right out of my acceptance of flights reality, especially at night where the streets brightness, coloring and style are just garish. (not to mention primitive)

 

It makes me pine for the artistic grace and color of Orbx scenery's.

I never liked cities in FSX and I still don't like them in Flight. Indeed the ground textures under cities are awful (and usually not alligned well with how the city is cut out of the surrounding) and the buildings may look nice up close but seen from a distance, like when you are flying, they ALL look like flat grey boxes. Yikes. Everytime I see those boxes popup (another disappointment btw) I feel like looking away. I am glad Alaska doesn't have that many cities... Lots of beautiful nature to enjoy! Sometimes I happen to see a city or town that look okay: must be coincidence. Anyway, the cities just don't seem to be on the same level as the rest of the scenery.

 

Luckily the rest of Flight is AWESOME.

I knew quite a few people that had FS9 and FSX, and never bought 3rd party stuff. They went to a PC store or Best Buys, bought the sim, put it on their PC, flew it for awhile and that was that. Let's face it most people don't join forums like this one whether it is flight sims, or cycling, or anything else. They are the casual gamer, and that is going to be a big advantage for Flight, cause you can even fly it with a mouse, it looks pretty good, doesn't crash, won't lock up your computer, and doesn't really need add ons to make it functional. These people don't know what mesh is, or ATC, or payware planes, they just want to fly and have fun.

 

The big bang with Flight is that you can try it for free, which is what I did a couple of months ago. I was so unhappy with the older flight sims by the time I quit flying altogether about 6 years ago, that I never thought I would fly a PC sim again. Flight convinced me otherwise, and I didn't have to spend a full week tweaking it or go buy the latest and greatest quad core PC, to get it to work, Since I mentioned Flight to them, my son in law, two of my grandchildren and two co-workers have downloaded it and think it is cool.

Concerning addons, while I bought Active Sky a couple of months after I got FSX, it was 3 1/2 years before I bought a payware aircraft. I had one freeware aircraft that I never used. I've never bought any scenery.

 

Also, I was never active on the forums. Yeah, I knew about the forums, and that I could get approximately 50,000 different versions of some specific airliner (with about 20 liveries each), but I wasn't interested in that kind of flying. That was a lot of the reason why I never even looked at what was available, and didn't read the forums.

 

I suspect the vast majority of users generally only visited forums when they had some problem they were trying to solve.

 

Hook

True, to truly get FS9/FSX working correctly and to get really into them you do need a lot more commitment, computer skills and often also money than with Flight which is pretty user friendly and doesn't require much more effort than just downloading and installing it and its addons with few clicks.

 

 

However myself I am glad that FSX/FS9 are like they are (other than FSX being horribly optimized software). All messing around with files, going around internet looking for answers, all that has made me a lot better in general computer use, and especially it has grown my problem solving skills, not just problems related to FS but all kinds of trouble with computer.

 

If there had never been FS but just Flight I would sure be a lot less confident computer user.

 

Really to me all that messing around with files, configurations and third party addons is what sets FS apart from other games and makes it a hobby + I can also be creative myself and create my own addons which I like very much.

 

Bringing more people to FS is good thing of course, however it should not be done like in Flight, by leaving whole third party community out and also removing ATC which is big part of all aviation. It kind of makes playing Flight feel more like casual gaming and less like a hobby, I can just buy addons made by Microsoft and fly them around in closed program made by MS, there is nothing open, no way to be creative and make overall experience better.

 

That's where Flight lacks in my opinion, it doesn't allow user to be creative any way. That is sad and applying for casual gamers shouldn't be excuse there, a lot of games such as Skyrim, at least earlier Battlefields, Crysis series, GTA and a lot more do allow third party modifications and addons.

Prior to installing FSX SP2, FSX gave me no more problems that Flight. It just worked. I had 3 CTDs in 8 months. Then, when I finally installed SP2, I started getting 3 CTDs every 8 days.

 

That's when I started visiting forums.

 

Hook

True, to truly get FS9/FSX working correctly and to get really into them you do need a lot more commitment, computer skills and often also money than with Flight which is pretty user friendly and doesn't require much more effort than just downloading and installing it and its addons with few clicks.

 

 

However myself I am glad that FSX/FS9 are like they are (other than FSX being horribly optimized software). All messing around with files, going around internet looking for answers, all that has made me a lot better in general computer use, and especially it has grown my problem solving skills, not just problems related to FS but all kinds of trouble with computer.

 

If there had never been FS but just Flight I would sure be a lot less confident computer user.

 

Really to me all that messing around with files, configurations and third party addons is what sets FS apart from other games and makes it a hobby + I can also be creative myself and create my own addons which I like very much.

 

Bringing more people to FS is good thing of course, however it should not be done like in Flight, by leaving whole third party community out and also removing ATC which is big part of all aviation. It kind of makes playing Flight feel more like casual gaming and less like a hobby, I can just buy addons made by Microsoft and fly them around in closed program made by MS, there is nothing open, no way to be creative and make overall experience better.

 

That's where Flight lacks in my opinion, it doesn't allow user to be creative any way. That is sad and applying for casual gamers shouldn't be excuse there, a lot of games such as Skyrim, at least earlier Battlefields, Crysis series, GTA and a lot more do allow third party modifications and addons.

 

And then there are people like me, who have worked in computer related industry for decades, that want to come home , fire up a sim and go fly without feeling like they are back at work again. I marvel at the fact that I can pause Flight, go outside, walk my dog for 45 minutes, have lunch, and come back to the PC and start Flight up again, and it runs. I don't come back to the desktop, or a blue screen, or something that stopped working for what could be dozens of reasons. I can remember going on Virtual Airline Flights and after flying from JFK to LAX, and on approach I would be apprehensive about changing screens, or views, because there was always a possibility of a program crash.

 

Early PCs were quirky, and one had to be careful what one did or the apple cart would be upset. I have windows 7 now and so far, it has been bullet proof. It, like Flight, just runs with no problems. People are not willing to go back to the days of spending hours configuring, tweaking, looking for defective DLL's, looking for duplicate BGL,s buying the latest expensive video cards, downloading drivers, and the host of other hassles to get a decent looking , flying experience. If someone gave me FSX today , with $1,000 worth of 3rd party Gizmos, my reaction would be, "thanks but no thanks". All I want to do is relax, and fly.

The #1 problem is reaching the few that still use and buy FSX add-on's. There may be tens of thousands of FSX pilots out there, but they are spread over the internet like sprinkles on a doughnut. Finding them and marketing to them is amazingly difficult!!!

I don't get it, frankly. We have over 87,000 registered members of this forum. We have 60 to 70 new registrants every day. Go to the bottom of the forum index page and you see that in addition to the hundreds of registered users in the forum at any given moment, there are hundreds more in the "Guest" category. That's exposure to tens of thousands of people a day. I would counter that the marketing opportunity is right in front of your face.

People are not willing to go back to the days of spending hours configuring, tweaking, looking for defective DLL's, looking for duplicate BGL,s buying the latest expensive video cards, downloading drivers, and the host of other hassles to get a decent looking , flying experience. If someone gave me FSX today , with $1,000 worth of 3rd party Gizmos, my reaction would be, "thanks but no thanks". All I want to do is relax, and fly.

True, but most simmers are not willing to trade most of the content and areas just for stability and user friendliness. Many simmers including myself don't only care about just flying the plane but also where they are flying. No matter how good scenery for example ORBX provides for Australia and USA I will still keep mainly flying in Southeast Asia as that area interests me most in real life too, many people have their favorite areas to fly in.

 

Same goes with Flight, I can't imagine myself just flying around Hawaii and Alaska forever no matter how stable the platform is. What is so good about FSX and FS before it is how it allows you to fly in any location in this planet, completely free from limitations, and big third party community is able to provide sceneries for all these areas.

 

Stability and third party support could both happen same time, it is just matter of resources, willing and effort, and also it wouldn't necessary have to be too extreme for casual gamer, advanced features such as ATC could be disabled from game options.

 

Of course dropping third party away from Flight is purely financial decision and not because it would make Flight unstable or anything like that, MS thinks they can get more money by making and selling DLC completely themselves. However for those of us who like to fly in certain areas it is not going to offer much unless Flight team happens to create that particular area, which is unlikely.

Although FSX was unstable at least it provided all both airliner and GA fliers their favorite areas to fly in and even way to make them look better through third party development.

 

Areas so far created by Flight team are just as impressive as stability and performance of Flight, just lack of content for everybody like FSX offered is what I dislike.

 

This said I will probably pick some Flight DLC anyway when I get back home if -40% sale is still there, with that price it is worth it, probably Flight will be fun to fly when I feel like getting short change from regions where I usually fly using FSX.

Yeah, that's a pretty good assessment of the situation.

 

But I think allocating a limited "starter" budget and seeing if the product can generate enough revenue to bootstrap itself is part of the experiment.

True, but most simmers are not willing to trade most of the content and areas just for stability and user friendliness. Many simmers including myself don't only care about just flying the plane but also where they are flying. No matter how good scenery for example ORBX provides for Australia and USA I will still keep mainly flying in Southeast Asia as that area interests me most in real life too, many people have their favorite areas to fly in.

 

Same goes with Flight, I can't imagine myself just flying around Hawaii and Alaska forever no matter how stable the platform is. What is so good about FSX and FS before it is how it allows you to fly in any location in this planet, completely free from limitations, and big third party community is able to provide sceneries for all these areas.

 

Stability and third party support could both happen same time, it is just matter of resources, willing and effort, and also it wouldn't necessary have to be too extreme for casual gamer, advanced features such as ATC could be disabled from game options.

 

Too bad that MS chose to make Flight more limited kind of simulator, of course making FS with these features would have required a lot more work and bigger budget.

 

 

I guess coming from the world of flying real aircraft, the idea of flying in different countries, or even vastly different areas was never a priority for me. Almost all my flying of RA was done in Florida with a bit in Georgia. I used to get a kick out of flying between 2 airports about 15 miles apart doing touch and goes.