How about hard cold "time"?. A combination of AlpilotX's HD Mesh v2 and scenery generated from OSM in World2XPlane is getting pretty close, and we just lack regional artwork for some regions and textures. Anyone who has a camera and some time can help out and improve their area, and best of all, it will remain free, no cash required.

Indeed Tony!

And ...

 

I doff my hat to those who give up their spare time to create quality freeware, and those like Tony, Andras and many more who innovate to make XP better for all of us.

 

... of course - not the slightest doubt abot that at all!

But i am also most confident that free- and payware can live together easily side by side and/or interact seemlessly.

 

Furthermore in some areas creating proper freeware regions are hard to be achived due the lack of freely available (and if used and further processed freely distributable) - (source) data.

Or what about some dedicated texture enhancements of photreal areas or generic ground textures for instance as another example?

Sure it can all be done for free, but as time, personnel and resources are most precious, having a financial backing in sight might be some kind of relief and/or encouragement alike - for one individual developer - or a group of developers.

Sure:

As soon as money comes into play things tend to become complicated - but let's try to remain pragmatic and positive here.

So overall i really think that this (pay- and freeware sceneries) could all work out well and actually help a lot to noticeably raise the interest for X-Plane within the entire flightsimming community, hence bringing new users (customers) on board!

Hi MdMax, perhaps you can really help me here?  How do you advise I get to the majority of X-Plane users to ask my question? 

 

That's a tough one! I presume you've asked over at the .org? There are one or two other popular XP sites. Hit them all. They should at very least, have analytics data that might inform any decision about which field to develop in which country, where are their users based? I also wonder might Aerosoft play nice if you approached them? I imagine they'd be only too happy to help, it makes good business sense. They seem to be the main ones selling into that market and might have some figures for you.

Really you can only approach those who have already sold into the market and ask them straight out how many units they've shifted. If they have any sense they'll be forthcoming knowing that the market has plenty of room to grow and that, at the moment, the more devs who come on board, the better for all it will be.  The devs who do bail in early are essentially creating the market and setting standards.

I would also approach IVAO/Vatsim just in case they have any figures that might indicate the popularity of airfields, a long shot but worth a try.

I don't imagine though that you will get anything definitive that will make the decision for you as such. It will no doubt boil down to taking a punt on it and praying it works out for you. Personally I hope you do obviously and that it does go well for you.

Definately would pay for quality airports for XPX. (Who wants to take off and land on a dull windswept paddock with one tin shed). Purchased XPX a year ago but only just got round to looking into it in some detail. The land scenery in XPX is not as good as FSX. The texture of the landscape is better but for some reason in XPX,  generic houses appear along all the roads in rural areas round my region, plus also along the entrance road into local airport which makes the landscape look very odd.). I assume this will get fixed in a patch. If that doesnt happen I probably wont stay with XPX.

 

In your shoes I would investigate World2XPlane and G2XPL. I have found the combination to be a winner to say the least. It produces high definition photoscenery with buildings and objects placed as in reality, subject to the quality of satellite imagery and OSM data for your particular area of concern. It turned XP into the sim I've always wished for, truly as real as it gets.

Will guess sale number will not show ixeg in that statistic, or how it will affect x plane vatsim traffic.

YES yes YES!

 

I've tried out the latest P3D and it has nice looks, but simply doesn't run as smoothly for me.

 

Smooth and consistent frame rates matter the most to me, with the "look" not far behind.

 

Bottom line is....if it's a slideshow, it doesn't really matter how "great" it looks.  (for me anyhow)

I want Kevin Grimm to make some airports, and I would buy them.  Does anyone know where he is now.  These shots came out in 2012 and since then I haven't heard anything about him.

 

http://www.terra-brasilis.org/forum/index.php?topic=3172.0

Will guess sale number will not show ixeg in that statistic, or how it will affect x plane vatsim traffic.

 

Yeah, I think everyone is waiting for that particular offering. That'll sell in huge numbers. IXEG, the PMDG of XP!

I bought a few payware Airports for XP10 when they were on sale. I would pay for some if

 

-its an airport I'm interested in, in an area where I like to fly

-they offer more features and are better quality than freeware ones. If they had some life there like moving ai ground vehicles.

 

 

Aerosoft was very enthusiastic about XP10 some years ago. I expected that they would convert all their FSX airports to XP10 quickly. But so far they only have a small number on offer and all seems to have slowed down there regarding payware airports for XP10.

So probably the market is not that big and promising (yet) to invest more in it?

My big thing is that a lot of payware X-plane stuff can't compete with freeware in the quality department. Can't say how many times I've glanced at a payware airport, shuddered, and after some searching found a much better freeware one. I think as long as that continues, sales might be disappointing.

 

Yes, this community is probably desperate for certain airports.....

 

But not enough to pay for halfhearted efforts.

I purchase a lot of payware airports for XPX64 now, when they are available, and will love to see more high quality airports released to purchase.

I bought a few payware Airports for XP10 when they were on sale. I would pay for some if

 

-its an airport I'm interested in, in an area where I like to fly

-they offer more features and are better quality than freeware ones. If they had some life there like moving ai ground vehicles.

 

 

Aerosoft was very enthusiastic about XP10 some years ago. I expected that they would convert all their FSX airports to XP10 quickly. But so far they only have a small number on offer and all seems to have slowed down there regarding payware airports for XP10.

So probably the market is not that big and promising (yet) to invest more in it?

 

I think many 3rd Party Developers (3PDs) are sitting on their hands waiting for XP 10.3 to debut.  The big goal at Laminar is to increase the hooks that the 3PDs can use to build on to bring XPlane up to the 'next level'.  I am optimistic that when 10.3 leaves Beta and 'goes final' we likely will see a marked 'uptick' in X-Plane Scenery offerings along with some airplane models.

 

 

Furthermore in some areas creating proper freeware regions are hard to be achived due the lack of freely available (and if used and further processed freely distributable) - (source) data.

Or what about some dedicated texture enhancements of photreal areas or generic ground textures for instance as another example?

 

This is indeed the case. I would love to do a payware scenery for the UK using the ordnance survey data. However, that data is expensive, and if I were to do it, I'd have to be sure that I'd earn the money back, which if I'm honest, I don't think I would, not with X-Plane anyway.

 

Textures are another story. Most people don't realise just how hard and time consuming it is to create textures. Hats of to companies like OrbX who have achieved this somewhat in FSX. To get something like this into X-Plane I'd imagine would be a difficult undertaking, and would require lots of man hours. Nobody seems to want to do it because the market is so small, which is a vicious circle, because it will continue to remain small until more people innovate to move the sim forward.

Yes, thats exactly the problem with the automatic imports ... I think, with a lot more script magic or pre-processing the import data (like matching it against a local, fresh PostGIS copy of OSM) it might be possible to do more auto-magic ... but in the end, I think, manual work is inevitable nowadays ... Years ago, when OSM still had large, empty areas, it was much easier to just do a straight import ...

 

 

And minecraft? You have no idea :lol: ... My son lately convinced me to get it ... and its quite a funny game ... with a light addiction factor (yes, I have tried it too).

Just never buy airports like I do aircraft as only land and take off there. the payware plane I can play around with think I bought $180,000 cessna lol.

Great discussion going on here!

Very interesting to read and follow!

 

I want Kevin Grimm to make some airports, and I would buy them.  Does anyone know where he is now.  These shots came out in 2012 and since then I haven't heard anything about him.

 

http://www.terra-brasilis.org/forum/index.php?topic=3172.0

 

WOW!

This looks absolutely stunning!

Fly Tampa in X-Plane - a real great and very good example to show how X-Plane could look like with dedicated 3rd party payware airports applied!

After scrolling thru all the answers, I think region packages like those by ORBX would be great. We have one airport that can be compared but XP is still miles away from those nice flights I did over ORBX land.