Excellent modeller, perhaps... dreadful sound implementer and recipient of appalling legal counsel, most definitely.

 

 

I thought about going there but withdrew my comments about "that side" of his business.. Haahaha.. He was a character that guy.

Even if their next flight simulator turns out to be horrible, at least FSX on Steam will broaden the interest in aviation. And Prepar3D is not going anywhere.

Hence the worry, Tom: any potential developer in this hobby cannot just be in it just for the money. We know what happens.

 

FSX really needed to be picked up by some philanthropist with our hardcore simming community in mind and in heart.

 

Apart from FlightGear, which developers are not it in for the money?

 

Unfortunately there's no sign of a philanthropist with "our hardcore simming community in mind" and a true philanthopist wouldn't spend money to subsidise our hobby.

If only P3D could have designed a 64-bit simulation engine, we hardcore simmers wouldn't even have to consider this stuff. It would be business as usual. 

That said, I don't think they can threaten the hardcore end of the hobby at all. Even though it's not 64 bit, I am encouraged by what I've seen of P3D so will be migrating over there at some point and as someone has already pointed out, P3D looks to be going strong. So if DTG do hijack FSX with inaccuracy and commercially driven pap, P3D will have to become our haven.

 

But maybe they might even make something better than FSX, or even P3D! My glass is half full...

Complaining that DTG release lots of overpriced buggy DLC is quite ironic given the huge amount of FSX DLC (aka addons) that fits that exact same description.

 

I'm sure you are all aware that a lot of the DLC for TS released on Steam is outsourced to third party developers, and that DTG do not lock the sim down and there are independent third parties like Just Trains, Iron Horse House and Armstrong Powerhouse who are all making and distributing content completely independent of DTG and Steam.

 

Finally, given the extremely introspective nature of flight simulation, how we have raised the bar for entry into the hobby so high in recent years (something which P3D has made even worse), putting both FSX and whatever new sim comes out on a digital storefront like Steam which is accessed by 75 million active users is a very good thing for the future of the hobby.

 

A lot of the animosity to DTG is what they transformed the Train Simulator community into.. When Rail Simulator came out people immediately started fixing, tweaking, and trying to make it realistic. The MSTS community is a thriving large community of freeware developers (and commercial).  It became clear after a few revisions (and turning into Railworks, then TS 14) that DTG weren't too keen on freeware and actual simulation. They wanted a choo choo driving game that appeals to casuals.  You can't blame them for monopolizing the addon market into a commercial gain for themselves but in turn it chased away most all the train simulation fans back to Microsoft Train Simulator or Trainz.  

I will withhold judgment until we really see what happens.  I find that worrying about the negative what-ifs doesn't serve a purpose.  

 

If Dovetail is really a bunch of old EA execs, so be it.  While I didn't like what EA did to MAXIS's Sims and SimCity franchise, I felt they dumbed it down.  However, it is done.  I still have my original Sims 1 disks that I can always install if I want to enjoy the original humor and intent of the game.

 

Don't worry what will happen to FSX.  A2A, PMDG, Orbx....etc will all continue to make their excellent addons.

 

I understand your point in all of this, but the way they run things is maximum profit and minimum effort. Now I understand that many companies operate this way, but for this franchise, the guys behind it couldn't care less about the product. Yes, I don't think we will see some of the big 3rd Party developers cut back on content, in fact I think they will gain from this initially. What I have a fear in is that the development here is in the wrong hands, and in the long run, we the simmers are going to lose out the most at least from MS based simulations. 

 

In terms of FSX, and it's next version that they plan on developing, that is where the problem I see in this all is. Someone else could develop a fantastic sequel to FSX that is well overdue, but they can't. They already tried this with Train Simulator, which if I recall correctly was based initially off Train Simulator 2 which MS was developing before the closing of the ACES studios. Look at it today. Every year they just release a new UI, call it a new game/updated game, but the engine is the same, with occasionally some added, buggy features, and more advertisements. They cannot, and I repeat this CANNOT fix their own games and released content. That is something that I fear here. They have shown that they want to fix it, and have been apparently fixing content for the last 6 months, but they have gone silent more recently and have not released any real bug fixes or patches that some products desperately need. 

 

This company has not really proved their ability in developing a solid, good simulation. The one simulator they do currently sell has many issues as I've said before. Being EA execs doesn't help them either, as they really have no respect towards users, especially users who complain and ask for fixes for issues. Someone has said this before too, they have gone out of their way to silence some of these people. Yes, I understand that the Flight Sim world is the same, but look at FSX. For being 8 years old, it has performed well in my opinion. Remember, it was developed before the graphic and multicore revolution. I'm not worried about content, as much as I am worried about the game itself, and how playable it will be. When FSX came out, it was for me approx. $70, but came with the whole world, and quite a few planes, which then were more then plenty, and appeared at the time more than well detailed. With the potential FSX sequel here though, it could be $60+ get a sliver of the world, and 3 marginally detailed planes, followed with no support or fixes for the issues that will pop up. Advertisements all over the game, a lack of free flight, mission based gameplay, and a lot of other things that make it arcade style, more than an actual simulator.

 

I just know from my experience with them, they really lack any ability to develop an actual simulation, but are great at developing bugs. I hope to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be. I hope they actually start to reach out to the community at the least, if they actually wanted to develop a good simulator that could compete with XPlane and P3D2, they have to, and they have to develop it right...

 

 

EDIT:

I wanted to include this. Dovetail Games is not a new company, they simply renamed themselves from Railsimulator.com earlier this year, with intentions to broaden their simulation reach. They are developing a fishing simulator too which they recently announced. When you look at their history, you'll understand where I come from.

 

 

This thinking is very flawed.

 

So you say, sir.

 

Regardless, what our community really needs is a dedicated dev group that does it out of passion and devotion for free.

 

Such groups do exist, observe:

 

http://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/content.php

 

 

A lot of the animosity to DTG is what they transformed the Train Simulator community into..

 

The huge amount of content available for FS9 and FSX, the existence of P3D and X-Plane both in active development and with their own third party addon developers means that DTG wouldn't be able to monopolise the flight sim genre and drive everybody in a certain direction. If you don't like what DTG do with their sim then there are alternatives. If anything this could open up a new avenue of easier access flight simming that could bring fresh blood into the hobby.

The "serious simmers" can go with FSX or P3D but we need new simmers: the "Kids" that like to hop on the computer or tablet and fly around for some time, shoot some buddy's down and have some fun; no preflight checks, no fuel calculations, etc.

 

They will grow and in a couple of years they will become serious simmers and demand new content!

 

There is no quantitative research I am aware of to verify this.  In fact, I would guess most such beginners lose interest and drop off.

 

In the meantime, our hobby gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

I'd recommend anyone and everyone go back and re-read Styckx's post #35, and read Dovetail's EULA treatment for armchair developers. There's no guarantee that such a clause will be placed on their flight products, but holy dear spirits in the sky that is a harsh, harsh, harsh EULA.

 

Ouch.

I'd recommend anyone and everyone go back and re-read Styckx's post #35, and read Dovetail's EULA treatment for armchair developers. There's no guarantee that such a clause will be placed on their flight products, but holy dear spirits in the sky that is a harsh, harsh, harsh EULA.

 

Ouch.

 

If you want the full EULA 

 

http://www.railsimulator.com/terms/images/EULA-TS2014-1.pdf

 

Section #9 is the User Generated Content section. Again.. It's much larger than the snippets I posted

To the question of age, youth, new FS users, here is the latest demographic result as of 10 minutes ago and with over 1,100 respondents:

 

 

And incomes:

 

 

Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

As far as age is concerned, the distribution is very much skewed to the left (i.e. the mass of the distribution is concentrated on the right of the figure).

 

Conclusion: the flight sim community could use some fresh STEAM input.

To the question of age, youth, new FS users, here is the latest demographic result as of 10 minutes ago and with over 1,100 respondents:

 

 

Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

 

The Microsoft Train Simulator Community is also a more older crowd filled with people who work on the railroad themselves in various forms from engineers to conductors..  Very much like the FSX community is. DTG and their Train Simulator is a much much much younger demographic.  They didn't like dealing with the old and experienced from the MSTS community when they were constantly correcting their "simulators" faults and laughing at their terrible physics that made no sense.

 

Albiet.. The Flight Simming community is even rougher (in a good way)..  We've been used to high level of detail and accuracy for years..

 

DTG see's money in DLC with flight simming.. That's a 100% given and the only reason they signed this deal. That's all they see and that' what they want to monopolize on.  No one thought they'd do it with Rail Simulator after the MSTS crowd told them to go pound sand.. Yet.. Here we are with TS 2014 and they have over $3,900 in DLC and no signs of stopping. 

DTG see's money in DLC with flight simming.. That's a 100% given and the only reason they signed this deal.

 

I just have to shake my head in abject disgust.