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jabloomf1230

Fun Poll

Which Flight Sim will be the first to be officially released  

43 members have voted

  1. 1. Which Flight Sim will be the first to be officially released

    • Xplane 11
      31
    • Dovetail Games Flight Simulator
      5
    • Aerofly FS 2 (non-beta)
      0
    • Prepar3d 4.0 32 bit
      0
    • Prepar3d 64 bit
      7


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Well, we're headed toward the end of the shortest month of the year 2017 and this poll is still viable. XP11 is moving along quite nicely and is up to beta 11. The beta version of XP World Editor was also released. As to Aerofly FS2, they released an SDK to developers. And there's all kinds of rumors regarding P3d V4.

 

And DTG Flight Simulator?

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"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
-  Thalassa Cruso 

Ahh, March, it has lived up to its reputation (especially if one lives in the northeastern US where they got 2 to 3 feet of snow). XP11 is now up to beta 15. I've given up trying to keep up with the beta releases, as each release fixes something and breaks something else. DTG FS is still MIA. The most exciting thing to report about Aerofly FS2 is that a few repaints were released. Still no release version of any of the three sims. And (cough, cough) P3d V4? My favorite post this month was on the Aerosoft official message board, where one of the developers was asked if their CRJ700/900 would be compatible with P3d V4.  Which will be released first? I suspect a real life airport with a circular runway will be built before either is released.:wink:

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Good post Jay,  Only seen this Thread now.  

Following 


 

 

 

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It was originally a fluff piece but the pace of progress has really slowed. My experience  with the XP11 betas lead me to believe  that LR rushed the new version out the door out of an unfounded fear that one of its competitors  was on the verge of releasing a new product.

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On 3/16/2017 at 4:22 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

It was originally a fluff piece but the pace of progress has really slowed. My experience  with the XP11 betas lead me to believe  that LR rushed the new version out the door out of an unfounded fear that one of its competitors  was on the verge of releasing a new product.

You don't know Austin Meyer's history very well, do you. :happy:

Laminar isn't a company that works that way. They have other irons in the fire besides the desktop PC version, like the phone app (a big seller, from what I hear), the FAA-certified Pro version, and various aerospace company contracts.

Lockheed Martin is the closest analogue to Laminar, as a company that isn't impacted that much by what the rest of the consumer-level FS market is doing. LM doesn't need to think about whether P3D is "market competitive" in the usual sense. Not with that massive F-35 contract and other taxpayer-funded projects in the bag.

Anyway, I think the current X-Plane pb15 is shaping up to the point where it's very flyable, if you can ignore some remaining graphics glitches (and don't try a water landing). I've been using the recent XP11 betas to fly in FSEconomy for the last few weeks, and I've been able to complete every single flight. If it wasn't pretty solid, I wouldn't risk my time in FSEconomy flying it.

As for DTG... who knows. They've been in radio silence mode for months, but they say they're still working on it, with something to show soon. I hope they have something that will keep the other sims on their toes. Competition is good.

I wish Aerofly FS2 success, but I don't think they're shooting for the same type of flight sim that many of us longtime sim pilots are looking for. I could be wrong.


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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I've been flying almost solely with XP11 since beta1, but anyone who says it wasn't rushed out the door is not looking at the bigger picture. There isn't enough room for all these flight sims, despite what some people here say. The market is tiny to start with and it only survives because the software is incredibly expensive. I can go out and buy any video game for my PS4 and I have to work at spending a couple of hundred US dollars even with a whole bunch of DLC. But a flight sim? Sure, the base sim is modestly priced and long ago, that's all anybody spent on XP. But those days are gone. I do recall certain folks recently spending $70+ for an XP weather addon. And the rest of the bunch? Once one starts buying this addon and that addon, it ends up costing upwards of $500 and maybe a lot more. John V. at ORBX is licking his chops over the prospects of Aerofly FS 2. It needs a whole lot of help and he's going to sell it to everyone. 

Don't get me wrong. I gladly pay the 3rd party developers their asking prices. That's not my point. My point is that there is a limit to the market and not all these flight sim  options are going to be viable.

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12 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Don't get me wrong. I gladly pay the 3rd party developers their asking prices. That's not my point. My point is that there is a limit to the market and not all these flight sim  options are going to be viable.

That may be true, but we don't have any hard stats on how many people only want to fly one sim exclusively vs. those who don't mind rotating between different flight sims for their different qualities. 

You brought up the cost factor for add-ons, and I do think that is relevant. We're at a point now where after P3D goes 64-bit, and after DTG releases whatever they're working on, someone who wants to move out of 32-bit FSX will face buying payware planes and scenery all over again. They'll be choosing between X-Plane, P3D 64, DTG (whatever), and Aerofly FS2 for building up that library of add-ons. That alone might limit cross-platform purchasing. But there will still be people who will keep a foot in several flight sims. There always have been.

Anyway, back to the main point I was making. Even if we assume that "not all these new flight sim options will be viable," when it comes to release timing decisions for X-Plane, I don't think it matters. Austin just doesn't operate that way. He'd still be working on X-Plane and releasing new versions if there were only 100 people buying the program. He could afford to do that. It's a privately held company with one aviation fanatic at the helm. 

None of the other contenders operate that way. Lockheed Martin is funded through other channels. Their decisions about the future of P3D probably hinge as much on their internal corporate needs for simulation as any concerns for the "educational" user base. So both Laminar and LM will be around for the long-term.

DTG and Aerofly are the two contenders that have to operate as more traditional commercial software developers, with more traditional marketing concerns. Those are the two companies, along with any add-on developers like Orbx that get on board, that will have to worry about how many copies are sold over the next few years.

Just my $.02 opinion, and I could be wrong about all of this. It's just how I see the current situation.


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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I thought that I'd check in since not only has XP11 been officially released but P3d V4 is 64 bit and will be for sale on May 30. DTG FSW and Aerofly FS2 are still in some kind of open beta so the "place" position in the race has yet to be determined. Technically there's still a chance for another 32 bit Prepar3d 3.4 maintenance release to be released, but  that doesn't count. Also, DTG has not released an SDK to developers.

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18 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I thought that I'd check in since not only has XP11 been officially released but P3d V4 is 64 bit and will be for sale on May 30. DTG FSW and Aerofly FS2 are still in some kind of open beta so the "place" position in the race has yet to be determined. Technically there's still a chance for another 32 bit Prepar3d 3.4 maintenance release to be released, but  that doesn't count. Also, DTG has not released an SDK to developers.

Actually we don't know if that is true in regard to an SDK, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that they've not made an SDK generally available to all. Since some of the defaut FSW aircraft are Carenado ones and work in the sim, and we know for a fact that Just Flight have been working on porting across some of their existing product catalogue to FSW too, they presumably must have had, if not a complete SDK, then at the very least something along those lines to enable them to do that.


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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True, I'm sure DTG has an SDK, but until it is publicly available some 3rd party developers are going to sit on the sidelines. Since there is a good amount of file-related compatibility between FSX and FSW, it is possible to develop scenery and aircraft for FSW without an SDK. FSW does support XML gauges.

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15 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

True, I'm sure DTG has an SDK, but until it is publicly available some 3rd party developers are going to sit on the sidelines. Since there is a good amount of file-related compatibility between FSX and FSW, it is possible to develop scenery and aircraft for FSW without an SDK. FSW does support XML gauges.

It might not be just the lack of a published SDK. Another factor might be the licensing requirements for FSW.

DTG has said that any add-on, free or payware for FSW must have appropriate license fees paid to use aircraft names, trademarks, logos, etc. I think this extends to avionics too. That's gonna put a damper on 3rd party add-ons, unless everyone starts using silly names like "Gramin GPS." :blink:

So far, this doesn't apply to developers creating add-ons for P3D, Aerofly FS2, or XP11, although it could change in the future. I hear that Airbus is getting interested in siphoning fees from entertainment flight sims using their trademarks, and that has already caused some concern with at least one XP11 helicopter developer.


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

So far, this doesn't apply to developers creating add-ons for P3D, Aerofly FS2, or XP11

What you are saying is that unlike DTG those three flight sim developers are not yet imposing trademark requirements. The use of aircraft names, trademarks and logos without proper permission from the aircraft manufacturer is illegal, but for some reason the flight sim world had previously escaped scrutiny. PMDG has certainly complied with such licensing for years. And anything running under P3d and manufactured by LM (including Sikorsky) probably has tacit approval or the LM lawyers would have been all over the third party aircraft developers by now.  And  with regard to the Garmin GTN gauges, I find it hard to believe that neither RXP nor Flight 1 have received permission from Garmin. The present discussion of trademarks was probably touched off by Airbus:

http://www.airbus.com/newsevents/news-events-single/detail/officially-licensed-projecting-airbus-brand-and-image-in-the-computer-simulation-market/

Aerosoft issued a response that they were looking into the licensing, but I imagine that the cost will dictate whether the Airbus A320 will now become the "Arbutus 3 Series" ala the automobile naming conventions in GTA.

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